Beautiful People (29 page)

    But he was amused by the way the write-ups made it sound as if his décor was the result of months of agonising with a team of interior designers.

    "Artfully simple" was the term most often used. But there had been nothing artful about it; simple had been the no-choice option. When he opened, money had been tight. He had not been able to afford carpets, or even particularly nice tiles, so the oak floors that had been there for centuries had been sanded and polished. He had done the sanding himself and now had those scars to add to various cut and burn injuries. The place had been filled with utilitarian wooden chairs and tables, bought secondhand.

    Marco pushed back some of his rumpled dark hair from his forehead and pushed his big, clumsy-looking hands into his violetcircled eye sockets. The effect as he rubbed his closed lids produced, he noticed, a light red similar to that of a new Chianti.

    He looked at his watch. Time to put the oxtail on. In six hours' time, it would be a thick, dark, silky sauce rich with meaty, winey, bone-marrow flavour. After that, he'd peel the peas. No other chef would bother, he knew, but getting the puree completely smooth was a point of pride.

    He remembered how Rodolfo had laughed about his pea puree. "You've got it wrong," the decorator had declared.

    "Have I?" Marco's heart had quickened. While he had never thought of Rodolfo as much of a cook, he had learnt over time that tips come from the most unexpected places.

Rodolfo grinned. "You're missing something."

"Yes? Yes?"

"It's obvious."

    "What is it? What am I missing?" What did Rodolfo know about pea puree that he didn't?

    "A life, amico mio." And with that, Rodolfo had plunged his brush into his pot and cheerfully carried on.

    Rodolfo didn't understand, Marco mused, how much food meant to him, how much pleasure he got from the simplest of things. How the taste of a fresh carrot could bring tears to the eyes. He had said this to Rodolfo who had laughed and said that, personally, onions were the only vegetables that made him cry.

    He looked at his restaurant again and felt a hot wave of love and pride. It was a former wine cellar, whose cave-like mouth stretched across the entire front of the building in a shallow arch. Inside was a long, wide space with a plain wooden floor and a brick barreled ceiling painted white. It was simple and intimate, as well as wonderfully cool on hot days, especially given the elderly but nonetheless vigorous vine that trailed around the doorway. At the top of the building, in the roof, were the tiny pair of low-ceilinged, whitewashed rooms—bathroom and bed-sitting room—in which Marco slept the few hours he was not in his restaurant. Or, as now, outside it in the cobbled, table-covered courtyard.

    The building containing his restaurant and his home was one of a row—or rather a curve—of similarly ancient, mellow, and slightly crumbling structures that followed a winding, cobbled street rising from the bottom of the hill, on which the village was built, up to the main square at the top where the church and the shops were. Everyone in Rocolo passed it regularly—had to—as cars were not allowed.

    As a result, there were few locals who didn't partake of a morning cappuccino, daytime espresso, or evening prosecco. At dinner and lunch, moreover, especially on Sundays, the courtyard was heaving with Rocolo families crowded under the big, white parasols shading tables piled with bread, wine, pasta, and whatever big-flavoured delicacy the popular local chef had produced that morning.

    "Ciao!" Some coffee-drinkers were leaving, and he waved them off.

    He watched approvingly as Daria, the waitress, came out and cleared away the coffee cups from some earlier breakfasters. Daria was pretty, certainly, with her doe-like face with its creamy skin and the shiny black ponytail that flopped down her back. But what Marco admired most about her was the speed with which she could chop a carrot and her neatness at table-setting. He had no time for women, for romance. The love of his life was his restaurant.

    He looked over the courtyard once more before disappearing inside. And it was then that he saw her.

    She was walking up the steep cobbled street towards him, flushed as even the fittest usually were by this point. She was about twenty-five and the hair that swished about her shoulders was as thick and shining as squid ink. Her wide, creamy face made him think instantly of panna cotta, and her pale arms and legs, the beautiful sheeny white of freshest leeks, were set off by a dress the bright yellow of saffron rice. As she got closer, he saw her pretty, full mouth was a rich, strawberry-semifreddo pink.

