The One in My Heart (15 page)

“It’s an acquired skill, like anything else,” he said finally. “When Moira and I broke up for good, I was like a man in a midlife crisis: I’d been with one woman for so long, I had no idea how to work the room anymore. It took me months to rediscover my predatory instincts.”

I’d have preferred a smirk in his voice, the usual masculine boastfulness. But he was matter-of-fact—dismissive, even.

“What did your predatory instincts tell you to do?”

I couldn’t help my tawdry curiosity. I’d never bothered to glance at any celebrity sex tape. But I’d watch every second of his, aroused and angry at the same time, if there was one floating around.

“I learned that it worked pretty well if I went up to a woman and said, ‘Hey, I just broke up with my girlfriend after seven years. Why are you here?’”

The first rule of communication: It’s not what you say; it’s how you say it. And the way Bennett said it, with sexual interest belied by aloofness—or was it the other way around?—did something to me. It made me, who already knew his story, want to know infinitely more about it. And it made me wish I were half so cool and nonchalant, that I too could take it or leave it.

“And what did you tell them about Moira when they asked?”

“Not many did—it’s not that hard to keep people talking about themselves. And if anyone did ask, I told the truth: that she was my first and I wanted to spend my life with her, but it didn’t work out.”

I wanted to spend my life with her, but it didn’t work out
. A man perfectly capable of commitment, paying to pretend-date me, about as demonstrable an instance of noncommitment as possible…

“Lucky for me you never tried to pick me up.”

But as soon as I said those words, I began to wonder. I’d always viewed our first time together as somewhat inevitable, from the moment I rather unsubtly invited myself to his house for tiramisu.

Had I been looking at a limited picture? What if everything he had done—tossing me the key to his car, walking away, promptly saying good-bye in front of his house—had all been calculated to put me at ease and gain my trust?

“You wouldn’t have fallen for anything like that,” he said.

“I wouldn’t?” I murmured. “How
would
you have picked me up?”

He dropped the bag of groceries into his scuffed messenger bag and stuck his hands into the pockets of his trench coat. We walked for a minute in silence, me wondering whether my question had gone unheard, before he glanced at me.

Our gaze met. Electricity crackled along the surface of my skin. He looked away. Another minute passed before he looked at me again. This time I kept my eyes on my feet, not wanting to be so affected, but feeling the jolt all the same, the force of his attention.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

There was no particular change to his voice, yet for some reason he came across as just perceptibly nervous.

“Evangeline.” Did I sound similarly on edge?

“Do you come here often?”

I looked at the ornate wrought-iron gate we were passing, and the red-roofed villa inside—and imagined us instead at a crowded nightspot, with throbbing music, pulsing lights, and the odor of too many bodies pressed close together. “No, hardly ever.”

“Why not?”

“Not my scene.”

“Do you want to get out of here? Have a drink somewhere?”

“Why?” I countered. “Because a nice girl like me shouldn’t be alone?”

“A nice girl like you should be alone as long and as often as you prefer,” he said quietly. “But I want to be there for when you’d like someone next to you.”

Pain pinched my heart, the pain of being understood when I didn’t wish to be, by someone who was only playing a game.

“That’s not bad.” I put on my shades. “Look, we can see the sea again.”

THE WALLS AND ARCHES OF
Villa Jovis that still stood were massive. Despite two millennia of harsh maritime weathering, the mastery of their construction remained evident in the precision of the masonry and the levelness of the brickwork. And Tiberius sure knew how to pick a spot for his pleasure palace: The ruins, surrounded by a heart-stopping panorama of sea and sky, occupied the easternmost tip of the island, twelve hundred feet above a sheer drop to the waves below.

Bennett and I sat on a small outcrop overlooking a cluster of cliff-hugging pines and made a picnic from his bag of groceries—bread, cheese, olives, and a tiny bottle of white wine. I didn’t eat much—and didn’t take more than a sip from the bottle.

I should have driven by him that night.

I should have said no to everything that followed.

And I should have backed out the moment I understood what had made me say yes to his crazy scheme.

