"Is this a tour of the city, or are you trying to take a tour of me?" I said before kissing the cleft in his chin I liked so much.
"Can"t it be both?" he replied, putting a finger beneath my chin and tilting my head back so that he could kiss me some more.
Every nerve and fiber came alive at his touch. Who needed Mr. Drayton the art teacher"s exercise when I had Liam"s soft and warm lips to pull me into the present moment?
Of course, the problem with moments is that they come to an end. No matter how you try and hold onto them.
We both sensed that if we didn"t quit now, we"d have to change the rating from PG-13 to R. Even so, it ached inside when we parted.
Drawing in a deep, shuddering breath in an attempt to calm the fires inside, I blew it out through pursed lips. "Wow."
Even in the shadows of the alcove, I could see Liam"s jaw working, see the way he fought to regain some sense of control and composure over himself.
Although, I had to admit that I really wanted to see him lose control.
He took my hand and led me back out into the rotunda proper, back out under that dome and the hole in its center that looked like nothing except a great iris in the sky looking down at all the tiny mortals that dared pa.s.s beneath it.
"That"s called the oculus," I said, Liam following my gaze.
"You seem pretty familiar with a lot of this already. Did you learn all this from school?"
"No," I smiled, my eyes still wandering over all this beauty that Liam showed me, "I"ve always wanted to visit Rome, actually, ever since I can remember. I used to read books and magazines..."
And I had so many of those books and magazines and doc.u.mentaries. All cherished gifts and belongings. Except now their memory did nothing except send me on a downward spiral.
"Then this must be a dream come true, being here, actually seeing all of this in living color instead of in a glossy magazine spread?"
My shoulders slumped a little at that, and a sudden and intense sadness welled up from the pit of my stomach in a cold wave. "You"d think so, wouldn"t you?" I said, barely a whisper.
My eyes drifted down until they came to rest on the polished marble floor. I am such a downer! I could practically feel my psyche scrambling for some sort of purchase as my mind slipped into that terrible and familiar rut.
Sensing my sudden change in mood, Liam gave my hand a rea.s.suring squeeze. "What is it? Something"s wrong."
The concern I noted in his voice pulled me from my sudden and unexpected slump. "Nothing, just something reminded me of some stuff I don"t like to think about."
Liam studied me, waiting for more. I realized that I wanted to tell him more, that I wanted to tell him everything. Except I couldn"t. Just thinking of putting my thoughts and feelings into words shoved a lump the size and weight of a bowling ball up my throat.
He somehow saw that, too, and thankfully chose not to press me for more information.
"I think we"ve seen enough of this place. It"s been here a couple thousand years. It"ll still be here when you want to see it again..." Before he could say anymore, his phone started buzzing in his pocket.
Taking it out, he glanced at the screen and then thumbed the b.u.t.ton to send it to voicemail. I detected a slight frown before he smoothed out his expression.
A wave of guilt replaced the sadness in my gut. "You know, you don"t have to do this. I don"t want to mess up your job or anything." He was here for business, not for me. And no matter how much I wanted to spend time with him, I knew he had priorities ranked higher on his list than me.
"Again with this!" he said, tugging me along across the rotunda, heading towards the twenty foot tall double doors and the daylight spilling in through them, "I know I don"t have to do this. I want to, though. There"s a difference. If you"re always doing what you think you have to, you never get to do what you want to."
That helped with the guilt. A little, at least. It also gave me a warm sensation that spread out over my stomach. Very few people had ever put me ahead of anything else in their life.
"So what"s next?"
It turned out that the Capitoline Hill and its various museums were next. And it was such a beautiful day to see everything. The warm sunlight leant the bronze and marble a living heat and vitality not normally found in their cold and inert natures.
And Liam looked good, too, of course. Though I suspected he"d look good under any light.
We wandered the halls, looking at this fresco or that while I told him about how Michelangelo had designed the whole s.p.a.ce.
Finally, we went out into the main square, the two of us holding hands and smiling like we were just another happy couple on vacation in the city of romance.
We stopped and looked up at the large bronze statue in the middle of the square. Its plinth sat in the center of a starburst laid out on the ground. The statue itself was of a wise-looking bearded man sat atop a horse, staring with unblinking eyes into infinity.
Of course, I knew all about it. And I started to explain it, but Liam interrupted me.
"It"s Marcus Aurelius," he said. The way he looked at it told me this wasn"t the first time he"d laid eyes on it. I got the impression that he"d come here often, trying to glean some sort of meaning from the statue of a man many considered the greatest example of a philosopher king.