    A hot wave of excitement washed suddenly over Marco. Rocolo, being one of the jewels of the Chianti tourist trail, attracted its fair share of beautiful women. Some of them even famous. But he had never looked at any of them the way he was looking at this woman now. She was enchanting.

Christian Harlow was not having a good day. This boneheaded Italian cop's refusal to let him drive at top speed up the village street was merely the latest example of how events at the moment seemed to be conspiring against him. Why the hell couldn't he, anyway? The crumbling old heap of a village needed something fast and new in it. The place was a mess; you could see that from here.

    "Whaddya mean I can't get my car up there?" he demanded, stabbing one of many beringed fingers at the small cobbled lane leading under the arch. "I'm starving. I need a burger, like, now, man. Hey. You don't know who you're dealing with here, yeah? Don't you know who I am?"

    The cop was jealous, Christian decided. Sure he was; the Ferrari he'd had the film company hire for his entertainment while in Italy was a great car. He'd had a blast roaring up and down the country lanes in it this morning—Jesus, they made them small round here—but now he was hungry, and this shitty little village was the nearest place to where he was staying. He'd zoom in and stop at the burger bar.

    "Walk?" he shouted angrily as the policeman mimed ambulatory movements. "Are you kidding?"

    It was on the tip of Christian's foot, expensively shod in Versace sandals, to put the pedal to the metal and roar away. But where the hell would he get his burger then? Besides, he wanted to check out the scene—and the chicks. There was bound to be someone willing to have a little fun with a Hollywood superstar.

    What was this freak of a cop saying to him? Christian frowned and tried to understand, not a process that came to him easily. "Bicycle?" he repeated disbelievingly.

    The policeman was bending his legs, holding his arms out in front and jiggling. A crowd that had gathered, and was swelling, tittered. Thunder gathered in Christian's heart. He threw his arm across the low, black leather back of the driver's seat, flung the Ferrari violently into reverse, and screeched away. Grudgingly, he parked the car, and, once the crowd had dispersed, trudged across to the bridge to begin the ascent to the village on foot.

    Bloody Italy, thought Christian. He'd never wanted to come here in the first place, had no interest in Europe whatsoever. Who did? As markets went, it was a million miles behind the only one that really mattered, his own native U.S. of A.

    And now, of course, he was stuck here for weeks on end. One of the other reasons that this morning had been such an ass-pain was the call he had got from his agent, Greg Cucarachi. Cucarachi had informed him that principal photography on the film had been set back by a week or so while locations were finalised.

    "Jesus," Christian had shouted. "Nothing on this goddamn film is finalised. Locations, actors, whatever. What is it with this guy Saint?"

    "The fee he's paying you and the fact the film will be huge," Greg had replied immediately. "And as it happens, another actor has been finalised." Christian now learnt that Belle Murphy had been given a part in
Galaxia
. "You're kidding me!" Christian screeched.

    "Don't you read the papers?" Greg asked.

    "No, I fucking don't," he yelled. "I pay people like you to read them for me."

    "In which case," Greg rejoined smoothly, "let me explain. Belle had a hit with some Shakespeare play in London. She's hot again— well, pretty warm."

    "You say this movie's gonna take eight weeks to shoot once principal photography actually starts? Eight weeks with her?"

    "Eight weeks in Italy, yes," Greg said. "But that's only the ceremonial space city bits—Saint wanted real palazzo interiors for them. There's about three months of shooting elsewhere, plus post-production…"

    "I don't wanna see her!" Christian interrupted violently. "Saint's gotta drop her from the film!" Not least because his chances of bedding anyone else would be badly scuppered by having his banshee of an ex around.

    "Not much chance of getting her dropped," Greg remarked. "But don't worry," he soothed. "There's a way round this. You don't have to see her. Or, rather, she doesn't have to see you."

    "How d'ya figure that out?" Christian demanded hysterically. "We'll be on set together."

