Breathing Room (3 page)

More ... something.

He reminded himself his next film would give it to him. Every actor in town wanted to play the villainousKaspar Street, but only Ren had been offered the job. It was the role of a lifetime, the chance for top billing.

Slowly his muscles unwound. MakingNight Kill would involve months of hard work.

Until filming began, he intended to enjoyItaly. He'd relax, eat well, and do what he did best. Leaning back in his chair, he took a sip of wine and waited for life to entertain him.

*

As Isabel gazed up at the pink and green dome of the Duomo outlined against the night sky, she decided thatFlorence's most famous landmark looked garish instead of grand.

She didn't like this city. Even at night it was crowded and noisy.Italymight have a tradition as the place where soul-bruised women came to heal, but for her, leavingNew Yorkhad been a terrible mistake.

She told herself to be patient. She'd arrived only yesterday, andFlorencewasn't her ultimate destination. That had been determined by fate and her friend Denise's change of mind. For years Denise had dreamed about coming toItaly. Finally she'd applied for a leave of absence from her Wall Street job and rented a house in the Tuscan countryside for the months of September and October. She'd planned to use the time to begin work on a book about investment strategies for single women. "Italy is the perfect place for inspiration," Denise had told Isabel over the glazed pear and endive salad at Jo Jo's, their favorite lunch spot. "I'll write all day, then eat fabulous food and drink great wine at night."

But shortly after Denise had signed the lease on the Tuscan farmhouse of her dreams, she'd met the man of her dreams and declared that she couldn't possibly leaveNew Yorknow. Which was how Isabel had ended up with a reasonably priced two-month rental on a farmhouse inTuscany.

It couldn't have come along at a better time. Life inNew Yorkhad grown unbearable.

Isabel Favor Enterprises no longer existed. Her office was closed; her staff had moved on. She had no book contract, no lecture tour, and very little money. Her brownstone, along with nearly everything else she owned, had fallen to the auctioneer's gavel so she could pay off her tax debt. Even the Lalique crystal vase engraved with her logo was gone. All she had left were her clothes, a broken life, and two months inItalyto figure out how to start over.

Someone bumped against her, and she jumped. The crowds had thinned out, and the New Yorker inside her no longer felt safe, so she headed down the Via dei Calzaiuoli to the Piazza della Signoria. As she walked, she told herself she'd made the right decision. Only a clean break from the familiar could clear her mind enough so that she could stop feeling as though all she wanted to do was cry. Finally she'd be able to move ahead.

She had a definite plan for how she would begin the process of reinventing her life.Solitude. Rest. Contemplation.Action. Four parts, just like the Four Cornerstones.

"Can't you ever be impulsive?" Michael had once said. "Do you have to plan everything?"

A little over three months had passed since Michael had left her for another woman, but his voice poked into her consciousness so frequently she could hardly think anymore.

Last month she'd caught a glimpse of him inCentral Parkwith his arm around a badly dressed pregnant woman, and even from fifty feet away Isabel could hear the sound of their laughter, a little giddy, silly almost. In all their time together, he and Isabel had never once been silly. Isabel was afraid she'd forgotten how.

The Piazza della Signoria was as crowded as the rest ofFlorence. Tourists milled around the statues, while a pair of musicians strummed their guitars nearNeptune's Fountain. The forbidding Palazzo Vecchio, with its crenellated clock tower and medieval banners, loomed over the nighttime bustle just as it had been doing since the fourteenth century.

The leather pumps she'd paid three hundred dollars for last year were killing her, but going back to the hotel was too depressing. She spotted the beige and brown awnings of Rivoire, a café that had been mentioned in her guidebook, and made her way through a group of German tourists to find an outside table.

"Buona sera, signora..."The waiter was at least sixty, but that didn't stop him from flirting with her as he took her wine order. She would have loved a risotto, but the prices were even higher than the calorie count. How many years had it been since she'd had to worry over menu prices?

When the waiter left, she centered the salt and pepper shakers on the tablecloth, then moved the ashtray to the edge. Michael had looked so happy with his new wife.

