Tuscan Heat (6 page)

“You must not miss out on seeing Firenze while you rest your ankle. Would you like to see something very much off the beaten path tomorrow? I will cancel my meeting, and take you myself on the motorcycle so you can heal. Say, ten o’clock?”

“Oh no, you don’t need to do that.”

“Of course not. But I want to do it.”

“Where were you thinking of going?” I asked, feeling shy.

“It is called La Specola, and it is one of the oldest science museums in the world. Since it has no famous art, we will have it as much to ourselves as we had Il Stibberto.”

“There are two museums where we won’t see other tourists? In Florence? In June? And you want to see both of them?”

He came over to me, with his motorcycle jacket over his shoulder. He put one hand on my cheek.

“I cannot help it. I want you all to myself.”

With those words and a last lingering kiss, he was gone.

I sat in the gathering twilight feeling stunned. Then I swore. I’d forgotten again to get his phone number.

I felt disgusting. I was probably an embarrassment to my pioneer ancestors, but in my mind there was no way a little sink rinsing could make clothes clean. After the Marco treatment, my underpants needed machine washing and real laundry soap. My tunic-and-capris airplane outfit wasn’t exactly the epitome of style in the first place, and being dingy didn’t help it.

I would have preferred to wear my new dress, but I didn’t think I could ride a motorcycle with a high hemline.

I didn’t want to spend my whole souvenir budget on clothes, but things were getting dire. The hotel staff was too polite to take official notice, but facts were facts. I was in their lobby wearing the same clothes for the third day in a row. I thought their sidelong glances at me said it all.

The throaty rumble of a Harley echoed across the piazza, and I darted away from their stylish censure.

“Good morning, Marco.”

“
Buon giorno,
Serafina.” He shook his hair free of the helmet and grinned. “Your ankle is better?”

I pointed at the brace. “Yes, but I’m not taking chances. At least, not with this.”

He took me into his arms and pressed his cheek against mine. With a sudden swoop, he bent me over backward and kissed me. I liked feeling little and feminine, and thanked him with a little extra tongue.

Someone zipping by on a Vespa honked and cheered. Marco pulled me back upright and waved.

In a moment we joined the gentle stream of traffic flowing down the narrow streets. We swung onto the Via de’ Tornabuoni, our bodies in perfect sync. The cathedral peeped at us in between the old buildings with modern shops. Hermés, Prada and Bulgari gave way to Burberry and Tiffany’s. We paused for a moment when traffic snarled in front of Santa Trinita.

“You should go in there,” called Marco over the engine noise. “There are frescos done by Michelangelo’s first teacher. Tradition says that the master himself helped chalk out the buildings, and perhaps this is where he did his first fresco painting.”

“I notice that you care mainly about the buildings. Such an architect.”

He laughed. I tightened my arms around his waist in reply.

The knot of scooters and pedestrians broke apart, and we roared across the bridge into the Oltrarno neighborhood. This side of the river had fewer palaces and more local people, at least on the road we were taking. I could have taken in the scenery for hours, but in minutes Marco swung the bike into a hidden parking garage.

I handed him my helmet and looked around. “Where’s the museum?”

“This is all part of a school. La Specola is but one tiny part of the complex.”

He wasn’t kidding about the tiny part. Again the museum employee—the only one there—spoke no English. We took our tickets and the photocopied map and pushed our way through a wooden door.

We were surrounded by glass display cases filled with carefully mounted seashells and other ocean denizens. These gave way to cases with moth-eaten animals that only a taxidermist could love. They were neatly organized and the cases were recently dusted, but the only sound was the faint hum of the fluorescent lights in fixtures that looked like they’d been installed in the 1950s.

I raised an eyebrow at Marco.

“These are very historic animals, Sara. The hippopotamus was a Medici.”

“I recognized the Medici nose.”

“That would have gotten you into trouble not too long ago,” he said, trying not to laugh. The room was so still that we were both nearly whispering, as if normal voices would break the spell that kept the animals from moving.

“Four hundred years is not too long ago?”

“Not to Florentines.”

We crossed into a room with walls completely covered in framed drawings of body parts. Below the drawings were small glass cases, each containing what looked exactly like…actual body parts. But what grabbed my attention were the three glass coffins in the center of the room. They were lined with faded satin sheets, with old satin pillows on one end. Each bed contained a sleeping person. Well, assuming that people were sleeping if their bodies had been partially flayed open and their internal organs neatly laid bare.

