A Life Sublime (9 page)

“No, we were commanded to by your aunt.” His lips touched her jaw. “Tell me what the dress looks like.”

“Give me your hand,” she demanded. She folded his fingers into his palm bar his index finger then drew along her décolletage. “You get to see a little of this,” his finger was permitted to traverse the curve of her hip, “a bit of this, and more importantly, it is a dress that is very good for this,” she spread his palm over the cheek of her bottom. “Now, would you mind passing me my champagne? All this promising is very thirsty work.” She tapped her hand firmly on his chest. “Pick it up, it hasn’t been that long. Not as long as your dad and my aunt.”

“Oh really?” He raised his eyebrows. “You want to take it there, right now?”

She gave a mild shrug, a glint of pure devilment in her eyes. “I’m just telling the truth.”

“Fine, all right. If Pads and Belinda are together in two months, you may drive my car.”

She slowly flicked open the buttons of his jeans. “You will
give
me your car. Because that’s what a good husband who loves his wife would do.”

She glanced up and saw his eyes were fixed on the movements of her hands. “Gina, if you can walk tomorrow after I’m done with you, I’ll even put a bow on the thing.”

She moaned as he kissed her.
How much better is that?
She thought as he pulled her beneath his body. Sleeping like the dead tonight, married the next morning and a car before the autumn. Sweet...

She took a glance around the gardens. “No one will catch us right?”

“No, no, no,” Nick assured her, unhooking her bra and flinging it into the fountain. “Just having a little preview.”

“You always get me into trouble,” she murmured. “This honeymoon better be awesome.”

“Oh it will be. Trust me.” He paused as soon as he removed her underwear. “Hold on. Is that a heart?”

Belinda glanced at the clock on the wall. Eight in the morning. She’d never been able to lie in past this time, like what her older generation would call a lazy piece of fish. The rites had gone on until very early in the morning. There had been dancing to some of her favourite artists and watching the boys shake their butts as if they’d been dancing to Ghanaian music their whole life had been so funny, Belinda had been in tears of laughter and begged them all to stop it. She hadn’t been allowed to touch any dishes or assist in the clean-up, so she was feeling a little redundant.

Already awake for an hour, she’d had a cup of tea on the balcony, showered and flicked through a few pages of a magazine Sofia had left in her room. Scrambling around in the drawers, her brand new swimming costume emerged from beneath the piles of pure white cotton underwear. It was glorious, one of those clever fifties style contraptions in a liquid black that pulled everything up and sucked everything in. Although, there weren’t enough scientific advances to make her look less like she was smuggling two basketballs in her back pocket she realised, examining her bottom in the full mirror in the bathroom.

The corner of a glossy bag caught the corner of her eye. Ah yes! The kaftans Gina and Sofia had bought for her. It would more than do to walk to the swimming pool. The first one she pulled out was similar to a simple black chiffon dress, covering her arms and her legs. Hmm. Maybe the other mouthy one did have good taste. Throwing it over her head, she grabbed her towel and swimming cap and hurried to the pool, wanting to enjoy a quiet swim before everyone else woke up.

The sun was already quite high and hot by the time she reached the pool. Tugging the kaftan off and laying it carefully on the nearest lounger, she tucked her hair under a cap before diving into the water. It felt like silk over her skin, she thought dreamily, turning onto her back and languidly letting the sun warm her face. The ache began in her thighs and she lost count of the lengths as her mind became blissfully free. She swam toward the vanishing edge and folded her arms over the side. Green topped cliffs dotted with pastel coloured villas framed her view, partly submerged in vivid, cobalt water. Close enough to the colour of Massimo’s eyes.

If this were her own home, she’d stay here permanently. It was awe-inspiringly beautiful. The view from the pool alone made one wonder at the landscape. She felt visually spoiled. Apart from his children living in London, what was keeping Massimo from early retirement and living his days here? Probably loneliness. Nothing like an extended time alone with your thoughts to emphasize every mistake made and shrink the importance of your life. It was the same thing stopping her from selling up and buying a home back in Ghana. What would she even do with herself?

“May I join you?”

Belinda looked up from the horizon to see Massimo sitting beside her, his legs submerged to his calves in the water. She hadn’t even heard him approach.

“It’s your pool,” she told him stiffly.

He pushed the hair back from his brow in an effortlessly youthful gesture. “I do have some civility left in me.”

How could she argue with that? “Then go ahead.”

He slipped in without a sound, then proceeded to ruin the tranquillity she had achieved before he and his Dolph Ludgren chest turned up, with Olympic-like lengths of the pool. Who did he think he was racing, Michael Phelps? With a huff, she made to pull herself out and go back to the villa but Massimo’s voice halted her.

“I have disturbed you, I apologise.”

“I said it’s your pool.” She looked back, to where he was treading water in the midst of the pool. “I don’t have a say in what you do in it.”

“You were here first,” he said, wiping his eyes.
Irritating man
, she thought. “Please do not let me chase you away. I will be still.”

She slipped back into the pool and rested her arms as they were before. The water rippled as he came to rest beside her. “You looked deep in thought. What were you thinking?”

