Lost in Carmel Read online

  “It's a date.”

  He kissed her hand again, then bit his lip, letting her hand fall to her side. “Buona notte, Natalie.”

  23 The Gilded Cage

  After last night's buona notte, she laid awake cataloging every look and every smile. Repeating every word she could remember, searing it into her brain, like a mantra, lest it be lost among the mundane details of the day. Jumbling around her tired mind was Tess's school schedule, Chloe's flight back to the states, and Maria's menu plans for the week.

  But it was Nico's eyes that kept her awake. The hazel depths she'd fallen into when she looked up and said, “Do I know you?”

  “Yes, we've met many times.”

  Over and over she looked up and said, “Do I know you?” It was a song playing in the back of her mind and she fell asleep listening to the soundtrack.

  September had one last day to offer and she'd saved her best for last. Wearing her brightest colors, she dazzled as if begging to be remembered. Natalie wanted to press it between the pages of a favorite book. Years from now when she peeled it from its protective paper wrapping, the edges would be fragile and brittle, but the colors would still be brilliant and true. And when she held it in her hands, all the memories would fall around her like leaves in the wind.

  The early autumn sun splashed its way across the piazza. Warmth from cobblestones beneath Natalie's sandaled feet was nothing compared to the warmth in her chest when she saw Nico already sitting at his little table. Waiting. Waiting for her. A smile unfolded across his face as he stood to welcome her with a kiss on both cheeks. His lips on her skin.

  “You are more beautiful in the sunlight, Natalie.”

  She loved the way he refused to play games. If he thought she was more beautiful in the sunlight, why not say it? She'd never met someone so open and without guile. He was self-possessed without a hint of arrogance. When she listened to him last night, she heard a man without walls. Unable to imagine what that might feel like, she stood on the other side of her own walls and watched him in envy.

  She knew what she had to do.

  “Sit.” Nico pulled out her chair and sat next to her. “How did you sleep last night?”

  “Very little.” She grinned. “I had a lot on my mind.”

  “Really, like what?” He leaned in closer, chin in hand.

  “Like my daughter's schedule at school...” Natalie trailed off with a non-committal shrug of her shoulders, but Nico caught her sideways glance that said something else.

  “Oh, too bad. I slept like a baby.”

  “Well that's probably because you're not keeping a secret.”

  She saw the cloud sweep across his eyes.

  “Are you keeping a secret?” He leaned back, an involuntary protective stance, moving his heart further away.

  Taking a deep breath, she looked him in the eye. “My name's not Natalie Lindstrom.”

  “Okay.”

  “It's Natalie Hampton.”

  The puzzled look on his brow remained.

  “That doesn't ring a bell?”

  “Should it?”

  “Not necessarily.” She laughed nervously, momentarily flustered. “Anyway, I'm supposedly a big-shot movie star from Hollywood.”

  Nico's eyes widened, as a faint recognition slid behind his gaze. He studied her, and Natalie could see him trying to fit the puzzle piece from Los Angeles into the unassuming Piazza Farnese. “Are you hiding, Natalie Hampton?”

  “I'm always hiding. Hiding from the press. Hiding from the crowds.” She shook her head. “Turns out, though, I've been hiding from myself most of all.”

  Nico placed his hand on hers, giving her the strength to speak freely. “Tell me.”

  “When I came here, I was in really bad shape. At the end of my rope, so to speak. Everything in my life was unraveling. I came here for peace and quiet... and to heal. A divorce like mine is going to provide headlines for months. My main focus in on my daughter and I'm hoping that the circus won't catch up with us over here. I didn't mean to lie. It's just that I have to be careful.”

  “Of course. I understand.” His voice was soft and low, and he looked around the piazza as if he were already protecting her from intruders.

  “But you were so open last night,” she continued. “The more you talked, the worse I felt for keeping so much inside.”

  “You don't owe me anything.” He leaned closer and took her hand in his. “But I'm glad you told me. I felt you were holding something back. Now it makes sense.”

