After Giulia left, he headed for the pool to swim some laps. The water was chilly, but not cold enough to numb him, something he would have welcomed. When he got tired, he flipped to his back, and that was when he saw Isabel sitting by the umbrella.
She’d crossed her ankles and tucked them off to the side. Her straw hat shaded her face, and the script lay in her lap. He dove under, then resurfaced as far away from her as he could get in a cowardly desire to postpone the inevitable. Finally he pushed himself up onto the deck and grabbed his towel.
She watched him come toward her. Normally her battle to keep her eyes from drifting to his crotch would have amused him, but today he didn’t feel like laughing.
“It’s a great script,” she said.
Apparently she’d decided to lull him before she went in for the kill. He played the world-weary movie star, sprawling down next to her, tilting his head back, and shutting his eyes against the sun. “Yeah.”
“It’s not too difficult to figure out why you didn’t want me to see it.”
A surly attitude was the quickest way to bring this to its ugly conclusion. “I’m not looking for any lectures.”
“I won’t give you any. This isn’t a film I’d stand in line to watch, but I know I’ll be the exception. The critics are going to love it, and so will audiences.”
He popped open one eye. Instead of coming at him directly, she was setting him up for a sneak attack.
“I can see why you’re excited about it,” she went on. “This part is going to push you to your limits. You’re at the place in your career right now where you need that.”
He couldn’t take any more, and he shot out of his chair. “He’s a child molester!”
She blinked her eyes. “I know that’s not what you signed on for, but it’ll be an amazing performance challenge.” She had the balls to smile at him. “You’re sublimely talented, Ren, and you’ve been waiting your whole career for something like this.”
He shoved a chair out of his way and headed across the pool deck. At that moment he almost hated her. She was so relentlessly reasonable, so unmercifully fair, and now he was going to have to spell out the details. “It seems to have escaped your attention that I was spending all that time with Tracy’s girls because I’ve been using them for research.”
“Yes, I figured that out.”
He whirled on her. “Steffie and Brittany! Those great little girls. Don’t you understand? I’ve been trying to get inside Street’s skin and see them through his eyes.”
The brim of her hat shaded her face, so he thought he mistook her expression. Then she shifted her head, and he saw he hadn’t been mistaken at all. Her eyes were filled with sympathy. “I can only imagine how difficult that must have been for you.”
Right then he lost it. It wasn’t enough for her to rip his skin off. She had to gnaw at his bones, too. “Goddamn it!” He hated her goodness, her compassion. He hated everything that set her apart from him. He had to get away, except his feet wouldn’t move, and the next thing he knew, she had her arms wrapped around his waist.
“Poor Ren.” She lay her cheek to his chest. “For all your sarcasm, you adore those little girls. Getting ready for this part must be awful.”
He wanted to push her away, but she was balm to his wounds, and he drew her close instead. “They’re so damn trusting.”
“And you’re completely trustworthy.”
“I’ve been using them.”
“You’re scrupulous about your work. Of course you need to understand children to play the part. You haven’t been a threat to those girls, not for a second.”
“God, I know that, but . . .” She wasn’t going to walk away. In the back of his mind he knew that meant he’d have to start all over again. But not today, not right now.
It defied logic, but he wanted to talk to her about it. He took a few steps back, putting just enough distance between them so he didn’t have to worry about corrupting her. “The script . . . It’s much better than Jenks’s original concept. There are times the audience will actually be rooting for Street, even though he’s a monster.”
“That’s what makes it brilliant and horrifying.”
“It shows how seductive evil can be. Everybody who sees the film is going to have to look inside themselves. Jenks is brilliant. I know that. I just . . .” His mouth seemed to dry up.
“I understand.”
“I’m turning into a goddamn wimp.”
“Don’t swear. And you’ve always been a wimp. But you’re such a wonderful actor nobody’s figured that out.”
Isabel had hoped to make him smile, but he was too caught up in his inner turmoil for smiles. This explained why he’d been so prickly lately. As much as he wanted to play the part, he was also repulsed by it.
“It’s Street’s film,” he said. “Nathan, the hero, is basically white wallpaper.”
“You’ve never had any problem detaching from your characters in the past, and you won’t have a problem detaching from this one.”
She’d intended her words to comfort him, but he looked even more troubled.
“I don’t understand you,” he said. “You should hate this. Aren’t you the big proponent of only sending good fairy dust out into the world?”
“That’s the way I want to live my own life. But nothing’s simple when it comes to art, is it? Artists have to interpret the world as they see it, and their vision can’t always be beautiful.”
“Do you think this film is art?”
“Yes. And so do you, or you wouldn’t be putting yourself through this.”
“It’s just . . . I wish . . . Hell, I wish my agent had forced them to put my name over the title.”
His bluster didn’t fool her, and her heart ached for him. The fact that he was so obviously conflicted might mean he’d finally gotten tired of skulking down dark alleys. Maybe he’d be ready to play someone heroic when this was over. It was time he moved past his narrow view of himself, both as an actor and as a human being.
Now, however, his gaze held nothing but cynicism. “So you’re giving me absolution for the sin I’m about to commit.”