It still wasn’t too late. People broke up all the time, didn’t they, even in the middle of “romantic” trips to beautiful places?

“Tell me about the ball—the one in Paris,” said Bennett, putting away the remnants of our lunch. “What did I miss?”

I frowned. What
had
he missed? I remembered very little of the ball itself—a flash of my stark red lips in a mirror, the iciness of Pater’s fingers in mine as we danced the first dance together, the conspicuous absence of Zelda, kept back in our hotel suite with the kindly French psychiatric nurse who had agreed to come on short notice.

Ingrained by years of practice, my mind immediately turned away from those memories. This was where I’d find myself back on the night of the rehearsal, at the beginning of my alternate history. At the very last moment, when our hope was spent, my most generic Prince Charming would appear as if by magic, a little out of breath and full of apologetic smiles.

But I could conjure up nothing at all. Meeting the Somerset boy in person had destroyed my alternate history: He would never have come to us, not under any circumstances or in any parallel universes.

Yet now the one who had taken the road less traveled wanted to know where the other path would have led.

“You didn’t miss much,” I said, staring at a distant sailboat. “A bunch of girls in big dresses—by and large not having the time of their lives.”

Bennett picked up a pinecone and ran his fingers along its scales. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there. My parents asked again and again if I meant it—that I’d actually go to Paris as I promised. And again and again I said yes, even as I packed up all my belongings. I was afraid that if I answered truthfully, they would swoop in and do something drastic. And I needed the master of my residence house to give me my passport so I could take the flight to San Francisco that Moira had booked.”

I shrugged. “The ball wasn’t really my thing anyway. And your replacement was a count, so my father was satisfied on that front.”

“I spoke to your father once, before my parents sent me to England.”

I looked at him, astonished.

“My grandmother had left some paintings that would come to me on my twenty-first birthday—nobody knew which ones, but I’d hoped that it would include the Pissarro over her mantel that I’d always loved. Your father had come to our place to look at some pieces of art my uncle had bought. When he was leaving I met him outside and asked how much a Pissarro painting might be worth.”

“But he didn’t deal in Impressionist works.”

“That’s what he told me. But he also told me that if he were me, he’d hold on to the Pissarro for some time—he felt Pissarros were undervalued and would appreciate in a decade or two. And he was exactly right: Recently a Pissarro sold for almost twenty million pounds. He was exceptional at what he did, your father.”

“Yes, he was.” Pater had an encyclopedic memory and, even more important, an uncanny feel for the zeitgeist. He was almost always ahead of the trends, much to the delight of his clients, who had the pleasure of watching their investments quantum-leap in value. “Did you ever meet with him again?”

My father had not been the kind of man who inspired others to come up to me and talk about him. Perhaps for that reason, when it happened I was always struck by how much I missed him.

“No, but right after he gave me the advice about Pissarro paintings, my brother walked up and I introduced them. He was very taken with Prescott.”

“Oh?”

“Most people my parents’ age were very taken with Prescott. He was at Harvard then, a member of the debate club and the rowing club—all-around impressive. Still is today.” Bennett tossed the pinecone in the air and caught it again, slanting a look at me. “Your father would have been surprised that you took up with the punk brother instead.”

“Nah,” I told him. “My father was used to being disappointed by my choices. All he ever wanted was for me to be a hostess with the mostest, and all I ever did was tinker in our basement with experiments that might blow up the house.”

“Did you ever? At least cause enough smoke to have fire trucks come?”

“No, never. Still, he popped antacids at the sight of my science projects. He probably would have preferred it if I’d brought home a punk kid like you instead.”

“Thanks for that backhanded compliment, sweetheart.” He took a swig of the wine. “What about Zelda?”

“Zelda was always fascinated by what I was up to.” I smiled at the memories. “We used to go through scientific equipment catalogs together and she’d help me order what I needed. She read books on her own to understand what I was doing. And since we were both in the basement all the time—her studio is there too—she’d come over from time to time and be my lab assistant.”

“I’ve wondered about the unusual closeness between the two of you,” he said.

