Love Beyond Words (City Lights, #1)(33)
“I met him downstairs before he could come up,” Natalie said. “They’re beautiful,”
“They make a poor showing next to you.”
“Thank you.”
“Come in. Please.”
Julian took the flowers and kissed her cheek—an awkward, nervous peck—as Natalie stepped into his home.
A sense of disorientation swept through as she looked about his apartment. The ceiling in the anteroom was deceptively low. Here the walls—in a muted beige color—stretched up to vaulted ceilings so she felt as if she’d stepped into another building altogether. A gorgeous chandelier of downturned glass pillars, each with a small light glowing in its base, hung from the juncture of ceiling angles. To her right, a formal dining room sat in the dark, looking as if it hadn’t been used in ages. The main living room was expansive and curved toward a kitchen of cherry wood cabinets and a gray granite-topped bar. Her shoes clopped on dark hardwood floors, and one wall was entirely comprised of windows that glittered with the panorama of the nighttime cityscape.
Behind the kitchen, the apartment kept going into unknowable reaches; if there was child’s room it would be there, but the space as a whole showed no signs of a child’s presence. In fact, Natalie thought, there was no sign of Julian here either. The apartment was beautiful, but austere. Every piece of furniture, every design piece, was modern and sleek and didn’t reflect Julian’s warmth in the slightest. It’s a textbook example of ‘bachelor pad,’ she thought, and rubbed her shoulders.
And then she came around the front entry and saw another space, open to the living and kitchen areas.
“Oh, wow.”
Where there might have been a sitting room or office, there instead was a library. It had no door but seemed as though it should, as if it didn’t belong with the rest of the house. The warmth that was lacking everywhere else was here in abundance. Bookshelves of rich mahogany stretched upward on three walls, their shelves replete with a library’s worth of tomes. The floors were the same dark hardwood, but overlaid with a stunning rug of an ornate floral pattern in green, gray, and blue.
The centerpiece of the room was an antique desk—old, scratched, worn with time and care—and a plush chair that appeared chosen for comfort rather than beauty. On the desk stood a small Murano glass desk lamp, its multicolored shade glowing warmly in the dimness. Its light illuminated a stack of black and white composition books, bound together with a rubber band. The café book, Natalie thought absently as she moved to peruse the bookshelves.
The books that resided on the polished ledges were in all makes, shapes and sizes. Leather-bound volumes cozied-up beside paperbacks. Hardcovers flanked yellowing antiques, the ordering force being the authors’ names. It was clear Julian felt every book in his collection was worthy of sharing space with its conditional betters. Natalie stared in open-mouthed wonder.
“If I had money, this is how I would spend it,” she murmured, then snapped her mouth shut, realizing she’d voiced her thought aloud. She glanced at Julian, her cheeks burning. But he apparently hadn’t heard. He was busy setting out a bottle of red wine and two glasses on the kitchen counter. Natalie cleared her throat.
“Dinner smells wonderful,” she said. “What are you making?”
“Bandeja paisa y crema de platano verde.”
She felt her cheeks grow hot; his accent had to be the sexiest thing she’d ever heard in her life. “What does that mean?”
“Creamy plantain soup to start, and the Paisa platter is a variety of different things…both Colombian dishes.” He pulled the cork free and poured the wine into two glasses.
“Where did you learn how to cook Colombian food?”
“From uh, my mother.”
“Not too spicy, I hope,” Natalie said.
“No, I remember you don’t care for spicy food.” He approached her with a glass of wine. “Please. Make yourself at home.”
She took the glass, conscious of his nearness. The mere presence of him made her breath quicken. “Thank you.”
“Of course,” he said, and then returned to his post behind the kitchen counter, as if it were some sort of protective barricade. Natalie had never seen him like this before. So out of himself. But then, she felt just as disoriented. This place, but for the library, is not like him. Another thought suggested that maybe she didn’t know him quite as well as she thought she did. You don’t know him at all, do you?
Natalie retreated to the books.
She hadn’t noticed at first but the library was decorated with sculptures, paintings, and a small handful of exotic-looking knickknacks, artfully arranged. African wood carvings shared shelf space with brightly-colored porcelain animals that brought to mind South America. A sumptuous oil painting of a man and a bull, high above one bookshelf, appeared vaguely Eastern European. Croatian, she guessed. And his mother is Colombian. She smiled faintly. Maybe from Cartagena, like Mendón.
A figurine on one of the bookshelves caught Natalie’s eye.
It was a bright blue pony—electric blue, like a pure summer sky—done in delicate blue porcelain, and big enough to hold in two hands. Swirls of yellow and white dotted its body in nickel-sized spirals, and it wore a saddle and bridle of melted gold. Natalie recognized it instantly.
“Oh, hey!” she laughed. “This is exactly like the pony figurine Karina buys at that Argentine market in Above. You know, that Mendón book I love so much?”