    "Sure, but whenever you're on set, you're in disguise. You're the evil lord Jolyon Wooloo, half lizard and half man," Greg reminded his client, quite unable to believe that Christian was unaware of this central fact.

    "That's the main part, yeah?" Christian said aggressively.

    Greg confirmed that it was. "It's a great part. Your costume's gonna be incredible. You'll wear a lizard mask made of latex. It takes four hours of make-up every day…"

    "What?"

    "Hey, all this is in your contract. Didn't you read it?"

    Christian fired hot air impatiently out of his nostrils. Of all the stupid questions. He hadn't read anything in the contract apart from how much he was getting paid. "I've got a latex mask on my head? In the middle of an Italian summer? I'm gonna cook, man."

    "You get cooled between takes by air pumped through a tube."

    "Big fucking deal," growled Christian. His big film break was

looking less sexy all the time. Eight weeks in Italy with Belle Murphy, dressed as a lizard in a latex mask. Great.

    "Remember, it's a big part," Greg reminded him. "It's gonna make you huge."

    It had better, Christian thought as he stomped up the cobbles into Rocolo.

"It's your restaurant?" Darcy was asking the wild-haired man in whites who had come out to take her order. He really was very tall for an Italian—over six feet, she estimated. But you obviously got tall Italians. There seemed no reason why not.

    "Every inch," Marco declared proudly. "I am chef-patron."

    She was lovelier than he had imagined, her long sweep of lashes like the tiny tentacles on the most delicious of sea urchins. Her perfect ears reminded him of the tiny, tasty clams he liked to use for spaghetti vongole. Her lips were not, as he had first imagined, the colour of the most perfect raspberry sorbet. No, they were redder, more like the tomato ice he had recently been experimenting with and which had actually turned out rather well.

    "What sort of food do you do?"

    He sighed happily. He was tongue-tied with women, and never more so than with this one, but this was the one subject in the world on which he could hold forth with the utmost confidence to anyone. "Country food, you know. Of the region. Traditional dishes, with perhaps a little modern twist here and there."

    "Is that what I can smell?" Darcy was sniffing hard. The scent was strong, herby, and delicious.

    "Si. Today we are doing a minestrone with beans and pesto. We make it with rice too, so much rice you can stand your spoon up in it and watch it fall slowly back down. Oh, and with a big glug of peppery, golden olive oil to finish…what is that noise?" Marco asked suddenly, inclining his big shaggy head the better to listen.

    Darcy did not answer. She had no intention of admitting it was her stomach.

    Lunch started with aperitivo of crisp Prosecco with salami and olives, along with a dish of bright green beans, a speciality of the region, Marco explained. Then followed some sausage and pea risotto, and afterwards lemon ice cream. A succession of wonders, Darcy thought.

    Never before had she tasted such food. Everything was so fresh, so colourful, so obviously full of goodness and flavour. It seemed to Darcy, as she absorbedly ate this lunch, that she had only ever fuelled herself at tables before. Only now, here under the cool shade outside this little but excellent restaurant, was she really eating for the first time.

    From the kitchen window, above the main dining room and commanding a courtyard view, Marco watched her eat. At that exact moment, he knew, the nutty, creamy flavour of the rice was combining with the fresh sweetness of the peas. Her eyes were closed as she forked the risotto in. This, thought Marco, was a woman who really appreciated food. He had sensed this was so from the start, which was why he had arranged a handful of his prized green fava beans, the early, baby broad beans he so loved to eat raw, in a dish for her, a privilege he accorded normally to only his very favourite customers.

    What was the matter with him? Beautiful women came to the restaurant all the time. Most of them left him cold. Mostly because they didn't eat, just poked salads about and crumbled the breadsticks, which Marco hated to see. They were taking up a place at his table a food lover could have had.

    Darcy, lost in contemplation of how absolutely delicious that pea risotto had been, almost jumped when the white plate bearing two creamy scoops over which strips of candied lemon peel had been laid descended to the table in front of her. She looked up, startled, to find herself staring into the distracted eyes of the chaotic-looking chef.