Gaining Visibility (4 page)

Admire?
What a great word. She hadn't been admired in years. This guy was totally flirting with her and it felt marvelous—like someone had popped the cork on a champagne bottle inside her.

How long had it been since she'd had a fun, flirty conversation with a man? She was forty-eight, had married when she was twenty-three. Twenty-five years? No wonder it seemed so foreign. She'd forgotten how exhilarating it could be.

The flight attendants encouraged the passengers standing in the aisles to find their places quickly with reminders that the flight was already late.

Julia settled back into her seat for the ride. Howard propped his arm on the armrest between them, and when the tight setting brought their arms into contact, the temperature in the plane vaulted several degrees. Julia readjusted the vent above her head so the air streamed directly onto her face.

“So tell me more about these hikes you'll be taking.” Howard shifted his posture toward her as much as possible with his long legs scrunched against the seat in front of him.

“Well, I have a couple of short hikes in the area around Lerici planned for the first two days. After that I'll be playing it by . . .”

A willowy brunette with smooth, olive skin plopped into the aisle seat. Her black tank top clung to a pair of breasts that had no need of a bra to support their ample size. Denim short shorts showed off perfectly shaped, tanned legs that must've started at her shoulders.

“
Scusi,
” she murmured in a soft Italian accent.

Howard's attention diverted so fast, Julia wondered if he would suffer whiplash. “Well, hello there.”

“. . . ear.” Julia finished her sentence, speaking to the back of the chair in front of her.

Howard extended his hand and introduced himself to the new seatmate. The fact she was native Italian must have fascinated him as he immediately started to bombard her with questions about her country, none of which mentioned hiking, his all-consuming interest three minutes before.

And with the appearance of Miss Italy, Julia once again vanished before her own eyes.

She told herself to ignore the slight. She should be used to it by now. But she wasn't. Something short-circuited inside her every time it happened. More than once she'd noticed how the streak of gray hair running from her left temple looked ominously like burned wires. How long would it be before her motherboard burned out completely? Before she was just a gray box of dead, worn-out wires and fuses?

She reached inside to pinpoint the emotion churning there. It wasn't jealousy precisely. Watching people fascinated her, and nothing was more intriguing than two beautiful people coming together for the first time. The magic. The spark. She saw that with Melissa and Michael and prayed every day it would continue for them and that the years wouldn't extinguish it the way it had for her and Frank.

But at that moment, it was the obvious twenty-year age difference—at the very least—between the two people beside her that disgusted her. Men who'd reached the age of Howard and Frank should be interested in more than a woman's physical makeup. Shouldn't they have developed an “inner eye”? One preferably located somewhere other than their penis?

Her clenched jaws couldn't exactly be chalked up to envy either. She didn't want Howard, didn't want what anyone else had, except in a general way.

If she had to put a name to it, it would simply be . . . longing. She so longed to feel full again—full of love and desire and life.

Of all the things she resented Frank for—his weakness, his abandonment of her when she needed him, his self-absorption—she shed the most tears over the loss of the life she used to know. The loss of who she used to be.

Now she was a white sneaker in a world of stilettos.

Howard's right shoulder cocked far enough forward to give her a spectacular view of his shoulder and the nape of his neck. He chatted easily with the brunette, who soon discovered the book he'd placed in the seat pocket in front of him was “the most amazing book” she'd read in a long time. And it sounded infinitely more appealing described in a sultry, Italian accent.

Armed with her new copy of
Interesting Interiors,
Julia prepared for what was shaping up to be a very long flight.

In the seats next to her, the book club met throughout the takeoff, the climb to cruising altitude, the meal, and the start of the movie, which was one she'd seen recently. Although it wasn't entertaining enough to sit through again, she watched it anyway, hoping it would put her to sleep.

It didn't.

She donned her blindfold and her ear buds, willing the music on her
Sleepytime
playlist to drown out the sounds of the growing acquaintance.

The blow-up travel pillow wasn't nearly as comfortable as the woman on the box, smiling in her perfectly restful sleep, implied. But Julia tuned her music to the series of Strauss waltzes and imagined herself as the woman on the box. She smiled dreamily and coaxed her mind into a restful frame for all of seven minutes, at which time she woke with a start to the mortifying realization she had drooled down the front of her blanket.

Fretting her seatmates might've noticed or that her fidgeting might bother them seemed needless, though. Howard's left-hand lady had him so absorbed, three-year-old ADHD twins could've been sitting in the window seat and he wouldn't have noticed.

With that comforting thought, Julia relaxed and enjoyed almost two full hours of sleep before the crew started waking everyone for breakfast.

Howard did acknowledge her presence once more when he passed a cup of coffee to her. His eyes took her in with a quick once-over. “Rough night, huh?”

She looked at him closely. Lancelot's irises had changed. They were actually more jaded than jade. She took the coffee without comment, sipping it as Milan appeared on the horizon.

When the plane landed, Howard and Venus de Milo scurried off together, his hand casually pressed against the small of her back.

Julia managed to get her carry-on out of the overhead compartment by herself.

After a two-hour layover, a second flight took her from Milan to Genoa. A taxi ride to the train station and a short train ride from Genoa got her to La Spezia. From there, the crowded bus took her to Lerici.

Her hair was frizzed, her attitude frazzled, and her nerves frayed.

One look, however, at the small jewel of a town snuggling around its breathtaking azure bay, and she was renewed.

Time seemed to have slipped into slow motion somewhere between La Spezia and this place.

Gone were the bustle and the noise of the city, replaced by a palpable tranquility. Maybe it was the warm breeze that slowed people's walks to a stroll or the tangy, salty air that filled their lungs and quieted their speech to a pleasant hum. Whatever it was, the magic cast a spell around her instantly and pulled her under its power.