"You're too much," he'd said. "Too much of everything." So why did she feel as if she were too little?

She drank the first glass of wine more quickly than she should have and ordered another.

Her parents' long-term love affair with personal excess had made her wary of alcohol, but she was in a strange country, and the emptiness that had been growing inside her for months had become unbearable.

"It's not my problem, Isabel. It's yours..."

She'd promised herself she wouldn't brood about this again tonight, but she couldn't seem to get past it.

"You need to control everything. Maybe that's why you don't like sex that much."

That was so unfair. She liked sex. She'd even started toying with the idea of taking a lover to prove it, but she recoiled from the idea of sex outside a committed relationship. It was another legacy from watching her parents' mistakes.

She wiped away the smear her lipstick left on her wine-glass. Sex was a partnership, but Michael seemed to have forgotten that. If he hadn't been satisfied, he should have discussed it with her.

Her thoughts were making her even more unhappy than she'd been when she entered the piazza, so she finished her second glass of wine and ordered another. One night of excess would hardly turn her into an alcoholic.

At the next table two women smoked, gestured, and rolled their eyes over the absurdity of life. A group of American students just behind them gorged on pizza and gelato, while an older couple gazed at each other over thimble-size aperitifs.

"I want passion," Michael had said.

The implication was too painful to contemplate, so she studied the statues on the other side of the piazza, copies ofThe Rape of the Sabines , Cellini'sPerseus , Michelangelo'sDavid . Then her eyes settled on the most amazing man she'd ever seen....

He sat three tables away, a portrait of Italian decadence in a rumpled black silk shirt with dark stubble on his jaw, long hair, andLa Dolce Vita eyes. Two elegantly tapered fingers curled around the stem of the wineglass that dangled indolently from his hand. He looked rich, spoiled, bored – MarcelloMastroianni stripped of his clown face and chiseled into perfect male beauty for an avaricious new millennium.

There was something vaguely familiar about him, although she knew they'd never met.

His face could have been painted by one of the masters – Michelangelo, Botticelli, Raphael. That must be why she felt as if she'd seen him before.

She studied him more closely, only to realize he was studying her in return....

Chapter 3

Renhad been watching her ever since she arrived. She'd rejected two tables before she found one that pleased her, then rearranged the condiments as soon as she was seated. A discriminating woman. She wore the stamp of intelligence as visibly as her Italian shoes, and even from here she radiated a seriousness of purpose that he found as sexy as those overly lavish lips.

She looked to be in her early thirties, with understated makeup and the simple but expensive clothes favored by sophisticated European women. Her face was more intriguing than beautiful. She wasn'tHollywoodemaciated, but he liked her body – breasts in proportion to her hips, tapered waist, the promise of great legs underneath her black slacks. Her blond hair had highlights she hadn't been born with, but he'd bet that was the only thing fake about her. No artificial fingernails or false eyelashes. And if those breasts were stuffed with silicone, she'd be showing them off instead of keeping them tucked away underneath that tidy black sweater.

He watched her finish one glass of wine and start on another. She took a nibble on her thumbnail. The gesture seemed out of character for such an earnest woman, which made it weirdly erotic.

He studied the other women in the café, but his eyes kept returning to her. He sipped his wine and thought it over. Women found him – he never went after them. But it had been a long time, and there was something about this one.

What the hell...

He leaned back in his chair and gave her his patented smoldering gaze.

Isabel felt his eyes on her. The man oozed sex. Her third glass of wine had lifted the leading edge of her dismal mood, and his attention lifted it a bit higher. Here was a person who knew something about passion.

He shifted his weight slightly and raised one dark, angular eyebrow. She wasn't used to such a blatant come-on. Gorgeous men wanted counseling from Dr. Isabel Favor, not sex.

She was too intimidating.

She moved the silverware half an inch to the right. He didn't look American, and she had no international following, so he wouldn't have recognized her. No, this man wasn't interested in Dr. Favor's wisdom. He just wanted sex.

"It's not my problem, Isabel. It's yours."

