by C. L. Donley
“Oh shit, I can’t believe I didn’t tell you.”
“What?”
“He just said, ‘write it and I’ll sign it.’”
Channing died laughing.
“Wrote myself one hell of a letter,” Lark giggled.
The best thing to come out of that shit show in Haiti was the dissolution of the bizarre, pseudo-romantic arrangement between her and her boss. Embarrassing. She cringed as she remembered unloading her baggage to him, almost immediately. And then the moment she realized… he didn’t care. He couldn’t possibly have cared.
The more she thought about how manipulative he was, the deeper her embarrassment grew. As if she wasn’t already relationship phobic.
Back to meaningless hookups it was. She’d never had an Italian one. She had a sneaking suspicion those were the best.
“I’m glad I could pass my expertise onto you,” Teresa smiled with a confident air.
“And here I thought nothing good would come out of that hot mess.”
“Now ladies, keep calm,” Channing lilted in her charming southern Georgia accent, “but two of the hottest Italian men on the planet are about to walk past us,” she crossed her legs as she spoke. The women were sitting at an outdoor table at one of Florence’s small, charming street bistros.
Channing, a loud mouth yet brilliant blonde, was known for two things: mixing strong drinks and exaggerating. But knowing this was Italy, and smelling the intoxicating scent of sandalwood from their table, they figured she probably wasn’t too far off.
Lark prepared to feast her senses on the first appetizer of the night, craning her neck ever so slightly to catch a glimpse of them.
While Channing was already in full ogling mode, Teresa took a drag of her cigarette as she assessed them, as if beautiful men were cheap where she lived.
Lark could barely believe her eyes, and though she wasn’t conscious of it, her mouth was probably agape.
“Chow…” Channing drawled more than usual.
“Ladies,” the dark-haired one cordially spoke.
Cruelly they kept walking.
They had some better place to be.
There was a first for everything, Lark supposed. She’d never seen an Italian man be standoffish around them, especially a pair of them.
But these men were older. Distinguished. The dark haired one with the light eyes looked to be the oldest upon first glance. The other was dirty blond, exquisite, not quite old enough to be her father, but close enough to still be her weakness.
“Questa nera,” he said to his friend, his low voice a force of nature.
Instantly Lark’s heart was in her throat and she felt the blood traveling her body, her nipples. She quickly took a sip of wine, as though it were a chaser.
Helplessly they watched as the two continued to saunter away. The dark haired one took a glance back in their direction, as if he just needed one more memory of Channing’s boobs to make it through life. And then they were gone.
“Money,” was all Channing said when they were down the street.
Teresa was smiling with her eyes on Lark, her chin resting on the open hand that held her cigarette. The two women locked eyes.
“What?” Lark said.
“I’m not fluent in Italian, but I understood that.”
“Understood what?” Channing looked between them.
“You didn’t hear the other one talking?”
“No, what’d he say?” Channing grinned mischievously, eyes wide.
“What did he say, Lark?” Teresa teased her, blowing out a puff of smoke.
“Nothing,” she dismissed, rolling her glowing hazel eyes.
“He said, ‘the black one,’” blabbed Teresa.
Channing looked over at Lark, indignant.
“You have to sleep with him for us,” she said. Teresa chuckled.
“He’s gone,” Lark argued, as if that was her only objection to the idea.
“They’ll be back,” Teresa predicted.
“I hope you’re not suggesting that we sit here all night and wait for them to return.”
“Don’t be silly, they’ll be back within the hour,” Teresa assured them.
They were, in fact, back within ten minutes. This time, Lark was the first to see them coming from her side of the table, and from quite the distance.
“Trouble’s back,” Lark divulged.
Channing instantly whirled her head in their direction. Lark and Teresa laughed.
Subtlety wasn’t Channing’s style. But Lark couldn’t fault her. If there were any two men that deserved to know fully the effect they had on women it was these two.
“Real names or fake?” Teresa grinned.
“Definitely fake,” Lark answered.
“She’s in rare form tonight,” Channing giggled as the men drew closer.
“I asked for a sign and I think…this is it,” Lark trailed off as she and the handsome stranger locked eyes. He walked up to the bistro.
Channing gave her the nudge.
“You know what to do, girl,” she whispered, slowly nodding.
She did. Lark was the only one of them who spoke fluent Italian at the table and typically served as the spy.
Channing already ensured they wouldn’t suspect that the girls spoke much, if any, of the language. It was an extra measure of safety that served them well on at least one occasion when a group of guys tried to drug some of her friends senior year.
The two men sat at an empty table across from them, conspicuously. The women nonchalantly continued talking and Lark listened as the most handsome of the two summoned the waiter and bought another round of drinks for their table. Channing didn’t know a lick of Italian, but she knew what a man looked like when he was buying you a drink.
The waiter came over and interrupted the girls’ conversation with another round, compliments of the adjacent table, just as they’d suspected.
The black one, he’d essentially said. Lark’s body tingled all over at the thought, especially down below. She’d just gotten dumped by her boss, and this guy was an Italian mirage. Late 30’s, early 40’s, impeccably dressed and wearing an expensive watch like a boss. A brooding expression and a jaw like a marble sculpture in the Uffizi. Light brown hair that curled at the edges and what looked to be olive green eyes from what she could tell without gawking, olive to match his gorgeous skin.
