Forbidden Kiss (6 page)

“All I want to know is where you bought the painting. A name, Rom. That’s all I need. It will be confidential. I just need a lead. I’m at a dead end, literally.”

She’d explained the provenance of the first painting, but the owner and the seller died within months of each other. As had the woman who’d given Rom his painting. She’d died during the French Revolution. A victim of the guillotine.

Rom took Jule’s clenched hands between his, squeezing them reassuringly. “Truly, Jule. I want to help you, but in this I cannot. It’s for your own good.”

She forced his hands away, frustration bringing color to her cheeks. “I don’t understand. For my own good?” When he didn’t answer, she continued. “Is there anything I can say to convince you otherwise?” She looked down at the ground, but her head came back up quickly as she realized how easily her offer could be misinterpreted.

“Nothing.” Rom forced a finality in the word, ending the discussion the only way he knew how. She headed for the door.

Jule turned her head as though to speak, but didn’t look at him. “I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry I bothered you yet again. I thought you might be excited by the discovery,” her voice faltered.

“Jule, please. I hate for you to leave like this.” Translation: he felt like a complete bastard for putting the tiny white tension lines around her mouth. “Share a drink with me?”

“No. I need to get back. It’s late and I’m sure you have things—” She waved her hand, at a loss for words.

She walked away, leaving a lingering trail of perfume.

Rom shut the door after he watched her cab drive away. He was caught in a loop and the same scenarios kept replaying. How many times would he put that woman in a cab, only to see her go away with her heart in her eyes?

He leaned against the door and let Lawrence’s words trickle in. The old man’s voice had been whispering inside his head all night, but Rom had kept the memories under lock and key. With Jule gone, he unlocked the door on his memory and let Lawrence in.

...

“It wasn’t supposed to end that way,” Lawrence said emphatically, pulling weeds from his herbal garden sheltered at the rear of the monastery by high stonewalls.

“Then tell me. How was it supposed to end?” Romeo ground out between clenched teeth, straining with the effort not to grab Lawrence by the collar and shake him until his eyes rolled up into his tonsured head.

It had been one month since Romeo woke up in a monk’s cell far away from Juliet’s tomb. One month since Lawrence had forced a potion down his throat and jerked him from heaven with Juliet. Thirty days of excruciating torment in which Romeo tried every way imaginable to kill himself. Each time, his body healed, but his mind teetered at the edge of insanity.

How could he go on? And for what reason?

Lawrence threw a mess of leggy green stalks into a pile and wiped his hands, squinting up at Romeo under the early morning sun. “How should it have ended? As it does for any normal couple. With the both of you dying in old age, mourned by children and grandchildren alike. Beloved by family, friends, and township. I saw it so.”

Lawrence was crazy. Romeo had no doubt. But he also possessed the ability to make human men immortal.

He just couldn’t raise the dead. His experiments in alchemy and magic hadn’t progressed that far.

“So how the hell does this end?” Romeo demanded, kicking the pile of greenery.

“Somewhere out there,” Lawrence whispered, his chin raised and his eye drawn to a distant point only he could see, “sometime in the days and years to come, you will meet Juliet again and find your peace.”

Romeo knelt beside Lawrence, grabbing his shoulders until the old man’s focus returned to the garden. “When? Where? How?”

Lawrence placed a warm, calloused hand over one of Romeo’s. “That I have not foreseen. The images come by dreams and linger but a short while. I’m sure the answers will be revealed if we are patient.
”

...

Rom didn’t do patient. Then or now. He made a decision to leave Lawrence after that day in the garden. He’d never returned. Now he thought perhaps he’d been hasty and Lawrence not as crazy as he’d assumed.

Rom knew only one way to find out the truth. Return to Verona. Find the remainder of Lawrence’s paintings and piece together how he could rest his bones next to Juliet’s at long last.

Pushing away from the door, Rom climbed the steps to his room, prepared to catch the next flight to Venice. Guilt made his tread heavy. Guilt over leaving Jule without an explanation or a champion to protect her against the Pios of the world. A woman as spirited as she deserved as much.