"But that"s not what"s interesting about it..." I started again, bursting with desire to preen beneath his approving eyes when I revealed what I knew about this particular piece of art.
"No, what"s interesting is that it"s a total fluke that this statue exists at all. It only exists because people thought it was a statue of Constantine the Great. Otherwise it would have been destroyed along with all the other pagan artifacts back then. He only exists because people thought he was someone he wasn"t."
"Also," I said, the words threatening to explode inside me if I didn"t get them out, "This one"s just a copy. The real one is getting restored."
"Yeah," Liam replied, his eyes taking on the look of the statue"s, staring off into some great distance, his voice equally far away.
I wondered at the significance, remembering the quote about how if a man looks long enough at a statue he begins to resemble it.
The look on his face disappeared as quickly as it had come, and he turned to me. "And now for a gelato break. There"s a great little place not far from here. The best in the whole city. You"ll never want to go to another shop again, believe me..."
I smiled, looking down at the starburst on the ground.
"No," he said, incredulous, "Don"t tell me: you haven"t had genuine Roman gelato yet, either?"
My shoulders humped up in a shrug, an embarra.s.sed heat burning my cheeks.
Liam chuckled, the sound throaty and rich. "I just can"t believe you! I don"t think I"ve met a single person like you before. Let"s get going; I can"t wait to see the look on your face."
Two minutes later Liam pulled the BMW to a stop along a narrow sidewalk that looked just like any other in the city. The shop in question was equally una.s.suming, a small sign swinging gently on its pole above the door proclaiming (in Italian) that this was Fratelli"s Confectionary.
An older, olive-skinned woman behind the gla.s.sed display case smiled as we came in. Within that display were two dozen different flavors of gelato.
Liam insisted on choosing for me, and soon we each had small bowls with two scoops of gelato in each. I had to admit, it looked good. Different from the gelato I"d had back home, somehow. More authentic, I suppose.
Liam sat us at the small bistro table closest to the shop window. And then he watched while I sank my small plastic spoon into the top scoop of gelato and pa.s.sed it through my lips.
I"d been meaning to appear impressed, but I didn"t have to act. It was good. I mean really good. As though the old woman had dumped whole bottles full of MSG into it to add the most flavor good. And smooth, like fresh cream.
I savored that first spoonful like I"d never savored a bite of food in my life, swallowing only reluctantly.
"Oh. My. G.o.d," I said.
Only then did Liam eat a spoonful of his. I couldn"t take my eyes away from his lovely lips, and the small smile that blossomed on them as he also got a taste of heaven. "You thought I was lying, didn"t you?"
"Not lying..." I said, punctuating my sentence with another irresistible mouthful, "Just maybe a touch hyperbolic."
"There"s no hyperbole I know of that can describe how good this is."
Here I could practically feel my forehead sprouting a sinister pair of devil"s horns. "This is so good, I don"t think I need a man anymore." And then I added the visual exclamation point of spooning more of the gelato into my mouth, letting the stem of the spoon pull against my lips as I withdrew it.
Of course it wasn"t true. I mean, I couldn"t shake the image of his lips from my mind, or the desire to taste the delicious gelato on them. But it was so good to just let go and joke around, to tease and be teased.
I realized then that I was happy. Well and truly happy. Searching back through the recent past, I couldn"t think of another time when that statement was true.
"I"ll lend you and the gelato my hotel keys, if you"d like to be alone," Liam said, jingling his key ring in his pocket, giving me an unimpressed arch of one dark eyebrow.
"I don"t think I can wait that long," I said, my cheeks starting to hurt from my smile, "I need it now!"
"Here, try mine," he said, sinking his spoon into one of his scoops and offering it to me. It was just as good as mine, which I offered him a taste of as well.
"Eat up, we"re not done yet," he continued. "I"m not done with you yet."
If it had been up to me, I would have happily spent the rest of the day (or week, or month) sitting in that little shop and eating the best gelato in Rome. But he wouldn"t let me, not with that spark of adventure in his eyes.
I left reluctantly, my stomach and tongue begging me to stay even as he opened the pa.s.senger door on the BMW for me, wondering what could possibly top that.
We didn"t have to travel far to our next destination, which I got an inkling of when I began recognizing streets and facades from that night at the fundraiser when I"d gone with him back to his hotel.
It was the Coliseum, rising ancient, ragged, and somehow splendid against the surrounding buildings. We marvelled for a few moments at the sheer scale of it, at the ingenuity required to build it, at its age. I loved its hundreds of individual archways.
