Susan Phillips - Breathing Room

Because she still felt vulnerable, she blistered him with a frown. “Do you just happen to keep things like eye patches lying around, or did you steal that from someone who actually needs it?”

“Hey, the minute the guy fell down, I gave him back his white cane.”

“You’re demented.” But her irritation faded.

“Look at all this great food.” He surveyed the market stalls. “I’m not eating with anybody named Briggs tonight, so I’ll let you cook for me.”

“I wish. Unfortunately, I’ve been too busy building my empire to learn anything about cooking.” She looked around and saw that Vittorio and Giulia had disappeared.

“I must be losing my hearing. Is there actually something you don’t know how to do?”

“Lots of things. For example, I haven’t the slightest idea how to gouge out someone’s eyeballs.”

“Okay, you win this round.” He took the bouquet from her and sniffed. “Sorry about that interruption earlier. Really sorry. Massimo wanted to give me a progress report on the grapes and to ask my opinion about when we should pick them, knowing full well that I have no clue. He suggested you might like to help with the vendemmia.”

“What’s that?”

“The harvest. It’ll start in about two weeks, depending on weather, the position of the moon, birdcalls, and a few other things I don’t understand. Everyone helps out.”

“It sounds like fun.”

“It sounds like work, something I’d rather avoid. You, on the other hand, will no doubt volunteer to organize the entire event, even though you know absolutely nothing about harvesting grapes.”

“I do have a talent.”

He snorted and started negotiating with an old woman selling eggplant. Once that purchase was complete, he began gathering up other vegetables, ripe pears, a gnarled wedge of pecorino, and a crusty loaf of pane toscano. His meat purchase was accompanied by a great deal of discussion with the butcher and the butcher’s wife about the pros and cons of various preparation methods.

“Do you really know how to cook, or are you faking it?” she finally asked.

“I’m Italian. Of course I know how to cook.” He steered her away from the butcher. “And this evening I’m making you a great dinner.”

“You’re only half Italian. The rest of you is a rich movie star who grew up on the East Coast surrounded by servants.”

“And a grandmother from Lucca with no granddaughter she could pass the old ways on to.”

“Your grandmother taught you to cook?”

“She wanted to keep me busy so I wouldn’t impregnate the maids.”

“You’re not nearly as rotten as you want me to believe.”

He gave her his bone-melting smile. “Baby, all you’ve seen is my good side.”

“Stop it.”

“That kiss really threw you into a tailspin, didn’t it?”

“Oh, yes.” He laughed, which made her more peevish, so she threw Michael’s words at him. “I’m schizo when it comes to sex. Sometimes I get into it, and sometimes I can’t get it over with fast enough.”

“Cool.”

“It’s not funny.”

“Will you just relax? Nothing’s going to happen that you don’t want to.”

Exactly what she was afraid of.

Ren went upstairs to get rid of his eye patch and change out of his laborer’s garb. Isabel finished unpacking the groceries and straightened up the mess he left in his wake. She wandered over to gaze out the garden door. The workers had disappeared from the olive grove, and Marta seemed to have moved into the villa for a while. This was a good time to locate the key to the storehouse.

She searched the kitchen drawers and cupboards, then moved on to the living room, where she finally discovered a wire basket containing half a dozen old-fashioned keys bound together with a piece of twine.

“What’s up?”

She jumped as Ren appeared behind her. He’d changed into jeans and a lightweight oatmeal cotton sweater. The hot water, she’d already noted, had magically returned. “I’m hoping one of these is the key to the storehouse.”

He followed her back through the kitchen and out into the garden. “Is there a reason this matters?”

A pair of crows squawked in protest as they headed for the olive grove. “I thought everyone was trying to get rid of me so Marta wouldn’t have to share the house, but now it appears to be more complicated than that.”

“At least in your imagination.”

They reached the grove, and she began to look for evidence of digging. It didn’t take long to notice that the ground near the storehouse was more trampled today than it had been yesterday.

Ren gazed at the footprints. “I remember poking around down here once when I was a kid. I liked the way the storehouse was built into the side of the hill. I think it was used to keep wine and olive oil.”

She tried the keys. Finally she found one that fit, and she turned it in the old iron lock. The wooden door dragged on its hinges as she pushed against it, and Ren moved her aside to give it a little muscle. They stepped into the dim, musty interior and saw old barrels, crates piled with empty wine bottles, and a few odds and ends of furniture stacked around. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she noticed scuff marks in the dirt.

Ren noticed them, too, and stepped around a broken table to take a closer look. “Someone’s moved these crates away from the wall. Go up to the house, will you, and see if you can find a flashlight? I want a better look.”

“Here.” She pulled out the small flashlight she’d stuck in her pocket.

“Do you have any idea how annoying that is?”

“I’ll try not to do it again.”

He played the flashlight across the walls, pausing to study the places where the rock had been reinforced with stones and mortar. “Look at this.”

She moved closer and saw scratch marks around the stones, as if someone had tried to pry them out. “Well, well… What do you think of my imagination now?”

He ran his fingers over the marks. “Maybe you’d better tell me what this is about.”

She gazed around the dark space. “Didn’t you try to kill somebody once in a place like this?”

“Brad Pitt. Worst luck, he got me instead. But in a contest between you and me, Fifi, I’m going to win, so start talking.”

She brushed away a spiderweb and walked over to investigate the opposite wall. “Massimo and Giancarlo are supposed to be digging a well in the olive grove, but this doesn’t look like the olive grove to me.”

