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Another day they went to the small islands of Murano and Torcello, and that evening George took her home to his house and they ate bread and cheese and drank wine in front of the fire. He read poetry, she told him about American Abstract Expressionist painting, and they spoke to each other about passion, faith, and love. They kissed and fondled each other. He was a sexy man to be with and one who obviously knew his way round women. Amy wanted more: to shed her clothes, for them to be naked in each other’s arms. She wanted a taste of the naughty sex he promised. He was a seducer very much in control of what he wanted, and when, and from whom. Amy could have let herself go, become besotted with
George, but she never went where she wasn’t wanted. They talked all through the night and got to know and like each other, then they watched the dawn come up over Venice.

Early in the morning several days later she went to George’s house again. It had undergone an impressive transformation. The rooms had been stripped bare of furnishings except for essentials. In the drawing-room were a pair of chairs, a table, cushions scattered on the floor, lamps on low tables. Nothing more.

‘What’s happened?’ she asked.

‘I inherited the house from an admirer, someone who loved me very much and wanted me to have a place to live and work in. I had always visualised it as pure space, clean, beautiful space, for my soul to wander in. I had too many things so I gave them away. Isn’t it wonderful now?’

And it was true, the house was a thousand times more beautiful, and this minimalist living suited George. Brought out another dimension in him, one that was more spiritual.

‘Yes, George, the house has a more powerful presence now. Something ethereal that goes straight to the heart, touches the soul,’ Amy told him.

‘You understand, I knew you would. Everyone has to clean their house out one day. We all do it in different ways.’

That was the thing about George that until that moment she had not figured out. He was more, much more than merely physically beautiful. He was a good
person, incredibly wise but silent about it. He was on a path of greater awareness in the Buddhist sense, and that above all else was what set him apart from most people. That was his charisma, what drew would-be lovers to him, what made people want to be part of his life. The realisation quite took Amy’s breath away.

It was several minutes before she was able to say, ‘It’s my last evening in Venice, George. I’d like it very much if you would dine with me at Rimboccare. Please don’t say no?’

That afternoon the weather quite suddenly turned cold and it began to rain. The downpour continued all afternoon and evening, and there was a wicked wind. The streets were running with water and people vanished into their houses. Tourists never left their hotels. As good as his word, George arrived at the Palazzo Davanzati and together Amy and he braved the weather and made a dash across the tiny piazza to Rimboccare.

The place was deserted except for one couple at a table in the window and another in the back of the small restaurant. The proprietor fussed over Amy. He had taken to her and was, like everyone else, extremely fond of George. They were shown to their table, against the wall, midway down the narrow room. A waiter greeted George and lit the candle in the centre of the table. A bottle of wine was placed on it, glasses upturned.

They had ordered their meal and were just settling down when Amy was suddenly aware of the couple sitting in the shadows at the back of the restaurant. It
was the man who drew her attention. Amy and he were facing each other, and she found it difficult not to keep stealing glances at him. He was a big man with fair hair. Quite the most handsome she had seen for a while. His looks were cool and charming. She felt an enormous attraction to him. It was inexplicable but she wanted to be near him, a part of his life. More than once she caught him gazing at her and sensed that he found something in her that he wanted. Amy thought herself fanciful and tried to forget him, but his mere presence in the room would not allow that. She turned her attention to George and the food.

They were on their main course:
osso bucco
and polenta, served with a mountain of slim strips of courgettes pan fried in olive oil. George was pouring from their second bottle of wine.

He told Amy, ‘I think there’s someone here you might like to meet. He’s a fellow American living in Venice, a painter. I know he would like to meet you. I’m surprised to see him here, Jarret almost never comes to this restaurant. His is a more grand circle of people than the artistic element that frequents this place. I really think he comes here on occasion to get away from them. He is after all an artist, and all artists need their peers for feedback. I’ll ask him and the lady he’s with to stop by for a coffee on their way out.’

Amy wanted to ask, ‘Am I being obvious? How do you know he wants to meet me? Is
he
being obvious?’ She wanted to say, ‘No, don’t bother’, or ‘I’d rather you didn’t’. But she said nothing, merely looked blankly at George
who took her hand in his and patted it. He told her, ‘Just don’t fall in love with him, that’s forbidden.’ Even then she could find no words to reassure him that she wouldn’t.

When George approached the table at the rear of the restaurant, the man he had called Jarret rose from his chair. His smile was devastating, filled with charm and terribly seductive. He was tall and big and very elegant in a slightly shabby way, like a prince in pauper’s clothing. Amy tried to shake herself free but the manner in which he lowered his eyes and then stole glances at her made that impossible.

