Olivia woke as the car came to a stop in front of a pair of tall iron gates. “Are we there yet?” she asked sleepily, thinking how she’d said the same thing so often to her dad on long car trips.
“We’re here,” Alessandro said. He picked up a remote control from the dash. The gates opened inward, and he drove slowly now, gravel crunching under the tires, the headlights revealing a sweeping drive flanked on one side by trees and the other by a large pond.
An elegant Palladian villa shrouded with mist came into view. “This is your home?” she asked. She’d seen this house before in design books, the kind that graced coffee tables and were named things like The World’s Most Beautiful Homes. Stairs rose on either side of a colonnade the White House would have envied, while the facade was punctuated by tall, graceful windows.
“My family’s home, yes,” he said as the car came to a stop.
She fumbled with her door but was unable to penetrate its high-tech mysteries before Alessandro came around and opened it for her. The sudden cold came as a shock. Alessandro put his arm around her as she stared up at the house. “It’s incredible.”
“I spent all my childhood summers here, but just my father lives here now,” he said. “He left for the Maldives right after his birthday party. The staff are expecting us.”
As if in a dream, she followed him up one set of stone stairs toward the now open doors. As they stepped inside, a tall, handsome woman in her mid-fifties greeted Alessandro warmly, kissing him on both cheeks.
“So nice to see you, Helga,” Alessandro said. “This is Olivia.”
“Piacere, Olivia,” Helga said with a faint German accent. “I left a bottle of your favorite wine in the library, Alessandro.”
Olivia could barely get out a stuttered buonasera as she gawked around the palatial entrance hall. Every inch of it was frescoed, and marble staircases swept up either side to a landing far above. She apologized to Helga for being rude. “I feel like Cinderella at the ball.”
Helga laughed. “It’s okay. This house is stiff competition. Alessandro told me you wouldn’t have any luggage with you, so I’ve set out some essentials for you in the wisteria-garden bathroom. If you have anything you’d like laundered, just leave it in the hamper behind the door.”
When Helga left them, Olivia raised an eyebrow at Alessandro. “Essentials? Did you send Helga shopping when you called her? Or do you often bring women with no luggage home with you?”
He laughed. “I can assure you, this is a first—but I do have resources.”
“I’ll say, and a wisteria-garden bathroom.”
“I’m sorry. It’s all a bit much. It gets a little embarrassing at times.” He indicated one of the doorways off the entrance, and they entered a round room ringed with elegant glass-doored bookcases and furnished with leather sofas and wingback chairs. A winding iron staircase led up to a balcony that encircled the entire room, and that held yet more bookcases. On a central table sat an antique globe, while above it, in the center of the ceiling, cherubs holding books in their hands looked down on them from a sunny blue sky. “Tiepolo?” she asked.
“Afraid so,” he answered, picking up what must be his “favorite wine” and pouring it into a glass that looked like it belonged in a museum. Eighteenth century, she guessed. What if she dropped it? It was worth more than everything she owned! “Don’t you have an old plastic cup or something?” she said. “It scares me, drinking out of that.”
“Not to worry. It’s just a good reproduction. We have dozens of them—we use them for parties.”
“Thank God,” she said, taking a sip. “When I was a little girl, we’d visit my mother’s aunt Millicent on Sundays. She was very English. She had a room she called the parlor, and she served tea in china teacups. I dropped one, and the handle broke off. She made me drink out of a mug after that.”
He laughed. “Believe me. I don’t want to remind you of your old aunt.”
“Remind me again why you decided to be a cop when you have all this?” The words were out before she could stop them. She clasped her hand over her mouth and came very close to dropping her glass after all. “Oh, I’m so sorry! Your wife . . . That was incredibly stupid of me. It’s just that this is so overwhelming. I live in a dumpy little apartment in Toronto. I mean, that’s what my sister calls it. I actually like it . . . or I did—”
He cut her off with one of those heart-stopping smiles. “I know. It seems crazy. Don’t apologize. It’s okay. Look, I know you want that shower, and I really have to call Columbo, but I need to say something first.”
