Page 7 of The Virgin's Dance with the Devil
Marisa read Rico’s final letter for the hundredth time. She was glad there wasn’t time to send a reply to him. She didn’t know what she would say.
She knew what she wanted to say, but it was impossible.Theywere impossible.
Dearest Marisa,
If love is a sickness, then mine is terminal. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. You have infected my mind as effectively as you have infected my heart. You warm my heart with your smile and with the softness of your lips on my cheeks.
Love of my life, I am counting down the hours until I can see you again.
Believe in me, my angel.
Rico x
She was counting down the hours too.
She’d dreamed of him last night. When she’d woken, she could have sworn she smelled oranges warming under the sun.
There was a knock on her bedroom door. “Marisa, are you ready?” came her mother’s voice. “We need to go.”
They were supposed to have left an hour earlier, but Marisa, awake until the early hours with thoughts filled with Rico, had overslept.
“One minute,” she called back, before looking again at the pile of letters scattered over her bed. Seventeen of them. Roughly one a week since Niccolo and Siena’s engagement party. In a few minutes, Marisa and her parents would be leaving for their pre-wedding celebrations.
In approximately five, maybe six hours, she would see Rico again. She would be staying in the same hotel as him for six days… and six nights.
The butterflies in her belly were like nothing she’d ever felt before, worse even than they’d been during their last lunch together. Much worse.
She gathered the letters together and put them back in their shoe box, which she hid behind her jumpers in her wardrobe.
She wished she didn’t feel the need to hide them. It wasn’t even as if she thought her mother would go nosing around her bedroom to find the identity of Marisa’s ‘penfriend’ despite itching with curiosity. There were boundaries that came when adult children lived in their childhood home, and Marisa’s parents respected them. She was thankful her mother hadn’t asked outright for the name of her penfriend, and thankful she hadn’t mentioned the letters to her father or sister. Luisa would have got Rico’s name out of her in seconds, and then all hell would have broken loose.
The sisters had chatted on the phone only two days ago, and Luisa had mentioned how much she was dreading having to spend a week pretending to enjoy the awful Espositos’ company. Marisa was still thankful Luisa had failed to notice her dancing with the youngest male Esposito all those months ago.
Reminding herself that she didn’t need the letters when she’d committed every word Rico had written to memory, Marisa closed her wardrobe door.
Marisa had never been to the Amalfi Coast before. In the years her parents had had money, holidays had been spent in other countries. The only times they’d stayed in Italy had been when they’d stayed with the Martinellis at their chalet at Cortina d’Ampezzo. It had been during their second skiing holiday there that the fact something was seriously wrong withMarisa’s father had become obvious. There had been signs before then, but they had been gradual and, so, easy to ignore, but that skiing trip, two years after their first, Pietro’s deterioration had suddenly slapped them all around the face. When, Marisa had wondered during that holiday, had her father’s strident walk morphed into a shuffle? But it was his struggle to stay upright on his skis that really alerted them to something being seriously wrong, and when they swept through The Bianchi Hotel’s stunningly landscaped grounds and their driver (nottheirdriver, but a driver and car arranged by her brother-in-law) parked outside the reception, Marisa and her mother both positioned themselves to help him out. Pietro’s legs were always a little unsteadier than normal after a drive, and he was prone to dizzy spells when standing up.
Thankfully Leonardo Bianchi, owner of the hotel and cousin of Niccolo and Gennaro Martinelli, had tasked his staff with keeping an eye out for their arrival, and had a wheelchair ready for them. Marisa knew her father hated ‘being pushed around like a child,’ as he liked to grumble, but sometimes it was necessary. Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. After five and a half hours in a car with only one rest stop, he needed it.
Checked in and shown up to their adjacent rooms in the hotel’s main building, Marisa quickly unpacked and then knocked on her parents’ door.
Her father was taking a nap, her mother on the balcony smoking.
“Are you okay if I go off and explore?” Marisa asked her.
If Marisa admired anything about her mother, it was her indefatigable spirit. She’d taken her husband’s incurable illness in her stride, cherishing his good days without lamenting the bad, an attitude Marisa strove hard to copy. However indefatigable Sofia Rossellini was, though, being a full-time carer to a man twice her size was hard work; the bruisesbeneath her eyes and deep lines on her face testament to the toll it was taking on her. Marisa helped as much as she could, but the bulk of the care rested on her mother’s shoulders. They were slender shoulders that lifted as she waved her hands in a shooing motion. “Leonardo called – he’s arranged for a nurse to be on call at all times while we’re here, so go and enjoy yourself.”
“Really?” Marisa said, surprised. “What made him do that?”
Her mother smiled and lifted a glass full of clear liquid Marisa was suddenly certain contained gin and tonic. “I think Niccolo must have asked for it. All the costs have been taken care of, too.”
“That’s such a kind and thoughtful thing to do.” Even if it did seem a bit excessive. Her father wasn’t completely helpless… well, occasionally he was, but under the current medication regime, those helpless days were much rarer. Still, it was a weight lifted to know that if he did have one of his bad days while they were there, help would be on hand.
“He always was a nice boy.”
“One of them had to be.” Not that Gennaro had been bad or horrible, she thought, just cold. Poor Luisa. Living with that man must be like living with a human ice block.
Rico was bad, a thought that flittered like a warning as she exchanged a wry, knowing smile with her mother before Sofia put her cigarette out and tapped the book she’d brought out with her. “Go on, enjoy the time we have here. I’m going to relax until we go for dinner, then hopefully I’ll feel calm enough not to stab Carmella.”
