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man living his own life and not one born of something that had happened a
     lifetime ago.
    On those weekends, those occasional weeks he could get away, he flew to Sicily, lived
     quietly, drinking inexpensive vino , dining at the little village trattoria on pasta, freshly caught fish, and grapes or figs.
    No women.
    He had plenty of them wherever he was currently posted. Not that he wouldn’t have
     enjoyed having a woman here, but women asked too many questions and he had no wish
     to either explain his life or lie about it.
    And then he met Angelica.
    It was summer.
    He’d been riding for a couple of hours, the sun was hardly up and yet the air was
     already hot, fragrant with the scent of the sea and of the wildflowers that grow in
     the rocky crevices of the cliff walls.
    He refused to wear motorcycle leathers in the heat, so when he spotted a deserted
     beach, all he had to do to undress was pull his T-shirt over his head, toss it on
     the sand next to his bike, kick off his boots, strip off his jeans and Jockeys and
     walk into the sea.
    He swam out until the island was far behind him. Then he turned and headed for shore.
     Halfway there, he saw a figure walking slowly alongside the beach as the surf beat
     against the shore.
    When he got closer, he realized it was a woman.
    A girl, really. Eighteen. Nineteen. And, God, incredibly beautiful.
    Her hair hung down her back like a scarf of midnight sky. Her dress, an old-fashioned
     flowered, gauzy thing, hinted at the contours of her body. She was barefoot. Her face
     was tilted up to the sun.
    Unexpected desire shot through him with an urgency he hadn’t experienced since boyhood,
     and lodged in his dick.
    Dammit.
    He was naked. Was he supposed to walk out of the water with a hard-on?
    She must have seen his bike, the little pile of men’s clothes next to it. She’d figure
     out the rider was in the water.
    Sicilian women were modest to a fault. Surely she wasn’t going to hang around.
    He treaded water for a couple of minutes.
    She was still there.
    He thought about floating on his back and grinned. A man floating in the sea, with
     a periscope sticking out of the water.
    How would that look?
    How deep was the water here? Deep enough. He hoped so, anyway, and he let down his
     feet.
    The water was up to his chest.
    “Hey!”
    She didn’t react. Hell. Now what?
    He took a couple of steps.
    The water was at his belly button.
    “Hey, signorina !”
    She turned and looked at him.
    Beautiful didn’t even come close. She was spectacular. And he recognized her. She
     was a waitress in the trattoria; maybe she worked part time because he hadn’t seen
     her that often. What was her name? Angel. Angelica. Something like that.
    She put her hand to her forehead, shielding her eyes from the bright-burning sun.
    He smiled. “Buon giorno.”
    No answer,. Her dark eyes fixed on his.
    “Sono Johnny —”
    “ Tu sei Gianni Wilde.”
    She pronounced it the Italian way. Gee-ah-nee Wheelldeh. He liked the way it sounded.
    “Si,” he said, smiling again.
    He told her that he had been swimming. That he wasn’t wearing a swimsuit. She didn’t
     answer. Didn’t she understand him? Sicilians spoke a dialect rougher and more elemental
     than what was spoken in the rest of Italy, but by now he’d spent enough time here
     to know that people understood his classic Italian easily enough.
    He put his hands on his hips. So did she. He arched an eyebrow.
    So did she.
    Was that a faint smile at the corners of her lips?
    His jaw tightened.
    So did the rest of him.
    Dammit!
    He wasn’t in the mood to be embarrassed by anybody, especially by a good-looking woman
     determined to make a fool of him.
    “I’m naked,” he said bluntly. “And I want to get out of the water.
    Yes, definitely that was a smile. She was teasing him. Didn’t she realize that this
     could turn into a dangerous game?
    Time passed. Seconds, fraught with meaning, felt like hours.
    Johnny narrowed his eyes.