Heaven and Hell (4 page)

No, no. Repeat after me. Sampson Cooper does
not
exist.

It would be fine.
Everything
would be
fine.

Still smiling weirdly maniacally, the maitre
d’ went on the move. I had wanted to sit with my back to Cooper’s
table but the maitre d’ was scooting me in on the side facing him
in a way that was strangely paternal at the same time it was
aggressive. I had no choice but to go with it or maybe end up in a
smackdown with a maitre d’hotel in an exclusive hotel on Lake Como
with Sampson Cooper as one of my audience and, for obvious reasons,
that wouldn’t do. It would be harder to avoid Cooper when he was
sitting in my direct line of sight but I’d survived a very bad
marriage, my husband had cheated on me and, with his girlfriend,
plotted my demise.

If I could live through that, I could sit
across from Sampson Cooper.

So I sat across from Sampson Cooper.

With a dramatic flourish that startled me so
much I jumped a little, though it was kind of cool but I couldn’t
exactly explain why, the maitre d’ flipped open my menu and plopped
it in my upturned hands. Then he spoke swiftly to me in Italian all
the while my head was tipped back and I glued my eyes with fierce
determination at his face, my lips curved in a small smile that I
hoped didn’t look stupid in the very unlikely event that Sampson
Cooper was actually looking at me. He kept talking for some time
and if he was describing the specials (did they do breakfast
specials?), they had a lot of them.

Then he clapped his hands, fluttered them in
the air for a second and turned toward Sampson Cooper. I caught his
wink at Cooper, something else I thought was weird, then he
scurried away.

I turned my attention directly to the
menu.

Then I did what I’d been doing the last two
weeks in Italy and that was calling up my very limited (but
increasingly less so) experience of looking at menus in Italian
restaurants. Cooter was not one to take his wife on the town and
when he did, it was for pizza and not in the kind of pizza joints
that printed their options in Italian.

Mozzarella, I knew but I didn’t see that
anywhere on the menu (alas). I saw something that ended with
di
funghi
which I was pretty certain meant mushrooms because other
stuff I’d ordered with those words in it also had mushrooms. I
hoped it was a mushroom omelet because that sounded really good and
I
had
hope since the word before it was “omelette” and I
figured an omelette was an omelet the world over.

I’d made this decision when a cafetière was
plonked on my table with a small elegant pitcher of cream and
matching sugar bowl and another Italian man, my waiter, started
talking to me. He didn’t talk long but he did clap when he was done
and move away without taking my order.

I watched him go and, as best I could
without looking like a freak, I turned my attention to the lake
without my eyes once hitting Sampson Cooper.

Then it struck me I needed coffee and I
needed it STAT.

So, as casually as I could muster, I turned
my attention to the cafetière, did the press thing, upended the
coffee cup at my place setting and prepared my coffee.

Then, sipping carefully so as not to burn my
tongue or choke, I turned my attention back to the lake.

Seriously, it was pretty. I’d never seen
anything like it. It kind of sucked that Cooter and Vanessa wanting
me dead was the reason why I had this gift but… whatever. It was a
gift. I’d lived through hell, now it was my turn in heaven and Lake
Como not only looked but felt just like what heaven had to be.

The waiter came back, shot some Italian at
me and I made a stab in the dark and decided he was asking for my
order. I didn’t bother speaking just did a lot of smiling and
pointed to what I wanted on the menu. He nodded, snatched the menu
out of my hand, did a dramatic flourish with it in the air that
took slightly less space than the maitre d’s flourish but, even
more compact, it was no less theatrical, before tucking it smartly
under his armpit and he hurried away.

I was looking after him in preparation for
the taxing effort of once again turning my head and not
acknowledging Sampson Cooper’s presence when I heard a deep, low,
masculine chuckle and it was so attractive, without my permission,
my eyes went to him.

Then my heart stopped beating. Total stall.
It would take paddles to get it pumping again.

He was no longer chuckling but he was
smiling.

At me.

“Do you speak English?” he asked and I
blinked.