“The Lord Byron Hotel?” she asked an elderly woman waiting in line at a gelato stand.

“
Sì
.” The woman expelled an additional line of something that hadn't been on the Italian language CDs, but she pointed to a conspicuously orange building set high up on the hillside—and the walking path that led to it.

Julia eyed the steep incline, noting the weight of her carry-on and her duffel. Both pieces of luggage had wheels . . . and in a few days, she'd be conquering the Cinque Terre.

Determined, she took on the hill, schlepping her bags behind her.

Dragging the extra forty pounds up what felt like eighty degrees of cobblestone incline for two hundred yards left her questioning her fitness
and
her sanity, however. She stopped at intervals, filling her lungs with huge gulps of air that apparently held no oxygen as she felt little to no recoup in her body. The bags threatened to pull her arms from their sockets, and her fingers gripped the handles with terror, knowing that any slip backward meant having to retrace her excruciatingly painful progress.

By the time she reached the turnoff onto the hotel's walkway, the twenty-two hours of travel since leaving Paducah hit her like a Mac truck. The warm fuzzies she'd started up the hill with had been abandoned along the way, replaced by hot pricklies that caused her blouse to stick to her chest and back and underarms, making the areas alternate from itch to burn.

She stomped along a walkway built on yet another incline, albeit gradual, up to the sign that indicated the office. In front of the door, two men blocked the path, discussing something that apparently had to do with the swimming pool. From their wild gesticulations and heated tones, one of them had released piranhas into the water.

If you stop, you drop,
Julia reminded herself. But it was the sight in front of her more than her mantra that inched her closer.

Adonis—or whatever the Roman mythology equivalent was—had come to life. Stripped to the waist, his torso was an ocean of waves and ripples that made her mouth so dry she longed for a taste. Long legs defined with muscles bulging from the shorts he wore pivoted him gracefully toward the pool and back to the other man whom he towered over.

Julia drew close enough to appreciate the sunlight glistening on the perspiration that poured from the black curly hair onto the wide, sculpted shoulders and chest. Despite the angry undertones, his deep voice had a smoothness that glided across his tongue like caramel gelato.

This was the man, rather than Howard, who should've been hooking up with Miss Italy. At thirtyish, he was the perfect age—the perfect everything—and Julia released the breath she'd been holding with a sigh.

“Um . . . excuse me. I need to get through here.”

Adonis swung toward her, pinning her with a sullen gaze from eyes as dark and rich as mahogany. “
Mi dispiace,
signora. I did not see you.”

Julia drew another sigh and shrugged. “That doesn't surprise me.”

His dark eyes filled with confusion. “You expect the surprise? A package perhaps?”

Her sarcasm had obviously gotten lost in translation. Julia brushed her fingers through the top of her hair to get the sweaty strands out of her face. “No—never mind. You'll have to excuse me. It's the jet lag talking.”

“
Americana
.” Adonis pinpointed the accent, and Julia nodded. “But . . . the jeta-lag, she is the . . . ? He twirled his hand as if it could wind out the word he was groping for.

Julia would've filled in the blank if she'd known what he was going for. But the fogginess in her brain wouldn't allow the foggiest notion to penetrate the surface layer.

He finally gave up. “English.” He spat the word. “She is the confused language.” His sullen manner pinned all the blame for that on Julia.

The shorter man finally lost the exasperated glare he'd been using on Adonis and turned his attention to her. “You wish to check in, signora?”

Julia nodded. “I'm Julia Berkwith.

“I am Signor Moretti, the owner.” His tone slid into smooth hospitality as he opened the door to the office and held it for her.

Adonis's disgruntled frown said he hadn't finished the conversation with Signor Moretti that she'd interrupted, but he directed a pointed look to the hotel owner before stomping off.

Julia breathed a relieved sigh when she stepped into the cool office—out of the heat of the day and away from the heat of their argument, not to mention the heat Adonis generated simply by his presence.

Thank heavens, everything was in order and check-in was easy. She could tell her brain had started to misfire as she signed her name the last time and left out the
k.

“You will check out on Sunday, just ahead of the crowd.” Signor Moretti's English was much better than Adonis's. “That is when all of Italy come to Lerici.”

“I read that this is a prime vacation spot for Italians. In fact, it's the main reason I chose this place,” Julia admitted. “If you want the best restaurant, you ask a local. I assumed it would be the same for vacation spots.”

“
Sì,
signora.” Signor Moretti beamed at the compliment. “Leave your luggage. I bring it to you.”

“I'll get it,” she assured him, though not sharing the reason why. She couldn't bear the thought of having to wait even an extra ten minutes to take a shower. “Thank you, though.”

“As you wish.”

He gave her the directions to the room and held the door open for her again.

Before she made the left out of the office, she was treated to one more quick view of Adonis's perfectly sculpted backside.

Melissa would describe him as a
total hottie,
and for once, Julia thoroughly understood the term.

* * *

By the time Julia dragged her bags all the way to her room, she was nearly delirious with exhaustion.

She showered, hoping it would revive her, but the warmth made her almost catatonic, so she lay down for a short nap and awoke to different lighting.

Her foggy brain took a minute to explain the discrepancy. She'd gone to sleep with streaks of afternoon sun casting long shadows in her room. She awoke to darkness . . . and hunger. The clock on her bedside table told her it was barely after eight in the evening.

She slipped into one of the new knit dresses she'd bought for the trip and smiled at the bit of cleavage showing in the scoop neck—certainly nothing that would draw attention, but enough to make her marvel at how normal she looked . . . as long as she kept her clothes on.

The scrumptious scent surrounding the hotel led her to its restaurant. She stopped in the doorway, taking in the white linen tablecloths and candlelight—much more romantic than her single status called for. She started to turn away but got caught by the maître d's greeting.