Chapter Seven

Betrayed. Jule clung to the word for a moment, allowing the pain of Rom’s rejection last night to course through her. It burned through her heart, up her veins to her throat, pushing its way behind her eyes and finally lodging in her brain with a pounding she couldn’t subdue even with Motrin.

“So he’s left the country, then. When will he be back?” Jule asked Ben Valerio, the attorney she tracked down as Rom’s forwarding contact since he tendered his dealer status at the auction house last week. She’d gotten the word—albeit too late—from a friend at the auction house who knew of her interest in Montgomery.

Valerio, a fifty-ish attorney whose graying hair matched his suit, sat next to her in one of the client chairs. He obviously took his compassionate lawyerly bit seriously. No intense looks from an authoritative position behind his desk; this guy went all out.

It made his news all the more personal and painful. She couldn’t possibly give in to the urge to put her head on the desk and cry out days of pent up frustrations. But his quiet comfort said he wouldn’t mind if she did. Which made Jule wonder if other women, scorned and lied to by one Rom Montgomery, had at one time or another sat in this same chair. Hearing a similar speech. The tactful brush-off.

She deserved more than that.

Valerio’s sharp, hazel eyes watched Jule from over the top of his reading glasses. He reminded her of her Pop when he used to be more fatherly—before Pio.

“Honestly, I’m not sure. He didn’t say. Sounded like a lengthy sabbatical though.”

Her throat burned with his betrayal, making it difficult to form the words.

“May I ask where he went?”

“You’re Casale’s daughter?”

“One of them,” Jule managed, willing to answer whatever questions he threw at her if he returned the favor.

Valerio raised his eyebrows and nodded. “And your relationship to Pio Mascaro?”

“There’s no relationship. He’s a business associate of my father’s.”

He steepled his fingers and reclined against the seat back where he stared at the ceiling. “I see.”

“Well, pardon me, but I don’t. Why are you asking about Pio? And how can I get in touch with Rom Montgomery? I need to speak to him immediately.”
To find out if he intends to steal my discovery.
It was her find! Her reputation.

She hadn’t been able to think of much else since finding out Rom had disappeared. She auto-piloted through her day at the Art Institute, but the work didn’t hold her interest. Nothing had since leaving Rom’s last night.

It felt too personal, his rejection. Not the collegial, “sorry, can’t help,” but the heartbreaking “I won’t help
you
,” because of the family. The Casales.

It was just blood for Christ’s sake. She might be related to a group of law-circumventing, second generation jerks, but Jule had never done an illegal thing in her life. Well, except for that time she inhaled in college.

Yet here she sat, continuing to pay for the sins committed by the family.

“What the hell is going on?” she blurted.

Valerio got up and crossed behind her, shutting the heavy office door. He then took the seat behind his desk, clasping his hands on the leather blotter in front of him.

Here comes the never-bother-my client-again speech.

“I did some checking into your family’s background at Mr. Montgomery’s request.”

Valerio held up a hand when she started to protest the invasion of privacy. Not to mention that it screamed Rom’s pronouncement of her as untrustworthy.

“Mr. Montgomery is worried for your welfare, Ms. Casale. He expressed as much to me after he had a talk with Mr. Mascaro at your house last night.”

“And?” She dreaded the answer.

“He expressly told Mr. Montgomery not to bother you or your family. He also laid a very explicit claim to your affections, which later he re-enforced with a visit from your brothers.”

“What!” Jule lurched to her feet, her bag hitting the floor with a thud. “When?” She leaned over Valerio’s desk, invading his personal space.

“Please, Ms. Casale, there’s more.” He gestured for her to take her seat and wouldn’t continue until she sat. “I looked at public records this morning and found a marriage license application filed under Pio Mascaro and Jule Casale—dated last week.”

“Jesus!” She shot out of the chair once again and paced the office. A sick dread rose in her heart. “Is that legal? Can he file something like that without my knowledge? I mean what the hell? I’m being stalked by my father’s best friend.”

“So his actions come as no surprise, then?”

“No.” Jule spun to look Valerio in the eye. “Yes. The guy has always given me the creeps, staring and making inappropriate comments when no one else can hear, but this is crazy. Does my father know?”