Holy cow! He was talking to me!

“Yes,” my mouth, fortunately, answered for
me.

“These guys got it goin’ on,” he informed me
and I blinked again.

“What guys?” my mouth, luckily, kept
speaking.

He tipped his head in the direction of where
my waiter was last seen and my heart started beating again, hard
and fast. I could feel it in my neck, my wrists, even at my
temples.

“You think they train them in that shit?” he
asked and I blinked again.

Sampson Cooper just used a curse word in a
swanky Italian hotel on Lake Como!

Why did I think that was so…
freaking…
cool?

“What…” I hesitated then cautiously went on,
“shit?”

He smiled again.

My heart stopped beating again.

Then he answered, “The menus.” He shook his
head then immediately proceeded to blaspheme in a swanky Italian
hotel on Lake Como. “Jesus. The first time the head guy did it,
thought he was gonna clock me.”

“That would have been unfortunate,” I
observed and then I sucked in a sharp breath when he threw his
beautiful head back and burst into deep, rough-like-velvet
laughter.

I’d never heard him laugh. I’d never even
seen
him laugh. Smiles, lots. Chuckles, sure. Grins, more
than occasionally.

Full on laughter.

Never.

He was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen
in my life. By far. And that was before I saw him in real life and
in real life he was more beautiful than ever.

But that deep, rough-like-velvet laughter
glided right across every inch of my skin, leaving beauty in its
wake that soaked through and, I swear to God, it felt like it
settled into my soul.

He sobered but his dark brown eyes were
still dancing when he focused on me and agreed, “Yeah, that would
have been unfortunate.”

It was at this point I jumped at least six
inches because the maitre d’ was suddenly there, talking fast,
gesturing broadly, his head going back and forth between Sampson
Cooper and me.

Then my waiter was there.

I had no idea what was going on and,
further, had no hope of finding out because he not once used the
words mozzarella,
ciao, grazie,
capisce
or pizza and
if he did, that probably wouldn’t have explained what was
happening.

But before I could form any conclusions or,
say, react
at all,
my entire body went rigid when I watched
in sheer, unadulterated terror as the waiter moved my cafetière,
creamer, sugar bowl and coffee cup to Sampson Cooper’s table.

What were they doing?

Cooper’s deep, rough-like-velvet voice came
to me and my eyes shot to him when he asked, “Do you speak
Italian?”

“Uh…” I was able to get out before…

No joke.

Seriously.

The maitre d’ grasped my elbow, forcibly
yanked me out of my chair in that aggressive but paternal way he
had then guided me around the table, shuffling me between my old
table and Sampson Cooper’s definitely current table at the same
time the waiter scooched with me. The waiter pulled out the chair
across from Cooper and the maitre d’ plonked my booty in it.

I was deep breathing and feeling, acutely,
like I was in the preliminary stages of my first ever seizure when
my head tipped back for some reason and I saw Sampson Cooper had
stood. Not fully, just up a little from his seat, his eyes on me. I
thought it was to protest but when the waiter shoved my chair (with
me in it, incidentally) under the table, he sat again and I
realized it was because he was a man, I was a woman but mostly he
was a gentleman who stood when a woman was seated at his table and
I was a woman who found herself, for inexplicable reasons, seated
at his
freaking table
.

No man had ever done that when I’d been
seated at his table and there was a beauty to it that seemed to
seep into my soul too.

My heart stopped again and, fortunately,
because I didn’t want Sampson Cooper to see me panting, so did my
breath.

The maitre d’ and waiter whisked themselves
away.

“You figure they needed your table?” Sampson
Cooper asked dryly and, considering my present circumstances, I had
no idea how I managed to loosen up enough to do it, maybe because
the situation was so bizarre, so extreme, so frightening, I had to
let some tension go but at his comment, it was my turn to burst out
laughing.

And, God’s honest truth, since Cooter died
I’d smiled more than I had in years which might not say good things
but there it was.

But I hadn’t laughed like that in so long I
forgot how good it felt.

