Riptide (27 page)

Dafne bestowed a serene smile on him as he straightened. “Charmed, I’m sure,” she told him, in what Nick figured she imagined was upper-crust British. It wasn’t even close. Her low-class South African roots showed through like worn silver plate over a base metal.

She turned less friendly eyes on Bria.
“Tu sei troppo presto. Il re è stata ritardata a Roma.”

As the old guy at the airport had told them, Draven was in Rome. Nick wondered if the woman called her husband “the king” in that annoying, superior way even when they were in bed. Clearly, Dafne loved being the king’s wife, and he could see why fiery, joyous Bria didn’t like the Ice Queen.

“No problem,” Bria told her sister-in-law without any editorial comments, which Nick found refreshing. Most women rushed to fill awkward silences. Bria was gracious and polite, but she didn’t jump in to make her sister-in-law look less ungracious. Dafne did that herself. “We’ll wait.”

Lips pursed, the queen rang a little gold bell. A man in a black suit materialized from behind the twenty-foot-high carved mahogany doors behind her. He looked like a wrestler, short and boxy, overly muscular, with the flat nose of a prizefighter.

His suit, Nick noticed, was custom-fit to conceal the weapon he carried beneath his arm, and efficiently covered his barrel chest, every button done up. He gave the Queen an inquiring look from beneath his unibrow.

“I presume you will want to cohabitate?” Dafne asked Bria with frosty contempt, hard to read on a face that barely moved.

Nick took Bria’s hand. He liked holding hands with her. A first for him. But this time it was for moral support and solidarity. She wasn’t here alone.

“Of course.” Nick’s response was immediate and frigid.

“Absolutely,” Bria said cheerfully at the same time, making him want to laugh.

“Alfredo will take you to your room to freshen up. I’ll see you at dinner.” And just like that, they were dismissed.

Bria seemed to take it all in stride as Alfredo shifted to allow them to pass by him to get through the door. Nick was already pissed, and the woman had barely said two sentences.

God damn it. Now he was having second thoughts about leaving Bria among her less-than-friendly relatives. But then, she didn’t have to be
happy
. Just safe.

*   *   *

While Bria showered, Nick used the house phone to contact the T-FLAC operative and fill him in on the latest developments.

“The body will keep,” Aries told him succinctly.

“That might well be,” Nick said with annoyance. “Doesn’t mean I want a corpse on board my ship, Aries. Take care of it.”

“Head back to Cutter Cay. Before you dock, this situation will be resolved.”

“How close are you to doing that?” The shower in the other room turned off. “My people are in danger. The princess was attacked, I have two men dead, and I have a murderer on board. This is no longer
simple
. You have twenty-four hours to resolve this or I’ll take matters into my own hands.”

“Don’t do anything that’ll jeopardize this op, Cutter. Three days should have this tied up.”

“Strangely enough,” Nick voice dripped frost, “as a
salvor
I don’t
have
fucking
ops
! Resolve this within that three-day window or I’ll sail back to the Cay without crew
or
diamonds.”

He replaced the receiver lightly on the cradle, then said, “Fuck,” quietly under his breath.

*   *   *

Bria had lasted an hour after they’d been shown upstairs to a newly decorated suite. There were signs everywhere that the place was being remodeled, redecorated, and refurbished. The garish, ostentatious bad taste everywhere she looked made her long for the
Scorpion
’s white-on-white-on, oh-so-
white
décor.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said quietly, coming out of the opulent bathroom wrapped in a towel. “We can visit my cousin Antonio, tonight, do you mind?”

Nick turned from the window and smiled. “You’re the boss.”

“Dafne’s the boss.” Bria mock shivered. “Hang on, and I’ll get dressed super quick.”

He gave her damp body and wet hair an appreciative look. “Don’t hurry on my account.”

“Much as I’d love to take you up on that leer, staying here is giving me hives on my hives. Can I take a rain check? Five minutes, I promise.”

He rested his hip on the wide stone windowsill. “I’m in no hurry.”

“You could come and keep me company while I do my face,” she suggested before returning to the bathroom.

