Passion (In Wilde Country 2)

Another sigh. “Oh, I don’t know. How to converse with a boy.”

“Converse,” he said solemnly, in hopes of winning a smile.

“How to waltz. Do the fox trot.”

“Popular dances of the day,” he said, even more solemnly. Still no smile.

“How to know which fork to use when there are four of them beside your plate.”

“Four forks,” he said and this time, he won a smile.

“Well, three beside your plate. Fish. Meat. Salad. The fourth one was lined up horizontally above your plate. It was for dessert.”

“Of course. Our table was never set with fewer than four forks. The fish forks were especially vital.”

Good. There it was. A laugh. Nothing big, but it was a laugh just the same.

“The only lessons I loved were dance lessons. Ballet lessons. I really, really looked forward to those.”

Matteo squeezed her hand.

“When this is over,” he said softly, “I will see you dance, cara.”

She brought their joined hands to her lips and kissed his knuckles.

“So,” he said, “you loved visiting your grandparents because you were not expected to deal with fish forks.”

“Nobody paid any attention to me. In the nicest possible way, I mean. There was no schedule to worry about. I hiked. I swam. I rode horseback with my grandmother.” Her mouth twisted. “My grandfather died when I was ten. My grandmother died when I was eighteen. She left the Vermont house to me. I haven’t been back there but one time since and the other day…the other day, I knew I would be safe if I went there…”

Matteo put his arm around her shoulders.

“Your memory is truly returning.”

She nodded. “Yes. But I still don’t know why I needed to feel safe, or why I felt I had to get out of the city so fast.”

“It will all come to you. You have to be…” His cell phone rang. “Damn,” he said, and pulled the thing from his pocket.

It was Zach.

“There’s news,” he said briskly.

“What?”

“Pastore’s definitely travelling. He has one of his men with him. Last we know, they were in Lake Placid.”

Matteo felt his belly knot. Lake Placid wasn’t more than a couple of hours away.

“Is that all of it?”

“The guys I’m sending you? We’re in the middle of one hell of a snowstorm here. No way for planes or choppers to fly, not even with us using a private airport. Caleb and I have contacts elsewhere. We figured sending people out of Texas or Chicago. No go. Turns out the storm where you are is even worse than ours. Nothing can land anywhere near you. Not for a while, anyway.”

Matteo nodded. There was really nothing he could think of saying that would make sense.

“Bad luck all around, man. I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault.”

“Still, you should be fine. The house has an automatic generator that’ll come on if the power fails. You won’t lose any of the alarm systems. And you’re carrying, right?”

“Yes.”

“You stashed the other guns around the house?”

“Yes.”

“Have you shown Ariel the Ruger? Does she know how to use it?”

Matteo looked at the woman he loved, sitting beside him, her eyes steady on his.

“I’m about to.”

“Good. Do it. And dude…”

“Yeah?”

“Good luck.”

Matteo disconnected. Ariel grasped his hand.

“Something’s happened,” she said softly.

This was no time for well-meant lies.

“Yes. Zach was sending us a couple of his men. They’re not going to get here for a while.”

She caught her bottom lip between her teeth.

“And?”

“And,” he said, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell her that Pastore was getting close. “And, cara, I’m going to ask something of you I didn’t want to ask.” He took her hand. “There’s a gun in the safe downstairs. It’s very small and light, and easy to handle. I want you to learn how to use it.”

“No,” she said quickly. “I don’t like guns. My father belonged to a club. He hunted pheasants. The pheasants weren’t wild, they were penned, and—”

“If, and it’s a very big if, if you should ever have to use this gun, it won’t be against tame pheasants.”

“How could I use a gun one-handed? Aren’t you supposed to use both hands to shoot a gun?”

“One hand does the work. The other is basically for balance.” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and wished she wouldn’t look at him as if he’d asked her to walk into that pen filled with pheasants and kill one. “It wouldn’t be easy, but you have the use of your fingers and part of your palm. Besides, the odds are that you’ll never have to fire it. I only want you to keep it handy and know how to use it in case—”

“In case everything else fails.”

He considered assuring her that it would never come to that, but she was too smart to buy off with platitudes.

“Yes,” he said in a quiet voice. She stared at him. Then she stepped closer, and he put his arms around her. “What are you thinking?” he asked.

“Our Sicilian vow,” she said softly. “‘I trust you with my life, as you trust me with yours.’”

His throat constricted as he tilted her face up to his.

“I love you, Ariel,” he said. “Remember that. Always.”

“And I love you. Forever.”

They stood that way for a long time, she in his arms, he in hers. Then she leaned back, her eyes glassy with unshed tears, and gave a sad laugh.

“Isn’t it amazing? The things I can remember. A bus ride trip Lake Serene. A plan to get to Vermont. My grandparents and the house they owned there.” She gave another little laugh and pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. “I remember dancing the waltz with a kid named Thomas Jackson Wilford Gillingham the Third. ‘The Third,’ he’d sa

y in this snooty voice, ‘the Third and not the Second or the Fourth.’”

“Sounds like a charmer,” Matteo said carefully.

“A real charmer.”

“Honey…”

“Let me finish. Don’t you want to hear all the things I remember? Like how to say Hello, how are you? in what is probably impeccable French. Like knowing that even though it’s proper to eat asparagus with your fingers, nobody actually does it. Like how to sit a horse for dressage.” She took a gulping breath of air. “I remember all kinds of nonsense from all kinds of clubs and courses, but, guess what? I cannot, positively cannot remember what in hell I’m running from!”

Matteo tried to come up with a rejoinder that wouldn’t sound banal or indulgent, and then he gave it up and, instead, kissed her. When he drew back, he looked straight into her eyes.

“You ready to add Guns 101 to that list of things you know?”

She gave a watery laugh and swiped the back of her hand across her eyes. He reached past her, tore a paper towel from the roll and brought it to her nose.

“Blow,” he said.

She did. Then she took the sheet of paper from him, stepped on the pedal that opened the trashcan and made a perfect lay-in shot with the balled-up towel.

“I played basketball, too,” she said, “but only for one semester.”

He grinned. She laughed. The laugh was almost the real deal, and Matteo made himself a silent promise that all her laughter would be real when this nightmare ended.

* * *

They went downstairs, to the lower level of the house.

He opened the gun safe, took out the little Ruger.

It looked like a toy in his hand.

The dartboard was at the far end of the room. He’d played darts a couple of times, enough to know this was a pretty official setup, meaning that the toe line painted on the floor was a little under eight feet from the board, and that the bullseye on the board itself was between five and six feet high.

Perfect, for their purposes.

Ariel was watching the gun the way he’d seen his sisters watch a spider.

“Okay,” he said, trying to sound upbeat, “here’s what you need to know.” He looked the gun over, found the magazine release and depressed the button. “This is called a magazine. It holds six bullets. I’m going to put it right here, on top of the pool table. See?”