  “I'm sorry I lied.”

  “Not lying. You just weren't ready to tell, yet. I understand.”

  “You have no idea how delightful it was to step out from behind Natalie Hampton's shadow, for one night.”

  “The princess escaping from her gilded cage?”

  “Something like that.”

  Nico's smile was tender with a hint of sympathy. “I liked Natalie Lindstrom, but I think I might like Natalie Hampton, even more. She has courage.”

  While they were talking, Nico's hand curled around hers until their fingers joined together in a show of solidarity. Natalie looked down at them now, intertwined, locked together, braver than the two of them dared to be.

  “I'm trusting you.” She looked at him, a small piece of the wall crumbling beneath the words.

  “You're safe with me.” Nico rose to the occasion. A knight in shining armor waiting for orders from his queen.

  Looking into Nico's eyes, Natalie found what she was looking for. They were the same eyes she'd stared into last night when Nico thought she was Natalie Lindstrom. Nothing had changed, except for the fact that she'd stepped out of her lie.

  She placed the weight of it all on the café table. Brushed her hands of it and left it there. Without any evidence to back up her claim, she knew that her secrets were safe with this man.

  24 Espresso

  Their afternoons were exclusive. A sacred time carved out of stone, just for the two of them. She loved the idea that Nico only had morning classes, leaving afternoons free, until Tess came home from school.

  During those hours they were an island unto themselves sitting at a little café table in Piazza Farnese. Hands reaching out as stories tumbled over one another like river water rushing over the rocks. Natalie never knew she had so much to talk about.

  When her words ran dry, she turned to Nico and became a bottomless vessel as he poured his story into her open hands. Her fingers trembled under the narrative of a wife named Claudia and the accident that changed the lives of everyone around her.

  A beautiful woman, wife and mother, reduced to a shell of her former self for four long years. The only sounds coming from her hospital bed were the sounds of machines pumping life into a lifeless body. Natalie watched Nico’s face as he struggled to condense a lifetime into a short story. The pain he still carried in his back pocket now wrapped around the jagged words she held in her hands. Terms like cerebral edema, cerebral atrophy, and a score of one on the Glasgow Coma Scale that had become second nature to him over the years, sailed over her head in an undiscernible fog. Whatever terminology you wanted to string together in a diagnosis, didn’t change the fact that Claudia was gone—in every way that mattered.

  “How long were you married before the accident?”

  “Sixteen years.” The words came out on an exhalation. “But I loved her forever.”

  Natalie loved that he didn't even try to paper over the relationship he had with Claudia.

  “We were high school sweethearts,” he said, the memory playing across his face. “Then I had to go and be a jerk about it. I left her to go to America. We each went our separate ways. I had lovers, she had hers.” He shook his head with a smile. “But when I came home, we found one another again. And I never let go.”

  She looked up at him, and into the blue-gray eyes that had been forced to watch as love slipped away. Day by day.

  Filled with admiration for this man, she wondered, how had he done it? How had he not fallen a
part? Her pain was nothing compared to his, and she felt foolish and weak in comparison.

  Listening and watching him tell as much of the story as he was willing, she felt herself being pulled into him. Everything about him was authentic and she wanted to wrap her arms around him and hold him until the pain in his eyes went away.

  While she worried about Tess, Nico had children of his own to think about. A son and a daughter, both away at college. Marius in Milan and eighteen-year-old Caterina spending a semester in America. Caterina was staying with Nico's sister, Angelina, and going to Columbia. Like father, like daughter.

  “Of course, I balked at sending Caterina across the ocean so soon after her mother's death,” Nico said. “But Angelina convinced me that a change of scenery would do her good. Angelina will watch over her niece like a mama and I'll return the favor by checking up on Angelina's son, Pietro, who lives here in Rome.”

  “Sounds like a good trade-off.”

  “I have to do what's best for my children, not what's best for me. If it was up to me, I'd keep her at home, where I can hug her every night.”

