Breathing Room (41 page)

Another bolt of lightning shattered the skies. She had no concern for her safety, but he did, and he pulled the statue from her stiff fingers. He began to toss it to the ground where it could no longer serve as a lightning rod. Instead, he found himself staring at it in his hand, feeling its power vibrating through him. She wasn't the only one who could make a covenant, he understood. It was time for him to make one of his own, a covenant that went against every male instinct he possessed.

He turned as she had, faced outward, and lifted the statue back to the sky. First she belonged to God – he understood that. Next she belonged to herself, no doubt about that.

Only afterward did she belong to him. This was the nature of the woman he'd fallen in love with. So be it.

He lowered the statue and turned back to her. She watched him, but her expression was unreadable. He didn't know what to do. He had vast experience with mortal women, but goddesses were another matter, and he'd angered this particular deity beyond reason.

Her dress whipped the legs of his trousers, and the raindrops had turned into angry warheads. A terrible frenzy gripped him. Touching her would be the biggest risk of his life, but no power on earth could hold him back. If he didn't act, he would lose her forever.

Before his courage deserted him, he pulled her hard against him. She didn't turn to ash as he'd feared. Instead, she met his kiss with a punishing fire. Peace and love, he somehow understood, were currently the province of her tamer sisters. This goddess was driven by conquest, and her sharp teeth sank into his bottom lip. He'd never felt so close to death or life. With the wind and rain raging around them, he used his strength to pull her down from the wall and set her against the stones.

She could have resisted, she could have fought him – he expected her to – but she didn't.

Her fingers pulled at his clothes. He was the mortal she'd chosen to service her.

He pushed her skirt to her waist and ripped away her panties. The part of him that could still think wondered at the fate of one who tried to claim a goddess, but he no longer had a choice. Not even the threat of death could hold him back.

The stones bit into his arms and the backs of her legs, but she opened her thighs for him anyway. She was wet. Wet and fierce beneath his fingers. He spread her legs wider, and then he drove deep.

She tilted her face to the rain as he worked inside her. He kissed her neck, the column of her throat. She set her legs around his hips and drew his power deeper, using him as he was using her.

They struggled together, climbed together. The storm lashed their bodies, urged on by the ghosts of the ancients who themselves had once made love within these walls. I love you, he shouted, but he kept the words inside his head, because they were too small to express the immensity of what he felt.

She gripped him tighter and whispered against his hair: "Chaos."

He waited until the very end, the last moment before they lost themselves, that sliver of time that separated them from eternity. Then he closed his hand around the statue and pulled it hard against her side.

A bolt of lightning split the sky, and they flung themselves into the fury of the storm.

*

She didn't speak afterward. They moved away from the wall into the shelter of the trees.

He straightened his clothes. They began walking through the ruins toward the trail. Not touching.

"The rain stopped." His voice was hoarse with emotion. He had the statue in his hands.

"I thought too big," she finally said.

"Did you, now?" He had no idea what she was talking about. He swallowed the lump in his throat. If he didn't get this right the first time, there was no guarantee of a retake. "I love you. You know that, don't you?"

She didn't respond – didn't even look at him. It was too little too late, exactly what he'd feared.

They made their way down the trail accompanied by the steady drip of rainwater from the trees. At the end Ren saw Bernardo standing by the Maserati. He'd gotten it out of the ruts, and he came forward, looking unhappy but determined. "Signora Favor, I regret to tell to you that you are under arrest."

"Surely that's not necessary," Ren said.

"She has damaged property."

"Hardly anything," he pointed out. "I'll take care of it."

"But how do you take care of the lives she has endangered with her reckless driving?"

"This isItaly," he said. "Everybody drives recklessly."

But Bernardo knew his duty. "I do not make the laws.Signora , if you would come with me."

If this had been a film, she would have clung to Ren's arm, quivering in fear, but this was Isabel, and she merely nodded. "Of course."