He indicated a leather sofa and sat opposite her on the edge of the coffee table. Taking her glass, he set it beside him. It all seemed so serious, and she didn’t know what to think. But that didn’t stop scenarios from speeding through her head. What was he going to tell her? Was he regretting he’d let things go this far with her? Was he about to tell her he wasn’t ready for this because of his wife?
“I don’t know how to say this,” he said, taking her hands in his, and she realized it was too late. No matter how much she steeled herself, this was going to hurt, and she could already feel tears welling up.
“If you’re not ready because of your wife . . .”
“No. Yes. Finding her has been an obsession for me, and until a few days ago I couldn’t even admit she was dead. Thanks to you, I’m finally ready to move on. You’re what’s important to me now. From now on, my thoughts, hopes, and dreams are with you and you alone. But I know you might not believe it yet, and so I understand if you’d rather not be with me right now. If you’d rather wait until you’re absolutely sure I’ve put all this behind me . . .”
She looked at him, not quite understanding.
“Look, this isn’t easy for me,” he continued. “Believe me, there’s nothing more I want right now than to carry you upstairs. But I have to give you that choice. Will you wait for me?”
“Will you wait for me?” she echoed, thinking he sounded like some nineteenth-century explorer going off to sea. She didn’t know what to do about the rest of what he’d said, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to wait for him. She wanted him now.
She got up from the couch and, standing over him, leaned down and pushed him back. Her skirt spread over the table as she covered his body with her own and kissed him. If he was surprised, it didn’t faze him for long, and he was soon kissing her back just as intensely. The wineglass she’d been so worried about smashed to the marble floor, but she no longer cared if it was priceless eighteenth-century glass.
“Does that answer your question for you?” she asked breathlessly against his mouth.
“Do you know how much I want you right now?” he whispered as he pulled at the strings of her bodice. “Though I don’t know how to get this bloody costume off.”
“Well, I guess it’s a good thing you’re a cop and not the hero of a bodice ripper,” she said.
He laughed. “And I’m not sure I want our first time to be on a coffee table.” Yet it might have been, had his cellphone not rung.
“Damn,” he said. “It must be my boss, Columbo. I have to talk to him. He’s probably wondering where the hell I am.”
Still, by the time they managed to disentangle themselves, the call had gone to voicemail.
“Why don’t you have your shower while I call Columbo?” he said.
“Only if I can have it in the wisteria-garden bathroom.”
“Of course. Only the best for you. Go up the stairs and make the right at the top before the ballroom. This brings you to the east wing. Walk all the way to the end of the hall, turn right again, and it’s the first door on the left.”
“Do you have a map? In my apartment back in Toronto, I say the bathroom door is the one that doesn’t lead to the fire escape.”
He laughed. “Feel free to check every door if you’d like. You’ll know when you’ve found it.”
She looked down at the shards of glass mixed with wine on the marble. “I’m sorry about that—I told you I wasn’t to be trusted. I’m glad it was a reproduction . . . but I should clean it up.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, kissing her lightly one more time. “I’ll take care of it. But try to drink the next one.”
“I will,” she promised, and as she started up the sweeping staircase in the entrance hall, she could hear him say, “Rossi here.”
She took the hall to the right, but not before she looked into the ballroom. The lights from the landing were enough to make the great chandeliers glint, while an expanse of marble floor seemed to fade into infinity as much as into darkness.
He was worried his wife’s death would come between them, but what about this? This was wealth she couldn’t fathom. Wasn’t he supposed to marry someone equally rich and have children with titles? Wouldn’t marrying Alessandro come with responsibilities like going to charity balls with international jet-setters? She honestly didn’t think she had that level of confidence, and wasn’t there a phoniness to the whole thing?
