Path of Love Page 10

  Chapter 7

  The guilt wasn’t there yet, but Erica could feel it coming. She’d actually bought a one-way ticket to Italy, having no idea when she’d be returning. The first week had spun by so easily that it had barely been an afterthought to ask Bridget if the room was available for a second one.

  “Sì! Sì! It is yours.”

  A week. She and Ridley had followed the same pattern with each village: Manarola, Monterosso, and Riomaggiore. They spent a full day exploring each tiny town and the nights in his bed making love. Twice they’d never even left his bed except to grab some takeout. She’d never done anything like that in her life.

  Of course she’d never had a lover like Ridley before. Actually, she’d never been with a man she thought of as a lover—it sounded very European. She’d had boyfriends, even affairs, but neither word fit whatever it was they had between them. Her most thoughtful prior lover had spent maybe half an hour in the preludes to actual sex—a few times, but not as a regular thing. Ridley had spent an entire afternoon making such gentle love to her that it had become one long blur of joy.

  She wasn’t fooling herself, or not much. She wasn’t expecting more than a fling with a man like Ridley Claremont III. He was handsome and wealthy and could have any woman he wanted. But at the moment, he wanted her, and she hugged herself tightly at the wonder of that knowledge.

  Initially, her plan had been to collect a trinket from each town, something to mark each day. But after the first day they’d spent in his bed together with nothing to show for it but a single pizza crust, she’d let go of that idea. Instead, she’d collected memories where they found them together—and she knew that she would be holding those memories close for a long time to come.

  One of her favorite memories would always be the church bells of the tall Corniglia church. Every evening at 7:30 (“Each town has a different time so that they don’t overlap,” Bridget had explained. “On the quiet evenings, you can hear three or four different ones from your little balcony.”) From Ridley’s room they could only hear the bells of Corniglia. But each night at 7:30, unless they were very, very involved in something, they would get up and dance to the church bells. It was like a slow children’s waltz, rung in a dozen tones of brass so that it echoed over the town. When they were otherwise occupied, they incorporated the rhythms in ways that made them both laugh.

  “Let’s go hiking,” she poked Ridley awake. It had fast become clear that he was far more of a night owl than she was. Getting him moving before midmorning was the exception, not the rule. Especially not if she woke him in the middle of the night, or he her, for an extra round of discovery.

  Ridley grumbled something unintelligible, snagged an arm around her waist, and drew her back to spoon against him.

  She now knew this game. If she settled there, he’d fall back asleep with an arm draped around her waist and the other serving as her pillow. If she pulled free, he’d let her go, though it might earn her a cute whimper of distress. Instead, she lay her hand on the back of his and slid it slowly lower, opening her legs to welcome his touch. A little wiggle as she pressed her behind more tightly against him and he was soon fully awake. Early mornings made no exception to his skills, and his attentions soon sent her soaring and ready to leap from the bed.

  “Lazybones,” she teased him as she stepped out of his shower and saw him still sprawled in bed.

  “Best view in the house,” he leered at her.

  “Hiking in five minutes.” Then she teased him by merely scooping up her nightgown and going naked out the door and up to her room. She wasn’t sure why, but she still changed there and came to his room at night. Maybe she needed the boundary knowing it wouldn’t last—she could retreat here and lick her wounds when it ended without everything reminding her of what she’d so briefly held. Maybe he needed the boundary but was too polite to say so. Either way, she’d certainly never walked naked out into a B&B hallway, even if no one came up here except Bridget later in the day.

  She trotted up the stairs to her private tower. First, she brushed her hair back, not quite long enough for a ponytail, but getting close. So many Italian women wore their hair long, she decided to give it a try. It made the washing and drying horribly inefficient (a decision she’d made as a teen), but it did look nice on the women she saw.

  Maybe it was time to live however she wanted to, rather than following only the path of what was most practical.