She looked up, and his lips curved. Her bruised heart, numbed by the wine, feasted on that slight smile.

This man doesn't think I'm schizo, Michael. This man recognizes a powerfully sexual woman when he sees one.

He locked his eyes with hers and deliberately touched the corner of his mouth with his knuckle. Something warm unfolded inside her, like a layer of puff pastry plumping in an oven. She watched, fascinated, as his knuckle drifted toward the slight indentation in his bottom lip. The gesture was so blatantly sexual she should have been offended. Instead, she took another sip and waited to see what he'd do next.

He rose, picked up his glass, and walked slowly toward her. The two Italian women at the next table stopped their conversation to watch. One uncrossed her legs. The other shifted in her chair. They were young and beautiful, but this fallen Renaissance angel zeroed in on her.

"Buonasera, signora."He gestured toward the chair across from her."Posso farle compagnia?"

She felt herself nod, even as her brain ordered her to turn him away. He slid into the chair, as seductive as a black satin sheet.

Up close he was no less devastating, but his eyes were a little bloodshot, and the stubble on his jaw seemed more a product of fatigue than a fashion statement. Perversely, his ragged edges intensified his sexuality.

She was only mildly startled to hear herself address him in French."Je ne parle pas l'italien, monsieur."

Whoa... One part of her brain ordered her to get up and walk away right now. The other part told her not to be in such a hurry. She did a quick survey to see if anything obvious would give her away as an American, butEuropewas filled with blondes, including ones like her who'd had light streaks added to perk up their spirits. She was dressed in black, as he was – slim trousers and a cropped, sleeveless cotton sweater with a funnel neck.

Her uncomfortable shoes were Italian. The only jewelry she wore was a thin gold bangle with the single wordBREATHEinscribed inside, to remind her to stay centered. She hadn't eaten, so he couldn't have witnessed that telling transfer of fork from left hand to right that Americans made when they cut their meat.

What does it matter? Why are you doing this?

Because the world as she knew it had collapsed around her. Because Michael didn't love her, and she'd had too much wine, and she was tired of being frightened, and she wanted to feel like a woman instead of a failed institution.

"È un peccato."He shrugged in that wonderful Italian way."Non parlo francese."

"Parlez-vous anglais?"

He shook his head and brushed his chest."Mi chiamo Dante."

His name was Dante. How appropriate in this city that had once been the home of the poet Dante Alighieri.

She tapped her own chest."Je suis...Annette."

"Annette. Molta bella."He lifted his glass in a sexy, silent toast.

Dante... The name warmed her belly like hot syrup, and the night air turned to musk.

His hand touched hers. She gazed down at it but didn't draw away. Instead, she took another sip of wine.

He began toying with the tips of her fingers, letting her know this was more than a casual flirtation. This was a seduction, and the fact that it was calculated bothered her for only a moment. She was too demoralized for subtlety.

"Hold your body precious,"the Spiritual Dedication Cornerstone advised."You're a treasure, God's greatest creation..." She absolutely believed that, but Michael had bruised her soul, and this fallen angel named Dante promised a dark kind of redemption, so she smiled at him and didn't move her hand away.

He leaned farther back in his chair, at ease with his body in a way few men were. She envied his physical arrogance.

Together they watched the American students grow more boisterous. He ordered a fourth glass of wine for her. She shocked herself by flirting a little with her eyes.See, Michael, I know how to do this. And do you know why? Because I'm a lot more sexual than you think I am.

She was glad the language barrier made conversation impossible. Her life had been filled with words: lectures, books, interviews. PBS played her videos whenever they had a fund drive. She'd talked, talked, talked. And look what it had gotten her.

His finger slipped beneath her hand and stroked the cradle of her palm in a gesture that was purely carnal.Savonarola , that fifteenth-century enemy of everything sensual, had been burned at the stake in this very piazza. Would she burn?

She was burning now, and her head was spinning. Still, she wasn't so drunk that she didn't notice that his smile never made it to his eyes. He'd done this a hundred times before. This was about sex, not sincerity.

That's when it struck her. He was a gigolo.