Gabriel's Rapture (Gabriel's Inferno #2)(19)

“You aren’t going to answer it?” she finally got a chance to ask.

“No. I told you earlier, I wasn’t going to speak to her.”

He pressed his lips to Julia’s once again, but only briefly.

“I feel sorry for her,” Julia said.

“Why?”

“Because she created a child with you. Because she still wants you, but she’s lost you. If I were to lose you to someone else, I’d be devastated.”

Gabriel huffed impatiently. “You aren’t going to lose me. Stop that.”

Julia smiled weakly. “Um, I need to say something.”

He moved back.

“This is coming from my concern for you. I want you to know that.” She looked at him in earnest. “I feel sorry for Paulina, but it’s clear that she’s been holding what happened over your head in order to keep you in her life. I’m wondering if she gets into trouble just so you’ll rescue her. I think it’s time for her to develop an emotional attachment to someone else. Someone she can fall in love with.”

“I don’t disagree,” he said stiffly.

“What if she can’t be happy until she lets you go? You let her go and you found me. It would be a mercy on your part for you to let her go so she can find her own happiness.”

Gabriel nodded grimly and kissed her forehead but refused to say anything more on the subject.

The rest of their stay in Florence was a happy one, a counterfeit honeymoon of a sort. They frequented various churches and museums during the day, in between returns to their hotel, where they would make love sometimes slowly and sometimes madly. Every evening Gabriel would choose a different restaurant for dinner, and they would walk home afterward, pausing on one of the bridges to make out like teenagers in the cool evening air.

On their last evening in Florence, Gabriel took Julia to Caffé Concerto, one of his favorite restaurants, which was positioned on the banks of the Arno. They spent several hours over a multi-course dinner, leisurely talking about their holiday and their burgeoning sexual relationship. They both confessed that the past week had been an awakening of sorts—for Julia, an awakening to the mysteries of eros; for Gabriel, an awakening to the mysteries of the four loves intertwined.

In conversation, he finally revealed his surprise. He’d rented a villa in Umbria for their second week of holidays. He promised to take her to Venice and Rome on their next vacation, possibly in the summer after they visited Oxford.

After dinner, Gabriel led her one last time to the Duomo. “I need to kiss you,” he whispered, pulling her body close to his.

She was going to reply, she was going to tell him to take her to the hotel and mark her body in a deeper way, but she was interrupted.

“Beautiful lady! Some money for an old man…” A voice called to her in Italian from the front steps of the Duomo.

Unthinkingly, Julia leaned around Gabriel to discover who was speaking. The man continued, begging for money so he could buy something to eat.

Gabriel caught her arm before she could approach the steps. “Come away, love.”

“But he’s hungry. And it’s so cold.”

“The police will come around and carry him off. They don’t like panhandlers in the city center.”

“People are free to come and sit on the steps of a church. Sanctuary…” she mused.

“The medieval concept of sanctuary no longer exists. Western governments abolished it, starting with England in the seventeenth century.” Gabriel grumbled as she opened her purse and withdrew a twenty Euro note.

“So much?” He frowned.

“It’s all I have. And look, Gabriel.” She gestured to the man’s crutches.

“A clever ruse,” he complained.

Julia fixed her lover with a very disappointed look. “I know what it’s like to be hungry.” She took a step in the beggar’s direction but Gabriel pulled her back.

“He’ll spend the money on wine or drugs. It isn’t going to help him.”

“Even a drug addict deserves a little kindness.”

Gabriel flinched.

She looked over at the beggar. “St. Francis of Assisi didn’t make his charity conditional. He gave to whoever asked.”

Gabriel rolled his eyes. There was no way he was going to win an argument with Julianne when she invoked St. Francis. No one could win against that kind of argument.

“If I give him something, he will know that someone cared enough to help him. No matter what he does with the money that will be a good thing. Don’t deprive me of an opportunity to give.” She tried to step around Gabriel but he blocked her path. He took the bill from her hand and added something to it from his own pocket, then he handed the money to the beggar.

The two men had a quiet exchange in Italian, and the poor man blew kisses to Julia and tried in vain to shake Gabriel’s hand.

He retreated, taking her arm and leading her away.

“What did he say?”

“He asked me to thank the angel for her mercy.”

Julia stopped him so she could kiss at his frown until it morphed into a smile. “Thank you.”

“I’m not the angel he was referring to,” he growled, kissing her in return.

Chapter 5

The next morning, a limousine met the happy couple at the train station in Perugia. The driver conveyed them down the winding roads to an estate near Todi, a medieval village.