  Jeans, boots, and a blouse of smoke-gray cotton. She accented it with a gold scarf from Riomaggiore and a slather of sunscreen for her non-Mediterranean skin tone. She’d never been one to tan, but maybe if she lived here, she’d—

  Erica froze and studied her reflection in the mirror.

  Maybe if she lived here?

  Where had that thought come from? Even a princess in her tower should be smart enough to know that a fling was a fling and nothing more. Smart princesses didn’t build happily-ever-afters on men like Ridley any more than they should have on lying rat’s-ass ex-bosses. Ridley was not a man to stay in one place for long.

  Just enjoy it while it lasts. And think about whether or not the “living here” thought meant anything after he was gone.

  Her hand was halfway to the tiny jewelry box Ridley had bought for five euro from a street vendor in Monterosso—just big enough for her new necklace—when she stopped.

  That didn’t sound like her.

  Good-girl Erica would be sensible. Back away. Set herself up to ease the heartbreak that she knew she would feel when this ended. Ridley might not know how special he was, but she was fast beginning to. Good-girl Erica would buy a ticket for a week from now: set a boundary, draw a line on the calendar.

  And go back to what?

  She wasn’t going to go back to a rat’s-ass ex-boss. But neither was she going to find another Ridley Claremont.

  Good-girl Erica would know to end it now. Experience had taught her that she could be packed and gone before Ridley was out of his shower—he was a total hedonist about long, hot showers (he’d was also doing a splendid job of converting her to the joy of long, hot showers for two).

  Just cut it off before it had a chance to rip out her heart.

  But New-girl Erica reached out and opened the small clamshell, so cleverly hinged with a bit of tooled leather and tiny brass hooks, to extract and don her sea glass necklace. New-girl Erica didn’t shy away from pain. Because with the pain came the sweet, and the sweet was so very, very fine.

  * * *

  Ridley was trying to figure out what he was doing right.

  Amazing wake-up sex. Erica always delivered amazing sex: middle of the night, wake-up, or in the shower. Every woman had some time where it wasn’t amazing, where it was just sex—par for the course. Erica rocked his world every single time and, according to her, she wasn’t missing out either.

  They’d taken the train back to Vernazza. They were still a long way from repeating gelato flavors and today’s had been no exception. She’d selected the Caramello Al Sale—salted caramel. When he’d asked for a taste, she’d taken a bite and then kissed him deep and long—he could still taste it. It had been intimate, public, and sexy as hell.

  Her ears had been bright red by the time she pulled away, but her smile had been nearly blinding.

  He’d opted to be brave and try Pino Mugo—because she’d teased him about a lack of bravery in not trying something labeled Pine Tree. It was one of the only flavors to be labeled in English as well as Italian to avoid any mistakes. It even had a little pine branch laid over the gelato tray to doubly confirm it. He still felt as if he was inhaling the Pacific Northwest with every breath.

  And now, beneath another stunning Italian spring day, he was following an exceptionally fine ass up the trail out of Vernazza. He’d dated models; hell, he’d dated supermodels. But he now understood that some of the shine came off because that’s how he saw them—as the supermodel.

  Again that weird honesty that Erica embodied so thoroughly. When she’d
walked naked out of his room this morning, he’d been utterly mesmerized. That was his lover. They were past sex and on to being lovers. And damn, it looked good on her.

  There was no shadow over her, no extra layer blurring who she was: model, actress, heir to a Napa fortune, hot townie cheerleader.

  Erica was simply Erica. Through and through. Right to the core. And that unthinking honesty and purity of message from the inside all the way out was messing with his head.

  He stopped a moment to catch his breath from the sharp ascent. Erica, of course, didn’t appear the least bit winded. He could keep up with her, but that had as much to do with his longer legs as it did her stamina—the woman was a hiking machine.

