by Marlene Hill
The details about this man came back to her. At first he’d seemed to be a decent sort. He hadn’t paid for sex but confessed she was too cute, and he’d always had fantasies about school girls. That thought had given her cold chills. She’d explained she wasn’t prepared and reminded him of his contract. With a wink he had assured her he’d be gentle. She repeated she wasn’t prepared. He said he carried protection. Again she insisted he stick to his agreement, and finally, he’d backed off. Good thing because she’d been about to kick him in the crotch that night—in public. After out-maneuvering this creep sitting here in Venice, she’d left that service.
* * *
Chuck appeared as Giulia pulled her hand free. Before he could say a word, she spoke in rapid Italian saying this man thought she was someone else and that she’d told him she didn’t understand English. Chuck caught on and stuck to Italian, putting his arm around her shoulders and walked her away. He wanted to punch the guy out but knew better.
The man’s parting shot was, “Oh, dolly, those gorgeous eyes.”
Chuck flinched, his arm tightened around her. “You do have gorgeous eyes, you know,” he whispered.
“Thanks,” she said huddling close to him.
“Do you ever wear a colored lens?”
Sometimes.
“Don’t wear one with me.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
On their way to the train back to Vicenza, Chuck wondered if it was too soon to invite Giulia to his apartment in Venice. His gut said it was, but, just in case, he’d put a fresh sheet and duvet on the bed and spruced up his place.
“Chuck, you don’t need to go all the way to Vicenza tonight. If it’ll make you feel better, I promise to take a cab from the station.”
“I know, but my—”
“Oh, your car. I forgot.”
“I was hoping I could persuade you to go back to Villa Rotonda tomorrow.”
“By the way, how is it you were out there last Sunday?”
“Honestly?”
“Of course.” And her smile made his throat catch.
“I hadn’t gone for years and wanted to check it out before inviting you to go with me. So. Tomorrow?”
“Well . . .” Hearing the echo of Nancy’s words, she said, “Why not?”
Chuck felt as thrilled as he’d been at fourteen when the girl he’d fantasized about agreed to go to a movie with him. He held Giulia’s hand all the way to the train station. Once in a compartment and on their way, he said, “We ought to exchange cell numbers in case something comes up. Okay?”
“Sure.”
“Sure” she says, as if it hadn’t felt like getting an overburdened plane to lift off. But it seemed like he’d made it over a huge obstacle.
At the door of her pensione, he gave her a small hug and brushed his lips lightly across hers not knowing what to expect. To his surprise, she raised her arms to the tops of his shoulders and kissed back. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her closer. Then leaning back to look in her eyes for a moment, he traced the outline of her lips with his tongue. They parted for him slightly and he pushed inside for one sweet taste. Desire burned hot and began to melt away his plans for restraint. Her tongue met his, and he thrust farther into her delicious mouth, but then, with a tremendous effort, he relented and released her. In a throaty voice, he said, “I’ll be here at one.”
She nodded and went inside but watched him through the oval glass of the door. When he turned back, she waved. God. He caught his breath. He almost kicked his heels in the air to leap over the stone banister. He liked that she’d waited to wave. When clear of her sight, he did leap over two bushes in a row, one after the other, as if running hurdles on the old Academy track.
* * *
Giulia touched her lips and thought about his. They’d felt sexier than they looked. Not even with her first lover had she felt such an instant reaction to a man. His erection had pressed against her during their embrace, and she sensed he was straining to control his emotions. Had she closed down for so long that she came across like someone trapped in a hair shirt or worse—frigid? Nancy was right, it-was-time-to-ease-up.
Within weeks after she and Jason had split, she’d thrown herself into graduate studies and eventually into the world of being a woman for sale, anesthetizing herself from all males, even from harmless smiles. My God. It had been more than three years since she’d allowed herself to respond to any kind of sensuality. Not a tremor until now.
* * *
“Pronto,” Giulia said into the phone, wondering who was calling at eight o’clock on a Saturday morning.
“Giulia! You’ve got to come. It’s my Tony! They attacked him.”