After several minutes George returned to the table and his meal. He took several forkfuls of food before he said, ‘They would be delighted to join us for coffee.’

He changed the subject and for several minutes Amy did manage to forget Jarret, though the sensation of being drawn across the room to him was still very much there. It spiked her natural vivacious charm with a sensual seductiveness that she usually kept well hidden. Few men had ever discovered the erotic Amy Ross and none but Peter Smith had ever been able to set her free sexually enough to enjoy that aspect of herself to the fullest. She was feeling a new sureness of self and enjoying it.

Amy and George were not quite finished with their meal when Jarret appeared at the table. He spoke directly to Amy. ‘Hello, this is Sophia Minetti. I’m Jarret Sparrow, and you’re Amy Ross.’

‘And we all know and love, or have loved, or want to
be made love to by George,’ said Sophia Minetti with a smile much too knowing for Amy’s liking. Here was a woman who was not just peeping into this mysterious, sensuous and exciting world but seemingly part of it. What had she meant? What was she insinuating? Had the three been lovers of each other at one time or another? Sophia Minetti made Amy feel very straight, very dull, and certainly not exciting enough sexually for either George Constantakis or Jarret Sparrow.

George rose from his chair to kiss Sophia, and the two went into a dialogue in Italian for some minutes. As for Amy and Jarret, it was a
coup de foudre
, as if they had received a blow that had momentarily stunned them. Once they came back to their senses there was no escaping the chemistry at work between them, that same something she had been sensing all evening from across the room. Amy tried, even while it was happening, to tell herself that she was imagining it, being fanciful. They tried to break the spell.

‘I’m sorry, you’ve not finished your meal.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Are you long in Venice?’

‘No.’

‘Is this your first visit?’

Banal, it was all so banal, and they both knew it. They were not fooling themselves or Sophia or George. Even they were aware of the invisible magnet that was drawing Amy and Jarret together.

He moved his chair closer to Amy’s, snapped his fingers for the waiter and ordered two coffees, and then
turning back to Sophia told her, ‘We mustn’t stay long.’ And that was all the notice he paid to anyone at the table other than Amy. The banal was dropped. He went right to the point.

‘You’re a magician – you’ve returned George to us. He’s been very reclusive of late. You must be very important in his life.’

‘Oh, I hardly think that. We’ve only just met.’

‘Tonight?’

‘No, a few days ago.’

‘That can be enough.’

‘Would it be enough for you?’ Amy could hardly believe she’d said that.

The look that passed between them gave her the answer she wanted. She was flummoxed yet ecstatic with happiness. Nervously she looked to see if the others at the table were aware of what was happening between her and Jarret. George and Sophia seemed deep in conversation.

Jarret chose not to answer Amy. Instead he asked, ‘Who are you, Amy Ross? What’s brought you to me?’

‘I’m an art historian, working in New York. And I have always questioned fate.’

‘I’m a painter, I live and work here in Venice and Istanbul where I share my houses with another painter. And I do believe in fate. It’s fate that I should have come out on this foul night. Fate that I should have come here when we had planned to go elsewhere. And it’s fate that you should be here. I saw you come in and shed your wet things and we’ve been together from that moment
on. That, I believe, is fate at work.’

The sound of his voice, and his words, were mesmerising. She hung on every one of them. He was expressing her own feelings about him. There was a tremor of emotion in his cultivated mid-western voice, mellowed by years at Harvard, of living in Europe and speaking foreign languages. It cast a spell over her, made it difficult for her to keep her feet on the ground or to face the reality of the situation. A holiday flirtation and nothing more.

‘Tell me about your work? Where can I see it?’ Amy wanted to know him, wanted him to fill the void in her life. Oh, yes, from the moment Jarret Sparrow spoke to her, she knew what she had never even suspected before: there
was
a void in her life.

‘I’m having a one-man show in New York sometime this year. I’m in a group show in Paris but that’s for others to view, not you. Come to my house. I want you to see my house and my work. What day will you come?’

‘I’m leaving tomorrow.’

‘You can’t.’

‘Oh, I can and I must. I’m meeting someone in Athens tomorrow evening.’

‘Tell him you’ve had a change of plan.’

‘No, that’s not possible.’

‘Then you won’t get to see my work, my house, be a part of my life. You don’t believe in fate.’

Amy was not ready to give him up. The very idea of losing him was already frightening. She felt quite mad, not in control of herself.