  And this was apparently her idea of hiking. A trail connected the five towns of Cinque Terre. But the five towns were perched on the edges of cliffs, separated by a sea that might look tame but definitely wasn’t. The trail (really no more than a footpath) had connected some of the towns for centuries for commerce, and others for the first time just a century before after being so long apart.

  Already they’d climbed high above Vernazza. He shot a bird’s-eye photo that captured town, harbor, and fort all in an area he could cover with his hand. The footpath clung to the cliffside much as the towns did. A fall of fifty stories onto wave-thrashed rocks lay on the other side of a railing that would never pass an American inspection. Above the trail, the last of the town’s terraced vineyards was petering out. The stone walls were slumping; the vines overgrown and too long untended.

  It was his first chance to really inspect them closely as this last terrace was just chest high.

  “What are you looking at?” Erica had doubled back and slid under his arm in a move so natural that it was hard to imagine her ever not having done that.

  “The vines, the soil.” He reached out and dug a hand into the soil. “Rich enough to hold nutrients and moisture, but rocky enough to turn dry and challenge the grape.”

  “Grapes like being challenged?”

  “They do. Napa and Sonoma have topsoil going down forever, but I sometimes think the vines have it too easy. Up in Oregon they have dry, rocky soil. It doesn’t bode well for the big-bodied wines, but Pinot thrives there in a way that we can never reproduce. This place makes Oregon look like Sonoma, but it’s still good soil. You can see it in the vines. Stout root stock as big around as your arm.”

  She held up one of her slender arms. “You mean as big around as yours.”

  She then stroked a palm down his forearm making him aware of his own strength. No woman had ever made him so aware of himself. But she did it all the time in unthinking ways. Not just how she touched him, but how she looked up at him as well. The way she seemed permanently aware of where he was. They could wander a hundred feet apart in a busy crowd, and he could look up and see her looking at him as if he’d shouted her name across the entire market square.

  “Right, as big around as mine,” he made it suggestive and lewd. Which backfired when he remembered how amazing it felt to be all the way inside her, but the trail was too busy for a chance to do anything here.

  “You’re not that big, thank god,” she pointed at the vine. The woman he’d first met would never have said such a thing. The woman who’d graced his bed for a week hadn’t even blushed. She was changing and he decided it was for the better. Of course if Erica got any better than she already was, he was a dead man.

  “You can also see,” he forced his attention back to the vine, “how desperately these need tending.”

  “Water?”

  “Pruning. The latest pruning cuts are at least three seasons old—that’s years. Viticulture is thought of in growing seasons. And it was a slap-dash job at that. I guess these vines lie too far from town to be profitable anymore. Makes me sad.”

  She turned and they started up the trail once more. They walked side by side as much as the trail and the occasional passersby allowed them.

  Some were walking the trail from the heights of Corniglia to the seaside of Vernazza, the opposite of the direction Erica had chosen. Of course, she wouldn’t opt for the easy way. But there were others who didn’t as well.

  Calls of “Links. Links.” announced that Germans were fast overtaking them and asking for clearance to the left. They usually were remarkably fit couples with ski poles for balance and packs big enough that they could set up a base camp on Everest. Well, not that big, but ridiculous for a two-hour day hike. Germans were never unprepared.

  Chattering families, coaxing along little kids, were doing the hike as well. Once they were overtaken by a hoard—a hiking group of fifteen to twenty stormed past them on a particularly steep part of the trail as if they did this every day. Even Erica’s inner ibex couldn’t match that. Then a single old Italian man, who had to be at least sixty, walked by them as if the prior group had been standing still.

  “Wow,” was all she managed. She had on one of her thoughtful looks.

  “Spill it, hotshot.”

  She shook her head, which was unusual. It made him doubly curious. Not beneath a little subterfuge, he glanced up and down the trail. They were alone for the moment.

  He spun her into his arms and pinned her back against the cliff face—the trail was little more than a six-foot wide notch in the cliff at this point. He kissed her until her arms slid up around his neck and she did that gooey thing of melting against him.

