Page 9 of Reaching Hearts

Chapter Four

Christiano

Dreaming of a better time when she was here and we were happy.

“Christiano, look!” Annie cries out, leaning forward in the gondola.

I turn my head, smiling as I put my arm around her and follow her pointed fingers. “It’s a bird, Bella.”

She shakes her head and leans into my shoulder. “Nothing is just a bird anymore. Everything is so beautiful here.”

A tugging at my chest pulls a kiss from me onto her head, the short light red waves of her hair blowing and tickling my lips. “You are as fresh as this breeze. You make me very happy,” I whisper into her ear, out of range of the gondolier hearing. What’s ours is ours, and not the world’s to know.

“You have no idea how strange it is for me to hear things like that.” She smiles against my neck and kisses it. Her arm slides around my neck and I bring her onto my lap. We ride like this with the sunlight warm, and the buildings drifting by us just like time.

“Christiano?” a voice says, calling me to consciousness.

Opening my eyes to the morning sunlight of present day, I roll over to look for her. “Annie?” The pillow beside mine is empty yet again. Looking to the clock I see it’s just after eight o’clock. I must have finally fallen back to sleep after our phone call. I never thought I would, tossing and turning for what seemed like a lifetime. Even as I stretch my limbs to rid myself of the dream, discontent will not leave me.

I stare at a ghostlike memory of her sleeping beside me with her mouth slightly open, a small space between her lips. The soft sounds of shallow breathing. The feeling of her hand on mine. Closing my eyes, I try to shut it out, and fail.

Naked, I trudge into the bathroom to wash my face with cold water. The pipes don’t disappoint; the fresh burst is icy, the shock so good that I splash myself many times. I don’t like having no choice in this. I want to go to her. I want her here.

None of this is right.

My face in the reflection is enough to make me want to break the mirror. Discouragement and frustration stare back at me, water dripping down the lines of a forty-six year old man. You don’t look a day past sixty-two, Annie would say, teasing me when I would bring up our difference in age. Staring at myself now, I feel I finally look that old. Missing someone takes away the light from your eyes.

I wipe the drops from my face with my hands, too impatient for a towel. Stopping in the doorframe, I stare at the bed, remembering the first morning she was here. I’d stood where I am now, unable to believe I had made such a grave error in judgment. She had been sleeping there, right there, on her stomach, her head faced away from me. She had one leg bent and the blanket only covered half of her bare skin. I'd taken her three times that first night. We’d been caught in the newness and excitement of a chemistry I had not expected when I walked up to find her asking for directions from Adolfo.

I had leaned against this very doorframe with my arms crossed across my body, wearing nothing, just like I am now. She’d stirred, turned her head, and her nose flattened for a moment against the pillow. Through a sliver of waking eyes, she spied me staring, and a slow smile spread her lips. Her hair, that wretched black mess that made her oddly adorable, was pointed in all directions. The paleness of her skin was so young, with freckles like lightly sprinkled cinnamon. The sight of it gave me great guilt. I felt sure I’d taken advantage of a child by bringing her into my bed.

I would have to let her go. But even the thought of it, made me unhappy.

“How old are you, Bella?”

Her smile grew into a sexy, sleepy grin and she said on a laugh, “Kinda too late to ask me that now, dontcha think?” She waited for a smile to be returned, and was disappointed. “I’m twenty-three. You?”

I shook my head wearily, afraid that confessing would be the moment she ran screaming, making up excuses why she must leave and never see me again. With a heavy conscience, I had to admit that I had opened the discussion. “Forty-one.”

“Forty-one?” She stretched her arms high above her head and pointed her toes, reaching far in both directions. “That won’t do. You see, in my Italian lovers, I need them at least seventy-three, seventy-two at the youngest. It’s over, I’m afraid. Call me in thirty-one years. And it was so fun. Pity that.” She sighed and peeked to see my reaction.

“Is that so?” I couldn’t help but smile.

When she saw, she was pleased. “It is very so. That’s what I was looking up yesterday, in my language translation book. I was trying to say, Put that cigarette down and make love to me!”

I laughed. “Adolfo would have chosen the cigarette.”

She grinned playfully and laid her head on the pillow. “Adolfo? Well, I would have knocked it out of his hand and had my way with him by force! But then you came and stole me from him. He’s lucky to have escaped. You? Not so much.”

I knew I was the lucky one. I knew this, and I was drawn to her, because the look in her eyes was so different than the women I knew. Often from them I felt I was a prize to be won, not a man to be loved. But this young American girl looked at me without motive. Staring at her then, my mood changing with her reassuring words and languid body, I traced the lines of her breasts with my glance, still struggling for which direction to take.

“I am wondering if I made a mistake bringing you back here, young one.”

She frowned into the curve of pillow and touched the blanket, playing with the fabric between her finger and thumb. “Oh.” She bit her bottom lip. When her eyelashes swept back up, there was determination. “I don’t think it was a mistake. I don’t care how old you are. It feels good to be around you.” Her eyes flashed away, as though shyness suddenly took hold. Barely loud enough for me to hear, she muttered, “I can leave.”

I knew I didn’t want her to, but I stood my ground, a decision still not made.

Once more her eyelashes swept up to me. Her bright blue eyes sank me deeply and almost against my will, into her sweet vulnerability. Without words, she begged me to let her stay. The sight moved me. She bit her lip as she slowly pushed the blanket down, revealing her light, ginger-colored triangle, the curve of her hip, the soft crease where her legs met. The blanket hovered in her fingers at the middle of her thighs and she released it. I breathed in deeply as the need for her filled me. She held my eyes with an open invitation.

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