With just a couple of snips, Gabriel cut a good six inches from the length of hair and let it fall from his hands. He and Luci and Luciana all watched as it hit the black salon floor.
Luciana’s mouth dropped open in shock.
“Can I offer you a coffee?” Gabriel asked.
“Absolutely,” she answered without hesitation.
As Gabriel worked his ministrations on her locks, Luciana reflected on how this trip had turned into much more than what she bargained for. Not only was she cutting her hair and wearing pants and touring Florence at her leisure, something far more important had happened. A six-foot-three-inch something, to be exact.
Jeans fade and hairstyles grow out, but meeting Gio would linger with her for the rest of her days. Last night on the bridge was surely the most romantic interlude she could possibly conceive of. The way they watched each other’s reflection in the water. How they turned to stare into each other’s eyes. Then he’d kissed her. What’s more, she’d kissed him back. A real kiss!
Which they’d immediately backed away from. Both understanding that nothing more could ever happen between them. Knowing that what already had happened was too much.
They’d stood in the courtyard of the villa when they’d returned from the river, neither of them wanting to go to bed. In that prolonged good-night, a piece of Luciana died. She’d realized the totality of what she would never have. This swirling dream she was dancing in could last for a few weeks, but that’s all it would ever be, a milky vision to reflect back on like a photo in a memory album. That was all she’d be taking home with her.
Sleep had eluded her. It was too grand not to recall over and over again their walk along the banks of the river. The way they chatted and discoursed, even argued, about everything they could think of from politics to art history to the evolution of Grasstech. Gio’s family was so progressive. They thought far and wide. They took bold chances and weren’t afraid to fail.
Princess Luciana wished she’d grown up with people like that around her. Her mother had been, effectively, silenced long before she gave birth to a daughter. While in her heart she had the utmost respect for her father’s decisions to preserve Izerote’s natural beauty and its idyllic way of life, that wasn’t what Luciana would have chosen for herself.
“Finito,” Gabriel chirped with a flourish as he lifted a hand mirror to show Luciana the finished job. Luci smiled from ear to ear because it looked exactly as the wig did, but now it was hers. It belonged to her. She could float up on angel wings for her hair felt as light as a feather without the weight of its former length down her back. The color was dramatic and sophisticated. Luci complimented Luciana on looking like a self-assured young woman, no longer a little girl.
Thankfully, Gio had insisted on giving her some money to keep in her pocket, so she was able to pay for the salon services.
Gio said he’d take a lunchtime break to show her one of Florence’s most visited sights, the original statue of David at the Galleria dell’Accademia. Viggo would pick her up in front of the villa soon. She decided to wander in what was essentially her neighborhood now. A bench at a small park beckoned, where she took in the noonday sun, let the rays shine through her new hair and replayed the electrifying kissing from last night.
A child’s ball hit her on the leg and snapped her out of her meditations.
“Mi dispiace,” a tiny voice apologized as a little boy came to fetch the ball. Probably about four years old, he had dark corkscrew curls and huge black velvet eyes.
“That’s okay. Here you go.” Luciana rolled the orange ball back to the boy, who wasn’t able to stop it. It passed behind him. The child stood only a few feet from the bench Luciana was sitting on and she had rolled it very slowly on the ground, so it was odd that he had missed it.
“Matteo!” A woman about Luciana’s age retrieved the ball and brought it back to the boy. “Try again, bambino.” The boy took the ball from her and ran toward the other six or so children in the park.
“Hi, I’m Luci. Do you care for all of them?” Luciana asked the woman.
“I’m Chiara and I suppose you could say that. I’m their teacher.” She pointed to a small building attached to a church. “We’ve come out from the nursery school to play before the children take a nap.”
Luciana watched the children, who were now chasing pigeons. She smiled at their lovely faces.
“Do you enjoy being a teacher?” she asked the young woman, whose hair was piled into a loose bun and who wore an airy blouse with a lot of stains on it. Probably everything from paint to clay to jam.
Her Royal Highness often made appearances at schools and children’s charities in Izerote. Of course, when she toured a facility she was dressed as a princess and rarely given anything to do but meet the children, who stared at her as if she worked for Disney. Or she might be permitted to do a nonmessy craft with them for five minutes. Nonetheless, she treasured the visits.
While there, she might observe a particular quirk about a child. How one interacted socially, perhaps having trouble when another child was around, or crying at the slightest provocation. How much she wished she could formally study the behavior of children, to play a part in helping them grow up to be fully functioning adults.
“Of course, Luci.” Chiara brushed some dirt from her own hands while her eyes never left the children. “To encourage the evolving young minds, to listen to their ideas. What could be better? What do you do?”
Obviously, she couldn’t reply that she was a princess. “I’m finding my way,” she answered wistfully. “I’d love to work with children.”
The two women conversed a bit more, both keeping a vigilant eye on the needs of the children. As Chiara had just expressed, to watch each child interact during play held endless fascination for Luciana. While at university, she’d taken classes in child development, but how she longed to earn an advanced degree. To study different styles of learning, gender analysis, social conduct. To make a difference in the lives of precious, unrestrained children.