But Alessandro wasn’t phony, and she couldn’t imagine him wanting to hang out with phonies. And he did seem to want to “hang out” with her.
What would his father make of her, a slightly awkward art history graduate from Canada from an undistinguished family? Her own father had been born in Padua, true, but he was the son of a factory worker. She smiled at the thought of bringing her sister, Claudia, here. Oh, wouldn’t that be sweet revenge for all her condescension!
She took the hall to the right as instructed, walking on Turkish carpets spread over marble floors. Paintings lined the walls, many, to her surprise, modern. She stopped in front of one. Magritte? She turned around. Matisse? And this just on the way to the bathroom!
Yes, it would be fun to see her sister’s face. Olivia would date him for that alone.
In the end, it wasn’t the first door on the left, it was the first on the right, and she laughed to think he didn’t know the way around his own house. The room on the left was amazing enough, a walk-in linen closet that was better stocked than most department stores, but the wisteria-garden bathroom took her breath away.
Heated marble floor, marble pedestal sink, toilet, bidet, shower, and a bathtub more like a small pool. The fittings gleamed with gold and a high arched window was covered with floor-length gauze curtains, while the ceiling and walls were frescoed with trellises hung with garlands of brilliant purple wisteria.
Thick white towels hung over heated racks, and on the gilt chair beside the tub were the promised “essentials”—all in white silk. Just her size. And while she was sure he wouldn’t tell her, she really wanted to know how he’d pulled that off.
She undid the bodice and let it fall to the floor. The skirt and underskirt were next, and then the simple black dress she’d put on that morning for her flight to New York. Could it really have been only that morning? She looked at her watch. It was almost midnight—only twelve hours since Alessandro had found the drugs in her luggage.
She stuck everything in the hamper behind the door. Really, she’d prefer if Helga burned it all rather than wash it. But then she supposed she’d need her black dress again—she couldn’t very well go home in a white silk negligee. But the costume she never wanted to see again—even if Alessandro did find it sexy.
Someday, she thought, looking into the depths of the tub, I’d like to soak all night in that. But for now, she was happy to have a shower. After all, as wonderful as the bathroom was, the thing she wanted most was to get back to Alessandro.
She showered quickly and, after slipping on the white negligee and robe, retraced her steps down the hall. Hearing piano music, she followed the direction of the sound down the stairs, through the library to where Alessandro sat at a concert grand piano, the name fazioli stamped in gold on the side. She recognized what he was playing. “Un sospiro” by Franz Liszt. “A Sigh.” It had been her father’s favorite piece of music.
He turned to her without a break in the music, one hand passing effortlessly over the other, a simple heartbreaking melody over a murmur of broken chords. “You look lovely. Are you warm enough?”
She nodded. “Your playing is so beautiful.”
“Come and sit with me,” he said. “I told you I’d play for you again.”
He moved over on the bench, and she sat beside him.
He played for a few more moments before speaking. “Columbo is fine with you staying here. Benito admitted the drugs were planted on you, and Dino has agreed to talk, but only after he’s guaranteed immunity. That should give us at least tomorrow together before I have to deal with this again. Columbo insists on sending a couple of guards. They’ll stay in their cars out front. Silvio and Marco both know you’re safe, and Marco said he’ll get in touch with your family and tell them not to worry.”
“Thank you. I should text Marco myself and let him know I’m okay.”
He nodded. The piece ended with a series of slow, solemn chords, and as the last one faded away, he said, “So now that’s out of the way. I could offer you another glass of wine, but I’m not sure I can wait for you to drink it.”
“I can’t wait either,” she said, and he lifted her effortlessly into his arms and carried her through the room and up the stairs. She didn’t notice whether they took the left hall or the right, nor the magnificence of the bedroom, nor that the clock had struck midnight.
As he kissed her everywhere, her “essentials” dropping to the floor, all she cared about was getting his shirt off. And that done, his jeans . . .