“Making this film isn’t a sin. And I’m hardly in a position to offer absolution.”
“You’re the best I’ve got.”
“Oh, Ren.” She walked over to him and reached up to brush a lock of hair from his forehead. “When are you going to start seeing yourself for who you are instead of who you think you are?”
“Man, are you ever a pushover.”
She reminded herself she was his lover, not his therapist, and it wasn’t her job to fix him, especially when she hadn’t made a dent in healing herself. She began to take a step backward, but he snagged her arm, his grip so tight it almost hurt. “Let’s go.”
She saw something that looked almost like desperation on his face. He pulled her to the farmhouse, to the bedroom. She knew that something was wrong, but she caught his fever anyway and tore at her clothes as urgently as he tore at his.
As they fell onto the mattress, she drew him upon her. She wanted him to drive away the premonition that it was all coming to an end faster than either of them could stop it. He gripped her behind the knees and spread her legs. Her orgasm was shattering but not joyous—a shadow racing across the sun.
Ren wrapped a towel around his waist and headed down to the kitchen. He’d expected a lot of reactions out of her after she’d read the script, but acceptance—not to mention actual encouragement—hadn’t been on the list. Just once he’d like her to behave the way he expected, but the fact that she never did was one more reason he couldn’t seem to get enough of her.
He’d begun to feel something like . . . the word “panic” crept into his head, but he pushed it away. He didn’t do panic, not even at the end of the film when he was enduring a predictably violent death. He just felt . . . unsettled, that was it.
Upstairs he heard water running as she began to fill the tub. He hoped she scrubbed hard at the smudge marks
he’d left on her skin—the ones she couldn’t see but he knew were there.
He tapped his hip, looking for cigarettes, only to remember he was wearing a towel. As he made his way to the sink to get a glass of water, a stack of letters lying on the counter caught his attention. Next to them a padded mailing envelope bore the return address of her New York City publisher. He glanced at the one on top.
Dear Dr. Favor,
I’ve never written to a famous person before, but I heard your lecture when you came to Knoxville, and it changed my whole attitude toward life. I started going blind when I was seven . . .
He finished the letter and reached for the next one.
Dear Isabel,
I hope you don’t mind if I call you by your first name, but I feel like you’re my friend, and I’ve been writing this letter to you in my head for a long time. When I read in the paper about all the trouble you’ve been having, I decided I needed to write it for real. Four years ago when my husband left me and our two kids, I got so depressed I couldn’t get out of bed. Then my best friend brought me this audiotape of one of your lectures she got at the library. It was all about believing in yourself and it changed my life. I have my GED now, and I’m taking classes . . .
He rubbed his stomach, but the queasiness he felt there had nothing to do with the fact that he’d forgotten to eat.
Dear Mrs. Favor,
I’m sixteen and a couple months ago I tryed to kill myself because I think I might be gay. Somebody left this book you wrote at Starbucks, and I picked it up. I think you might of saved my life.
As he settled down at the table, he realized he’d started to sweat.
Dear Isabel Favor,
Could you send me an autographed picture of yourself? It would mean alot. When I got laid off at work . . .
Dr. Favor,
My wife and I owe our marriage to you. We were having money problems, and . . .
Dear Miss Favor,
I never wrote a famous person before, but if it hadn’t of been for you . . .
All the letters had been written after Isabel’s fall from grace, but the writers didn’t care about that. They only cared about what she’d done for them.
“Pretty pathetic, right?” Isabel stood in the doorway, knotting her robe at the waist.
The constriction in his stomach had risen to his throat. “Why would you say that?”
“Two months. Twelve letters.” She sank her hands into the robe’s pockets and looked unhappy. “In my golden days, sonny boy, they came in by the boxload.”
The letters hit the floor as he shot up from the table. “Saving souls is based on quantity rather than quality, is that it?”
She regarded him oddly. “I only meant that I had so much, and I blew it.”
“You didn’t blow anything! Read these letters. Just read the fucking things, and stop feeling so goddamn sorry for yourself.”
He was acting like a bastard, and any other woman would have torn into him. But not Isabel. Not the fucking Holy Woman. She didn’t even wince. She just looked sad, and it cut right through him.
“Maybe you’re right,” she said.
She turned away slightly. He was starting to apologize when he saw her eyes drift shut. He couldn’t handle this. He knew how to deal with women who cried, women who yelled, but how was he supposed to deal with a woman who prayed? It was time to think like a hero again, no matter how much it went against his nature. “I have to get back. I’ll see you in the morning at the vendemmia.”
She didn’t look at him, didn’t answer, and who could blame her? Why talk to the devil when God was your companion of choice?
21
Only Massimo beat Ren to the vineyard the next morning, and not because Ren had gotten up so much earlier than everybody else, but because he’d never gone to bed. Instead, he’d spent the night listening to music and thinking about Isabel.
She appeared as if he’d conjured her, stepping out of the early-morning mist like an earthbound angel. She wore new jeans that still had fold marks across the knees. The flannel shirt she’d buttoned over her T-shirt belonged to him, and so did her Lakers cap. Still, she somehow managed to look tidy. He remembered the fan letters she’d received, and something burned in his chest, right behind his breastbone.