“They are made of wax. Realistic models from two hundred years ago, for students to learn about the human body without desecrating the dead,” said Marco.

The more I looked at them, the more confused I felt. The models were accurate in every detail, and I could remember anatomy classes that didn’t have such good models. I wanted to draw them even if I wasn’t sure I could convey how emotional they were. These things were only teaching aids, but their creator gave them real faces. The old man looked weary, even asleep. The young mother seemed to be dreaming, a little smile on her peaceful face. The young man broke my heart, with his hand up by his round and rosy cheek. These scientific models lay on soft beds and held rosaries, and I’d have done no less for them if I’d been the one building the display. I tried not to let Marco see the tears in my eyes.

“It is all right, Serafina,” he said, taking my hand in his. “We are something more than the sum of our parts, and I can feel it in this room in a way that I cannot in the fine museums and churches. I am glad you feel it too. The artist imagination, yes?”

I leaned my head on his shoulder. We stood there for a moment in silence.

Then I felt him chuckling. “What’s so funny?”

“I recognized the Medici nose.”

Our laughter didn’t break the mood so much as it transformed the mood. We had come full circle through the exhibit floor, and though we were in the final room, I could see the ticket desk through the glass in the door. I stopped by an ordinary plastic skeleton hanging on a wire. I reached up and moved its jaw in time with the words Marco had sung to me in my hotel room. “Con taaaaay, par tee roooooow…”

I couldn’t get any further before Marco broke up. The clerk glanced up and frowned at us, so Marco grabbed my arm. Together we ran out of the nearest door, barely making it outside before we shrieked with glee like children.

“I do not remember the last time I laughed so,” he said at last.

“You have a wonderful laugh,” I replied. I stretched my arms up to the sky. Something about being in the sunshine after seeing the models made me feel more alive than ever.

“Thank you. You have a wonderful accent. You again surprise me with your Italian. You keep saying you speak none, but then you start singing in the language.”

“That? You were singing it yesterday. I was only parroting.”

We were standing in a little formal garden. He put an arm around my waist and led me away from the door. “Ah. Well, your memory is excellent then.”

“Marco?”

“Mmm?”

“What do the words mean?” We seemed to have arrived at our destination. A graceful little alcove fronted with slender columns and occupied by an abandoned fountain. It seemed small, but it was possible to stand deep inside and be reasonably screened from view. My heart skipped a beat when he rubbed my palm with his thumb in a slow, suggestive circle.

“Oh, it is mostly nonsense, about places that don’t exist.”

“It didn’t sound like nonsense. It sounded happy when you sang it.”

He brought my palm to his lips, and the deliberate kiss he gave me made me shiver. “It is a love ballad, so it is happy. The singer is looking forward to spending time with a new friend. Appropriate, no?”

“Very.”

He took my face into his hands and leaned in. I met him halfway.

It was the kind of kiss that made me wish I was a poet and not a painter. Slow, hot and tender all at once until my toes were curling inside my shoes. He pulled away, but he didn’t step back. He kissed my eyelids, my nose, my cheeks and my jaw, raining down dozens of light little kisses until I felt like I was floating.

I sighed, content for a moment to accept what he offered. The alarms were going off in my head just as they had at the Stibbert, but it had been so long since someone cherished me. When he was done, he held me close.

“Thank you, Serafina.”

“For?”

“For seeing what I see in the museum.”

“Seems silly to thank me for that. It’s like thanking me for having brown eyes.”

“Ah, but you willingly shared yourself with me.”

I couldn’t argue with that. Instead, my stomach growled. We started laughing again.

“Sorry, lover,” I said. I stood on tiptoe to kiss him quickly.

“How is your ankle? Could you take a little walk?”

“What did you have in mind?”

What he had in mind was a picnic “in a nice garden.” We stopped at a little hole-in-the-wall shop that sold bread, cheese, fruit and wine in a string bag I slung over my back. Back on the bike, we zipped past the sea of easels in the piazza in front of the Pitti Palace. I grinned, thinking of Marco’s horror at the thought that I might want to join them. We rumbled up around the side of the palace. The sleepy-looking guard stepped forward with his hands outstretched, but as soon as Marco lifted his visor, the gesture changed to a welcoming wave.

I waited for Marco to park the motorcycle. “You know the owner?” I asked. It was getting to be a ritual with him.

