“I’ll do what I did before you graced my door, and call my sister to come in. We’ll be fine.” Andi waved them toward the door with a flourish, her wide sleeves fluttering. “Go! Get out!”
With a gentle tug, Carlo pulled Sabina close, until they were almost hip to hip. “We’ve been thrown out. Join me for dinner?”
She turned her face up to him, and again he was struck by the difference in her. When she smiled, there was no reserve at all in it, and her face lit up. “Yes. I would like that.” She lifted her free hand and brushed her fingertips over his cheekbone. “You’ve been hurt.”
One of Joey’s tweakers had managed a decent swing—one of the women, about which Luca had still not let up—and he’d had a pretty impressive black eye and needed a couple of stitches. All that was left now was a pink line, about an inch long, under his eye.
“It’s nothing.” He turned his head and kissed her palm, and she dropped her hand.
He wanted to kiss her; the urge to pull her into his arms, to enfold her, was almost insuperable, but he was concerned that she might pull back if he came on that strong. When she’d called him, she’d asked only if they could talk soon, when he next came to Quiet Cove. He’d told her he’d come the very next day, and here he was, but he still had no idea what it was she would say.
No—now, he thought he might have a hint of an idea. Her expression was so warm, so open, so sweetly shy that he could not believe she had bad news for him. But he would not push her, would not scare her.
He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles. “Let’s go, then.”
She squeezed his hand, and he led her out of Andi’s shop.
~oOo~
Carlo had intended to take her to Dominic’s, the nicest restaurant in town, right on the harbor and built so that the dining room was on stilts over the water. He wanted to take her on a proper date. He thought maybe this night would be the start of something between them. He hoped that it would.
Since Quiet Cove was a beach town, its attitude was pretty laid back, and even this restaurant, with its linen tablecloths and wine stewards, didn’t have much of a dress code. Shoes and shirt were really its only requirements. Also a bottom of some kind. He hoped she wouldn’t feel like she was underdressed. He himself was wearing jeans and a faded chambray shirt.
It was a small place and tended, especially in the summer months, to be busy on weekends, like this Friday night, but Carlo didn’t need a reservation. He wanted to surprise her, so when she asked where they were going as he led her to his car, he only smiled and helped her in.
They were both quiet on the short drive, but when he pulled into the Dominic’s lot, Bina’s kind of quiet changed. It thickened somehow, making Carlo a little worried. But she got out with him and took his hand, and he led her to the door of the restaurant. Though it was early for dinner, and the sun had not yet set, there was a small cluster of people loitering outside the building—diners without reservations, waiting for a table. When Carlo started to push through them, Bina pulled him back.
He stepped away from the crowd. “Bina? Okay?” Her expression had darkened considerably from that mystical light she’d had at Andi’s, and Carlo began to worry that his little sliver of hope about why she wanted to talk had been misplaced.
“No, I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “Can we…this is not…to go somewhere else, would this be too much trouble?”
Feeling a disconcerting mix of relief and concern, he brushed his fingers over her furrowed brow and was glad when she leaned into his touch. “Of course. I’m sorry. I didn’t know you didn’t like Dominic’s.”
“It’s not that. The restaurant is good. I enjoy the swordfish very much. But I have…I don’t know the way to explain…”
“You don’t have to. We can go anywhere you want. It’s fine.”
“I would like to explain, if I can. With…with him, we go always to places like this. Very fancy. All of them around, I think. I like that to be in the past.” She sighed sharply and stomped her foot a little. She was wearing flats that were almost the color of her skin; he hadn’t noticed them before. “I’m nervous. My words aren’t good.”
Unable to resist, he slid his hand along her jaw and into her hair and bent down to kiss her. His blood roared in his ears at the touch of his lips on hers. He refrained from taking it deeper, but she relaxed into him instantly, and he had trouble breaking away from her surrender. At last, he pulled back before he lost all impulse control. Still leaning on his chest, she blinked up at him, looking as dazed as he suddenly felt. He let go of her hand and snaked his arm around her waist, both supporting her and holding her close. “I’m nervous, too. And your words are beautiful. Where would you like to go instead?”
Her smile then was positively rapacious, even as it kept its sheen of shyness. “Can we get take-out?”
He laughed, all at once completely at ease. They were starting something, they were. But Trey was at the house with Rosa and his father, and with the trouble Trey had been having, bringing Bina home was not a good idea. Not yet—too confusing. “We really can. Can we take it to your place?”
“I would like that.” She lifted her hand and hooked it into the open throat of his shirt, her fingers scratching lightly at his chest, and his balls clenched. “I would like you to see my place.”