Something about his tone made me nervous. Did he perceive that it wasn’t just love that kept me in orbit around Zelda, her faithful satellite, but also fear?

He looked at me. “I’ve wondered about how it has made y—”

His expression changed.

“What is it?”

Wrapping an arm around my shoulder, he pulled me close and whispered, “My parents are coming this way.”

The tension in his voice vibrated in me. I took out my compact, opened it, and looked behind me with the mirror. There they were, his parents, picking their way down to where we sat.

“You ready?” he asked.

I suddenly remembered my need to distance myself from him—from this entire situation. His parents couldn’t have arrived at a worse time.

Bennett kissed me on my temple. “I’m so glad you agreed to come.”

We were on, then.

“You don’t know how much I looked forward to this trip,” he murmured. “How impatient I was to go away somewhere, just the two of us.”

His scent was that of winter, crisp, cool, with a bare hint of wood smoke. The sound of his voice, the caress of his words on the shell of my ear, the warmth of his palm on my nape…

“I think I have some idea how much you wanted this,” I managed.

“You can’t even begin to guess.” He pulled me to my feet. “Sometimes it scares me that we might have never met. That we could have spent years living a mile from each other and not once crossed paths.”

His thumb traced a line across my cheekbone. His gaze was intent, solemn. I couldn’t breathe. “You are the best thing to happen to me in a long, long time, princess,” he said softly. “I—Mom, Dad?”

I didn’t need to pretend to swivel around in surprise—caught up in Bennett’s “confession,” I’d forgotten about his parents completely. Could they see my disorientation? My embarrassment? Could they see the heat that scalded my face?

“Oh, hi,” I said, my voice half an octave above normal. “How are you? What brought you to Capri?”

“It’s our anniversary,” said Mrs. Somerset. “We’re taking a trip around Italy.”

I got off the outcrop and shook hands with them. “Happy anniversary. May you celebrate many more together.”

“And you two, are you on holiday?” asked Mrs. Somerset, sounding a little breathless.

It hurt, how much she wanted her family back together. I wanted to hug her, but I had no choice but to play my role. “I had a conference in Munich, and Bennett had a few days off. So we thought we’d meet up on the Amalfi Coast, even if it isn’t the best time of the year. Quite a fog yesterday—we could hardly see our way to our hotel.”

“We missed that,” said Mrs. Somerset. “We got into Naples last night—and before that we were in Tuscany, where the weather was wonderful. For February, at least.”

We women were definitely doing the heavy lifting here, while father and son…Mr. Somerset didn’t exactly glower, but neither did he look pleased at this unexpected wrinkle to his anniversary trip.

This was a man who did not enjoy being thrust into situations for which he hadn’t prepared.

I made the executive decision to give him the time to prepare himself.

“Are you staying here on Capri?” I asked.

“No, we’re staying at La Figlia del Mare in Positano,” answered Mrs. Somerset.

“What a coincidence. That’s where we are too—Zelda raved about the place so much we had no choice but to try it.”

“Maybe it’s not so much a coincidence as an inevitability,” said Mrs. Somerset. “I also picked the hotel because Zelda recommended it a while ago.”

There was no time to ponder Zelda’s inexplicable love of La Figlia del Mare.

I set my hand on my fake boyfriend’s arm. “Bennett and I were about to head over to Anacapri and Mount Solaro. But why don’t we have dinner together tonight, if you and Mr. Somerset don’t have other plans?”

Mrs. Somerset must have come to a similar executive decision. She didn’t consult her husband—or even look at him—before she answered. “We would love that. I hear the hotel’s restaurant is excellent.”

“It’s exceptional. Should we say eight?”

“That would be wonderful.”

“Well, see you tonight then. Enjoy Capri.”

I tugged on Bennett’s hand. It took a couple of tugs, but he muttered a “bye” and followed me up the path that would take us across the ruins and back to the road.

“What’s the deal?” asked Bennett, once we were out of his parents’ earshot.

I was afraid he might be miffed, but he only sounded puzzled.

“Your dad doesn’t care to be thrown like this. I mean, how did you feel when the elevator door opened and they were standing right there?”