When I quit laughing, I focused on him to
see him grinning at me but there was a look on his face, a warmth
in his eyes, an intensity, it almost felt like… no kidding… like he
found me fascinating.

Me.

Kia Clementine

And seeing that look in his eyes aimed at
me, no one but me, a look I had seen in… never, never had I seen a
look like that directed at me, I wanted to run. And I wanted to run
because I wanted that to be it, my last memory of Sampson Cooper. I
wanted to go somewhere and burn it into my brain. I wanted to keep
it with me forever.

But I couldn’t do that so I forced myself to
reply, “They
are
pretty busy.”

His grin faded but his lips still twitched
when he agreed, “Yeah.” Then he sat back, snagging his coffee mug
as he did and he asked, “Do you mind?”

“Mind?”

“Sitting with me,” he explained before
taking a sip.

Uh.
Yes!
I was pretty certain my body
needed my blood to flow through its veins and my heart was
constantly stopping so I didn’t figure that was good.

But obviously I couldn’t tell him that so
instead, I said, “Not if you don’t mind.”

His eyes changed again, they dropped quickly
down my torso then up and he murmured in a sexy way that I was
pretty certain made my nipples go hard, “Oh, I don’t mind.”

Oh.

My.

God!

Did he just do that?

And if he did, what did it mean when a man
did that? The last man to flirt with me was Cooter and he did it by
buying me extra tater tots at the local burger joint.

Did it mean what I thought it meant?

Oh.

My.

GOD!

He took another sip from his coffee, put it
down and extended his big hand my way. I stared at it luckily not
jumping ten feet and it was not my first time seeing his masculine,
long-fingered, well-veined, strong-looking hand that I thought it
was immensely attractive in a way that if I was just a shade on the
sick side, I could create a religion based on it.

It was just the first time I saw it in real
person.

“I’m Sam Cooper,” he introduced and I forced
myself to lift my hand, put it in his and his fingers curled around
instantly, warm and strong.

“Kia,” I told him, my voice softer because I
was freaking out because
he was holding my hand!
“Kia
Clementine.”

That got me another grin.

“Kia Clementine?” he asked.

I nodded.

He held my eyes.

He also kept hold of my hand.

My heart stopped again.

Then he murmured again in that sexy way,
“Clementine.”

“Yep,” I said.

His head tipped to the side and he remarked,
“Great name.”

“It’s my husband’s,” I told him stupid,
stupid,
stupidly.

His hand tightened in mine for a half a
second then released it.

Oh yes.

Stupid!

His face was still friendly but now somehow
a shade remote when he noted, “You’re married.”

“Not anymore.”

Luckily, this came out calmly not quickly or
desperately.

Thank God.

“Divorced?”

“He’s dead.”

His back straightened and his eyes again
grew intense, this time in a different way. There was emotion
there, compassion, and it, too, was knock your socks off
beautiful.

“I’m sorry,” he said gently.

And that was when, no joke, I blurted, “Four
months ago, half his head was shot off in a motel room while he was
boinking my high school arch-nemesis who remained my arch-nemesis
long after high school, though I didn’t know that until her husband
burst in on them in the local motel with a shotgun he was prepared
to use. My husband got dead. Her husband got five to ten for
involuntary manslaughter.”

Sampson Cooper blinked.

Okay, uh… what was
that?
Why did I
tell him that?

Not only was I in imminent danger of having
a heart attack, I was also clearly temporarily insane.

I needed to get out of there, like,
yesterday.

“No shit?” he asked into my mental
strategizing on how to beat my retreat.

I shook my head.

“Christ,” he muttered.

“That about says it all,” I muttered back,
looking from him to the table and wondering if I should pretend to
have a crying jag at the passing of my husband and ask to be
excused then get the first taxi, rental car, bus, train or plane
out of Lake Como and go back to Heartmeadow, Indiana, a place
Sampson Cooper had never been and one where he’d more than likely
never go and immediately enter what would probably be years of
therapy to deal with this encounter.