~oOo~
Her place turned out to be a small room above Piccolo Flowers and Gifts. He smiled to see it—the room was bright and cheerful and cozy for deeper reasons than simply its small size. But the ceiling had a sharp pitch, and only about five or six feet down the middle of the room was taller than he was—and then only by a couple of inches. When Bina turned around and saw how close he came to brushing the ceiling, she doubled over with laughter.
She was so fucking amazing.
“Oh! Oh, I’m so sorry. I forget that you are so tall to hit the ceiling.”
“Yeah, yeah. Yuk it up. I’ll probably end up with a concussion tonight.”
She came back to stand against him, raised up on her tiptoes, and lifted her arm high, so that she could pat his head. “Poor Carlo. If you sit, then maybe we can save your head.”
Thinking that lying down was another way to save his head, he nodded and set the paper sack full of Thai food on the scratched chest that seemed to serve as her kitchen counter.
There was a small sofa—a loveseat, really—facing one of the dormer windows, and Carlo realized that she didn’t have a television. Out the window, though, from this third-story room, between two buildings across the street—the town pharmacy and laundromat—there was a decent view of the water. He smiled, imagining her sitting on the old loveseat, of a red material so faded it was pink, staring out across the sea. Better than any reality show.
There was a narrow table under the dormer window, and lined up in two rows across it were a few dozen paperbacks. Curious, he walked over, ducking down as the ceiling sloped. He was able to stand in the nook created by the dormer, though, and he scanned the spines of the books. He was surprised at the eclectic mix—old-fashioned whodunit murder stories from the likes of Agatha Christie and P.D. James, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, several non-fiction titles on religion, some science fiction, four titles by Isabel Allende, One Hundred Years of Solitude, several volumes of poetry, War and Peace, a couple of self-help books that seemed to have a self-actualization theme, and a volume of restoration drama. And many others.
Carlo himself read fairly often. He’d enjoyed English in school, and he’d read some of the books in front of him for one class or another, but these days, his tastes ran to spy novels, the Ludlums and the Clancys.
Holding The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath, in which a bookmark with a gold, silken tassel held a place about midway through, Carlo turned. Sabina was regarding him steadily, her expression warm but otherwise blank.
“Are these all yours?”
“Yes. The bookstore on the street is a favorite place. There is a cat. He helps me find my books.”
/> Smiling at that statement but letting it lie, he said, “Looking at this collection, I wouldn’t be able to tell almost anything about you. Do you like all of these books?”
“For some, I don’t know yet. That’s why I bought them. To see. But others, yes. They are old favorites. I like Allende. She writes about a world I would like to remember. I think I can sometimes, when I read her. I like Gogol, too. And Nabokov. Also Twain. But the books I read before were his, so now I have mine.”
Before he’d even gone back to Providence, Carlo had noticed that she had stopped saying Auberon’s first name. Usually now, she simply called him by a pronoun, an audible sneer in her voice. When she had no choice but to name him, she used his surname.
He indicated the book in his hand. “It looks like you’re reading Plath. I read some of her stuff in college. Do you like her?” He remembered her poetry being mostly about suicide and discontent.
She took the book out of his hands and replaced it between Sonnets from the Portuguese and Goblin Market and Other Poems. “I do. I like the pictures she makes with her words. She, too, was very unhappy.”
Her back was to him; she seemed to be staring out at her view of the ocean. Dusk had arrived, and the sky was thick with clouds. The night had the bruised look that portended rain, and the golden light of Bina’s lamps made the little attic all the cozier in comparison. Carlo took a step to stand behind her, and he let his hands lie over her shoulders. “Like you were?”
She tipped her head, laying her cheek on his hand. “No. No. I think she was trapped in her mind. She was her own captor. A sickness. I…no, I was unhappy in a different way.” She laughed. “I sound like Tolstoy: ‘every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way’.”
“What’s that from?” He bent down and kissed her head, just above the silver clip in her hair.
“Anna Karenina. I read it again last week.” She lifted a thick book from her collection. “The opening line is famous. Have you read?”
“No. Should I?”
She shrugged. “I like it. But it is a sad book about a sad woman. An unhappy family. Russians write sad books.” She put the brick of a book back. “South Americans…we write magical books. With ghosts who join us for dinner and talking animals and time that does what it wants. We are not so much trapped by the world.” She paused again, her hand resting across the tops of her paperbacks.
“Sabina, I love you.” The words were out before he’d known they were even in the vicinity of his mouth, but he didn’t try to take them back. They were true.
She turned. Her hazel eyes, dancing with color, met his. “How can you know this?”
