“Gadgets. I’m starting to like this.”
“Good.” She whipped off the tea towel she’d wrapped at her waist. “Now, that’s enough talk. Turn off the stove and get naked.”
He yelped and dropped his knife. “You nearly made me slice off my finger.”
“As long as it’s just your finger.” She grinned and began unbuttoning her blouse. “Who says I can’t be spontaneous?”
“Not me. Okay, I’ve got my breath back.” He watched the buttons open. “What time is it?”
“Almost eight.”
“Damn. Company’s coming any minute.” He reached for her, but she frowned and dodged.
“I thought Giulia and Vittorio canceled on us.”
“I invited Harry.”
“You don’t like Harry.” She took another step back and began fastening up her buttons.
He sighed. “What gave you that idea? He’s a great guy. Would you mind leaving a few of those open? And Tracy’s coming, too.”
“I’m surprised she accepted. She wouldn’t even look at him today.”
“I didn’t exactly tell her I’d invited him.”
“And isn’t this going to be a pleasant evening?”
“It couldn’t be helped,” he said. “Things bottomed out between them this morning, and Tracy’s been dodging him ever since. He’s pretty upset.”
“He told you all this?”
“Hey, guys share. We have feelings, too.”
She lifted an eyebrow.
“Okay, maybe he’s a little desperate and I’m the only one around he can talk to. The guy’s a total screw-up when it comes to women, and if I don’t help him out, they’re going to be here forever.”
“Yet this total screw-up managed to stay married for eleven years and father five children, while you-”
“While I have an idea I think you’ll like. An idea, by the way, that has nothing to do with the Battling Briggses, other than the fact that we have to get rid of them to pull it off.”
“What kind of idea?” She leaned down to pick up some mushroom stems he’d dropped on the floor.
“A little sexual costume drama. But we need the villa to do it justice, which means that the whole family and their baby-sitters have to go.”
“A costume drama?” She let the stems fall back to the floor.
“A sexual costume drama. I’m thinking nighttime. Candlelight. A thunderstorm if we’re lucky.” He picked up her glass and rolled the stem in his fingers. “It seems the unscrupulous Prince Lorenzo has caught sight of a feisty peasant woman in the village, a woman no longer in the first blush of youth-”
“Hey!”
“Which makes her all the more appealing to him.”
“Darn right.”
“The peasant woman is known throughout the land for her virtue and good works, so she fights off his advances, despite the fact that he’s the best-looking dude in the region. Hell, in all of Italy.”
“Only Italy? Still, you should always put your money on a virtuous woman. He doesn’t have a chance.”
“Did I mention that Prince Lorenzo is also the smartest dude in the region?”
“Oh, well, that definitely complicates things.”
“So what does he do but threaten to burn the entire village if she won’t submit to him.”
“The cad. Naturally she says she’ll kill herself first.”
“Which he doesn’t believe for a minute, since good Catholic women don’t kill themselves.”
“You do have a point.”
He drew a descriptive arc with his knife. “The scene opens on the night she delivers herself to the prince’s deserted, candlelit villa. The same villa, coincidentally, that sits at the top of this hill.”
“Amazing.”
“She arrives in the dress he sent her that afternoon.”
“I can see it. Simple and white.”
“Bright red and slutty.”
“Which only makes her virtue more apparent.”
“He wastes no time in preliminaries. He drags her upstairs-”
“Scoops her up in his arm and carries her upstairs.”
“Despite the fact that she’s not exactly a featherweight-but luckily he works out. And once he gets her into his bedroom, he makes her take off her clothes slowly… while he watches.”
“Naturally he’s naked as he watches, because it’s very hot in the villa.”
“And even hotter in that bedroom. Did I tell you how good-looking he is?”
“I believe you mentioned it.”
“So the time comes when she’s forced to submit to him.”
“I don’t think I’m going to like this part.”
“That’s because you’re a control freak.”
“And, coincidentally, so is she.”
He bowed to the inevitable. “Just as he’s ready to force himself on her, what should she catch sight of out of the corner of her eye but a pair of handcuffs?”
“They had handcuffs in the eighteenth century?”
“Manacles. A pair of manacles lying just within her reach.”
“Convenient.”
“While his lust-glazed eyes are focused elsewhere”-Ren’s own lust-glazed eyes focused on her breasts-“she reaches behind him, grabs the manacles, and snaps them around-”
“I knocked, but nobody answered.”
They pulled apart and saw Harry standing in the doorway looking miserable. “We used to do that thing with the handcuffs,” he said glumly. “It was great.”
“Ah.” Isabel cleared her throat.
“You could have knocked,” Ren grumbled.
“I did.”
Isabel grabbed a fresh bottle of wine. “Why don’t you open this? I’ll get you a glass.”
He’d barely finished pouring when Tracy came in. She bristled with hostility at the sight of her husband. “What’s he doing here?”
Ren pecked her cheek. “Isabel asked him. I told her not to, but she thinks she knows everything.”
In another lifetime Isabel would have defended herself, but she was dealing with insane people, so what was the point?
“This seemed the best way,” Harry said. “I’ve been trying to talk to you all day, but you keep running away.”
“Only because you make me sick.”
He flinched but persevered. “Come outside, Tracy. Just for a few minutes. There are some things I need to say to you, and I have to do it privately.”
Tracy turned her back to him, wrapped an arm around Ren’s waist, and rested her cheek on his arm. “I should never have divorced you. God, you were a great lover. The best.”
Ren glanced over at Harry. “Are you sure you want to stay married to her? Because right now I’ve got to say I think you could do a lot better.”
“I’m sure,” Harry said. “I’m very much in love with her.”
Tracy lifted her head like a small animal sniffing the air, only to decide that what she smelled was unpleasant. “Yeah, right.”
Harry hunched his shoulders and turned to Isabel, the shadows in his eyes making him look like a man with nothing left to lose. “I’d hoped to do this privately, but apparently that’s not going to happen, and since Tracy won’t listen, I’ll tell you, if you don’t mind.”
Tracy seemed to be listening, and Isabel nodded. “By all means.”
“I fell in love with her the moment she dumped her drink in my lap. I thought it was an accident. I’m still not sure whether to believe her that it wasn’t. There were all kinds of good-looking guys at that party tripping over each other to get her attention, but it hadn’t occurred to me even to try, not just because of her physical beauty-and God knows she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen-but because of her… because of this glow she had. This energy. I couldn’t take my eyes off her, but at the same time I didn’t want her to know I was watching. Then she dumped her drink, and I couldn’t think of one thing to say.”
“He said, ‘My fault.’ “ Tracy’s voice caught on a little hitch. “I dump the drink, and the idiot says, ‘My fault.’ I should have known right then.”
He still paid no attention to her, focusing on Isabel instead. “I couldn’t think. It felt like my brain had gotten a shot of novocaine. She was wearing this silver dress that dipped low in the front, and she had her hair up, except it wouldn’t stay up and these curls had fallen down her neck. I’d never seen anything like it. Anything like her.” He gazed into his glass. “But as beautiful as she was that night…” His voice grew thick. “As beautiful as she was then…” He swallowed. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this.” He set his glass on the counter and disappeared through the garden door.