  He was so open and brave, never couching his words, Natalie thought.

  “It's important that Caterina get more comfortable with her English.”

  “I'm so jealous that you speak both languages fluently. I feel like an underachiever.”

  “But you're the lucky one.” Nico grinned. “You already speak English. The international language for all business.”

  “Yes, lucky me.”

  “Besides,” Nico shrugged, “Angelina wants me to get on with my life. I've been living in limbo for a long time.”

  Natalie's lips curved into a faint smile of recognition, remembering how she'd recently stepped out of the void.

  “Are you ready for an adventure?” Nico asked the next day when they met.

  “Yes,” she said before she could think twice.

  “Then follow me.”

  Taking her by the hand, Nico led her to a little scooter parked away from the tables.

  “Your chariot, my lady.” He grinned.

  Natalie looked at the scooter, then down at the dress she was wearing, then back at Nico with a grin of her own. She wasn't about to let a little thing like a dress get in the way of an adventure. Nico swung his leg over the blue Vespa and kicked it off its kickstand. Fingers reached out to her and she slid her fingertips across his as he pulled her towards him.

  Taking her seat behind him, she tucked her dress under her legs, before circling Nico's waist with her arms, wondering if he could feel her heart beating as her chest pressed against his back.

  The scooter wound its way through hidden alleyways and back streets. Nico dipped and turned and maneuvered the bike between buildings and underneath clotheslines full of the days wash.

  As they ducked behind the lush vines hanging from a small bridge, she looked back over her shoulder for one more look at the magical scene. She couldn't believe she was zipping through Rome on the back of a scooter with her arms wrapped around James Bond who smelled like sheets hanging out on the line, with just a hint of musk underneath.

  The tiny alleyway they were in came to a dead end and the only way out was to jump headlong into oncoming traffic.

  “Hold on,” Nico said over his shoulder as he found a hole big enough to slide into.

  Natalie shut her eyes and tucked her chin behind his shoulder. They picked up speed to keep pace with the onslaught and Natalie was reminded that Roman traffic was no place for the timid.

  At the next stoplight cars pulled up to the mark, tires inching over the line in their bid for a head start. Scooters swarmed in, filling every opening between cars. Traffic lanes ignored, as riders nudged their mounts closer to the starting gate in this modern-day chariot race. Engines revved in anticipation, and Natalie felt adrenaline coursing through her veins.

  The light turned green and the chase was on. Nico zipped in and out of traffic like he was dancing and soon Natalie lightened the death grip around his waist long enough to enjoy the exhilaration of the wind in her hair and the power of an engine between her legs, that felt sexual.

  She couldn't remember ever feeling this free. Though she had ties to other things, half-way around the world, today she slipped the binds from her wrist and let them fall. She turned her head to see them trailing behind her, like the tail of a kite until the breeze carried them away.

  Turning off the main strip, Nico nudged the bike down another narrow street until they came to a stop in front of a little coffee shop. Saldo's Caffe Bar.

  “Saldo's?” She cocked her head to the left as she planted her feet on solid ground.

  “The same.”

  Nico took her hand and led her through the door of his father's old store, the aroma wrapping around them in a coffee scented knot, as soon as they entered. Natalie breathed deeply, filling her nostrils with the iconic scent of Italy.

  “Zio,” the handsome young man yelled from behind the counter.

  “Pietro.”

  Much back slapping followed, and Natalie smiled at the open affection between the two men. Nico held Pietro's face in his hands, then swallowed him in a hug. Nico turned to Natalie and waved her over.

  “Natalie, meet my nephew, Pietro Nevi. My sister, Angelina's boy. Pietro, this is Natalie.”

  Pietro wiped his hands on his apron as he came around the counter to grab Natalie's hand in both of his. The surprised look on Pietro's face morphed into one of pure pleasure as he looked at Natalie then back at Nico. It was obvious the young man was unused to his widowed uncle walking in with a woman on his arm and Natalie couldn't help feeling a little special.