He was a work of art, a human ode to Mediterranean masculinity. If he showed any remote interest in sleeping with her, she was a goner. His handsome companion with the black hair and light blue eyes had been noticeably silent once the drinks came.
“Grahtzee!” Channing drawled to the men at the table. They raised their glasses in response.
“Americana?”
“Si,” Channing replied, Lark nodded. They waited for Teresa’s reply.
“Non,” Teresa accommodated them.
“Ah, Francia. What part?” the dark-haired stranger asked Teresa in French.
“Paris,” Teresa replied in her accent.
“May we join you?” the green-eyed one wasted no time.
Teresa and Channing looked over at Lark who gave a simple shrug with one shoulder.
“Of course,” Lark offered matter-of-factly.
“My name’s Jane, this is Delphine, and this lovely young thing is my friend Vanessa,” Channing began, gesturing toward each of the girls.
“Vanessa,” the handsome stranger repeated, eyeing Lark carefully.
“Si,” Lark confirmed.
“And you?” Teresa piped up.
“Moi?” the dark haired one stalled.
“Oui,” she drily confirmed, briefly raising her eyebrows.
“Bill,” the stranger answered, with a long ‘e’ in place of the short ‘i’ sound. Lark snickered.
“’Beel’?” Teresa repeated.
“Yes,” he replied. The girls exchanged glances. It seemed they were all on the same page.
“What about you handsome?” Channing asked.
The handsom
e stranger was in the midst of sipping his drink when she asked.
“Bob,” he finally answered when he was done, with a long Italian ‘o’. The girls chuckled.
“Bill and Bob,” Lark repeated as she looked over at Channing. She gestured in their direction, smiling, as though their aliases were convincing.
“Dio mio,” the handsome stranger muttered. Lark looked over to see what garnered his reaction and found that he was looking at her.
It was her smile, she realized, after a long moment. She chuckled a bit.
“You are the most beautiful woman in the world, Vanessa,” he confirmed as he held her gaze.
Channing and Teresa at the table couldn’t help but giggle. Lark smiled. No game in the world like Italian game, she thought.
“Coming from the most beautiful man in the world, that is high praise indeed,” Lark said with a subtle toss of her hair.
“Where are you ladies headed tonight?” ‘Bill’ asked. Meanwhile ‘Bob’ still had his gaze on Lark, one that she confidently returned.
“You tell us,” Channing replied, smiling.
* * *
“So how do the two of you know each other?” Lark asked, striking up a conversation as they walked.
“We are family. Brothers,” ‘Bill,’ the dark-haired one answered.
“We. Are. Fam-i-ly…” Channing absent-mindedly sang. Lark’s admirer looked over at Channing and grinned like he recognized the song. Lark melted like an ice cream cone. He was being awfully chaste with his words and it was killing her. She wanted to hear his voice again.
“What do the two of you do?” Lark inquired. The men laughed a bit.
“Why do Americans ask every man this?” the dark haired one asked.
“What, they don’t ask that in Italy?” Channing grinned.
“No, it is considered rude. We listen to your accent. We watch your mannerisms. We can tell where a person is from, if they are rich or poor, from this. Which is really what you are after, no?”
“Well in America, everyone works. And the kind of work you do says a lot about you.”
“Allora, we work, we just don’t talk so much about it.”
“What on earth do you talk about if you don’t talk about what you do?” Channing wondered.
“Life. Love. Food.”
“But for real though, what do you guys do,” Lark said. The girls all laughed. Her companion was still admiring her as much as he could while they walked.
“We are in finance,” he answered.
“The both of you?”
“Si.”
“Beel and Bobe, the finance brothers?”
“Si,” he said again. The girls laughed again.
The ladies didn’t balk at their vague description. They got the sense that it was more because they were indeed wealthy, and found it genuinely rude to talk about.
When they walked a single block to their destination in the heart of the city, within sight of the Duomo, their suspicions of the two men’s affluence were confirmed.
On the outside, it was a somber-looking stone building with scaffolding on the front. Then they were buzzed in and entered the double doors, a foyer, and through the second set of double doors, french doors that led to an elaborate soiree in a gorgeous stone courtyard. There was a beautiful old fountain in the middle, and they were surrounded on every side by tall ancient arches that supported the balconies and terraces of various apartments.
At some point, Lark realized that this elaborate apartment building was, in fact, someone’s house, that everyone at the soiree was filthy rich, and could likely tell that they were not.
“Would you like a tour?” the handsome stranger asked Lark.
Lark looked over at her friends who were pretending not to know what he was asking.
“Go, Alouette,” Teresa absolved her with the French version of her name.
“We are not interested at all in the tour,” Channing grinned as she kept her eyes on her friend. Lark was sending her a “don’t wait up” look when she felt the handsome stranger grab her hand.
She was caught off guard as she turned to look down at their meeting hands, arousal radiating through her as if he were transferring it through his touch.
She could feel his eyes on her and she didn’t dare look up.
