“You’re not going to shut up, are you?”
“You just told me all I had to do is ask. I’m asking.”
The look he shot her was withering, but he didn’t walk away. “We hadn’t even spoken in over a year. And when we were dating, it wasn’t a grand passion for either of us. She didn’t kill herself because of me. She died because she was a junkie. Unfortunately, the less savory members of the media wanted a sexier story, so they invented one, and since I’ve been known to play fast and loose with the truth myself when it comes to the press, I can hardly cry foul, can I?”
“Of course you can.” She said a quick prayer for the soul of Karli Swenson, only a few words, but in light of her current spiritual black hole, she was thankful she could pray at all. “I’m sorry for what this has put you through.”
The chink in his self-protective armor had been a small one, and his villain’s sneer returned. “Spare me the sympathy. Bad press only adds to my box-office appeal.”
“Gotcha. All sympathy retracted.”
“Don’t do it again.” He took her arm to guide her through the crowd.
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s not to antagonize anyone with a fanny pack.”
“Funny.”
She smiled to herself. “See those people staring at us. They can’t figure out why a babe like me is walking around with such a geek.”
“They think I’m rich and you’re a little treat I bought for myself.”
“A little treat? Really?” She liked that.
“Stop looking so happy about it. I’m hungry.” He took her arm and steered her into a tiny
He shot her a quelling look, and a few moments later they emerged from the shop with double cones. She dabbed at the mango, then the raspberry, with the tip of her tongue. “You could have consulted me about what flavor I wanted.”
“Why? You’d just have ordered vanilla.”
She’d have ordered chocolate. “You don’t know that.”
“You’re a woman who likes to play it safe.”
“How can you say that after what happened?”
“Are we back to our night of sin?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Proving my point. If you didn’t like to play it safe, you wouldn’t still be obsessing over what turned out to be a less than memorable experience.”
She wished he hadn’t put it that way.
“If the sex had been great-now, that would have been worth obsessing about.” His steps slowed, and he slipped off his sunglasses to gaze down at her. “You know what I mean by great, don’t you, Fifi? The kind of sex that makes you so wild all you want to do is stay in bed for the rest of your life. The kind of sex where you can’t get enough of the other person’s body, where every touch feels like you’re being rubbed with silk, where you get so hot and-”
“You’ve made your point!” She told herself this was simply Ren Gage showing off his tricks and, in general, trying to aggravate her with those smoldering eyes and that husky, seductive voice. She took a slow breath to cool off.
A teenager shot by on a scooter, and the sun melting from the golden stones fell warm on her bare shoulders. She smelled herbs and fresh bread in the air. His arm brushed hers. She licked her cone, swirling the mango and raspberry against her taste buds. Every one of her senses felt alive.
“Trying to seduce me?” He pushed his glasses up on his nose.
“What are you talking about?”
“That thing you’re doing with your tongue.”
“I’m eating my gelato.”
“You’re diddling with it.”
“I’m not diddl-” She stopped and gazed up at him. “Is this turning you on?”
“Maybe.”
“It is!” Sparks of happiness rushed through her. “Watching me eat this is turning you on.”
He looked irritated. “I’ve been a little sex-deprived lately, so it doesn’t take much.”
“Sure. It’s been, what? Five days?”
“Don’t even think about counting that pitiful encounter.”
“I don’t see why not. You were satisfied.”
“Was I?”
She no longer felt quite so happy. “Weren’t you?”
“Have I hurt your feelings?”
She noticed he didn’t sound too worried about it. She tried to decide whether she should be honest or not.
“Snotty
Compared to New York’s glittering monuments to the past, the Guarnacci Etruscan Museum was unimpressive. The small lobby was shabby and a little gloomy, but as they began inspecting the contents of the glass cases on the ground floor, she saw a vast display of fascinating artifacts: weapons, jewelry, pots, amulets, and devotional objects. More impressive, however, was the museum’s extraordinary collection of alabaster funeral urns.
She remembered seeing a few urns prominently displayed at other museums, but here hundreds jostled for space in the old-fashioned glass cases. Designed to hold the ashes of the deceased, the rectangular urns varied from about the size of a rural mailbox to something closer to a toolbox. Many were topped by reclining figures-some female, some male. Mythological scenes, as well as depictions of everything from battles to banquets, were carved in relief on the sides.
“The Etruscans didn’t leave any literature,” Ren said when they finally climbed the stairs to the second floor, where they found even more urns crowded into the old-fashioned cases. “A lot of what we know about their daily lives comes from these reliefs.”
“They’re certainly more interesting than our modern cemetery markers.” Isabel stopped in front of a large urn with the figures of an elderly couple reclining on the top.
“The
Isabel gazed at the couple’s lined and wrinkled faces. “They look so real. If their clothes were different, they could have been a couple we passed on the street today.” The date indicated was 90 B.C. “She looks like she adored him. It must have been a happy marriage.”
“I’ve heard such things exist.”
“But not for you?” She tried to remember if she’d read whether he’d been married.
“Definitely not for me.”
“Ever tried it?”
“When I was twenty. A girl I grew up with. It lasted a year, and it was a disaster from the start. How about you?”
She shook her head. “I believe in marriage, but not for me.” Her breakup with Michael had forced her to face the truth. It hadn’t been time constraints that had kept her from planning their wedding; it had been her subconscious warning her that marriage wouldn’t be good for her, even with a better man than Michael had proved to be. She didn’t believe that all marriages were as chaotic as her parents’ had been, but marriage was disruptive by nature, and her life would be better without it.
They wandered into the next room, and she stopped so suddenly he bumped into her. “What’s that?”
He followed the direction of her eyes. “The museum’s prize.”
In the center of the room a single glass case held an extraordinary bronze statue of a young boy. The nude was about two feet tall but only a few inches wide.