By this time, the sun had begun its descent into the west, forcing the buildings to throw sharp, inky shadows across the streets and fountains and squares.
And then he took me inside, pointing out the exposed pa.s.sageways in the ground at the center where the ancient Romans would keep the lions and gladiators until it was time for the games.
"They would flood it, you know," I said, unable to hide my excitement, "They"d fill it with water and hold actual naval battles."
He didn"t ask me how I"d come to know all of this. He must have remembered that peculiar sadness that came over me when he asked earlier, knowing it touched a nerve.
Just thinking like that threatened to send me down into a tailspin again, the awful thoughts tugging at the edge of my mind. It was a struggle to keep that levy up, to keep them from bursting into my consciousness.
Again, I found the solace I needed in Liam.
Liam looked at the rows and rows of seating, and I could see him imagining the thousands upon thousands who would come here when some rich patrician or emperor would throw the mob some entertainment.
"I find it amazing how much power lies in popular opinion alone," he said, "If you can make people love you, they"ll let you do anything. Get away with anything."
I looked again at Liam"s dark hair, his excellent and symmetrical facial structure. It wasn"t hard to picture him in dark purple robes, laurels on his brow, watching the games from the Emperor"s seat.
He was easy to like, I knew. Dangerously easy. It was no wonder he looked so successful. I bet he had plaques in his office back home proclaiming him the youngest executive to do this or that. He"d be running whatever company he worked for in no time, I suspected, with that disarming smile and that charm and the breadth and depth of knowledge I could see lurking behind his deceptively boyish eyes.
He caught me looking at him, and a sudden jag of panic shot through me as though I"d been discovered slipping a candy bar into my pocket at the checkout line. Only this time I didn"t look away.
He pulled me close and kissed me again, the shock of our lips touching rocking my body leaving me breathless and trembling. I could still taste the sweetness of the gelato on him, and that only made it better.
Like all the kisses that had come before it, I didn"t want this one to end.
Like all the ones before, it did.
Just as I felt his hands begin sliding down my hips, just as I squeezed handfuls of his polo shirt, his phone started buzzing in his pocket again.
"Just ignore it," he said breathily, hardly taking his lips from mine.
We tried, and we had a few blissful seconds of peace before it started buzzing again. I couldn"t get rid of the nagging thoughts about distracting him and keeping him from doing what he"d come to Rome to do.
I couldn"t stop imagining some irritated Italian businessman on the other end, his swarthy complexion darkening with anger and irritation with each unanswered ring.
"Just get it," I said, tearing myself away, my stomach twisting, "It"s obviously important."
"It isn"t. Not right now," he replied.
"Answer it, please. For me."
He studied me again, the buzzing of the phone punctuating his thoughts. Then he gave the slightest of nods and pulled the sleek and glossy cell from his pocket.
"Yes?" he said.
I heard a chirping voice on the other end. Except it wasn"t the excited tones of an Italian man lambasting him for not picking up.
It was a woman. Instantly, I wanted to know who she was. Needed to know. The rationalist inside me said it was probably a business partner. A mother or sister annoyed at not being able to check on him.
The cynic, however, said it had to be a girlfriend. A wife.
"I"m with someone important right now. We"ll have to talk later," Liam said. With that, he pulled the phone from his face and ended the call.
A voice inside me screamed in my skull, demanding that I ask if that was his girlfriend. But as much as I wanted to know, I also didn"t. Ignorance was bliss, after all.
"Was that important? I"m sorry if it was..." I said.
"No, just someone else along with me on the trip getting impatient about a few business matters... Now, where were we?"
I wanted to believe him, I really did. Every single cue I"d gotten from Liam told me he was honest and straightforward, saying what was on his mind and d.a.m.ned if you didn"t like what he had to say.
I knew it was ridiculous. Knew that I"d known him only such a small stretch of time, that I couldn"t possibly know enough about him to make a true judgment call. But that awful, evil, mean cynical voice wouldn"t stop its nagging.
But then his arms encircled my waist again, pulling me hard to him. My head tilted back automatically, following the nonverbal, instinctual clues from his body language.
He kissed me again, harder than before, like he suddenly needed me more than ever.
A few of the other tourists wandering the Coliseum had begun to notice us, and I started becoming self-conscious. But Liam didn"t. He kissed me harder, as though he didn"t care who saw us or what they thought.
I was jelly in his arms. Heat p.r.i.c.kled across my skin, through my body, all of it moving to a central point inside of me. I throbbed with it.