He cradled her face in his hands, the silk of her cheeks warm against his rough palms. “I’ve known you for two months, Bina. I know that’s not long, and I know we’ve been apart for almost half of it. But I’ve seen the strength in you. The beauty in your heart. Your kindness. Your sense. Your will. These weeks away from you have made me ache. I don’t expect you to feel the same, but I need you to know. I love you.”
“It makes me afraid. What you feel. What I feel.” She bent her head in his hands, looking down.
“I’m sorry. I don’t want you to be afraid.” Suddenly, the night seemed to be going in a different direction, one that worried Carlo a little. He should have kept his mouth shut. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t push her. But he was with her, touching her, and that would be enough. If she didn’t send him away again, that would be enough.
“I don’t know how to know when is right.” She lifted her head; her eyes sparkled with tears.
“I don’t, either.” He bent down and kissed her lightly. “Why don’t we just eat? Is that better?”
With a grateful smile, she nodded, and they went back to her tiny, makeshift kitchen and sorted out their dinner. They kicked off their shoes and sat together on the sofa to eat.
While they ate, they chatted about safe things—Bina told him about the things she’d learned about the town, and she shared stories about her job and Andi’s unusual ways. They both had anecdotes about Carmen and Luca, and Carlo came to realize that she’d grown quite close to the next oldest Pagano siblings. She asked about Trey, and Carlo told her some good stories. It was a nice meal.
He didn’t tell her about Trey’s night terrors or the sudden return of his memories about his mother. He didn’t tell her how often his noisy little boy got quiet, especially in the evenings. He didn’t tell her about his own struggles to get his business back on its legs, to repair his relationship with Peter, to sell the loft and find a suitable place to raise his son. They were still at the hotel, and, if not for Natalie, he thought he and his kid would both be hiding under the bed by now.
The brotherly raid on the tweakers who’d robbed Joey had netted only $17,000 of the forty he’d lost. The shitheads had already spent the rest on paying up with assorted dealers and then supplies for their little storage-unit soiree. Under pressure from Luca, and with Joey in a panic at the urgent care clinic, he’d agreed to fill in what was missing, splitting the burden with Luca. It had nigh on tapped him out.
The insurance payouts had finally happened a few days ago, so they’d survived that last-minute panic. He could get the loft restored, and he and Peter could get the office up and running. But Peter was thinking about backing out. And Carlo didn’t know what he’d do then.
All of that he kept from Bina. Tonight, in this cute little apartment, his life was good. What he wanted was sitting inches from him, sharing satay and Thai spring rolls and bottles of iced tea. He felt like his life would turn around if he could get things right with her. It made no sense. Or maybe it did. Things had begun to unravel when he’d met her, because he’d met her. Because he’d fallen for her. He didn’t think things would knit back up without her.
When they had eaten their fill, Bina tidied up, washing the few dishes in the bathroom sink, the only sink in the apartment. Carlo packed up the cartons of leftovers and put them in her refrigerator. When he turned around, she was sitting on her little sofa, looking over the back at him.
He came around and sat next to her. Sliding his hand under hers and bringing it to rest on his thigh, he asked, “What would you like to do now? Would you like to go out?”
As if to answer his question, the night outside the windows flashed brilliant light, and a few seconds later a heavy, indolent thunder rolled by. He laughed. “Might need an umbrella.”
“Carlo.”
He turned from the window and met her eyes. Her expression was intense, and he wondered if there was cause in it to be worried.
“I would like…I would…” She stopped and looked down at their twined hands, and Carlo thought he understood.
He lifted her chin, his pulse pounding and his cock, half hard since he’d been here with her, swelling to solid fullness. “Bina?” More lightning, louder thunder.
“Please.”
He didn’t need more than that. At her plea, he released the reins on his own need. He pulled her onto his lap, buried his hands in her rich, dark hair, and kissed her. With one last wave of restraint, he tried to hold back a little and not simply devour her, but her hands went into his hair and curled into fists, clutching him hard. She moaned into his mouth and turned so that her chest was flush with his. He could feel the hard buds of her nipples—through her bra, her shirt, his shirt—and his last defenses were shot. He caught her legs in his arm and rolled, laying her under him on the sofa, which was too short even for her. He didn’t care; he simply shifted, going to his knees on the floor and pulling her farther down on the sofa cushions.
And then he remembered what he had decided against. He hadn’t wanted to presume. It had felt sordid to prepare, as if what was going on now had been the obvious conclusion. He pulled back, his breath coming in strident gasps, and when she moaned a complaint, he almost couldn’t pull away.
“Wait. Wait, Bina.”
Footsteps Page 21