“Nonna. What happened? Who attacked him? Where is he?”
“In Ospedale Vittorio Veneto on Via Forlanini. He’s asking for you. Last night. Late. The police found him on the street beside his car.”
“I’ll come. Of course I’ll come. Do you have your cell phone with you? Are you there now? How is he? How are you?”
“Si, si. I have my phone here at the hospital. He says he’ll live but keeps asking for you. Me? I’m fine.”
“I’m on my way,” Giulia said, pulling an overnight bag from the closet and opening drawers to stuff underwear, night shirt, and cosmetics into the bag. “I’ll let you know what time I’ll arrive as soon as I know. Keep your phone on. Are you there alone?”
“My friend Angelina’s with me but must leave soon. I’ll be here. I’ll be here. Come straight to the hospital. Please. He’s half out of his mind and says do NOT go to the house.”
“Tell him I’ll be there soon as I can. Nonna, get coffee and a bite to eat.”
“Si, si. Angelina fusses over me, the same.” She chuckled out a little sob.
Giulia felt relieved that Nonna could laugh, but why was Nonno Tony asking for her? And why stay away from the house?
As she flipped through the local phonebook looking for a taxi number, she remembered her date with Chuck and dialed his number. As soon as he heard the problem, he said he’d pick her up in twenty minutes. He could get her there in an hour and a half. Much faster than the train. She made a feeble effort to argue but let her pride go and thanked him. The important thing was to get there. She had visions of the cruel ’Ndrangheta going after her nonno.
“Bring your hiking boots and warm clothes,” Chuck said. “Spring storms come up fast in the foothills.”
She pulled on a pair of dark brown corduroy jeans, a heavy blue sweater, wrapped a matching scarf around her neck and decided to wear the hiking boots instead of filling her bag with them.
Chuck arrived on time and saw her standing inside the door almost as if she hadn’t moved since last night. At that moment, it struck him how much he wanted her. How much he wanted to take care of her for the rest of his life. Geezus, where‘d that come from?
“Have you eaten anything?” he asked as he put her bag in the space behind their front seats along with his own duffle. He wore black jeans, grey sweater and black leather jacket and had decided to wear sturdy boots, too.
“No, but I can eat later,” she said.
“I called ahead to Enrico’s, a little shop on the way out of town. We’ll swing by and get brioches and coffee for now and sandwiches for later. You’ll need energy to deal with this.”
“Thanks. Usually I feel self sufficient, but I’m scared for him, for them. I’ll take any help I can get.”
“Good. Not good about what happened, but good you’re accepting help.”
“I know.” This man understands my reluctance to accept anything from anyone.
After making the stop at Enrico’s, they were at the outskirts of Vicenza by nine-fifteen. Chuck said, “Now, tell me why you’re so frightened.”
She took a sip of hot coffee. “This coffee’s perfect,” she said. The aroma of fresh-baked brioches filled the little car. She took a bite and sighed with pleasure.
“Good, huh?” he said.
She told about Nonno Ton
y asking her to carry what she had feared might be contraband. She told of how her eyes were like Nonno Tony’s—except his left was brown and her left was blue. She also told about wearing a brown lens and a wig to the meeting.
He looked over at her.
“What?” she said. “I’ve always wanted straight hair so I like to wear a wig sometimes.” He remained quiet. “And… well… this time, I wanted to look different because I didn’t feel right about the whole thing.” She told about insisting that Nonno count the diamonds and sign a paper verifying their size. Again she hesitated.
“Is that all?” he said.
“Not exactly.” She told of the man who had sent her a drink a few weeks before and that after she delivered those gems, she knew Botteri had been that man and maybe it had been more than a simple gem delivery. “And now, I think someone from an ‘organization’ attacked Nonno.”
He reached for her hand and laid it on his thigh. He kept his hand over hers as they drove on in silence. His leg felt firm and strong and warm.
“We’ll make a quick stop at Treviso, it’s about halfway. Forty more minutes after that, we’ll be there.”