"Isabel—"

She slid into the backseat of Bernardo's Renault without acknowledgingRen . He stood alone and watched them disappear.

He gazed at his Maserati. The side mirror was gone, the fender dented, a scrape marred the black paint on one side, but he couldn't bring himself to care about anything except the knowledge that he was the one who had pushed her to such dangerous recklessness.

He stuffed his hands in his pockets. He probably shouldn't have bribed Bernardo with the promise of a top-of-the-line computer for the police station if he arrested her, but what else could he do to make sure she didn't get away before he'd had a chance to set things right? With his heart in his throat, he made his way to the car.

*

The only light in the cell came from a flickering fluorescent fixture set inside a wire cage.

It was pastnine o'clock, and Isabel hadn't seen anyone since shortly after her arrival, when Harry had appeared with some dry clothes thatTracyhad gathered up. She heard footsteps approaching, and she looked up to see the door swing open.

Ren came in. His presence filled the small cell. Even here he managed to take center stage. She didn't try to read his expression. He was an actor, and he could show whatever emotion he wanted.

The door closed behind him, and the lock clicked. "I've been frantic," he said.

He didn't look frantic. He looked purposeful but tense. She set aside the pad of paper she'd propped on her knees, the one she'd made Bernardo give her. "That must be why it took you three hours to get here."

"I had to make some phone calls."

"Well, that explains it."

He came closer and studied her, looking uneasy. "That insanity on top of the mountain...

It got a little rough up there. Are you all right?"

"I'm pretty tough. Why, did I hurt you?"

His lips thinned. Smile or grimace, she wasn't sure which. He slipped a hand in his pocket, then immediately withdrew it. "What did you mean when you said you thought too big?"

She knew her place in the world now, and there was no reason not to explain. "My life.

I've always told people to think big, but I finally realized that sometimes we can think too big." She moved to sit on the edge of the cot.

"I don't know what you mean."

"I thought so big that I lost sight of what I want my life to be about."

"Your life is about helping people," he said fiercely. "You've never for a single moment lost sight of that."

"It was the scope." She curled her hands in her lap. "I don't need to fill auditoriums. I don't need a brownstone nearCentral Parkor a closetful of designer clothes. In the end, all that suffocated me. My career, my possessions – all of them stole the gift of time from me, and I lost my vision."

"Now you have it back." It was a statement, not a question. He understood that something important had changed inside her.

"I have it back." She'd gotten more satisfaction helping Tracy and Harry than she'd gotten from her last lecture at Carnegie Hall. She didn't want to be a guru to the masses anymore. "I'm opening a small counseling practice. No place fancy – a working-class neighborhood. If people can't pay, that's all right. If they can, so much the better. I'll be living simply."

His eyes narrowed with his hit man's gaze. "I'm afraid I have some news that's going to put a crimp in those simple plans."

She'd embraced the concept of chaos, and she waited to hear what he had to say.

He moved close enough to loom over her, something she now found more interesting than threatening. "You managed to piss everybody off when you stole the statue."

"I didn't steal it. I borrowed it."

"Nobody knew that, and now the locals want to lock you up for the next ten years."

"Ten years?"

"More or less. I thought about talking to the American embassy, but that seemed risky."

"You could mention how much money I gave the IRS this year."

"I don't think it's a good idea to bring up your criminal past." He rested a shoulder against the graffiti-covered wall, looking more confident than when he'd arrived. "If you were an Italian citizen, you probably wouldn't have been arrested, but the fact that you're a foreigner makes it more complicated."

"It sounds like I might need a lawyer."

"Lawyers tend to confuse things inItaly."

"I'm supposed to stay in jail?"

"Not if we follow my plan. It's a little drastic, but I have every reason to believe it should get you out fairly quickly."

"Yet I find myself curiously reluctant to hear what it is."

"I have dual citizenship. You know that my mother was Italian, but I don't know if I told you I was born inItaly."

"No, you didn't."

"She was at a house party inRomewhen I was born. I'm an Italian citizen, and I'm afraid that means we'll have to get married."