‘I don’t leave until after lunch tomorrow, I’ll come in the morning.’

Joy in his face, a sigh of relief. Signals as to how he was feeling about her that went straight to her heart. He smiled and it was as if the sun came out and burned away any resistance she might have to him. He raised her hand from where it was resting on the table and lowered his lips to kiss it. When he lifted his eyes and gazed into hers there were tears in them. He was choked with emotion. Neither of them could speak. He knew she was his. Finally he managed to bring himself under a semblance of control.

‘Where are you staying?’

‘The Palazzo Davanzati.’

‘I’ll come for you, or you’ll never find your way. Early, very early, so we can spend your last hours in Venice together. I’ll see you off tomorrow. Until then you’re mine. Go home now. Pack. Get Silvio to send your luggage on. He knows very well how to do those things. Settle up there, your bill and all that, you won’t be back or ever stay there again. Seven o’clock. No, not seven. I’ll be at the Princess Marina’s door, the street side, at six o’clock, just when Venice is waking up.’

He did not wait for an answer but turned to Sophia and spoke to her in Italian. George rose from his chair. Jarret gave him a farewell hug, and said, ‘Thank you, George.’ Then smiled at Amy and told her, ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’

Sophia kissed George and turned to Amy. She smiled at her. By that time Jarret had already left the table
and was waiting impatiently to be gone from the restaurant. Sophia looked at him and then back at Amy. ‘It’s a long time since I’ve seen Jarret as happy as he is right now. He’s smitten. It shows on his face, the way he moves. New life flows there. And what about you? I don’t believe in fate, Jarret does. What I believe is that Jarret Sparrow has made a conquest, and you, Amy Ross, have fallen in love.

‘Venice … Remember, it plays tricks on people, it’s famous for its masquerades.’ That was her goodbye to Amy, that and a kiss on her own fingers which she blew across the table.

Chapter 6

He was there in the hall waiting for her when she came down the stairs. After a night of tossing and turning and having very little sleep – full of the excitement of leaving Venice, a moment of infatuation with a stranger, and the new adventure that lay before her – Amy was more calm about Jarret. That was not to say that she felt no reaction to seeing him; quite the opposite. Her heart skipped a beat. She found him, if anything, even more attractive than the night before.

Amy still felt drawn to the excitement of being with him on her last day in Venice, of entering his world, seeing his work. This feeling she had for him was different from any she had ever known and quite inexplicable. She would have liked him to have taken her home the night before and made love to her then. It was obviously sexual, this something between them.

‘Venice is at its most glorious this morning. The light is miraculous after that dark and hideous rainstorm yesterday. The sun has come out for us, Amy Ross.’ Those were his first words to her: polite words, charming words, but where was the passion he’d had for her, that he could hardly hold back the night before?

Jarret seemed calmer but he hadn’t fooled her. She sensed it at once: that the sexual attraction was still
there but that he was repressing it. All during her restless night she kept rationalising him away because soon continents would be separating them, and they lived such different lifestyles. She sensed that he had done the same. They had to save themselves from each other, she told herself. One look across a room does not make a lifetime of love, sex, security, and marriage. Or does it? And what had George said: ‘forbidden’? And what had Sophia Minetti been trying to tell her? Had that been a warning? Those were the things that were crossing her mind when she put out her hand to greet Jarret. But what the mind dictates the heart does not necessarily follow. The moment his lips touched her skin Amy knew that she had a fight on her hands to keep her relationship with Jarret Sparrow a holiday flirtation and not a romance.

‘I hardly slept last night, I was so looking forward to seeing your work.’

‘
I
spent most of the night arranging the house to give you an exhibition.’

‘Is it far, your house?’

‘It’s faster by water, but I don’t spend my money on gondolas and only in emergency on powerboats. All my money goes on paint and canvas.’

They hurried away from the Palazzo Davanzati. Jarret closed the wooden street door behind them and, looking at the high walls that fronted the
palazzo
, told Amy, ‘Now that world’s behind you, I’m going to take you into a new and better world, more wonderful than you’ve ever known. That’s what you want, isn’t it? That’s what
you’ve been looking for?’ Jarret was full of enthusiasm, his eyes filled with excitement. It was there again, that special togetherness, two people wrapped up in each other, wanting each other. She very nearly gave a sigh of relief.

