Secrets (37 page)
Definitely true.
“You’d make up all sorts of excuses.”
She jutted her chin. “I don’t make excuses.”
He laughed. “Then you kiss me.”
Waves of shock. How could he totally disarm her with a thought? She took up the only weapon she could find. “I don’t kiss the cook.”
His gaze on her mouth might as well have been a kiss. “But now we’re partners.”
“I said I’d think about it.”
A car pulled into the drive. Rese jerked a glance over her shoulder. A charcoal Mercedes, man and woman, just the sort to be making the wine country tour and staying at her bed-and-breakfast. They sat while he closed the sunroof, then climbed out and eyed the villa.
How different could this be from directing her crew or making a bid?
Lance clamped his palm to her lower back. “Want me to handle it?”
No way. She had let him take over yesterday—and had the pierced ears to prove it. She pulled herself up stiffly. “I can do it.”
A gentle knock sounded and the couple came inside. The slight man said, “Hello. Mike and Roberta Taylor. We have a reservation.”
Lance turned her with his hand still planted in her back. His easy smile. “Hi.” Their feet crossed the room, two couples coming together. Lance held out his hand. “Lance Michelli. And this is Rese Barrett.”
She held out her hand and shook twice.
Lance released her lower back. “Nice drive in?”
“Lovely,” Roberta said. “We can’t wait to get up into the vineyards.”
“Do you have a plan?” He was warm and engaging, the perfect host. Roberta took a guidebook from her purse.
Lance told her, “You can call ahead for tours and tastings,” then motioned toward the small table with the guest book. “If you’ll just sign in.” He explained the setup and took their credit card.
Rese could have done all that. Roberta sent her a smile, then looked up and around the front room. “This is lovely.”
She could tell her everything that had gone into it, but doubted the petite redhead wanted to know.
Lance said, “Rese will show you to your room,” and handed her the key from the thin cabinet above the guest book.
She took it from him. “This way.” Her voice was flat but audible. She led the Taylors up the stairs to the Redwood, unlocked the door and waited while they did a quick inspection. Then she surrendered the key to Roberta.
“If you need anything, Lance or I will be around.”
They thanked her, but she was already heading down the hall, down the stairs to the parlor and through the dining room to the kitchen where Lance had taken out his phone. He must not have dialed yet, because he lowered it when she stopped beside him. “I had it under control.”
“Oh. Those moments of dead silence were for effect?”
She frowned. “What moments?”
“The ones before I stepped in and greeted them for you?”
Had it been that way? The dull lump in her stomach suggested it had. She gripped her hands together.
He pulled her close. “We make a great team.”
He kissed her mouth with businesslike precision—what someone might call soundly, the period at the end of the sentence. He’d made his point and punctuated it?
“I thought you weren’t going to do that.”
“You wanted me to.”
“I did not.”
“Better run a check on your body language.” His mouth pulled at the corners as he leaned in close again. “You all but begged.”
“Oh! You…” Unable to come up with a word fierce enough to fit the choler, she stomped his instep, and he jerked back, wincing.
She clenched her hands. “I never beg.”
With a limp forward, he pressed her to the counter. “You are so tough, aren’t you?” The amusement was gone from his eyes, replaced by a fiery intensity. “It would be so humiliating to actually need someone.”
“I don’t—”
“Well, here’s a flash for you. You were created to know and serve God. Beyond that, you came from
my
rib.”
A fierce huff escaped her lips. Of all the arrogant … His rib? She had a sudden flash of a storybook with two people in a garden and a snake whispering with Alanna’s voice. She swallowed tightly. “That garden of Eden myth is a children’s story. Your God is no more real than Mom’s fantasies.”
The tension seeped from him. His grip softened. “You’re wrong. God is real.”
“You’ve seen him?”
His glance gentled. “In every firefighter’s face. In every volunteer who sifted rubble for body parts. In the tear streaks of people who hadn’t lost anyone. There is a God, Rese. And there is evil. And nobody stands alone before either.”
Lance could not put out of his mind Rese’s face as he’d laid the truth on her. It was an uneasy, humbling thing to put your trust outside yourself. To know that another ordered your days—and numbered them. As C. S. Lewis put it,
“We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be
.”
Lance knew how painful it could be. He had to trust it would all be for the best, and try like anything to make it so. In their phone conversation, his sister had told him Nonna was fighting. She could not talk yet. After nearly six weeks, she could still form little more than rudimentary sounds that only made her angrier. Momma thought if she didn’t try so hard it would come easier, but Lance understood Nonna’s panic. If he was trapped inside himself, he’d fight every second of it.
Talking to his nephew had been bittersweet. The boy had grown up too fast with Tony’s death, and Lance could feel the hole left in the party. He should have been there in his brother’s place. He’d been teaching Jake to play guitar before he left, and he told him about the plan to play tonight for their guests and anyone else who showed up. Jake feigned interest, but it was clear he’d have rather had him at his party.
The boy’s disappointment lingered as Lance tuned up in the empty room, surprised by the good acoustics. He shouldn’t have to strain too much unless people packed in. Not likely. It wasn’t as though he had a name or a following. He’d left that behind, no matter how many new agents Ricardo found. Tonight was just a lark. He might attract a few curious people from the flyers Rese had posted around town, but he didn’t expect much. And he didn’t want much either.