That brought her up off the bed. "What are you talking about?"

"I've spoken to the local officials, and in their own way they let it be known that they wouldn't keep you in jail if you were the wife of a citizen. And since you're pregnant anyway..."

"I'm not pregnant."

He regarded her steadily from beneath those angled eyebrows. "Apparently you've forgotten what we were doing a few hours ago and exactly where that statue was when we were doing it."

"You don't believe in the statue."

"Since when?" He threw up one hand. "I can't imagine what kind of hell-raiser we conceived up there. When I think about that storm..." He shuddered, then bore down on her. "Do you have any idea what it's going to take to raise a child like that? Patience, for one thing. Luckily, you've got a lot of that. Toughness – God knows, you're tough. And wisdom. Well, enough said about that. All in all, you're up to the challenge."

She stared at him.

"I intend to do my part, don't think I don't. I'm damn good at potty training."

This was what happened when you welcomed chaos into your life. She refused to blink.

"I'm supposed to forget that you ran off like a coward when I got to be too much for you?"

"I'd appreciate it if you would." He regarded her with something like entreaty. "We both know I'm still a work in progress. And I've got a great present to help you forget."

"You bought me a present?"

"Not exactly bought. One of those phone calls I made after you were thrown in jail was to Howard Jenks."

Her stomach sank. "Don't tell me you're not going to make that film."

"Oh, I'm going to make the film. But Oliver Craig and I are switching parts."

"I don't understand."

"I'm playing Nathan."

"Nathan's the hero."

"Exactly."

"He's a dweeb."

"Let's just say he's testosterone-challenged."

She sank down onto the bed and tried to envisionRen as the bookish, bumbling, mild-mannered Nathan. Slowly, she shook her head. "You'll be perfect."

"I think so, too," he said with satisfaction. "Fortunately, Jenks is a man of vision, and he got it right away. Craig's doing cartwheels. Wait till you see him. I told you he looks like a choirboy. Just thinking about him playing Street gives me the chills."

She looked up at him. "You did this for me?"

He wrestled with his answer, then looked vaguely embarrassed. "It was mostly for me.

I'm not giving up playing bad guys, don't think that for a minute, but I couldn't handle Street. Besides, I need to stretch. I'm not all bad. It's time I accepted that. And you, my love, are not all good. Witness which one of us is currently incarcerated."

"It's giving me a chance to think about an idea for a new book."

"What happened to the old one? The one on crisis management?"

"I finally figured out that not every crisis can be managed." She gazed at the cell around her. "As much as we want to keep ourselves safe, we can't protect ourselves from everything. If we want to embrace life, we also have to embrace chaos."

"Getting married to me sounds like a good start."

"Except that chaos has its own way of finding us. We don't have to set ourselves up for it."

"Still..."

"I can't imagine how difficult a marriage between us would be," she said. "The logistics alone are impossible. We both have our careers. And where would we live?"

"You'll figure it out in no time. You can start making lists. You still remember how, don't you? And while you're doing that, I'll take care of the really important stuff."

"Such as?"

"I'm designing our kitchen. Everything's going to be state-of-the-art. I want a low counter at one end so our kids can cook, too, although we're keeping that little bugger you're carrying away from knives. A big eating area with—"

"I'm not pregnant."

"I'm fairly sure you are. Chalk it up to male intuition."

"Why the change of heart, Ren? What happened to you?"

"You happened to me." He came over and sat next to her on the cot, not touching her, just looking deep into her eyes. "You scare me to death, you know. When you stormed into my life, you turned everything inside out. You upset all the things I believed about myself and made me think in new ways. I know who I used to be, but I'm finally ready to figure out who I am. Cynicism gets tiring, Isabel, and you've...rested me." The cot springs squawked as he shot up, turning fierce without warning. "And don't you dare tell me you've stopped loving me back, because you're still a better person than I am, and I'm counting on you to take more care with my heart than I took with yours."