The busy street was carpeted in cherry blossom petals from the trees that lined it. It made a snowy carpet for Giovanni where he had parked his chair beside the wrought iron rail that surrounded a massive oak. He was reading something on his phone. The collar of his white shirt poked from his gray pullover, and the end of a pale blue scarf flicked in the breeze like the tip of a cat’s tail. He was casual and stunningly elegant, definitely not wearing anything that had been purchased secondhand.
Both road and foot traffic were heavy and noisy, but he lifted his head and looked straight at her as she approached, as though he’d been aware of her from the moment she turned the corner at the end of the block. His black hair was charmingly ruffled by the breeze, his tanned face naturally stern, yet lit with probing curiosity.
“You’ve written a book,” was his cryptic greeting. “It’s very compelling.”
“How—”
She cut herself off as he lifted a hand, leaving her in the awkward position of rebuffing his invitation to embrace and kiss in greeting or bend to accept it. She’d been reliving last night’s kiss nonstop, so she set her hand on his shoulder and leaned in.
Something flashed in his gray eyes—humor, surprise—then an inferno of heat before he steadied her with one hard arm and captured her mouth with startling greed. Her heart leaped and her feet seemed to leave the ground. All of her felt suspended and floating as she abandoned herself to the wonder that was his mouth playing over hers.
She could have kissed him forever, here in the street, while strangers brushed by them. He was a stranger, she reminded herself distantly, but he didn’t feel like one. She felt as though he’d been calling to her for her entire life and she had finally caught up to him.
He let their kiss dwindle to a series of briefer tastes while a rumble of deprivation sounded in his throat. He kept her hand in his own as she straightened. She locked her soggy knees, trying to remain upright.
“I was offering to take your bag, but thank you.” His mouth curved with amusement, while his heavy eyelids transmitted a smoldering beam of sensual appreciation. “I’ve been thinking about you and wanted to do that again.”
“Oh, my God.” She ducked her brow behind her free hand, flustered at having read the situation so wrongly.
He released a soft chuckle across her knuckles and kissed the back of her hand. “Give me your bag and we’ll get out of this wind.”
She slid her bag from her shoulder and set it in his lap, then obeyed his wave that invited her to walk down the ramp ahead of him. Inside, he passed her bag to the maître d’ and she gave up her jacket before they were shown through the intimate dining lounge.
From the outside, with its small street-level windows, she had presumed this was a midrange Italian restaurant. It was far more impressive and exclusive. Subtle lighting lent intimacy to the sumptuous furniture arranged in private pockets and alcoves. A harpist in the middle of the room plucked a soothing mood into the air. A woman in a corner wore an epoch’s worth of diamonds, while the man sampling wine was a famous American with a full complement of EGOT awards. His companion was a well-known human rights lawyer.
“Am I dressed all right?” Freja asked in a whisper.
“You’re perfect,” he assured her.
Moments later they were settled at a discreet table. His chair was armless and streamlined, but still too bulky for the space on the opposite side of the table. He slid into the spot on the side, close enough that only the corner of the table separated them.
She self-consciously set aside her cap and dropped her phone into it, then flicked her hair behind her shoulders, aware of him watching her as he ordered a bottle of wine.
When they were alone, she cleared her throat and said, “I was going to ask how you learned about my book.” She’d only given him her first name yesterday, partly because it tended to prompt the conversation she could feel building right now. “I’m even more interested in how you have a copy? It doesn’t come out until the fall.”
“I’m extremely well connected.” His mouth quirked as though that was an understatement. “I received it an hour ago, so I haven’t read all of it. You’re still in Mongolia. My sense is that it gets worse before it gets better.” He grew somber.
Various accounts of her story had been excerpted in the news when she was first freed. Throughout her recent four years at university, while writing the book, she had read aloud sections in class or circulated them for feedback. She was used to a reaction of sheer disbelief or dismay that she wasn’t more disparaging of the people who’d held her.
Giovanni only waited patiently for her to respond.
“I think we’ve established that loss is as bad as it gets,” she murmured.
“True,” he agreed in a grave tone. “Is that why you wanted to write it? As an homage to your father? I’d heard of him, but only vaguely as a travel writer. I had no idea he’d been such an avid blogger. And so political.”
Something in that leading statement caused her a brief flashback to those early days of arriving in America, when government types had interrogated her incessantly. Giovanni was the son of an ambassador, she reminded herself. His interest was likely ingrained from his early life observing the highest level of world governments, not suspicion that she was a cog in such things.
“Pappa didn’t take sides so much as document blatant injustice when he came across it. His true interest was culture and history and the beauty of nature that we too often overlook. That’s what his fans wanted from him—escape from the clamor and nonsense of their own lives into the reassurance that we’re all part of the same human fabric. And yes, there was a part of me that wanted to give his readers his final chapter. They did, after all, pay for my upkeep most of my life.”
They still did. Many of his books had gone into reprint after the story of his death broke. She was his sole beneficiary.
“I imagine they feel invested in you, being his companion through all his adventures.”
“You’ll laugh, but I honestly had no idea how famous he was. My publisher told me to join social media to promote my book, and my phone exploded. I hadn’t even read any of his books cover to cover until I was at university. Why would I need to? I was there. And in the places we visited, he was only seen as a nosy tourist.”
His attention was fully on her as though he examined and weighed every word she spoke. It was disconcerting, causing her to blush with self-consciousness.
“Now that I’ve started my own blog, and realize how much work it is to find interesting content, I realize why he exploited me so shamelessly.”
“Does that bother you?”
“Not really. He was always very good about asking which photos he could post or whether he could quote something I’d said. He would flag pages in his manuscript and let me veto anything I felt was too personal or didn’t reflect well on me. I rarely pushed back because it never occurred to me that people even read what he wrote or cared about me. At best, I imagined they were reading for snippets of history and odd mishaps like arguing with a donkey on a muddy track. I didn’t realize they came to believe they knew me, not until I was brought to America and the reporters wouldn’t leave me alone.”