“Not this time,” he said, grinning. “I did some work here when the summer began, as a charitable donation. They said I might use the employee entrance from then on, and I thought you might like to see something that is actually on the tourist map for a change.”

We had been climbing up a gravel path between tall hedges. The view opened up. I knew the Boboli Gardens were right behind the palace, but it’s one thing to know that and another thing to see the sheer size and grandeur of the grounds. My entire field of vision was filled with perfectly manicured lawns, shrubs and raked gravel paths. Graceful carvings with a patina of age
smiled down on us from their precisely placed pedestals. Near the top of the hill, an enormous fountain beckoned us with a rainbow emerging from its spray. This was what he’d called a nice garden for a picnic.

“I love Florence,” I muttered under my breath.

“Everyone does,” agreed Marco. He took our lunch from me, and he tucked my hand into his elbow. Although the grounds were crowded with tourists, in a surprisingly short amount of time we were sitting in a shady nook. Framed like a miniature painting by a gap in the hedge, the dome of a church shone in the sun.

I sliced the cheese while Marco poured the wine. He was humming to himself.

“You’re singing that song again.”

He looked surprised. “I am. Well, I blame you, Serafina, you got it into my head.”

“Sing something else then,” I suggested.

“Hmm. There was one song I learned long ago, one that makes me think of you.”

I tried not to fidget. The sweetness of the moment after seeing the bodies had been one thing, but I was back to being sure I wanted to keep things more down-to-earth. I reached out and took one of the wineglasses and replaced it with a cheese sandwich. “Oh?”

“Ahem.” He took a deep breath, and started singing. “She was a fast machine, she kept her motor clean, she was the best damned woman that I have ever seen. She has the nicest eyes, telling me no lies, and she knocked me out with those American thighs—”

I nearly spit the wine across the clearing. “AC/DC? You’re singing AC/DC to me in Florence?” I choked out between giggles.

“You asked if I knew another song!” he said in mock protest.

“You got the words wrong.”

“No, I did not. You do not have the sightless eyes, you have very nice eyes.”

“Thank you,” I said, when I could breathe again.

“Now we are even. We have made each other laugh.”

“Even is good.”

He moved a little closer and put his hand on my leg. “But in one way, we are not even.”

I pressed a strawberry to his lips. He sank his teeth into the fruit as slowly as he could without losing any of the juice, and my nipples tightened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Orders.”

“Wouldn’t you rather think of them as suggestions?”

“It is still my turn to give you…suggestions.”

I squirmed a little. “Didn’t the shower count?”

“Two to one. You got the roof and the grotto. I can only claim your bathtub.”

“You know, this kind of scorekeeping isn’t healthy.” I was trying to keep my face straight, but there must have been a sparkle in my eye, because he leaned in.

“You don’t think keeping balance between a man and a woman is healthy?” He was so close that I wet my lips and smiled with anticipation. He groaned. “Do you have any idea how exciting you are to me?”

Without waiting for an answer, he put his mouth on mine. His tongue explored my mouth with confidence. The heat of his body warmed my skin even though we weren’t quite touching. He tasted like strawberries and wine, and I couldn’t get enough.

We were sitting close together with our legs stretched out. He shifted us around until his broad back shielded us from anyone who might happen by and slipped his hand in between our
chests. With the flat of his palm he massaged one of my breasts until he heard my breathing speed up, and then he gently pinched my nipple. I cried out, the sound muffled by his kiss.

I pulled back, though I stayed close to his face. “You’re crazy,” I muttered. “This is awfully public.”

“Oh, I was not thinking about sex.”

“You weren’t?” I put my hand between his legs and his hard cock surged against my fingers. I reached for the zipper, but he caught my wrist.

“You promised to say yes. Say yes to what I offer you.”

“What are you offering?”

He took my earlobe in between his teeth and nibbled. “A chance to do nothing,” he whispered as soon as I shivered.

“I don’t understand.”

“Just say yes.”

“Yes.”

He pulled away. “Now you must do as I say. Lean back against your hands, the way I sat on the bench. Spread your knees a bit. Make room for me to kneel in front of you.”

“Orders, orders, orders.”

“You do not like it?

I couldn’t lie. I had always been the one to take charge with Larry, and there was something so hot about letting this man lead the way. “It’s not bad.”

He locked eyes with me, and with a little smile on his face, he reached for my breast. “Do nothing, Serafina. Do not react.”