A car door slammed and Giancarlo arrived, sparing Ren the need to do more than give her a brief hello. As the others appeared, Massimo started issuing orders. The vendemmia had begun.
Isabel discovered that harvesting grapes was a messy business. As she tossed the heavy clusters into the basket, or paniere as it was called, juice threatened to trickle under her sleeves, and her pruning shears became so sticky they might as well have been glued to her palms. They were also treacherous, mistaking flesh for the tough grape stems. It wasn’t long before she had a Band-Aid on the end of one finger.
Ren and Giancarlo traveled the rows picking up the overflowing baskets and dumping them into the plastic crates that had been stacked on the small flatbed hitched to the tractor. They unloaded these at the old stone building beside the vineyard, where another group began crushing the grapes and pouring the must into vats to ferment.
The day was overcast and cool, but Ren had stripped down to a T-shirt printed with the logo from one of his films. He appeared beside her to collect the basket she’d just filled. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”
In the next row one of the women held two bunches of grapes in front of her breasts and jiggled them, making everybody laugh. Isabel waved away the bee that kept buzzing her. “How many chances do I get to harvest grapes in a Tuscan vineyard?”
“The romance is going to wear off pretty quickly.”
It seemed that it already had, she thought, as he wiped his forehead and walked away.
She stared at the bee that had landed on the back of her hand. He hadn’t come to her last night. Instead, he’d phoned from the villa and told her he had work to do. She needed to work, too, but she’d brooded instead. The dark side of Ren’s past clung to him like cobwebs, getting in the way of any hope they had of a future together. Or maybe he’d just decided she was too much for him.
She was grateful when one of the younger women appeared to work next to her. Since the woman’s English was as limited as Isabel’s Italian, their conversation took all her attention.
By evening, with half the vineyard picked, she headed back to the house. She didn’t speak to Ren, who’d gone to share a bottle of wine with some of the men. When Tracy called to invite her to dinner, she declined. She was too tired to do more than eat a cheese sandwich and fall into bed.
Morning arrived before she was ready, and her muscles protested as she rolled over. She considered staying in bed, but she’d enjoyed the camaraderie yesterday. She’d also liked the sense of accomplishment she’d felt. It was something she hadn’t experienced for a long time.
The job went faster the second day. Vittorio showed up to help. Tracy appeared with Connor and filled Isabel in on the children’s first day of school, as well as Harry’s phone call from Zurich the previous night. Fabiola used her limited English to tell Isabel about her struggles to get pregnant. But Ren barely spoke to her. She wondered if he was working harder than everyone else because he owned the vineyard or because he wanted to avoid her.
The sun sank closer to the horizon. When there were only a few rows left, she made her way to the water table. As she filled her cup, a burst of laughter made her look up. She saw a group of three men and two women approaching from the villa.
Ren set down the crate he’d been unloading and waved as he walked toward them. “It’s about time you got here.”
Two of the three men were of the Adonis species, and they both spoke with American accents.
“When the big guy calls, the cavalry comes to the rescue.”
“Where’s the beer?”
An expensive-looking redhead with a pair of pricey sunglasses pushed on top of her hair threw Ren a kiss. “Hey, babe. We’ve missed you.??
?
“Glad you made it.” He brushed her cheek, then did the same to the other woman, a Pamela Anderson look-alike.
“I’m dying for a diet Coke,” she said. “Your heartless agent wouldn’t stop.”
The fourth man was small and thin, maybe in his mid-forties. His sunglasses dangled from a sport strap around his neck, and he held a cell phone pressed to his ear. At the same time he managed to pantomime to Ren that the caller was an idiot and he’d be off in a minute.
The redhead gave a throaty laugh and ran her index finger down Ren’s bare chest. “Oh, my God, sweetie, look at you. Is this real dirt?”
Indignation swept through Isabel. That was Ren’s chest the woman was making free with. Isabel took in the redhead’s low- riding pants, killer shoes, endless legs, and perfectly exposed belly button. Why hadn’t Ren mentioned that he’d invited these people?
She was standing just far enough away that he could easily have ignored her, but he called her over instead. “Isabel, I want you to meet some friends of mine.”
Tracy had teased Isabel about always looking tidy, but she didn’t feel tidy at the moment. As she moved toward them, she wished she could freeze time just long enough to take a bath, do her hair, put on makeup, slip into something elegant, and saunter over with a martini in her hand. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t shake. I’m a little the worse for wear.”
“These are friends of mine from L.A.,” Ren said. “Tad Keating and Ben Gearhart. The bozo on the cell is my agent, Larry Green.” He indicated the redhead first. “This is Savannah Sims.” Then the Pamela Anderson look-alike. “And that’s Pamela.”
Isabel blinked.
“I just look like her,” Pamela said. “We’re not related.”
“This is Isabel Favor,” Ren said. “She’s been staying in that farmhouse over there.”
“Oh, my God!” Pamela shrieked. “Our book club did two of your books last year!”