“Chuck, thank you for doing this. I might still be waiting to board a train.” She was quiet for a while. “I wonder if I should go to this man Botteri and explain why he didn’t trust Nonno and say I was embarrassed about my different eyes and that’s why I wore the brown lens—”
“Would Botteri think you didn’t trust your grandfather?”
“I think I could convince him about the eyes because sometimes I do like to pretend I have normal ones.”
“Ah babe.” He squeezed her hand. “You needn’t hide anything, and not your beautiful eyes. They—you—are perfect the way you are.” Perfect? How about enticing, beguiling, fascinating, ravishing, tempting, and completely irresistible?
“Thanks.”
Strong rays of sunlight pierced through the dark forest reminding him of the ramped-up strobe light in a dirty disco joint in Uzbekistan. That operation had almost blinded Chuck, and the memory of the explosion that killed Harv, one of his best men, still jolted him. It had been their last covert rescue mission together. After that, he’d requested a change of duty. He’d seen enough. Been through enough to last a lifetime—more than a lifetime.
Giulia sensed a stiffening in Chuck’s posture and looked over at him. He sucked in a deep breath and reached for his wraparound sunglasses stashed in a holder above the rear-view mirror. “Damned flashing lights drive me crazy,” he muttered.
They remained quiet in their own thoughts. After a while, he slowed and pulled into a road-side petrol and snack shop on the approach to Treviso. “Want to stretch a bit? Use the facilities? More coffee?”
“Nothing, thanks, but I’ll look for the gabinetto, restroom.”
They were on their way in twelve minutes. He asked Giulia to hand him a sandwich. She also took one herself. “I didn’t think I could eat a thing but guess anxiety makes me hungry.”
“Yeah. Adrenalin does strange things.” He knew what it could do to men in combat. Fast heart beats. Incredible thirst. Hunger. Not to mention that over-whelming adrenalin gave every guy a hard-on that wouldn’t quit.
He’d brought bottles of water, and after they finished eating, she opened a bottle of Panna water and poured it into two cups. “I like Panna best,” she said, “but many markets don’t always have it.”
“Are you a connoisseur of water?” he asked grinning over at her. By damn, the Force’s shrink had been right, joking with Giulia was helping to neutralize the power of that flashback.
“Hardly. I’m not a connoisseur of anything I can think of. Until I drank Panna, I’d never noticed the difference in waters, but this has a smooth, slick feel and tastes so fresh.” She poured more for him. “If the truth were known, a horrible additive probably hooks poor suckers like me.”
Smooth. Slick. Jesus. Every word she says gives me a hard-on and I’m nowhere near combat.
“Back to Botteri,” Chuck said, “how would you explain the wig?”
“That’s easy. Women wear wigs to change their appearance all the time.”
“True,” he said. “The most worrisome thing is that you didn’t touch the bag of diamonds.”
“You think that might make him think I didn’t trust Nonno?”
“Possibly. But that’s only if they’d test it for fingerprints against—” he stopped.
“What?” she said.
“Did you have a drink while talking to him? Hold a glass or touch anything?” He ran his hand through his hair. “It’s a long shot, but—”
“I wore gloves the whole time I was with him. All of five, ten minutes. They’re beautiful kid leather my grandparents gave me for Christmas. I don’t think I sat down. Oh yes. I did, briefly by the fire and then when I asked for a receipt, I sat while he wrote it.”
“Jeezus! Does he have your name?”
She shook her head. “I used my other grandmother’s name—she died many years ago.”
“Hmm. So that wouldn’t connect you to your grandfather Tuon.”
“No. My name couldn’t be Tuon anyway. Mom was a Tuon until she married. Would Botteri do all that research on my name? My fingerprints?”
“God. I don’t know. So you gave the maiden name of your other nonna?”
“Yes. Mirella Rizzatti. I thought I was being so clever.”
“You were clever. Rizzatti’s a popular name in the Veneto. They’d have to go through hundreds of families to trace it to you.”
“What can I do to convince Botteri that Nonno Tony’s not a thief?”