He warmed up with a song he’d written in Italian, back when he needed to convince Conchessa he wasn’t the imposter she suspected. Not even Nonna’s letter in his possession had convinced her at first. It was only after he’d helped her in the kitchen, and she’d seen his fingers in the dough, that she’d relented.
Then they had spoken long and in depth about Antonia and the letters written between them since they were girls, letters that had stopped after the one Conchessa put into his keeping, the one that spoke of fear and danger. Then he understood why she had doubted him. She was convinced Antonia had perished. To have someone who claimed to be her grandson appear, wanting answers…
Lance smiled faintly. He’d certainly had to prove himself lately. But he’d left the convent with Conchessa’s blessing and her prayers lifted in humble and expectant simplicity. Thoughts of her still brought the peace that had leavened him like yeast at the convent, and his song became a prayer sung in her language to a Father who knew every tongue.
Into your heart, into your hand,
All that I am, naked I stand.
Should I depart, searching in blindness
When I have known the kiss of your kindness?
Selah, O Lord, Selah. In the silence You find me.
Selah, my Lord, Selah. In the stillness refine me.
Not at all the song to open a set, unless he needed to remember tonight wasn’t about him and recall the reasons he’d left performing behind. He wasn’t even sure why he’d agreed to do it now, except that Rese had asked instead of ordering him. As he practiced, Evvy hobbled in. He looked up, surprised, but she said, “You don’t think we’d miss opening night, do you?”
We?
“Great to see you, Evvy.”
By the time he finished the next song, her gang had gathered at the various tables. Three gentlemen in shirt-sleeves and sweater vests, and seven women who smelled like a Wal-Mart fragrance department. He hoped he could sing with the cloying scent in his throat. But he was glad they’d come.
In her Renaissance festival barmaid costume, Star flitted between the tables, serving wine and coffee lattés and the chocolate-dipped
biscotti
he’d made earlier. There was no sign of last night’s tears, replaced by her alternate effervescence. If she was faking it, she was superb in her role.
The Taylors came in, followed by a few others—a young couple and three guys who seemed to recognize Star. The diverse crowd allowed him to mix in some contemporary tunes along with some of his own newer songs. It rushed in on him, what he’d loved about performing: the energy that charged a room, that buoyant feeling that lifted him out of himself.
He could almost imagine Chaz and Ricardo beside him, their voices blending in harmony with his, Rico’s drums and any of the instruments Chaz threw into the mix. Even solo, it was good to sing and play again. He didn’t care who filled the seats, what sort of music they wanted. He had so many songs in his head, and if he missed a verse or two, they filled it in for him. It was easy.
He glanced at Evvy swaying and clapping her tiny fingers. What secrets had she and Ralph shared inside these walls? Maybe they could visit the old guy. That idea caught hold. He had discovered the underground vault, but he wanted to know what happened and why. Maybe Ralph could tell him, and Evvy might know as well. He looked into her face and sang an old Sinatra tune, complete with croon. If she were the swooning sort, she’d be at his feet.
Over the older folks’ conversations, he had to sing louder than he’d intended. He hadn’t seen Rese yet, but he was sure she could hear it all from the kitchen. She probably had her hands full making their steamers and lattés. But he wished she’d come out and see the energy in the room. It wasn’t the crowd he’d expected, but they were fun, counting the coins out of their purses for Star and placing their song requests.
The crowd roared and sang along when he started “That’s Amoré,” and then Rese was in the doorway. He found her with his smile. They had talked about this, laughed and imagined. Now it was real. Their eyes found a common wavelength, sharing humor and excitement and more. A sharp pain somewhere near that missing rib.
Partners,
he thought, and forgot everyone else.
Dressed in the snuggly comfort of her pajamas, in the sanctum of her suite, Rese bathed her pierced ears in capfuls of antiseptic, then painfully turned the studs in her ears. That’s what came from giving up control. Watching Lance sing to the room had almost put her over the edge. Near the end, when he sang to her, she toppled.
He had won. Just like Brad and the others, he had fought her every step. But unlike every other man, he had won. Terror like nothing she’d known seized her. How had she given in? Where had he found the unguarded spot to sink his spear?
She couldn’t let him see it. If he didn’t know, it might not be too late. Her only armor was control. But the thought exhausted her. Was there never an end to it?
“There is a God, and there is evil.”
His words had locked in her mind like a deadbolt. Was there some striving of opposite forces, some primal conflict she was caught between? She shuddered, recalling the aching dread sucking at her the night that “presence” had striven for her. Good versus evil? Or a natural facet of her mind resisting the danger her lungs inhaled—as she now resisted the peril to her heart?
Lance talked of God and sang of love: two mysteries she could not explore. She needed Dad’s arms around her, legs pumping, rushing her out and away. Prudent. Pragmatic. Confident. He had made her what she was.
But he had lied
.
What little I know in my innocence.
Ideals like pebbles in the creek.
Wash away, wash away.
There is no logic in life.