The blonde’s tongue glided along her upper lip in a provocative manner. “What time do you want me?” She flashed a smile. “To meet you, I mean?”
Seriously? Shouldn’t a body like that exempt you from having to be coy?
“Le diciannove.”
Blondie giggled. “What’s that mean?”
“The nineteen hours.”
“So that would be . . . ?”
Adonis held up seven fingers.
“All right, then. I’ll see you at seven in the bar.” Blondie gave a tiny wave and strutted back to her seat.
As Adonis downed a second bottle of water, Julia gathered up her things and headed for her room. The last three minutes had added at least a decade to her age.
Adonis had worked moving rocks all day in the hot sun, yet was primed and ready for sex.
She, on the other hand, had relaxed for a good part of the day—and was ready for a nap.
* * *
From her corner table in the restaurant where she relaxed unnoticed, Julia watched the three young people in the bar, playing out the scenario she had overheard being planned.
The ubiquitous stonemason and his friend had scored . . . or were well on their way.
Blondie had indeed met them for drinks. Although Adonis had been anxious to accept her offer this afternoon, now his friend seemed more aggressive in the pursuit. Adonis appeared a bit more aloof, to the point of being standoffish, actually.
Julia swallowed her last sip of wine. No doubt, one of them was going to get lucky tonight. Maybe both.
Waiting it out with another glass of wine to see who left with whom was tempting. The subtle—and sometimes not so subtle—interaction was fascinating. When the blonde turned her attention to the stonemason, he would do something every time to divert her attention back to the friend, who was handsome and sexy . . . but he was no Adonis.
Even fully dressed—if the low-cut, backless minidress could be considered fully dressed—Blondie was pretty, but a little hard around the edges. “Rode hard and put away wet” was the descriptive Kentucky term.
The stonemason could have his pick and was probably waiting for better fare.
A third glass of wine just to assuage her nosiness seemed silly when a walk down to the village would be beautiful tonight, not to mention better for the tummy Julia was fighting to keep flat. She also wanted to get to bed early because she’d decided to do tomorrow’s hike first thing in the morning. That way, she’d have the rest of the day for sightseeing—her last chance to explore Lerici . . . at least, for this trip.
While she contemplated her choices, Adonis excused himself, making up her mind for her. With him gone, the tableau wouldn’t be nearly so interesting.
She signed her check and left the finale of the interlude to her imagination.
CHAPTER 5
By ten the next morning, Julia had already hiked seven miles, showered, traded her shorts for a skirt and her hiking boots for flip-flops, and was enjoying a continental breakfast on the patio of the hotel, which once again gave her a full view of the pool and Adonis at work.
She noticed yesterday how he worked from a hodgepodge of large stones sometimes piled two feet high, sifting among them to find the one that worked best. He would eye both the spot and the rock carefully, then chisel the edge for the fit he wanted. And sometimes, after all that work, he’d fume and throw the stone away, and search for another. He certainly was picky about which stone went where. Perhaps color also influenced his choice? As a designer, she could appreciate that.
And she could appreciate the man . . . from a distance. She certainly didn’t want to get within his radar and risk the embarrassment of getting caught watching him again. He was used to it, though, she could tell from the self-assured way he carried himself. She couldn’t help but notice the number of looks he garnered from the women in the area.
If he lived to be a hundred, this guy would never know what it meant to be invisible.
As she sipped the last of her caffe latte, he disappeared around the edge of the building. When he didn’t return for at least ten minutes, she decided maybe the coast was clear for a while. Today was her last day in Lerici, so if she was going to get a closer look at the sculpture she’d studied from afar, it had to be now, and preferably while the temperamental stonemason was away. She signed her check and moseyed over toward the clamshell.
The closer she got, the more intriguing the object became. Overlaid with polished mother-of-pearl, the part housed inside the shell—the ball or moon or pearl or whatever it was meant to be—begged to be touched, so she obliged. The smooth orb had already caught the sun, was warm under her palm. A delicate stroke sent it rolling to one end where the concave form sent it back the other direction. She stood mesmerized, rolling the orb from one end to the other, watching the ever-changing display of colors as it moved along the path. It reminded her of the kaleidoscopes she’d enjoyed as a kid, making her feel like a magician wielding great magic with the turn of her wrist or the flick of her finger.
“You like?”
Julia spun around to find the stonemason and the same dark eyes she’d encountered before, but today they weren’t so brooding—and they were much closer. So close they stopped her breath for a couple of seconds. “It’s . . . it’s beautiful,” she finally managed. “I’ve never seen anything like it. I was trying to decide if it was a pearl or an iris or the moon passing in front of the sun.”
“Iris?” The eyes squinted in the same questioning way as they had the day she arrived, but today they lacked the fire that lit them from behind, replaced instead by a pleasant warmth.
She made a little circle with her finger in front of her eye. “The colored part of the eye. The iris.”
“Capisco.” He studied her eyes for a few seconds. “You have the beautiful . . . iris. Like the sea in winter.”
Oh my. She’d heard about the legendary charm of the Italian men, but she hadn’t prepared to deal with it—or her resulting momentary lack of brain function—firsthand. His gaze continued to scrutinize her eyes in a disconcerting manner, and she suddenly felt sorry for all those amoebas in high school biology classes. “Thank you. That’s very nice.” She turned back to the sculpture, finding her escape by rolling it once again to the end and back.
“I must work now. I finish today.”
The comment drew her back around to face him. He had one of those smiles that melted a woman’s insides. Perfect teeth gripped a lusciously full lower lip. She felt a twinge of disappointment she wouldn’t enjoy him with her coffee tomorrow. “Please, go ahead and work.” She gave a dismissive wave. “Don’t mind me.”
He didn’t move, just continued to stand close, shifting his weight.
“It’s been nice talking with you.” She gave a little wave.
He still stood there, then his smile broke into a low chuckle that vibrated in and out and around her. “I am Vitale. I work here.” He pointed to the exact spot where she was standing.
Her eyes flitted across the way to the area where he’d been working earlier, only now noticing it was finished. “Oh, of course. Sorry!” Embarrassed she’d been gawking too much to pick up on his hint, and more than a little flustered, she moved to get out of his way, a stack of nearby stones forgotten.
The side of her knee connected with the precarious pile. She stumbled, trying to miss them, but lost her balance in the process. Oh God, I’m going to fall. She fought to keep her skirt from bunching around her hips, trying to preserve some scrap of dignity on her way down. Just when she thought all was lost, two strong hands gripped her arms and kept her upright.
Too bad he