“Oh,” I say softly. “That’s where you get it from.”
He lifts a shoulder. “Maybe. I paint sometimes, but it looks pretty amateur, especially compared to him. He opened an art gallery in Lucca a long time ago, and now I run it. He’s somewhat retired and living on the island of Elba with my mother.” He pauses. “I say this for context, because if it wasn’t for my father, I wouldn’t have had the training and education and exposure to do what I do. And what I do is create art that people pay large amounts of money for.”
He’s downplaying his success and talent, attributing it to his father. “I’m sure you have talent that would have come out some other way, had your father gone on a different path. Don’t sell yourself short.”
Claudio runs his fingers along his jaw, pinching his square chin as he studies me. “Let me ask you something, Grace, from an artist to an artist.”
“I’m a writer,” I interject.
His brows raise, his face looking like I just slapped him. “Nooo,” he says in a hush. “A writer is an artist. You don’t agree?”
I shrug and look down at my feet. “Honestly, I don’t feel like much of a writer right now anyway. So I definitely don’t feel like an artist.”
“Just because you don’t feel it, doesn’t mean that you aren’t. Which brings me to my question. You say I am selling myself short because my father paved the way for me. This is your first novel on your own, correct? You had a writing partner before?”
I glance at him sharply. “How did you know?”
“Jana,” he says.
“Oh. Right.”
“Do you feel like you deserve to be where you are had Robyn not been there?”
Robyn’s name sounds so foreign coming from Claudio, like the image of her, the idea of her, the ghost of her, didn’t have a chance of existing here until he brought her up. Hell, for the first time since her death, I had gone more than twenty-four hours without succumbing to my grief. It feels … wrong. And yet I know it’s needed at the same time.
Claudio takes a step toward me. “I’m just saying,” he says, his voice lower. “It is hard for us to own our success sometimes because we’re afraid if we do, we’ll lose the magic. Perhaps the muse won’t show for us because she thinks we don’t need her. But we do. At least I do.”
I manage to look at him. “You have muses?”
“Of course. What kind of artist would I be if I didn’t have inspiration delivered by some unpredictable force of nature? What kind of Roman would I be, for that matter? I have the deities in my blood, and they are elusive creatures.”
I’m pretty sure Robyn was the one who supplied the muses for the both of us. Or maybe she was my muse. Maybe the two of us together created this magic that could never be bottled up or duplicated again. The thought makes my heart sink right to my knees.
“Come on,” Claudio says gently. His eyes search mine as he reaches down and briefly presses his fingers to my wrist, sending another current through my veins. “I have more to show you.”
He turns and I follow, my skin warm where he touched me.
Six
Grace
When I wake up it takes me a moment to realize where I am. Not back in my drafty flat across from the cemetery, but in a comfy spacious bed with fancy linens and morning light trying to slip through the closed shutters.
I’m in Villa Rosa.
I’m in Tuscany.
And there’s a knock at my door.
I slowly sit up, wondering if it was the knock that originally woke me.
“Y-yes?” I say, clearing my throat.
“La colazione è pronta!” Vanni yells from the other side. “Vamoose!”
Okay, so I know what vamoose means. I lean over and grab my phone from the dresser. Nine o’ clock on the dot. Claudio wasn’t kidding about his schedule.
I exhale thoroughly and swing my legs over the bed, taking a moment for my brain to settle.
I stayed up late last night, which accounts for why I feel so tired.
But it was for the best reason.
After Claudio showed me the garage, he took me through an area where they do their own olive oil pressing, generally to give as gifts and sell at the art gallery, plus a small gym (which accounts for Claudio’s muscles), then he brought me to the top level where he keeps his plasters.
I don’t know what I was expecting. In Scotland, plasters are either casts or a Band-Aid, so even though I knew that wasn’t the case, I was half-expecting to see a room that wouldn’t look out of sort at a hospital.
Instead, I was surrounded by white statues of all shapes and sizes. At least they looked like statues, until Claudio told me they were the plaster casts that he used as models for his sculptures. First he sculpts in clay, then he makes a plaster cast of the clay model, and then finally he uses the plaster as the basis for the stone or marble sculpture he does, keeping the exact same ratios and dimensions.
They were inspiring, to say the least, and Claudio seemed so blasé about them. I was in awe that he could even create them from scratch and then go through all the steps to bring them to the final form. The skill needed to even create a clay model was out of this world, and made me look at him with an even deeper sense of appreciation.
He said that he never gets rid of them in case he needs to duplicate one of his pieces, which sometimes happens, but I couldn’t imagine getting rid of them anyway. It would be like throwing out all your best drafts if the drafts were perfect to begin with.
After that, I felt something rumble through me, like the creativity that had been percolating since I landed in Italy was finally coming to a boil.
Claudio showed me the rest of the grounds a little more thoroughly than when I was left to my own devices, telling me the history of the place, and I decided that the table in the covered veranda at the outskirts of the pool area was the perfect place to write, at least at that moment.
I went to my room, grabbed my laptop and notepad, and then hunkered down for the afternoon and evening, only going inside to get water and use the loo. I didn’t even have dinner since I was running on creative adrenaline and didn’t want to stop, and Claudio totally understood.
Then later, I came up here to my room and wrote until about three a.m.
Which explains why I’m both exhausted and starving.
I quickly slip on a pair of joggers and flip flops, pulling on a bra and tank top. The only bad thing about having two men in the house with me is that it has ruined my plans for a braless June.
The table is set up outside again, and I guess it will be the designated dining area until the weather sends us inside. It’s another gorgeous day, with soft morning sunshine that hints at the heat to come.
Claudio puts his newspaper down the moment he sees me, and gets to his feet, flashing me the kind of smile that makes my head spin.
“You’re up,” he says. “I felt badly about getting Vanni to wake you, but I figured since you didn’t eat dinner last night, you should at least have breakfast. Espresso?”
“Please,” I say emphatically as I sit down and look over the spread.
The food looks glorious. Poached eggs, slices of cold cuts and hard cheeses, a loaf of crusty bread, cooked prosciutto, melon. Yesterday while I was writing, Claudio went to the grocery store and so now we are obviously spoiled for choice.