For a fleeting minute, Luciana felt like Luci, a denizen of this great city. A woman who had a direction and was at ease with herself, and who was in a secure relationship with a wonderful man.
What? Luciana caught her own thought. Even if she were free to love, Gio had made very clear that a serious relationship was most definitely not on his agenda. Last night’s spontaneous kisses had probably meant nothing to him. Not only did he need to concentrate on the responsibilities of running an enormous corporation that was on top of its competitors, Gio was a man who lived out of a suitcase without entanglements. Just because he was spending time in Florence didn’t mean that was immediately going to change.
Nonetheless, for just an iota longer, Luciana pictured her life as a Florentine schoolteacher in love. Imagining what she was going to cook for her man tonight and the warm embraces she’d have with him in their bed.
The boy with the big doe eyes threw the ball to Luciana again. She tossed it gently back and, again, he missed it.
“Chiara.” Luciana leaned in toward her so the boy wouldn’t hear. “I don’t think he’s seeing the ball clearly. Has he had his vision checked? I think he might need eyeglasses.”
“That’s a good observation, Luci. I will mention it to his parents when they come to pick him up.”
After Chiara and the children left, Luci walked home to get ready to sightsee with Gio. Feeling very Luci indeed.
* * *
Although Luciana kept insisting that she wanted to see Florence as a typical tourist would, Gio was sure she’d just as soon not queue up for hours to see Michelangelo’s David at the Accademia. Nor did he have the time to do so. Therefore, he was glad he had asked an assistant to book tickets in advance for a reserved entrance time. As it was he’d had to rearrange several meetings in order to free his schedule for a few hours. It was actually rather ridiculous th
at he was sightseeing in the middle of the day.
Gio himself hadn’t seen what was one of the most visited locations in Europe in many years. He’d forgotten just how imposing and magnificent David really was until they approached the statue, ringed by tourists studying the work from all perspectives. The marble champion, who as the story went, was a young shepherd when he slew his powerful opponent, Goliath, with cleverness rather than might, stood raised on a pedestal for all to see.
“Michelangelo was only in his twenties when he carved this,” Luciana commented to Gio while they both studied the details. “What an amazing achievement for such a young person.”
“In addition to all of the other works he did in his career.”
“One of the greatest artists the world has ever known. I’ve been waiting for so long to see this. Thank you for bringing me here.”
“Look at how defined the eye sockets are. That gives him such a look of watchfulness.”
“That’s what they say about the biblical character it’s based on. David has his slingshot there—” she pointed to the detail over his left shoulder “—that he used to defeat Goliath with only five stones.”
They moved incrementally around the statue, carved from a single block of marble, observing every minute feature. The prominent veins in David’s hands, the rigidity of his muscles, yet his bent left leg suggested the innocence of youth. The work was so well preserved and compelling that it felt as current now as it had been when Michelangelo created it in the early 1500s.
Gio felt himself relaxing. There had been a couple of stressful moments already today when he’d had to make decisions related to the employee structure of the company. People’s jobs were on the line and it was up to him, and ultimately only him, to decree what was in the corporation’s best interest. Which could be a ruthless job. He’d called his father at the vineyard. They’d discussed it over the phone and come to a decision.
He was especially interested in deciding on a new location for a manufacturing plant to produce his new slate of biometric products. With the dozens and dozens of offices and manufacturing sites Grasstech had amassed, Gio enjoyed bringing new and good-paying jobs to towns or villages whose citizens needed the employment.
“Do we have time to see some of the other works of art here?” Luciana asked after they’d circled David three times.
“I’m all yours.”
Luciana looked at him with big eyes as a small smile fought to come across her mouth even though she resisted it with a bite to her lower lip.
Gio fought a grin, too, at the words that had come out wrong. He was hardly all hers, for heaven’s sake!
Last night as they’d stood on the bridge, he didn’t know what had driven him to kiss her, a move he hadn’t been planning and knew he mustn’t repeat. But there hadn’t been a glimmer of censorship as his head bent down for that split second of contact with lips as pillow-soft as could be. Most unexpectedly, she’d lifted them to kiss him again and hadn’t settled for the brief brush he had. No, she’d kissed him like a lover, bold and self-assured. With that, she’d rocked him to his very core.
After they’d lingered in the villa courtyard and finally said good-night, he’d lain awake in bed, high on Luciana. Like she was a drug that sent him levitating above his body. She was like no one he’d ever met, exhilarating and tragic all at once. Thoughts of seeing her again had popped into his head all night long in spite of his telling himself to get to sleep.
Gio had spent so much time alone. Even before the fiasco with Francesca, he’d been only casually dating, never able to see how a woman would fit into his life. A life dedicated to his mind and to creativity would be it for him.
Like many people who entered the world of computer science, he was not especially social by nature. More comfortable inside technology, absorbed in work. Like Michelangelo, who was said to sometimes lie down on the ground in his clothes and boots to sleep in small increments because he worked almost continually and barely ate. Gio understood how it was to get lost in a project, in the painstaking process of solving one problem after the next until he developed a solution.
