A Moment on the Lips(51)

‘Princess, this is an Italian artisan ice cream shop,’ he pointed out.

She smiled. ‘I know, and Italian ice cream is the best.’ When they came out, he was amused when she rattled off a quick assessment, saying where it was better than Tonielli’s and where it could learn from her. ‘Having said that, this crème brûlée gelato is pretty good.’ She looked enquiringly at him. ‘How’s the blueberry and white chocolate?’

He held out his cone so she could taste it.

‘Not bad,’ she said. ‘But I think it’d be better still if you had the blueberry and the white chocolate flavours separate, then rippled them together.’

They strolled through the streets to the historic Place du Tertre, full of cafés and artists selling their work from stalls; Dante could hardly believe how much they’d managed to cram into the centre of the square. People around the edges were performing street theatre and juggling; tourists were sitting quietly while artists drew caricatures and portraits of them.

‘Your picture, sir, madam?’ an artist asked. ‘I can do a special price for the two of you.’

Carenza’s eyes lit up and she turned to Dante. ‘Can we?’

Had he been on his own, he would’ve made a polite excuse and walked on; but he could see how much Carenza wanted to do it. The whole Parisian experience. And, since she’d given him so much over the last two days, who was he to deny her something so small? ‘Sure we can,’ he said.

They sat down on a nearby wall. ‘Your arm round the lady,’ the artist directed. ‘Smile at each other.’

Dante felt awkward and exposed—particularly when other tourists came to look over the artist’s shoulder at the picture he hadn’t yet seen—but everyone seemed to smile and nod approval at what the artist was capturing on paper.

It was only a few short minutes before the artist showed them the portrait, pastels on rose-grey paper.

And it scared Dante witless.

The way he was looking at Carenza, it was obvious to the whole world that he was in love with her. Oh, hell. Hopefully she’d just think that the artist had taken a bit of—well, artistic licence.

He paid the artist, then on the artist’s recommendation went into one of the souvenir shops and bought a tube so they could roll up the picture and keep it protected on the way back to Naples.

Carenza stood on tiptoe and brushed her mouth against his. ‘Thank you.’

‘Prego,’ he said automatically. But he couldn’t get the portrait out of his head. Did he really look at her like that? And, if so, had she noticed? Because it really wasn’t fair to raise her expectations—to make her hope that he could be something he knew he just couldn’t be.

They stopped in a café for a croque monsieur and a coffee, and then Carenza took him to the Pompidou Centre.

‘It’s really impressive, isn’t it?’ she asked.

He looked at the huge steel-and-glass structure. ‘Yes.’ Though he didn’t like it anywhere near as much as he’d liked the Louvre or the Eiffel Tower. And it didn’t even begin to compare to the beautiful white stone buildings across the other side of the city, the ones he’d fallen in love with on sight.

‘This is one of my favourite places in Paris.’

The second they walked in, he realised why. It was filled with modern art. And he just didn’t get it. The more he walked round, the more he saw, the less he understood. Half the stuff looked as if it had been drawn by a child in kindergarten, and the other half were just random splodges of colour. What was so special about all this? Why did she love it so much? Was it an ‘emperor’s new clothes’ kind of thing, or was he just missing the gene that made him appreciate it?

‘If you didn’t have Tonielli’s, what would you do?’ he asked.

She looked surprised by the question; then she smiled. ‘That’s an easy one. I’d like my own art gallery.’

Just as he’d guessed. ‘And you’d sell this kind of stuff?’ He looked at the painting of squares in front of him, and others that just seemed a chaotic mess of colour.

‘Yes. It’s the vibrancy and the energy of the pieces that I like.’

Vibrancy and energy. She could’ve been describing herself. But he couldn’t see it in the works of art. ‘I don’t get it,’ he admitted. ‘To me, you could hang this stuff any which way and it still wouldn’t make any sense. It’s all random.’