  “Spill it,” he muttered, but covered her mouth again before she could answer.

  “Come on,” he teased, again not giving her time to respond.

  “If you just—Ow!” Ridley pulled back and clamped a hand over his mouth to check for blood. “You bit me!”

  “Not that hard,” she didn’t look regretful at all.

  “On the lip!” he pointed and accidentally jammed his finger against the sore spot making him curse again.

  “Just what you deserve. Come here. I’ll kiss it and make it better.” She went up on her toes and kissed him lightly. And it did feel a little better.

  “The kiss of the princess is magic.”

  “The court fool’s one isn’t bad either.” And she started up the next section of trail.

  They hiked along for another ten minutes or so and the silence seemed to be stretching thin. Actually, it was becoming pervasive. He looked around. Here they were, on the coast of the sea, high among rocks that should be covered with birds—and he didn’t see any.

  “No birds,” he broke the silence and his voice sounded overloud against the quiet breeze and their footsteps.

  “What? Oh. I hadn’t noticed.”

  They reached a wider section of the path. Or it would have been if not for a rock avalanche. A pile of boulders took up most of the width. Above them a massive net of heavy steel wire had been draped over the cliff. Any rock that broke free would slither down between cliff and net and hopefully not land on a tourist’s head.

  Erica sat on one of the boulders, which wasn’t like her. She always seemed to see what was going on around her. He debated moving her along, but didn’t know how well that would go over at the moment. She sat there toying with her necklace, rubbing each stone between her fingers as if polishing it. Something she only seemed to do when she was thinking the most deeply.

  “I was thinking back there… I guess this morning too…” She stared out at the ocean, her face strangely quiet.

  Since silence seemed to have cracked the dam, maybe he would try doing something atypical and try more of it. It wasn’t like him, but then he didn’t usually care that much about how someone felt past having a good time. Even that was selfish, he supposed. If his date was having a good time, then he was more likely to as well. He’d always thought of it as his “being positive feedback loop.” Maybe there was a “being quiet long enough for someone to think loop” as well.

  “I wondered what it would be like to be in that kind of shape. For them, in a way, it’s easy. Walk out your door here and it’s a workout. Steep streets, steep hills, gorgeous trai
ls right out your door.”

  “You’d have to live here.”

  “I figured that out myself,” Erica kept staring at the sea. Not some trivial thought then.

  “And this morning?”

  She nodded.

  “During or…” No, he didn’t want the answer to that, but she reached out and patted his knee.

  “Don’t worry, Ridley. When you’re making love to me, there is absolutely no thinking going on in this girl’s head, except More!”

  “Well, that’s a relief.” And surprisingly similar to his own response to her. He’d thought that was mostly a guy thing.

  “It was after. When I was up in my room getting dressed. I don’t know why it bothers me. I realized that I have nothing to go back to.”

  “Another job?”

  “For who? And why? Wrapping all my Good-girl Erica protectiveness around me again? What the hell’s the point of that?”

  “You swore.” There was something way deeper in what she was saying, but it was just making her more and more unhappy. So he latched on to his point. “You just swore.”

  “I did, didn’t I?” And her demeanor brightened.

  “You sure as hell did.”

  “I did,” she agreed in some surprise and he had to laugh at her.

  “Say, ‘I sure as hell did’.”

  “What’s the point? I already said it.”

  “Swearing isn’t a one-time license, Princess.” But he pulled her into his arms and kissed her temple before hauling her to her feet. “Come on. Too beautiful a day for moping.”

  “It is,” and once again she led off, slowly picking back up to her usual pace.

  As he followed, Ridley wondered if he’d just done the right thing. It had been his usual thing—find the funny. When women started getting all introspective, that was his cue to change the tune or step out of the picture.

  But Erica was wrestling with something deep and he’d just made her shove it back into the dark. What would it take for it to surface again? Probably something drastic.