“Just how beautiful it is here,” she said gently. Sensing an expectation to talk, she added, “It would be nice to know the history. You may as well make yourself useful.”

He smiled. “It used to be a convent. Long before it was defiled by the Da Canavezes, the priest running the convent wrote to the bishop in Naples, informing him the convent was too extravagant a place to fully allow a nun to dedicate her life to God. When women came to a convent and gave themselves to Christ as a bride, any dowry they had would go to the church. It was more lucrative to the bishop to agree to sell the convent and purchase a cheaper hold for the women. Simplicity being closer to godliness. Corruption within the Catholic Church has existed for many a year.”

What an utterly disappointing and insulting story of women being ousted from what they were entitled.

“One of my ancestors bought it as a gift for his new bride and it has been passed to the eldest son of every Da Canaveze since then. When I go, this will pass to Nicholas.”

“And what will Paul do with himself?”

“Paul prefers Milan. He has a home there which has half the bedrooms but many more chandeliers. I gave it to him as a wedding present.”

Belinda’s frown deepened. “Are you sure you don’t play favourites?”

“Yes. But Paul has always had to find his own way and I believe now he has. What about your own children?”

“I don’t have any. I already told you the first night we were here.”

“I apologise. I was distracted. It would certainly account for your youthful looks.”

“It wasn’t a choice,” she snapped. It was the one subject guaranteed to set her teeth on edge and make her temper flare like wildfire.

“I understand your loss,” he said, which only inflamed her further.

“What do you know about loss? You don’t know what it is to have telephone call after telephone call telling you your father is dead, your mother is dead, your family dropping dead and you can’t get back home to see them buried properly. When you can’t give your husband the babies he wants, when the one and only person who understands you dies? All this before the age of forty. That is loss. How can you talk to me of loss when you have everything that you do?”

Massimo gave a long suffering sigh, “Belinda, why do you always think I am patronizing you?”

“Because you are,” she muttered, embarrassed by her outburst. Maybe this place wasn’t good for her. She’d never been particularly good at holding her tongue, but being around the Da Canavezes wasn’t doing anything for her sense of self control.

“No I am not. I said I understood because I did want more children. And it was not to be. There was nothing I could do to change that. Of course I have lost family and friends. Dreams.” He stopped for a moment, closing his eyes briefly, water coursing down the planes of his face like tears of a marbled saint. He continued. “To expect that no one else has suffered as you have is patronizing. I was merely sympathizing with you.”

Her mouth tightened. She hated people’s sympathy, she didn’t want it. “You don’t need to.”

He sent her an assessing look. “Why are you afraid of having things in common with me?”

Belinda turned to him, fury in her eyes. “Pardon?”

“The idea of having similarities with my life worries you. I can tell. We are all simply human. If not always with the same set of sensibilities.”

Hmm. “You and I both know that is not always the case.”

Those crystal blue eyes twinkled. “That sounded nice.”

“What?”

“
You and I
. Please do continue, we may even eventually agree with one another.”

Ridiculously attractive man, she thought, a reluctant grin tugging at her mouth. “Eh heh. All right, I’m going to go and sort myself out.”

“Belinda,” he said with a mild warning, as she heaved herself from the pool and padded to the lounger, “I am the last sensible adult in this villa. You should stay friends with me, even if we disagree, or you will have no one else to talk to.”

He has a realistic and very valid point
, she thought, snapping off her swimming cap. God knows she wished there was a palm tree within reach where she could remove a few swatches and swat the idiocy from the mouths of those children. “I’ll let you know,” she replied smartly, pulling the kaftan over her head and wrapping the towel around her hair. He was still watching her. Naughty man, she knew that look. That same sort of look had got her into trouble before she had married and a good many times after. “You behave yourself. I told your son and I’ll tell you too. I am not afraid to beat you if you give me nonsense.”

Massimo glanced down at his arms before looking up, a light in his eyes that should have sent her running for her passport and on the first plane back to London. “What makes you think I would not enjoy that?”

“Because you’ve never had a proper beating from me,” she retorted, collecting her things and making her way back to the villa. There would be something to occupy herself with and take the goosebumps from her flesh that had nothing to do with being cold and everything to do with the husky laugh of the man still in the pool.

Fitted with banners between each pillar, the night before the wedding was formally announced as
The Last Supper
. The
loggia
once again served all of them and just before they sat down to eat, a car came bounding up the drive way.

“It’s Beppe and Rocky,” Nick informed them. “Brace yourselves.”

“Who?” Belinda barked.

“My friends. I’ve known them for so long, we practically share DNA.” He explained with a rueful smile.

A ridiculous joke horn sounded, followed by a stream of Italian curses. The slam of a car door echoed across the grounds before they all heard the distinct sounds of someone retching.

Belinda got to her feet and approached the car, hands on hips. “What’s the matter with you?”

An enviably dressed, devilish-looking young man, straightened. “I am very sorry,
Signora
. But that idiot drives like he’s had a full frontal lobotomy. I thought we were going to end up off the cliffs.”

A blond man popped his head out of the car. “What’s he saying about me? After I kindly picked him up from the airport?”