Page 8 of The Virgin's Dance with the Devil
Marisa’s heart never failed to twist when her mother mentioned Carmella Martinelli. The two women had been as close as sisters. As the saying went, ‘To err is human, to forgive divine,’ a sentiment Marisa, as a woman of strong faith, believed in wholeheartedly. When it came to CarmellaMartinelli though, Marisa fully understood why her mother preferred to stab rather than forgive because she couldn’t forgive her either. Strangely, she felt less animosity toward Giuseppe even though his cruelty in dumping her father as his lawyer had been directly responsible for the Rossellinis coming within weeks of bankruptcy. It had also been at Giuseppe’s direction that he and Carmella had dumped the Rossellinis as their closest friends, despite them being Luisa’s godparents. Giuseppe had always been an arsehole. Carmella had been considered an aunt by Marisa and Luisa. She’d made the women of the Rossellini family love her and then broken her mother’s heart, and for that, Marisa would never forgive her.
Kissing her mother goodbye, Marisa quietly slipped out of her parents’ room and resisted returning to her own to reapply her lip gloss.
The grounds of The Bianchi were much more expansive than would be guessed from the outside. Seemingly cut into the sheer cliffs that lined the Amalfi Coast, it was a haven of peace and tranquillity… at least, Marisa assumed that would usually be the case. For the next six days, The Bianchi was for the exclusive use of Niccolo Martinelli and Siena Esposito’s wedding party. Approximately five hundred guests were arriving that day, all with strict instructions to have fun and join in with the pre-wedding celebrations.
Having cut through the vast, bustling reception, Marisa’s explorations found her discovering the enormous ballroom, the main restaurant, the Bistro, a coffee shop, the spa, a games room, an art studio and a gallery. Cutting back the way she’d come, she followed the noise until she found the main swimming pool. Already, guests were sunbathingunder the warm spring sun, groups sat around the pool bar chatting and drinking, a sense of excitement pervading the air. According to her sister’s message, the path on the far side of the pool would take her to the block Luisa and Gennaro’s suite was located.
Marisa was one of the only people in the world who knew her sister and brother-in-law slept separately. Poor Luisa had discovered earlier on arrival that their suite only had the one bed.
Spotting lots of familiar faces, Marisa smiled and waved at everyone who caught her eye, and tried not to make it obvious that she was actively seeking one particular guest.
She shouldn’t be actively seeking him, but she couldn’t help herself. She was as skittish and excited as she’d been on the eve of her birthday as a child.
They hadn’t made any specific plans to meet up. They hadn’t needed to.
She’d never known intimacy could spring between two people writing weekly letters to each other. It was all so much deeper and more personal than anything that could happen over email. She’d come to adore Rico’s atrocious handwriting. Come to adore so much about him. Seeing him in the flesh for their lunches, which had somehow become a twice, sometimes three times weekly affair, had only reinforced this growing adoration.
Rico was much different in person than in his letters, almost like he was two different men. The man in the letters was a thoughtful, romantic soul who shared Marisa’s love of books and old films. The man in the flesh was bouncy, good-humoured, inquisitive and attentive. Both men made her feel like she was the only woman in the world. Both men made her feel alive in a way she’d never felt before.
But he was also a thug. While his father and brothers ran different divisions of the Espositos’ massive media empire, Rico ran their chain of casinos, an even greater means oflaundering money than the opening of nursing homes and hospital wings. The women usually draped on his arm were as different to Marisa as the sun was to the moon. They were the kind of women who fit into his world: glamorous ornaments with a flinty edge, something she could never be. His was a life she could never be a part of, and so friendship was the most she could offer him.
Except it wasn’t friendship that made her heart jump so hard and flood her face and head with colour when she spotted him at the pool table to the side of the pool bar playing a game with one of his brothers. Wearing a black t-shirt and knee-length canvas shorts that perfectly displayed the muscularity of his physique, his biceps flexed as he made his shot, and then, as if sensing her presence, his head turned. A breath later, their eyes locked.
Tightening her grip on her beach bag, Marisa had no idea how she kept her legs moving or how she was able to pull a friendly smile to her face as she strolled past him.
Her heart and head were still pounding when she stepped onto the path, and she pressed her hand to her chest and forced herself to keep looking forward, to not look back, to keep her veneer of nonchalance going.
It was only when she approached a sign for the beach with an arrow facing to the right that she realised she must have passed her sister’s block, and as she realised this, she became aware of footsteps nearing her.
Her pulses had already jumped to hyperdrive when she heard her name being called.
Chapter Three
Rico was mildlysurprised to find his heart was beating faster than normal. It had to be the speed-walk he’d done to catch Marisa up, although it hadn’t felt especially strenuous, not when compared to the vigorous workout he put his body through each morning. It wasn’t just his heartbeat either. Adrenaline was pumping through his veins, but that was likely because, finally, after four months of devoted letter writing and increasingly frequent ‘friendship’ lunches, he had Marisa exactly where he wanted her.
He'd come to enjoy writing those letters almost as much as he’d come to enjoy reading hers. For sure, writing them had been hard work – who knew writing a letter by hand could cause your hand to cramp up? – but they had been worth it. All those hours spent scouring the internet for book quotes and synopses had paid off. The gradual change in the tone of Marisa’s letters had been a chef’s kiss.
She’d come to a stop at the sound of her name, and now, after a suspended beat, she turned her head. If colour hadn’t been crawling all over her face, he’d have believed the casual way she said, “Oh, hi, Rico.”
It had been nearly three months since their first lunch together. Three days since their last. Three days since he’d heard her husky voice.
Barely a foot separating them, he looked at her flaming face and thought as he always did how his memory was never able to retain the radiance that shone from her and elevated her into something so much more than beautiful. Watching her stroll past in those modest denim shorts that showed off her toned golden legs and the shimmering gold mesh vest she wore over a black bikini top had reinforced what a hot little body she had (he was quite certain she deliberately wore her chunkiest clothes for their lunches). He’d chucked his pool cue onto the table, grinned at Tommaso and walked away, too busy admiring the sway of Marisa’s hips and the swing of the ponytail she’d tied her long chestnut hair into to care about forfeiting the game. He’d spent four months putting in the groundwork with Marisa. He was not going to waste a minute.
Four months of writing love letters to a woman and regular lunches with only friendly hello and goodbye kisses on the cheek for his efforts. If the change in tone of her letters had been a chef’s kiss, the gradual change in her demeanour over their lunches…
She’d beaten him to the restaurant they’d met for their first lunch at, and had stayed resolutely seated on his arrival. When those sixty-three minutes had ended – he hadn’t been lying when he’d written that those minutes had flashed by – she’d jumped to her feet, hugged her handbag to her chest and stammered that she had a meeting she needed to go to. Her body language had told him loud and clear not to ask for a kiss goodbye.
Contrast that with the beaming smile she’d greeted him with at their last meet and the way she’d hurried through the crowds of tourists at the Piazza della Signoria to rest her hands lightly on his shoulders so they couldswap kisses to their cheeks… it had filled his heart with such warmth that he’d not needed any help from the internet in describing it in his letter to her. She still kept her feet tucked under her chair while they ate so there was no chance of their legs brushing, and when they walked together it was with her arms wrapped around her chest, but there was no disguising the longing in her beautiful eyes or the tremor in her body when she leaned in for a goodbye kiss to his cheek. Marisa wanted him. Her desire just needed coaxing out of her, and here, on the romantic Amalfi coast where privacy could easily be found, Rico was more than ready to do that coaxing.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“Nowhere. I’m just exploring.”
“Have you explored the beach yet?”
She shook her head. “Have you?”
“Not this one… Shall we?”
