Love Beyond Words (City Lights, #1)(12)
Natalie looked to the window where the wind wailed mournfully. Dead leaves swirled outside the door.
“Sometimes I don’t feel as though I’m reading Mendón so much as I’m escaping into his stories,” she said. “His books are like a refuge from all that is ugly and mean. From pain. They are slices of absolute truth, you know? Truth expressed in the lives of his characters and shining through his prose.” She turned her eyes to him. “You really don’t have any opinion of him?”
“You’re disappointed?”
“No. Well, maybe a little. I don’t mean to put you on the spot or anything.” Natalie sighed. “Maybe Liberty and Niko—my boss, the eponymous Niko—maybe they’re right. That I spend too much time in stories and not enough in the real world.” She scoffed. “I hate that term. Mendón’s books are set in the real world but tinged with magic. And even when things get dangerous or violent or sad, in the end, you’re left with a sense of hope and faith in the goodness of people. That’s why I jump when someone says they’ve read him. I’m hoping they’ve seen and felt the same things, and that they appreciate him as well as I do.” She looked at Julian, a terrible thought occurring to her. “You don’t dislike his work, do you?”
“I like it fine.”
“Okay, I can keep talking to you then,” Natalie said with a grin. “I get a little carried away, I know. But you should see the spectacle I make of myself when I catch a customer reading him. I just…fly out of myself…out my routines of solitude to talk about the book. Or about Mendón. He’s reclusive, but god, I hate the term ‘recluse’ too. It makes it sound like he’s a weirdo. As if there’s anything wrong with wanting a little silence now and then. He has his own routines of solitude, you know?”
Julian was watching her with an inscrutable expression on his face. She felt her neck grow hot. “Oh jeez, I’m the weirdo. Right now. Just going on and on...”
“No.” Julian said quietly, almost sadly, “I think your enthusiasm for Mendón illuminates this room better than any light, and I have a new appreciation for him for that reason alone.”
A thick silence fell between them. It seemed he wished to say something more but he didn’t, and now she wished she had said less. Her father used to tease her that she was like an old engine that needed cranking, but once it got going…
“You have customers and I should go,” Julian said, rising.
“I do…?”
Behind Natalie, the bell above the door jangled and a gaggle of elderly women in felt hats and gloves came in. They cooed and gabbled over the pastry display and pondered the difference between a mocha and hot chocolate.
Julian drew on his coat and gathered his belongings. “Good night, Natalie.”
She watched him go, rubbing her arms that had broken out in gooseflesh. He’d taken the warmth of the room with him, leaving her cold and with the bizarre sense that he was disappointed in her, though she couldn’t fathom why.
“Does anyone work here?” one woman squawked.
Natalie plastered on a lightless smile. She attended the customers mechanically, her thoughts on the conversation with Julian. By the end of the night, after turning it over and over in her mind a thousand times, she came to one conclusion: she had said too much and made him uncomfortable. You babbled like a maniac. No wonder he left. He wanted some small talk, not a discourse on Mendón. She half-wished Niko or Liberty were there so she could say, “See? This is why I don’t talk to people. I just mess it up.”
After closing, Natalie retreated to her apartment, to her couch, and took up her copy of Coronation. She dove deep, not coming up to the surface until she was tired enough to fall immediately and safely into sleep.
#
The sedan pulled into the circular drive of towering condo complex and Julian Kova? climbed out before the driver could open the door for him.
“Good night, sir,” the driver said, his face professionally impassive.
Julian slammed the door shut, and muttered a good night. He strode up to building, taking the concrete stairs two at a time. Columns of lights—the skyscrapers of the Financial District—rose around him, buffeting the howling wind and breaking it up into manageable gusts.
Bernie, the night doorman, greeted him with a warm, “Good evening, Mr. Kova?,” and held open the spotless glass door. Julian muttered another greeting, and yet a third to Hank, the security guard at the front desk. Once inside the confines of the elevator, he spat a curse in Spanish, and jabbed the button marked ‘15PH’.
The elegant tone of the elevator announced the floor and opened on a small anteroom of rich, maroon carpet. Lights glowed in art deco sconces of pewter and gold. There were no other doors but for his. He keyed in a security code on the wall panel, and it swung soundlessly open.
The penthouse was dark, illuminated by the city that glittered through the immense windows that composed one wall. Julian wended between elegant chairs and tables and sofas until he was standing before them.
He looked out over the sparkling constellations of the city and the pool of darkness that was the bay. The Golden Gate Bridge to his far left and the Bay Bridge to his right hung like starry garlands over the blackness, their luminescence converging and blending with Sausalito and Oakland.
“Thousands of writers in the world,” Julian murmured. “Astronomical odds. A coincidence of outrageous proportions.” He leaned his forehead against the cool glass; his skin still burned when he thought of her, of how her rich dark eyes had shown when she spoke of her favorite author. “So much love…” He sighed. “I couldn’t have written anything worse.”