Trouble.
She had a bad feeling, even though she’d already conceded that he was probably getting some tonight. Perhaps it was a warning, an omen. It was her first night in Florence, after all. She was jet-lagged, in no emotional state for intimacy that’s for sure, and she didn’t need any bad mojo hanging over this new job. She needed every shred of confidence she could muster.
But she couldn’t stop her feet. She was magnetized by his touch, his scent, his every move and the low hum of his voice, his thick accent like musical notes skimming her eardrum. They walked slowly hand in hand as they made their way up the stairs, the night air on one side through the courtyard’s many archways. Lark held the hem of her dress up as they climbed the stairs, keeping her eyes on the exquisite tailoring of his suit jacket framing his broad shoulders and back. Her slightly darker hand still in his. My word.
Don’t fall in love, don’t fall in love, she chanted in her head. Stop saying ‘love’!
He took her through a traditional Tuscan living area to a more modern kitchen and finally to a terrace that overlooked the labyrinth of terra cotta roofs of the city.
“Gorgeous,” she said.
“Eccome,” he said, his eyes on her straight hair caressed by the wind. He tucked a piece behind her ear and she was utterly lost. That he seemed to be as smitten with her was the stuff all dreams are made of.
“Is this your house?”
“My family’s,” he answered.
Dammit.
Lark, you idiot. This guy could be a Di Rossi!
She snapped out of it a bit, trying to remember if she saw any telltale markers: a family crest, coat of arms, anything she could loosely try to decipher.
She was too afraid to ask. The illusion was fragile enough as it is, just knowing that he had a family of any sort. Did that mean he had a wife? Enough questions.
“Is there someplace more… private we could go?”
“Such as?” he raised an eyebrow.
“Such as… someplace where we won’t be disturbed? Where we can’t disturb anyone else?”
“Why would we disturb anyone else?” he asked.
“I tend to be… loud. When I fuck. I can tell just by being with you that I won’t be able to keep my wits about me,” she said.
The handsome stranger searched her eyes, a slight furrow in his brow. He kept his eyes on her as he spoke.
“Mira, Vanessa. I respect your wish for privacy. But this is not why I brought you here.”
“But it’s why I came. So what do we do?”
Her eyes were gentle, yet piercing. Not at all confident, yet resolute.
The stranger gave a deep sigh as if wrestling within himself. He leaned in, placing his big hands on her bare shoulders.
Slowly her eyes closed, she took a deep breath. Her limbs were lifeless at her sides when he linked a single long arm around her waist. She gripped him for dear life and let the low tones of his voice caress her ear.
“Lo senti?” he began. He continued to caress her, to speak to her in a language she wasn’t supposed to understand.
It was the first time she wished that she could go back to age 14, when it was all just gorgeous, melodic syllables. She tried to empty her mind as he spoke. Tried not to hear the verb conjugations that became whole sentences, the gerunds and their direct objects— and good heavens the possessives. She tried not to hear Sicily, tried not to know how well educated he was.
But it was no use. She’d learned them all too well, too precisely, her methods too effective. She was surprised to hear the interpretation was equally as poetic as the unintelligible words might’ve been.
That he truly meant any of it was probably doubtful. She had
a feeling this brand of seduction was preserved exclusively for non-native prey.
Nevertheless, she was unraveling, panting and wincing at the sudden and fierce sensations of need pulsing through her at his words.
“Please…” she moaned. She wanted to know his real name. No way was she calling him “Bob.”
But she was afraid. Afraid to burst this gorgeous illusion as fragile as a bubble. One friend or family member coming around the corner was enough to shatter it. If life wanted to hurl her back to Earth, let it do its own dirty work.
“I think… I know a place,” he sighed, sounding resigned. Defeated.
“Let’s go,” she whispered. She took his hand and they walked as if they’d known each other forever, she lagging patiently behind as he faithfully led her down another set of steps, back through the large state of the art kitchen to a small door that looked like it led to a basement.
“Careful,” he said. She held onto the narrow edges of the wall until she could feel around in the dark for the banister. When they got to the bottom of the stairs a single lightbulb with a pull chain revealed a dank cellar filled with wines, tilted and stacked neatly in tall, pristine fridges like the fanciest gas station in the world.
She followed him a little further to the end of a hallway where there was a dead end, more shelves of wine and a bar-sized table and stools for tasting. She was surrounded wall to wall and head to toe by ancient looking and curved brick, like catacombs.
There she spotted a family seal: “Bennetto.”
Of course.
Inwardly she breathed a sigh of relief.
No doubt he was still in some way acquainted with the Di Rossis. These wealthy families always moved in close-knit circles.
Nevertheless, she felt reasonably safe. If word got around about the loose American whore named Vanessa, she would deny all knowledge.
She leaned against the bar table, the slit down the side of her mustard colored dress revealing a long, shapely leg.
“Bene?” he asked, speaking of his choice of venue.
“It seems… only deceptively private.”
“Vero. But no one will hear your screams.”
She had to laugh at that one. He grinned as he watched her.
“Until they open the cellar door, that is.”
“And then they will likely proceed with extreme caution.”