“If I can’t do you, I’ll be safer out here watching a hundred gardeners prune trees into strange and unnatural shapes. Don’t be long. I’m hungry, and apparently food is all I’ll be getting for a while.”

With a spring in her step, and her heart doing the Snoopy dance, Bria went all the way with her makeup. Smokey eyes, glossy lips. Even though she was going to bronze the red dress in memory, since it was the only game in town, she slipped it on over her lotioned, completely bare body.

Let Nick think about
that
all night.

Nobody stopped them as they strolled out the front door. Not that there was any reason they should. This was her home as much as it was Draven’s. She might not be welcome, but she wasn’t a prisoner.

It just felt like it.

Halfway down the driveway, she called her cousin using Nick’s phone, and they arranged to meet in an hour at an out-of-the-way
trattoria
on the other side of town.

They walked through the town, and she bought him a slice of pizza wrapped in paper from a vendor because he said he was starving and couldn’t wait for dinner. Then waited until he’d taken his first bite, and they were surrounded by people, to let him feel that she was completely naked under the dress.

“And for some reason,” he said darkly, crowding her against an alley wall, “you think that I won’t retaliate?”

She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him lightly on the lips, feeling wanton and happy. “I’m betting on it.”

They shared the pizza as they walked. It was a warm summer night and the streets were filled with people enjoying their evening walk, chatting with friends, stopping for a cold drink. The evening meet and greet perambulation was called
fare lo struscio,
something Bria remembered doing on summer evenings with her parents.

Because she looked so much like her mother, people recognized her; some stopped, most dipped their heads and respectfully kept walking.

“You’re a celebrity,” Nick observed. He was holding her hand again. Only, as he assured her, to prevent getting separated with all the people milling around them. Bria was perfectly fine with it. No matter the excuse.

She’d never strolled any streets holding hands. It was … sweet. Innocent. Lovely.

“Most people who recognize me are my parents’ age,” she told him, smiling at two elderly women who were bug-eyed staring at her, hands talking at the same time. “So they recognize me because I look like her.”

It made her sad, because her parents should still be ruling now. If they had been, the streets would be in better repair, and all the shops would’ve been open instead of only a handful. “Young people don’t want to come and live and raise families here,” she told Nick, as he paused to buy a large paper cup of freshly squeezed lemonade, which he handed her first.

“It seems busy enough.”

She sipped the tart juice and pulled a comical face, making Nick smile, as she’d wanted to do. “Older people have returned, and they’re trying to make a living here.” She took another deep gulp of the tangy drink. It tasted exactly the same as when she and her mother used to come into the village on market day.

“But the vineyards won’t produce for several more years, and industry as it was has pretty much died out. Twenty years ago, when their parents fled, they would’ve been young. So this isn’t their world any more. They want to be in big modern cities with Internet in their houses and a thousand channels on TV.”

“Did you study public relations to help your people?” Nick wrapped his arm about her waist and steadied the cup in her hand, as several people stumbled out of a nearby alley, laughing and joking in English. Tourists. Bria was happy to see them, even if they were tipsy in public.

Nick stroked her bottom through the thin fabric of her dress, reminding them both that she was commando. “Marv encouraged me to do a lot of things in the hope I’d come home one day. PR seemed a good overall way to perhaps encourage tourism or persuade companies to come into Marrezo to start cottage industries to feed the tourism. I did some hotel management, even some travel agency work and international business relations, all in hopes it might eventually make a difference. But as much as I want to help my country, that’s not going to happen.”

He took the cup from her and drank deeply, his tanned throat working as he swallowed. “You can’t tell me that you don’t want it.” He handed it back empty. “Every move you’ve made since we’ve gotten here has shown me how much you love it. Is it because of Dafne?”

“Dafne, is just—Dafne.” She paused, looking down and wondering at the hot sting of tears she quickly blinked away. “It’s more Draven. You’re right. I do love it. But he’s been perfectly candid that he has no interest in me coming back here. He doesn’t see that I have a place here, which kind of stings a little, since I’ve spent the better part of my life learning, training, and anticipating the triumphant return and all the good I’d do here.”

“You’d be an asset.”