“It sure is an odd place for a well.”

They poked around a bit more but found nothing else suspicious. She followed him out into the sunshine, where he switched off the flashlight. “I’m going to have a talk with Anna,” he said.

“She’ll stonewall you.”

“This is my property, and if there’s something going on, I want to know about it.”

“I don’t think confronting her is the best way to get information.”

“You have a better way? Stupid question. Of course you do.”

She’d already thought it over. “It might be more productive to act as though we haven’t noticed anything odd, then make ourselves scarce and watch what happens from someplace we can’t be seen the next time Massimo and Giancarlo show up.”

“Spy, you mean. Now, that has to violate every Cornerstone you ever made up and a few you haven’t even thought about.”

“Not exactly true. The Personal Relationship Cornerstone calls for aggressively pursuing your goals, and the Professional Responsibility Cornerstone encourages out-of-the-box thinking. Also, something very dishonest seems to be going on here, and the Spiritual Discipline Cornerstone advocates total honesty.”

“Spying, of course, being a great way to practice that.”

“Which has always been a problem with the Four Cs. They don’t give you a lot of wiggle room.”

He laughed. “You’re making this way too complicated. I’m talking to Anna.”

“Go ahead, but I’m telling you right now, you won’t get anywhere.”

“Is that so? Well, you’ve forgotten one thing, Ms. Know-It-All.”

“And what’s that?”

“I have ways of making people talk.”

“Then be my guest.”

Unfortunately, his ways didn’t work with Anna Vesto, and Ren returned to the farmhouse later that evening with no more information than when he’d left.

“I told you so,” she said to punish him for the afternoon she’d spent sitting in the arbor thinking about that vineyard kiss instead of working on an outline for her book about overcoming personal crisis.

He refused to take the bait. “She said there’d been some small landslides, and the men can’t start digging until they make certain the hill’s stable.”

“Strange that they had to go inside the storehouse-undoubtedly the most stable part of that slope-to begin making reinforcements.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

They were standing in the kitchen, where Ren had just begun dinner preparations. He’d moved into her house, mess and all, and she hadn’t done anything to stop it.

She took a sip of the wine he’d poured, and leaned against the counter to watch as he pulled the chicken he’d bought from the small refrigerator. He sharpened a wicked-looking carving knife with a steel he found in a drawer. “When I mentioned to Anna that the storehouse didn’t seem like the most logical place to start making reinforcements, all I got were shrugs, along with the suggestion that Italian workmen knew a lot more about landslides and well-digging than a worthless American movie star does.”

“Except more politely stated.”

“Not much. Then that five-year-old exhibitionist came running in and flashed me. I swear, I’m not going up there again without a personal bodyguard-meaning you.”

“Brittany’s just trying to get attention. If everyone would ignore her negative behavior and reinforce the positive, she’d stop doing it.”

“That’s easy for you to say. You’re not the one being stalked.”

“You do have a way with women.” She smiled and took another sip of wine. “How are Tracy and Harry doing?”

“She wasn’t there, and Harry ignored me.” He pushed aside a yellow plate holding the pears he’d bought at the market. “Okay, this is how we’re going to solve the mystery of what’s going on around here. We’re announcing to everyone that we’re driving to Siena for the day. Then we’ll pack up the car, head off, and when we get far enough away, double back and find a vantage point where we can watch the olive grove.”

“Interesting plan. My plan, as a matter of fact.”

“Actually, that’s what I’m going to do.” He took a whack at the chicken breast. “You’re staying in the car and driving to Siena.”

“Okay.”

He cocked one of those screen-idol eyebrows. “In the movies this is where the liberated woman tells the macho hero that he’s crazy if he thinks he’s going on that dangerous mission without her.”

“Which is why you, the bad guy, are always able to abduct those foolhardy females.”

“I don’t think you have to worry too much about Massimo or Giancarlo abducting you. Tell Father Lorenzo the truth. You don’t want to compromise your principles with spying, so you’re making me do the dirty work.”

“Good theory, but wrong. When it comes to a choice between boiling in the hot sun all day and strolling through the shady streets of Siena, guess which one I’d rather do?” Besides, strolling the streets of Siena wouldn’t present the same temptation as spending hours alone with Ren. Even though she’d almost positively decided to have an affair with him, she wanted to give herself another chance to regain her sanity.

“You’re the most unpredictable woman I’ve ever met.”

She took an olive from the bowl on the counter. “Why are you so anxious to send me off to Siena?”

He pushed aside a thigh with the edge of his blade. “Are you nuts? About five minutes into the stakeout you’d be dusting the weeds and rearranging the leaf piles. Then, when you finished all that, you’d start trying to tidy me up, and I’d have to shoot you.”

“I know how to relax. I can do it if I concentrate.”

He laughed. “So do you plan to just stand around entertaining me, or do you want to learn something about cooking?”

She smiled despite herself. “I’ve actually been thinking about taking a few cooking classes.”

“Why take classes when I’m here?” He washed the chicken from his hands in the sink. “Start cleaning those vegetables, then cut up the pepper.”

She gazed at the chicken he’d just finished dismembering. “I’m not sure I want to do any activity with you that involves knives.”

He laughed, but as he gazed down at her, his amusement faded. For a moment he seemed almost troubled, but then he dropped his head and slowly, thoroughly, kissed her. She tasted wine on his lips and something else that was distinctly Lorenzo Gage-strength, cunning, and a thinly veiled vicious streak. Or maybe she’d made up that last one to try to terrify herself out of what she wanted to do with him.