Love Beyond Words (City Lights: San Francisco Book 1) (7 page)

“Safe?”

Natalie’s cheeks burned. The words had slipped out. “Nothing. Anyway, I have Niko to thank for a lot of things. He owns this whole building and when I applied to rent from him three years ago, the job here practically came with it.”

“He seems like a good man.”

“Yes, he is. Him and his wife, both.”

“Why does that make you sad?” Julian asked gently.

“Does it? No, it doesn’t,” Natalie said. “I’m just…tired maybe.” She smiled faintly. “Long day.”

She waited for the next comment or question, something about how her parents must be proud, or if her family lived nearby. But he said nothing and another silence descended.

She nibbled at her blueberry muffin and he took a bite of his croissant. A little flake clung to his lower lip.
Such a beautiful mouth.
A sudden urge to lean over and run her thumb along his lips came unbidden, and she flinched hard enough to upset her plate. The muffin rolled across the table.

Julian caught the pastry and returned it to its plate. “Are you okay?”

Natalie flushed to the roots of her hair.
Did that just happen?
Seriously?
“I just…you have something…on your lip.”

He wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Got it?”

“Uh, yes,” Natalie said. “I’ll try to tell you next time instead of throwing my food at you.”

He laughed loudly, and she laughed with him, her embarrassment evaporating.
How does he do that? Make me feel perfectly at ease and absolutely thunderstruck at the same time?

“I really enjoy talking to you,” he said. “If you don’t mind me saying.”

“No, not at all,” Natalie replied. “I like talking to you too.” A silence fell and after a few moments she held up her hands. “But jeez, we’re terrible at it!”

Julian grinned. “Cicero said ‘
silence is one of the great arts of conversation.’”

“Then we must be masters of the form.”

“
No, no, we’re just rusty when it comes to talking to new people. We can do this. Think of a topic, quick.”

“Ummm, travel.”

“Travel, brilliant. Here we go. Natalie Hewitt, do you travel?”

She grinned at his playfulness. “Julian Kovač, no I do not.”

“No? Are you sure?”

“Yes. I think I’d remember.”

“All right, let’s say I believe you.”

Natalie laughed. “Oh, that’s very kind of you.”

“
Why
do you not travel?”

“Not by choice. It’s just not in the budget at the moment.”

“Gotcha.” Julian held his arms out. “See? This is easy. We’re on a roll.”

“We are!” she laughed. “I even have a question for you: your last name is Croatian but your accent is…Spanish?”

“
Correcto
,” he said quickly. “But the subject is travel, and the question is—don’t think, just answer—if you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?”

“Venice.”

“Venice Beach?” He fished around in his pocket for his cellphone. “I’ll call you a cab. You could drive there tonight. Be there in the morning…”

“Oh stop,” she laughed. “Italy. Venice, Italy.”

“Mmm, that’s a bit more complicated.” He dumped his cellphone on the table—the latest iPhone, Natalie noticed—and leaned in. “Why Venice?”

“Because it’s…Italy. It’s pretty…and…” She waved her hands. “No, I’m not going to tell you why Venice.”

“Why not?

“Because. I just can’t. You’ll think I’m a sap. Or that I’ve seen too many romantic movies.”

“Ah, so it’s a romantic inclination.” Julian grinned innocently. “What, pray tell, is romantic about Venice, Italy?”

She tossed her napkin at him. “Oh, jeez, let me think…”

“You’re not supposed to think. Just answer.” He held out the napkin. “And I believe you dropped this.”

She burst out laughing and he watched her, as if he liked the sound of it. When she had subsided, he cocked an eyebrow at her expectantly. “Well?”

“Trust me, you don’t want to hear it,” Natalie said, the laughter fading from her voice. “I’ll get all wound up and start babbling away. Again.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“The other night I rambled on about Rafael Mendón and you just…Well, you left.” Natalie cleared her throat. “You seemed uncomfortable.”

Julian’s playful expression turned pained. “I’m very sorry if I left you feeling self-conscious. That was not my intention at all. I was just…thinking of other things. Stupid things that get in the way. But what you said…Your passion for…the writing. I liked that very much.”

Natalie felt a warm glow bloom in her stomach for the way he was looking at her. “Even so, I tend to get carried away. I know that.”

Julian tapped his fingers on the table. “All right, I confess I have ulterior motives for asking you about Venice.”

“Oh?”

“I want to hear you talk about something the way you talked about your favorite author.”

Natalie swallowed. “You do?”

“My mother once told me that you can see into the soul of a person when they speak of the place on this earth that means the most to them. Whatever the reason, having been there or not.”

Natalie felt the warm glow intensify. “So you just asked me a very personal question then, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I suppose I did.”

“Okay.” She rested her chin on her palm, a small smile on her lips. “You first.”

He sat back in his chair with a small laugh. “I suppose that’s fair.”

“I think so.”

“Rijeka, Croatia,” he answered after a moment. “A northern seaport city where my father was born. He worked in the shipyards before coming to America. I’ve never been there but have always wanted to go. I feel I
need
to go. He abandoned my mother and me when I was three years old and then reappeared when I was ten, only to die a month later.”

Natalie swallowed hard. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea…”

“How could you?” he asked gently. He turned his stunning blue gaze to the window. “I always thought that I was missing a piece of myself with his absence. More than a piece. There is half of me, my blood, my history that I don’t understand. I think that if I go to Rijeka, I will find those missing pieces, or at least the remnants of his spirit there, and perhaps fill in the holes.”

