Breathing Room

“Is Marta the housekeeper here?”

“No, no. Is no housekeeper here, but in town there is very good housekeepers.”

Isabel ignored that. “Is she the gardener?”

“No, Marta keeps the garden, but is not the gardener. There is no gardener. In town is possible for you to have a gardener.”

“Then what does she do here?”

“Marta lives here.”

“I understood I’d have the house to myself.”

“No, you would not be alone here.” She walked to the kitchen door and pointed at the one-story addition at the back of the house. “Marta lives there. Very close.”

“But I’d be alone in the middle of all those people in town?” Isabel said, taking a wild guess.

“Si!” Giulia beamed, her smile so charming Isabel hated to put a damper on it.

“I think it would be best if I spoke with Signora Vesto. Is she at the villa now?”

Giulia looked relieved to pass the ball. “Si, si, that would be best. She will explain to you why you cannot stay, and I will come back to take you to the house I have found for you in town.”

Isabel took pity on her and didn’t argue. She’d save that for

Signora Anna Vesto.

She followed the path up from the farmhouse to a long, cypress-lined drive. The Villa dei Angeli sat at the end, and as Isabel caught sight of it, she felt as if she’d been transported into the film version of A Room with a View.

Its salmon-pink stucco exterior, as well as the wings that sprouted here and there, were characteristic of grand Tuscan homes. Lacy black grillwork covered the ground-floor windows, while the long shutters on the upper floor had already been closed against the heat of the day. Nearer the house, the cypress gave way to the rigid formality of clipped box hedges, classical statues, and an octagonal fountain. A double set of stone staircases with massive balustrades led to a pair of polished wooden doors.

Isabel climbed the stairs, then lifted a lion’s-head brass knocker. While she waited, she gazed down at a dusty black Maserati convertible parked near the fountain. Signora Vesto had expensive tastes.

No one answered, and she knocked again.

A voluptuous middle-aged woman with discreetly colored red hair and tilted Sophia Loren eyes gave Isabel a friendly smile. “Si?”

“Buon giorno, signora. I’m Isabel Favor. I’m looking for Signora Vesto.”

The woman’s smile faded. “I’m Signora Vesto.” Her plain navy dress and sensible shoes made her more likely to be the housekeeper than the person who owned the Maserati.

“I rented the farmhouse,” Isabel said, “but there seems to be a problem.”

“No problem,” Signora Vesto replied briskly. “Giulia has found you a house in town. She will see to everything.”

She kept her hand on the door, clearly wanting to hurry Isabel away. Behind her a set of large, obviously expensive suitcases sat in the entrance hall. Isabel was willing to bet that the villa’s owners had either just arrived or were about to leave.

“I signed a rental agreement,” she said, speaking pleasantly but firmly. “I’m staying.”

“No, signora, you will have to move. Someone will come this afternoon to help you.”

“I’m not leaving.”

“I’m very sorry, signora, but there is nothing I can do.”

Isabel realized that it was time to get to the top of the chain of command. “I’d like to speak with the owner.”

“The owner is not here.”

“What about those suitcases?”

She looked uneasy. “You must leave now, signora.”

The Four Cornerstones were made for moments like this. “Behave politely, but decisively.” “I’m afraid I can’t leave until I speak with the owner.” Isabel pushed her way into the entrance hall and received a brief impression of high ceilings, a gilt and bronze chandelier, and a grand staircase before the woman jumped in front of her.

“Ferma! You can’t come in here!”

“People who try to hide behind their authority do so out of fear, and they need our compassion. At the same time, we can’t let their fears become our own.”

“I’m sorry to upset you, signora,” she said as compassionately as she could, “but I must speak with the owner.”

“Who told you he was here? No one is to know this.”

The owner was a man then. “I won’t say anything.”

“You must go at once.”

Isabel heard Italian rock and roll coming from the back of the house. She headed toward an ornately carved archway with green and red marble inlays.

“Signora!”

Isabel was tired of people messing with her-a crooked accountant, a faithless fiance, a disloyal publisher, and her fair-weather fans. She’d lived in airports for those fans, taken the podium through a bout of pneumonia for them. She’d held their hands when their kids did drugs, curled her arms around them while they struggled with depression, and prayed for them through desperate illnesses. But the minute a few dark clouds had shown up in her own life, they’d run like rabbits.

She charged through the house, down a narrow gallery where ancestral portraits in heavy frames juggled for space with baroque landscapes, across an elegant reception room wallpapered in brown and gold stripes. She whipped by grim frescoes of hunting scenes and grimmer portraits of martyred saints. Her sandals left scorch marks on the marble floors and singes in the fringes of the kilim rugs. A Roman bust trembled on its pedestal as she rushed by. Enough is enough!

She came to a halt inside a less formal salon at the back of the house. The polished chestnut floors were laid in a herringbone pattern, and the frescoes showed harvest scenes instead of boar hunts. Italian rock music accompanied the shafts of sunlight spilling in through long open windows.

At the end of the room an arched doorway much grander than the one in the farmhouse opened to a loggia, the source of the blaring music. A man stood inside the arch, his shoulder resting against the frame as he gazed out toward the sunlight. She squinted against the glare and saw that he wore jeans and a rumpled black

T-shirt with a hole in the sleeve. His profile was so classically chiseled it might have belonged on one of the room’s statues. But something about his rebel’s slouch, the liquor bottle tilted to his mouth, and the pistol dangling from his free hand told her this might be a Roman god gone bad.

With a wary eye on the gun, she cleared her throat. “Uh… scusi? Excuse me.”

He turned.

She blinked against the sun. Blinked again. Told herself it was only a trick of the light. Just a trick. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t…

6

But it was. The man who’d called himself Dante stood slouched in the doorway. Dante of the hot, glazed eyes and decadent touches. Except this man’s hair was shorter, and his eyes were a silvered blue instead of brown.

“Son of a bitch.”

She heard American English-movie-star English-spoken in the deep, familiar voice of the Italian gigolo she’d met the night before last in the Piazza della Signoria. Even then it took a moment before she understood the truth. Lorenzo Gage and Dante the gigolo were the same man.