He slipped his arm through hers and they hurried along the narrow streets, crossing stone bridges, and seemingly going deeper and deeper into the heart of Venice. He fired questions at her, about her work. Every time she told him something interesting about the New York art world they found yet another point of communication. Their footsteps echoed through many twisting and turning narrow cobbled footpaths and small, quiet piazzas; little squares with architectural treasures from the fourteen and fifteenth centuries – fountains or a sculpture worn away by time, a bench of stone, a chair of marble, a single column, a carved capital lying on a plinth. By the time they arrived at Jarret’s house, which was not a house but a
palazzo
of twenty-five rooms with water frontage, she was lost again with absolutely no idea where in Venice she was.

They stopped in front of his door. ‘I feel like fate did send you to me, you know, that you’ve come at just the right time in my life. I’m not a novice, I exhibit my work all the time, but the excitement I feel about showing it to you … well, I haven’t felt like this for such a long time, if ever. I don’t know what you expect, and I don’t know that you’ll like it, but I do know that you’ll understand it, that you’re with me.’

Jarret’s words touched a nerve in Amy, a tenderness,
an unbelievable gratitude to him for feeling that way about her. She was about to say something but he stopped her. ‘I think every canvas I’ve ever painted has been for you; every drawing, every collage, they’ve all been created for you. No, please don’t say anything now, just look.’

He hadn’t needed to silence her, she couldn’t have said anything anyway, she was too emotionally unbound, falling very nearly helplessly in love.

Amy had wondered whether he was a good painter, whether he might even be a great painter, instinct had told her that he would not be a bad painter. She had met enough artists to follow her instincts about them and their work. She had occasionally been surprised but rarely, if ever, had she been wrong. She forced herself to set her emotional feelings for Jarret Sparrow firmly aside for the time being.

Amy stepped into the hall of his
palazzo
stunned by the emotion in his voice, the passion for her in his eyes. The moment he closed the door behind them he locked out the world as she knew it, and Amy entered Jarret Sparrow’s world.

All the while they had been making their way to the
palazzo
she had been aware of him as a man and her sexual attraction to him. His cool, sensual handsomeness and charm had seduced her, and she had to keep fighting that seduction, had to keep trying hard not to lose herself in an infatuation that was doomed to end in just a few hours. With the click of the lock Jarret the man vanished into the recesses of her mind and Jarret
Sparrow the artist took over their lives. Amy Ross, art historian, adviser, sometime dealer, scuttled the Amy Ross who was falling in love.

Amy was immediately aware of a massive body of work, that of a prolific artist who worked in many media: collage, construction, watercolour, sculpture, oil on canvas, paper, wood. The
palazzo
was not so many rooms as
palazzos
in Venice go, but they were enormous rooms with high ceilings and beautiful proportions. The walls were painted white and hung with his work and his work alone. Huge, small or average size, framed and unframed Jarret Sparrows. Abstract paintings, some better than good; strange surrealistic collages – exciting works of art that sometimes worked and sometimes did not quite. They were powerful paintings, full of colour and action and yet static at the same time; that was their uniqueness and possibly what made them not quite work. Jarret Sparrow had a yearning to be a great painter, that was the message Amy received from room after room of his work, cleverly hung, excitingly displayed. Yearning is one thing, a great painter another – thus spoke the professional Amy Ross to the woman already in thrall.

The
palazzo
had a large inner courtyard one could look at through the open loggia on the first floor of the building. Even that was hung with his work; painting on heavy silk was another of his media and these flag-like paintings were slung over the balustrades into the garden.

In contrast with the abstract works of art, the
courtyard garden was formal and grand in design and planting, the equal of the finest in Venice or anywhere else in Italy. Even this late in the season it was blooming, a miracle for a garden in Venice. And the house that was not a house but a
palazzo
was still beautiful. One could imagine it in its glory during the fourteenth or fifteenth century when everyone who was anyone owned a
palazzo
in Venice. When Jarret’s palace had been constructed, Venetian power was at its height. The sumptuous and splendid in all things was encouraged by the Venetian Senate, the better to impress visiting merchants and ambassadors. Both façades and interiors were matched for magnificence. Amy had seen many examples of that during her stay in Venice, had actually lived for a few days enjoying the luxury, the history of another age. There it had seemed natural: here at Jarret’s it was extraordinary.