“Why don’t you go?” she asked softly.

“Because I’m afraid of what I will find.”

The silence that fell then was a thick one, full, but not unpleasant. Natalie had never met anyone who spoke like Julian did. Who thought about the world the way he did, and she suddenly had an overwhelming urge to read whatever it was he was writing.

“Your turn,” he said.

“My turn,” Natalie agreed. She heaved a breath. “I want to go to Venice because I saw a picture of the Grand Canal in a travel book once. The photo was taken at dusk, and the water was an amazing, brilliant blue. As blue as…” She looked at his eyes that were watching her intently and cleared her throat. “Uh, well, a stunning color. Lamps from the restaurants and cafés that lined the water cast this perfect golden hue along the edges. In the middle of the Canal there were a handful of gondolas, each with a lantern glowing at the front. The gondoliers who poled them wore their black and white striped shirts, and there were couples in each boat, huddled together.

“And there was one gondola sort of at the front. It had two men sitting in it, one playing an accordion, one with a violin under his chin. In this photo, the gondolier’s mouth was open and I just know that he was singing. I could hear the music and feel the warm air, and smell the water, and this man’s voice... it was beautiful. I want to go there and experience that beauty, surrounded by history and art. I think it would be…”

“Sublime?” Julian offered.

“Yes, exactly.” Natalie huffed a breath and wiped her eyes. “And there’s something else to know about me and that is I cry at the drop of a hat and it’s really embarrassing but I can’t help it.”

Julian’s smile was wistful and comforting at the same time. “My mother also said that tears flow when the soul experiences an emotion so potent the body can’t contain it.”

“She sounds like a poetic woman, your mother.”

“She was.” He glanced at the clock on the wall. “Closing time. I’ll walk you home.”

He waited for her while she locked up the café and again while she unlocked the gate to her stairwell.

“Goodnight, Natalie. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Goodnight, Julian.”

She hesitated for as a long as she dared, and when he did nothing she slipped inside the dark passage and watched him walk away.

October both raced and dragged by. The days of Julian’s absence from the café slowed time to a crawl. More often than not he was there, writing and then talking with her, but he’d also stay away for days at a time, no rhyme or reason to his schedule that Natalie could see but to torture her with his absence.

Marshall and Liberty begged her to come with them to an “epic” party on Stanyan Street on Halloween night. She declined and was mortified when they showed up in the café that night anyway.

Marshall was dressed as Gomez Addams, Liberty as Morticia. Liberty had made the costumes and done their make-up, and Natalie thought there must be a costume contest somewhere waiting for them to pick up first prize. Neither hid the fact they were looking for Julian. They blatantly inspected each customer, speculating over the young male patrons. Julian was late. Or he wasn’t coming. Natalie hoped it was the former and that he would arrive with serendipitous timing: right after Marshall and Liberty departed.

“Well?” Liberty tossed a lock of stiff black wig hair over her shoulder. “Where is he?”             

Natalie shrugged. “Not here.”

“Not here,” Marshall said. “Therefore he’s
not
around to
not
ask you out on a proper date. Ergo, you are free to meet up with us after you’re done slinging joe.”

Natalie wiped the counter with a rag. She had no retort. It had been a colossal mistake to tell her friends about Julian. Marshall was right: he hadn’t asked her to go outside the café; hadn’t made any romantic overtures of any kind. And yet, his attention to her was rife with warm, sweet emotion. The nights he came to the café were rich with delicious conversation and every moment at her apartment gate was filled with possibilities.
This
would be the night he asked her to dinner or a movie or perhaps…something more
.
But he did none of those things and she was too paralyzed by her own shyness to do anything but let the moments pass. He told her good night and she closed the door behind her, to be rewarded with a dark, empty stairwell, an empty apartment, a cold bed...

“I don’t feel up to it,” Natalie said now.

Liberty’s expression was compassionate under layers of black kohl and white paint. “Honey, come with us.”

“I can’t just leave the café. I’m working.”

“You’re off at eleven, right? For a party of this magnitude, you’ll be right on time. Come. Be our little Wednesday. You’ve got the big sad eyes for it.” Liberty smiled brightly and took a new tact. “You’ll meet some new people! Forget about that Julian guy for a bit. I think that might be good for you.”

“You two go ahead. I’m going to take a bath and get some sleep.”              

“Are you sure? Getting plastered might put things in perspective.”

“I don’t want to get drunk,” Natalie said.

“Why not? Afraid you’ll drunk-dial him?”

“No, I can’t. I…”

“What?”

“Nothing.” She glanced at them sideways and saw Liberty and Marshall exchange incredulous looks.              

“You don’t have his phone number, do you?”

Natalie wiped a ring of old moisture off the counter.

“Girl, forget that freak,” Liberty screeched. “He’s either a serious closet case or he’s stringing you along. Either way, he’s no good.”

“No good?” Natalie twisted the rag in her hand. “How could you even…? He’s more than good. He’s wonderful. You have no idea. I mean, there can be…
levels
between meeting a guy and…and sleeping with him.”

“Not
this
many levels,” Marshall muttered.

Liberty crossed her arms, the tattered black sleeves of her dress billowing and then settling around her. “You’re deluding yourself over something that’s never going to happen and I don’t think it’s healthy.”