“That’s the thing, Ms. Casale. Your father and Mascaro drew up a contract transferring property from Mascaro to Edmondo upon your marriage.”

Jule sat before her knees gave out. Pop had sold her out.

“Ms. Casale?” Valerio hovered anxiously over her after some minutes, a glass of water in his hand. Jule took it, but didn’t drink. She couldn’t work the muscles in her throat. Her father’s betrayal lodged there like a swelling sponge.

What was with the men in her life? Couldn’t she find one, just one who didn’t lie, cheat, and steal?

“Ms. Casale, are you all right?” True concern shone from the lawyer’s eyes, an emotion Jule didn’t think men of his ilk possessed.

“Why are you being so nice to me? And why are you telling me all this?” she asked, afraid of his answer. If it involved her returning the favor, she would kick him in the balls and storm out of the office. Enough was enough.

“Rom Montgomery is not just a client, but a friend. A very dear friend. Before he left, he spoke of you and requested I help if you came to me. Well, here you are and in a very tight spot, from where I’m standing.”

Jule tried to process the information. Was that a you-owe-me kind of speech? And had Rom really asked Valerio to look out for her? Did guilt drive him to make the request, knowing he stood to benefit from all her hard work if he recovered the paintings before she did?

“Did he suddenly develop a conscience? Why does he care what happens to me? He didn’t act like he cared last night.” She swiped a hand across her forehead, pushing back errant curls.

Valerio once again took the client’s chair next to hers, the supple burgundy leather squeaking softly. “Without compromising Rom more than I already have, let me say he cares very deeply. He may not show it, but under the scowl and the threatening looks, a poet’s heart beats.”

Jule frowned at the description. A poet? Rom? Perhaps of death dirges, but love sonnets? Didn’t seem likely. “That may be true, but I don’t think he cares what happens to my career, or me.”

Valerio took her hand where it gripped the scrolled chair arm. “Jule. This is Ben talking. Not Rom’s lawyer, but a man who would like to do some good where only wrong has been done.” He paused and Jule waited, touched by his honesty. The man seemed to breathe truth and justice. She could see it in his eyes and his smile, the way his body language spoke reassuring confidence.

“I’ll tell you where to find Rom, if that’s what you want. I’ll even put you on a plane to Verona if that’s what it takes to end this thing right. He didn’t ask me to tell you this.
I’m
telling you this for his sake. He needs to be reminded what life’s all about. Living.

“Unless you protest, I’m ready to petition the court to strike the contract your father and Mascaro have filed and can leak to the media everything I have on Mascaro’s illegal business. By the time this whole thing is over, Mascaro won’t be considering wedding plans or property, he’ll be considering what book to read while he lounges in federal prison.”

Jule fought the tears and stared at Ben through a blurry haze.

“Now just tell me what you want to do,” Ben said.

…

Jule pushed back against the hard wooden ribs of the restaurant chair until she felt each turn of the wood in painful detail.

She’d tracked her parents down at Vespa’s, the neighborhood trattoria owned by one of her mother’s sisters, Stephanie.

“I don’t understand why you did this,” she told her father, completely undone by his admission of “trying to do the right thing.”

“Don’t you? Think about it, Jule. You’re twenty-five and divorced. You’re nearly penniless. Living with your mother and I,” her father said.

“Jule, sweetheart,” her mother tried to interrupt, but Jule silenced her with a glare.

“Don’t be mad at your mother. She didn’t know anything about this. It was my decision.”

“That’s my point, Pop. It’s not your decision. Marriage. Children. Those things are up to me. Selling me off to Pio to alleviate your debts is unforgivable no matter how you package it as being in my best interest.”

Out of the corner of her eye she noticed heads turning in her direction and caught the worried look of her mother. The one that said, “please be reasonable.”

Causing a scene was the least of her worries. And her mother would get over it. Jule didn’t know if she ever would.

“You’re wrong about Pio. He truly cares for you. Independent of me, the man loves you and always has.” His eyes warmed in the lamplight and Jule refused the lure of forgive and forget. It was her life they were talking about here.