  “Let Pietro show you what real coffee tastes like.” Nico steered her to the counter.

  “Yes, please. Apparently, I’ve never had real coffee.” Natalie grinned.

  She remembered a long lecture about coffee on their first date. The professor in his animated state railed against the bastardization of Italy's gift to the world. But as usual, the world sniffed in indifference and added or subtracted from the original recipe at will. Americans being the worst offenders. Of course.

  “So, you're a coffee snob?” she'd teased over spaghetti carbonara.

  “I prefer to call myself a purist.”

  When talk had brought him around to his father's shop, she'd detected a note of sadness just below the surface. “Of course, Papa wanted me to work there. I grew up there. I was working before I could see over the counter. I can do it in my sleep. That's how I put myself through school in America. I worked as a barista on 114th and Broadway.

  “But it wasn't just the coffee that made Saldo's a hit. It was Saldo. My father was larger than life. People came from miles away to be in his light as well as grab their morning shot of espresso. He knew everyone by name. Never forgot a face. Aside from the fact that I had my own dreams, I could have never lived up to Saldo. I don't have that personality. But my nephew does. So, Pietro took over his grandfather's business and everything is as it should be. Except for the times I regret the disappointment I saw on my father's face.”

  “I know that look and I know that feeling,” Natalie had commiserated.

  Now she turned her attention to Nico who was lecturing in front of the class.

  “Espresso, misunderstood by most westerners as a kind of roast is not a roast at all, but a method.”

  Natalie nodded, chin in hand, elbow on the counter.

  “High pressure water is forced through small amounts of finely ground coffee, extracting a small, concentrated amount. Intensity is the key.”

  “Coffee magnified.” Natalie grinned.

  “Exactly.” Nico nodded at his pupil. “Why do you think we call it a shot?”

  “That's what I was thinking,” Natalie said. “Everyone bellies up to the bar and shoots it down like a shot of whiskey. Where in America we sit and take our time. We linger over coffee. And it's odd to me, that in this instance Italians and Americans are reversed. Usually it's the Italians
taking their time and we're the ones accused of being in a hurry.”

  “That's because espresso is fragile,” Nico countered. “It doesn't like to sit around for very long.”

  “I see.”

  Natalie let her gaze drift around the little shop, taking in the homey atmosphere, the wooden bar polished to a deep shine and the large marble countertop that ran the length of the back wall. Bottles and canisters were lined up on glass shelves behind the counter, everything tucked neatly into its place. The large espresso machine gleaming in gold and copper having pride of place.

  To Natalie's left was a picture on the wall of a distinguished older gentlemen. Life had etched her story on his face, leaving a trail of silver hair in her wake, but the mischievous smile of a man who had charmed many a female in his time was still in place. She walked over and stood beneath the picture, looking up into Nico's eyes.

  “Is this your father?”

  Nico's grin was wide and proud. “That's Saldo. We have a saying here at Saldo's.” Nico was behind the counter now, his arm thrown over his nephew's shoulder like a couple of schoolboys preparing to recite a Boy Scout pledge. “Nero come la notte, dolce come l'amore e caldo come l'inferno, that is to say, as black as the night, as sweet as love, and as hot as hell.”

  Natalie applauded. Like father, like son. Nico was adorable.

  Behind the counter, Pietro was all business, face scrunched up in concentration as he ground the beans then transferred the powder to a portafilter, where he tamped it down with a sure touch.

  “The crema, the frothy layer on top, is really not cream at all.” Nico was giving the play by play as Pietro worked, and Natalie tried hard not to smile. “It comes from the release of carbon dioxide when the espresso is extracted under such pressure.”

  Finally, a demitasse cup of the dark brown elixir was slid across the counter with the precision of one transferring plutonium and both Pietro and Nico stood back waiting for her pronouncement.

  Natalie studied the layer of crema that had the look of honey-colored beaten egg whites.