Even with his parents’ nearly sublime marriage as an example, Gio never imagined himself as someone who would settle down with a wife and children. He feared because of the attention he paid to his work that he would never be able to give a family the focus they deserved. Yet spending time with Luciana, it dawned on him that, with the right person, anything was possible.
“I want to see the slaves.” Luciana brought him from his musings.
Taking her by the hand, and registering its smallness in his, he snaked through the crowd and led her to another hall in the gallery that held the works usually referred to as the Prisoners.
Four of them were on display here and others in museums elsewhere in the world. These Michelangelo works were considered nonfinito, or incomplete, although it wasn’t known for sure as to whether he had left them unfinished on purpose as a way of explaining his own artistry.
“Michelangelo was quoted as saying something to the effect that he was merely a tool and that the sculptures were already there in the marble. His job was only to carve away what would allow the art to be seen,” Luciana said.
“Ah, so we both studied art history at university. It was a good counterbalance for me to the world of science and mathematics.”
“I’ve always been especially drawn to the Italian masters.”
The four works were devastating. Each depicted a man who had not yet broken through and was still trapped within the marble. With a leg or a torso or a face not yet visible, they appeared to be half man and half stone.
“Some scholars speculate they represent man’s struggle to be free,” Luciana added pensively. Her face changed from admiration at the work to something personal and melancholy. Gio guessed it was the idea of being trapped in marble, bound, incomplete, unable to actualize one’s full self, that had gotten to her on a profound level.
Out of the corner of his eye, Gio spotted two men wearing black suits who appeared to be looking their way. They didn’t hold professional cameras or else he might have suspected that they were paparazzi that recognized Princess Luciana, although she’d told him that she was not a high-profile royal like some. Anyway, with that blond wig she was so enamored of and her new wardrobe of comfortable clothes, he doubted that the press would make the connection.
He dearly hoped that they weren’t palace security from Izerote, a possibility that Luciana feared. That her father had been keeping tabs on her all along. That perhaps an arrangement had been made to allow Luciana a couple of days under the delusion that she was on her own when, really, she’d been surveilled by her father’s missives all along. Who might pounce on her any minute, thereby ending this expedition that meant so much to her.
Although he was sure he would have detected it previously if they were being followed. Subtly glancing over to the men again, he saw they were now turned away from Gio and Luciana. Perhaps they were just undercover overseers for the gallery.
Strangely, he wanted to protect the princess. Fury bubbled in him as he watched her study the captives in marble, knowing she was in her own prison. Fury at her father and at a faraway land he didn’t know, for forcing her to conform to outmoded conventions and gender rules that made no sense to Gio. If only he knew of a way to help Luciana’s island of Izerote so that she didn’t have to marry the neighboring king.
Why he’d come to care so much about Luciana in such a short time, he didn’t know. Maybe it was his general disdain for injustice.
After Luciana had her fill of seeing a few of the other halls of art in the Accademia, they exited. “I can afford a little more time. Let me show you another tourist sight. Did you change something about your wig? It looks nice.”
* * *
“This is the Ponte Vecchio.” Gio swept his arm across the vista of the bridge f
illed with people.
“It’s much different from the ones we saw last night.” Luciana studied the bridge that was lined on both sides by shops and structures with windows.
“Centuries ago, it was butchers and fishmongers who sold their wares along this bridge. Now, as you can see, there are galleries and souvenir shops but mainly jewelers.”
Indeed, Luciana and Gio walked past one small jewelry shop after the next. Gold, silver and other precious metals beckoned from the outward-facing glass cases the vendors used to attract buyers. Gemstones sparkled. Tourists pointed at items.
“It’s an old saying that many a man lost his fortune by taking his wife walking along the Ponte Vecchio,” Gio declared.
They observed as a man and a shopkeeper excitedly argued, their arm gestures and shaking heads indicating they had not yet reached a deal. A group of young women pointed at diamond rings from another vendor. Every few storefronts, instead of fine jewels, tables of figurines depicting the statue of David were for sale. Little Davids meant to sit on a desk as a memento of time spent in Florence. Naked Davids on cell phone cases. Luciana smiled wryly. Had she been princess of a larger monarchy, she might have ended up with her own likeness on a coffee mug.
From the bridge, they stopped to watch a sightseeing boat as it made its way underneath.
Gio bent his arm for Luciana to take, and they continued on.
A necklace caught Luciana’s eye. Simple silver, its several strands of different lengths created a statement.
“Do you like that?” Gio inquired why she had fixated on that one piece.
“It’s only that I have one very much like it.”
“Did you sell it in Barcelona?”
“Not that one.”
Suddenly, guilt thundered through Luciana’s body. Had she completely lost her mind, selling palace jewels? Which technically didn’t really belong to her. They were only hers to wear during her reign and would then be gracing her children and their children and so on. What right had she had to sell what wasn’t even hers?
The Italian's Runaway Princess Page 8