She tossed the empty cup into a nearby container. “But that’s okay. Things change, and sometimes even if we can’t see it, they change for the better. My skills won’t go to waste. Second thing is, we—I don’t know—we feel awkward around one another. We used to be relatively close considering the age difference, but now that we’re older and have led such vastly different lives, we just don’t … click. I envy you your close relationship with your brothers. Family is everything. Ever since Marv died, I’ve felt … I don’t know—adrift, maybe?”

“That’s understandable, since for all these years you believed he was the only family you had left, even if there wasn’t blood between you.”

“I have Antonio. I think you’ll like him— Oh, there he is now! Tonio!” Bria let go of Nick’s hand and ran across the street to fling herself into her cousin’s arms. He lifted her off her feet and swung her around, then bent her over his arm and kissed her smack on the lips.

Antonio was almost as tall as Nick, with black hair and naughty brown eyes. Last time she’d been home, she’d seen the way all the girls gave him suggestive glances, and probably their phone numbers. He was handsome, single, and fairly wealthy as the owner of a vineyard that, while not producing yet, still had stores of his family’s famous wines. Hidden from the terrorists during their occupation, the extra twenty years of aging would make some of them more valuable.

She locked hands with Antonio and dragged him across the street. A trick of the light made Nick look a little demonic as she introduced the two men.

“We’ll talk English, okay?” Tonio asked, keeping his voice low. “Less people will understand us here.”

They walked into the Trattoria Amici, which, at first glance, looked like any corner grocery shop. The fragrance of tomato, garlic, basil, and freshly baking bread made Bria’s mouth water, that slice of pizza a distant memory.

The narrow entrance was filled with people waiting for tables. The walls were stacked to the wood-beamed rafters with piles of wooden wine crates, dusty bottles of olive oil, sacks of locally grown lentils and chickpeas, jars of honey, and braided strings of onions, garlic, and bright red chilies.

Antonio walked over and pulled a dusty bottle from the rack, wiped it with a napkin from a stack by the door, and showed it to Bria.
Frutti del dios
. His family’s fine red wine. Bria gave him the thumbs-up. Tonight she’d eat wonderful homegrown food, drink lovely red wine, and take Nick home to the Palazzo and give him a night he’d never forget.

She smiled into the middle distance, and felt Nick slide his arm around her waist, then discreetly cup her behind.

“Great minds think alike,” she whispered, her voice husky.

“I’m not hungry,” he whispered against her ear. “Are you?”

“Starving,” she assured him, laughter bubbling up in her voice.

There were a couple of dozen tables in the back, near the kitchen, and the small space was hot and filled with animated conversation and the clinking of china and glassware. It was loud, boisterous, and frenetic. Bria wanted to bottle the whole place so she could take it out to sniff when she felt homesick back in Sacramento.

Nick, standing right beside her, smiled, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, then ran the back of his finger down her cheek. “You love this, don’t you?”

“Table is ready. Come on.” Antonio pushed his way through the people waiting, hailed the owner, then led them to a fairly secluded table in the very back near the kitchen.

“Don’t bother looking for a menu. Giovanni will bring us the specials.” He uncorked the wine and gave it all of thirty seconds to breathe before he poured three glasses.
“Cin Cin!”

They talked about the salvage business, and Antonio’s plans to revitalize the winery he owned. The vineyard alongside the Pescarna/Pavina road was his. “Another year, maybe two. We’ll see.” Their meal was delivered to the table, big steaming bowls of a fragrant tomato-based broth, spiced with basil and filled with an assortment of cut vegetables and seafood, from small clams still in their shells to bits of calamari and sea bass.

“Nick has generously offered to refund Draven’s investment in his salvage operation.”

The soupspoon stopped halfway to Tonio’s mouth and hung there suspended. “The whole five million euro?”

Bria nodded. “I know you couldn’t convince Draven to rethink his strategy, but once the bank loan is repaid, I think we have a chance to make a few strategic short-term investments and put that money to some use helping the people.”

Tonio set his spoon down, the contents untried. “Draven’s concept of what a good yield is with relation to time spent in the investment doesn’t seem to be improving. Neither does his understanding of high-risk versus low-risk investments.”