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Authors: Trish Morey
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wide marble shower. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to blot out those images too—but how did you blot out the image of a perfect male specimen, naked under the cascadingwater, droplets beading on the ends of his hair, rivulets sluicing down his long, hard body?
She swallowed hard and slapped on a too-bright smile as she turned. ‘It’s a fabulous apartment. How old is it?’ As an attempt to find something safer to talk about, even if maybe it was groan-worthy, it was the best she could come up with. The fact she hadn’t used the word ‘naked’ was something to be proud of.
‘At least seven hundred years,’ he said as he showed her through the rest of the apartment: the second bathroom, a small room given over to an office and a still-generous but much more modest and unassuming second bedroom. With no lovers’ alcove, she noted wryly, and with which she would have been perfectly happy. ‘Originally it was built on a Byzantine design, and then redesigned during the fourteenth century to what you see today.’
‘It’s magnificent, Raoul,’ she said, no stranger to luxury herself. But there was something special about this place. It spoke of a time of both massive wealth and an unprecedented interest in the arts and all things beautiful. The
palazzo
was a temple to the beautiful, the fine, the rich and sensual.
And Raoul was like a beautiful, tortured dark angel in its midst.
‘I must leave you now,’ he said when they had finished the tour and he once again stood stiffly before her in the library. ‘I have something I must see to. Please make yourself at home.’ And then all too suddenly he was gone, leaving the air swirling in his wake.
She wandered through the apartment alone, stoppingto admire a painting or an exquisite detail on one of the many frescoes, admiring the chef’s kitchen with a zillion gleaming utensils hanging from the hooks.
She stopped by the
quadrifora
, the four beautiful doors that led to the balcony, and on impulse opened them and stepped outside. A breeze tugged at her hair, and on it the scent of cooking from a
trattoria
she could see along the canal, its tables and chairs spilling out onto a terrace alongside the water. She stood there and listened to a gondolier serenade his passengers and just breathed in the scents and sounds of a city built upon the sea while her tangled thoughts lay elsewhere.
What was it that troubled Raoul? she wondered. That coloured his moods from light to dark in an instant? What was it that drove him to such dark, explosive depths, that turned his eyes unreadable and closed him off to everyone?
She stood there, long after the gondolier’s song had faded along the canal, thinking about the riddle that was Raoul. Finally, finding no answers amongst the stuccoed buildings, the overflowing flowerpots or the slow, eternal slap of water against building, she sighed and thought about unpacking instead so she could go and explore.
She found Natania in her bedroom with the job already half done. ‘Oh, I don’t expect you to do that.’
‘I don’t mind. There is not enough to do otherwise, and anyway—’ she lifted a cashmere sweater and rubbed it against her cheek ‘—you have such beautiful clothes and you wear them so well. Do you know my Marco said you looked like a flower when you arrived? Dewy and fragile and just waiting to be picked.’
Gabriella stilled as she retrieved her toilet bag from the case, heading for the bathroom. ‘Marco said that?’
Natania nodded gravely, slipping tissue paper between the folds of the sweater before reverently placing it in a drawer. ‘Please don’t be offended. It was meant as a compliment. Only he was worried that to put you in this bedroom …’ She waved a hand ‘… well, it might make you unsettled.’
Gabriella was still trying to work out how to answer when the other woman unzipped a compartment in her suitcase, unfolded a dress and laid it on the bed, smoothing the fabric with her
She swallowed hard and slapped on a too-bright smile as she turned. ‘It’s a fabulous apartment. How old is it?’ As an attempt to find something safer to talk about, even if maybe it was groan-worthy, it was the best she could come up with. The fact she hadn’t used the word ‘naked’ was something to be proud of.
‘At least seven hundred years,’ he said as he showed her through the rest of the apartment: the second bathroom, a small room given over to an office and a still-generous but much more modest and unassuming second bedroom. With no lovers’ alcove, she noted wryly, and with which she would have been perfectly happy. ‘Originally it was built on a Byzantine design, and then redesigned during the fourteenth century to what you see today.’
‘It’s magnificent, Raoul,’ she said, no stranger to luxury herself. But there was something special about this place. It spoke of a time of both massive wealth and an unprecedented interest in the arts and all things beautiful. The
palazzo
was a temple to the beautiful, the fine, the rich and sensual.
And Raoul was like a beautiful, tortured dark angel in its midst.
‘I must leave you now,’ he said when they had finished the tour and he once again stood stiffly before her in the library. ‘I have something I must see to. Please make yourself at home.’ And then all too suddenly he was gone, leaving the air swirling in his wake.
She wandered through the apartment alone, stoppingto admire a painting or an exquisite detail on one of the many frescoes, admiring the chef’s kitchen with a zillion gleaming utensils hanging from the hooks.
She stopped by the
quadrifora
, the four beautiful doors that led to the balcony, and on impulse opened them and stepped outside. A breeze tugged at her hair, and on it the scent of cooking from a
trattoria
she could see along the canal, its tables and chairs spilling out onto a terrace alongside the water. She stood there and listened to a gondolier serenade his passengers and just breathed in the scents and sounds of a city built upon the sea while her tangled thoughts lay elsewhere.
What was it that troubled Raoul? she wondered. That coloured his moods from light to dark in an instant? What was it that drove him to such dark, explosive depths, that turned his eyes unreadable and closed him off to everyone?
She stood there, long after the gondolier’s song had faded along the canal, thinking about the riddle that was Raoul. Finally, finding no answers amongst the stuccoed buildings, the overflowing flowerpots or the slow, eternal slap of water against building, she sighed and thought about unpacking instead so she could go and explore.
She found Natania in her bedroom with the job already half done. ‘Oh, I don’t expect you to do that.’
‘I don’t mind. There is not enough to do otherwise, and anyway—’ she lifted a cashmere sweater and rubbed it against her cheek ‘—you have such beautiful clothes and you wear them so well. Do you know my Marco said you looked like a flower when you arrived? Dewy and fragile and just waiting to be picked.’
Gabriella stilled as she retrieved her toilet bag from the case, heading for the bathroom. ‘Marco said that?’
Natania nodded gravely, slipping tissue paper between the folds of the sweater before reverently placing it in a drawer. ‘Please don’t be offended. It was meant as a compliment. Only he was worried that to put you in this bedroom …’ She waved a hand ‘… well, it might make you unsettled.’
Gabriella was still trying to work out how to answer when the other woman unzipped a compartment in her suitcase, unfolded a dress and laid it on the bed, smoothing the fabric with her
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