The paintings were one thing; the furnishings, the manner in which he lived, another. To Amy it seemed as if he had spent his years in Venice raiding not the antique shops but the junk stores of the city. Anything that had some age, from Art Deco back in time and style: a clock with one arm and no glass; a bowl chipped enough to be called a design of its own; silver plate that had, in places, long ago lost its coat of silver; teapots without spouts, and some without handles; chairs that had lost an arm or at the very least whose caning had been worn or punched out. Sofas lumpy and smelling of damp – shabby furnishings rather than works of art, room after room of pitiful junk arranged in decorative salons. A
palatial residence created from trash and hung with canvases that turned the
palazzo
and Amy’s visit into a happening. The house of a rich talent but a poor man keeping up with the Joneses? Only in this case the Joneses were the princes and princesses, the marquises and marchionesses, the dukes and duchesses of Venice and Europe. Or was this the house of an artist who had a passion to be a prince, and lived as the only prince he could afford to be?

‘I’m dazzled,’ Amy told him.

‘That’s what you’re supposed to be.’

He took her by the hand and they moved slowly from room to room. Amy was genuinely overwhelmed by the work. She began asking questions about the paintings, relating far more easily to them than to his collages. She found the large collages disturbing, so different from his work with the brush, as if two different minds, two separate people, had worked on them. Hours later Jarret’s work had taken them over. It was nearly one o’clock when he had pulled the last painting from a stack leaning against the walls of his studio.

Those hours had not passed in silence. Painting and all works of art were a part of these two people’s lives; they had been schooled in art and what each of them had to say about Jarret’s work had substance and intellect behind it. Inevitably the conversation went from his work to the new and exciting painters in the New York contemporary art world; to those great painters alive and dead who had influenced their lives; to the shift from Paris as the centre of the modern art world to
New York. The talk was heady stuff, they were high on it and each other.

All the while they were drawing closer together but time was driving them apart. It was a strange sensation, this constantly having to put the brakes on, but that was what Amy was doing. ‘Don’t fall in love.’ Were George’s words advice or a warning? ‘Venice … Remember it plays tricks on people, it’s famous for its masquerades.’ Sophia’s words. Seeds of doubt planted in her mind. They were making Amy cautious, and now that she had seen the way Jarret lived and his work, she felt more unsettled than anything else.

Had he made one overtly sexual move towards her she would happily have thrown all caution away and taken the hours they had left to consummate the life force throbbing between them. She wanted orgasms with this man. She had a burning desire to be sexually one with him, to experience the little death with him, the dying in that moment of coming. And she wanted to make love to him, for him to come, give himself up to that exquisite moment of bliss. She sensed a mysterious significance to her being with him that was beyond anything she had ever felt with another human being. His looks? His charisma? His devastating cool and yet sensual charm? He had them all and was practising on her. She had seen this in other men but never one like Jarret.

And there was something more. Something she saw in his eyes, the looks he gave her: desire. With every breath he took, every word he uttered, in every way he
moved, he was telling her he wanted her. The elaborate display of his work, the wanting her to be there with him; he could not lay enough of himself out for her to take up. He had sexual lust for her. One minute it was there in the manner in which he gazed at her, and then it was gone, in the way he kissed her hand, took her by the arm and led her away from one painting to another. The sexual tension was electric, yet nothing happened, neither in word nor action, not even a hint of promise or innuendo.

When at last they were in his bedroom he pulled her into his arms and they gazed into each other’s eyes. All worlds, art or otherwise, vanished in those few seconds when he placed his lips upon hers and kissed her. The warmth of his body, the scent of his skin, the lips that trembled with passion. Enfolded in his arms, the Amy Ross she had always been died and she was born again in that kiss. He released her, never taking her to his bed, never saying a word of love or desire or expressing any erotic passion for her. Instead, he took her by the hand and led her from the room. Several rooms away he stopped. For the first time he spoke about the man who shared his house.

‘This is Fee’s room. He never shows it to anyone, but I know he wouldn’t mind your seeing it. I’m so sorry Fee – his real name is Firuz Yolu but everyone calls him Fee – isn’t here to meet you. He would adore you, and I know you would like him. His room is the only one in the house with his paintings in it. He doesn’t paint any more. He should, he’s a terrific painter.’

‘No!’ Amy was emphatic.

Jarret looked amazed. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Selfishness. I don’t want to share this experience of you and your work with the sight of anyone else’s paintings. We have so little time before this is over. Do you mind?’

She could see in his eyes that he didn’t mind in the least, that he was flattered. Jarret told her he loved her more for her sentiments by taking her in his arms again and giving her another longer and more lingering kiss. She could hardly miss the emotional effect her words had had on him. They bound the two of them even closer together. Arm in arm, in silence, they walked through the
palazzo
to the kitchen, the poorest room in the house. There Jarret finally spoke.

‘There’s hardly a crust of bread but I can offer you a coffee.’

‘What time is it?’

‘We have two hours left.’

‘You make it sound so final.’