“I put him off as long as I could hoping you would find your own way, but now I think it’s time you settled down and Pio will do right by you. You won’t have to associate with men like Rom Montgomery. Plus, you’ll be financially secure and you’ll be moving in the circles you were accustomed to once upon a time.”

“I don’t care about money or social standing. All the years we had money, it never meant anything to me. Didn’t you get that when I went away to a state school?”

Her Aunt Stephanie showed up on Jule’s right, bending until she was on level with the trio around the table. “Do you guys want to take it in the back lounge where it’s more private? People are starting to stare.”

“No. We’re done here.” Jule pushed her chair back, but her father’s hand clamped down on her wrist.

“Don’t see Montgomery again.”

“Give us another minute, Steph. We promise to be quiet,” her mother said, filling the silent gap to placate Stephanie while her father kept her from leaving.

“You can’t forbid me to see people, Pop. I’m not a child.”

“You’re not. True. It’s just that we love you and do desire only the best for our oldest daughter.” He patted her arm in apology as he let go of her wrist.

Her mother nodded in agreement.

And like that, most of Jule’s anger dissolved. Mostly. “Believe it or not, I love the both of you. But I can’t be around you unless you call off this, this, engagement, or whatever you want to call it.”

Her father lowered his eyes for the first time since Jule had sat down at their table. The bud of near panic she’d felt in Valerio’s office bloomed into full-blown dread.

“I can’t, Jule. I can’t,” he said without raising his head.

Jule glanced at her mother in question, who in turn looked at her father, concern furrowing her brow.

“What do you mean you can’t?” Jule asked.

“I already spent the money he gave me.”

…

Rom pushed the stick shift into neutral and set the parking brake, stalling for time as he looked through the Mercedes’ windshield to Piazza Bra. Beyond the tops of the evergreens growing in a small central park, he could make out the imposing edifice of the two thousand year old Roman Arena.

On the surface, the gateway into the heart of old Verona hadn’t changed much in the 600 years he’d been gone. The Portoni della Bra—the twin, barrel-vaulted stone arches topped by fourteenth century battlements—still stood at one end, admitting pedestrians to admire the majesty of the Roman Empire and all it had wrought. Visitors passed through on their way to the Arena, built 1400 years before Rom ever took his first breath of Veronese air.

Lined by palaces newly built when Rom left, the open market area still teemed with people. Here, locals and foreigners alike shopped, ate, drank espressos, and simply passed through to other streets pin-wheeling off the piazza. But under the larger than life remnants of the Roman Empire and the grandeur of the Venetian Republic, Rom took note of the modern changes.

Commercial signage of the 21st century decorated much of the piazza, along with scooters, public phones, and scaffolding blanketing the Arena. Tourists in hiking shoes and backpacks wandered freely across the triangle shaped plaza, stopping to take pictures and listen to street performers. Everywhere, people had cell phones, either pressed to an ear or in hand.

The liston—marble pavers fronting the buildings—were new, too. Put down for the ruling classes over 200 years ago to save their feet from the dust, Rom agreed with the red and cream tones of the marble as it suited the square.

He lowered the window on the Mercedes, letting in the surrounding street noise. The coos of nearby pigeons provided a soft undertone to the human chatter. The same sounds he’d heard as a young man. But yet not the same, Rom decided.

Different languages reached his ears. English and Japanese.

The subtle fragrance of the river Adige, a longtime friend embracing the ancient city like a mantle, reached him through the open window. He closed his eyes and rested his head against the seat, letting the sounds and smells take him to the banks of glassy green waters.

...

“But why me, Lawrence? Why choose me to test your potions on?” Romeo leaned his head against the cool stone of his monk’s cell, temporary lodgings since he could never show his face in Verona again while those he knew and loved still lived.

He could return when they died, but he saw no point then.

“I didn’t choose you, dear boy. That is what I have been trying to tell you. I didn’t know the potion would work, but I had to try. I had to do something.”

Lawrence folded his hands into the wide arms of his friar’
s robes and looked forlornly around the room. With nothing to distract his attention but a single cot and bedside table with a solitary candle, Lawrence’s tormented gaze fell on Romeo again.