“Maybe he is.”
She stiffened and leaned away from him. “Maybe we need to hear his story first.”
After an uncomfortable silence, he said, “You’re absolutely right, Giulia. We need to hear your Nonno’s story.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The grey-stucco hospital in the small town of 28,000 was easy to find.
“I’ll drop you off and let you be with your family. You can call when you need a ride,” Chuck said.
“Oh no you don’t. You’re not getting off that easy. I want you with me,” and she quickly added, “to hear what Nonno Tony has to say.”
“He’ll be embarrassed enough without having me there.”
“It’s too bad if he’s nervous. Another set of ears is always good. Besides, they already know you’re bringing me. Will you come?”
“Damn straight I will.”
When Giulia and Chuck walked toward Nonno Tony’s room, Nonna was pacing in the hall outside while the nurse was with him. Nonna grabbed Giulia into her arms and kissed her. “You came! You really came.” Then she looked at Chuck and whispered into her ear, “Is this beautiful man your friend?”
“Yes,” she whispered back and turned toward Chuck. “Nonna, this is my friend, Major General Novak, from the base where I work.”
Nonna spoke haltingly in English, thanking him for bringing Giulia. He responded in Italian and asked her to call him Chuck. Nonna beamed.
“Nonna, how bad is he?” Giulia asked.
“He has two broken ribs and is bruised all over. They kicked him when he was down! His knee’s swollen, his shoulder was dislocated. And black and blue marks all around his blue eye. But as usual, he says he’s fine,” she said with disgust and a little grin of pride.
“When can he go home?”
“Maybe tomorrow. Oddio!, Oh God! You didn’t go to the house did you?”
“No, no. We came straight here.”
The nurse, dressed in lavender scrubs, came out and said they were free to go into his room. Chuck stood in the doorway while the two women entered. Giulia hurried to the side of Nonno Tony’s bed. Using the arm without an IV, he pulled her close enough to give her a hug—not as powerful as usual—but he murmured he loved her and was sorry he had dragged her into his mess.
“Don’t worry, Nonno Tony. You need to heal, we’ll talk later.”
“We tal
k now. You didn’t go to the house?”
“We came straight here as Nonna said. But why not go to the house?”
“Who’s that?” Nonno Tony asked, noticing Chuck across the room.
Giulia wasn’t aware that Chuck had hung back; she motioned him to come to Tony’s bedside. “Nonno, I want you to meet my friend, Major General Novak. When he heard about you, he offered to drive me here.”
Nonno opened his good brown eye wide and appraised Chuck. “Big man,” he grunted. “Thank you for bringing my Giulia.”
Chuck put out his hand. “You’re welcome, sir. Please call me Chuck.”
“Gladly. And you will call me Antonio—no, make that Tony.”
They shook. Some sort of meeting of the minds happened between these two men. It was subtle, but a rapport had been established. Strange, Giulia thought. She’d expected Nonno Tony might not want Chuck anywhere near her. She was pretty sure, however, that Nonna would be thrilled she had a male friend who’d drive her all the way to Vittorio Veneto.
“Chuck,” Nonna said, “would you please find more chairs so we can all be comfortable while Tony tells his story.”
Chuck made an almost imperceptible bow and left to find chairs. Nonna caught the bow and smiled.
“Oh my, Giulia. Your young man is so handsome and polite.”
“He’s not my young man, Nonna. Just a friend.”
“So far, tesoro, darling, so far,” Nonna murmured. “I saw him look at you the same way Tony looked at me once.”
“He still looks at you that way, Nonna.”
“Yes.” She dipped her head, then smiled back up at Giulia.
How interesting, Giulia thought. Nonna wants to include Chuck in her husband’s story. She looked over at Nonno Tony. His eyes were closed, maybe painkillers made him drowsy, but it was more than that. He seemed shriveled and frail. For the first time, she acknowledged him as a seventy-seven-year-old man. But this couldn’t be her Nonno, who had always vibrated with life. My God. He could die! Her chest clenched and she felt short of breath.
