These Tangled Vines(64)

Freddie stood up and walked toward her. He pulled her into his arms.

“I’m sorry,” he said, rubbing her back. “You’ve been supporting my dreams ever since the day we met, so if you want to stay here and finish out the season, we can do that. And if you want to take a class about wine tasting, we can do that too. I’m just so happy that I finished my book. Now that it’s done, we can start living. We’ll do whatever you want.”

She should have been relieved. Finally, her husband was thinking of their life together, not just his own personal dreams and goals. More importantly, he had proven yet again that he was not the sort of man who shouted or smashed things, which was why she had chosen him as a husband in the first place. In that way, he had never disappointed her.

Why, then, was her stomach churning with exasperation?

Just when she’d grown tired of waiting for Freddie to put her happiness first and had finally come to a decision about a future without him, he decided to return with a completed manuscript and the fulfillment of all his promises.

Had she been wrong to lose faith in him? Had she given up too soon?

God, oh God . . . Anton was waiting for her at the swimming pool. She wanted desperately to go to him and tell him about Freddie’s return, to talk everything over. He would understand what she was feeling because he understood her better than anyone, including Freddie. He would help her make sense of it.

At the same time, she couldn’t deny that her physical attraction to Anton was still overpowering, and her desires were waging a battle against the loyalty she felt toward Freddie. Was that all it was, where Anton was concerned? Physical attraction? Had she lost touch with what really mattered?

Stepping back, Lillian spoke without making direct eye contact with Freddie. “Dinner in Montepulciano sounds perfect.” She couldn’t possibly take him to the villa. “But right now, I have to get back to work. I just came back to put on a different pair of shoes.”

How appallingly easy it was to lie to him. Poor Freddie believed her without question.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll make reservations somewhere. You got paid yesterday, right? We can afford it?”

“Yes.” She went to the bedroom to change her shoes but stopped in the doorway when her gaze fell upon the bed. Thankfully, the maid had visited that morning. The sheets were freshly laundered, and the whole apartment had been vacuumed and mopped.

Lillian entered the room, opened the wardrobe, and put on her deck shoes.

“I’ll see you later,” she said, hurrying for the door.

Freddie set his plate in the sink with a clatter. “Okay. Love you.”

His words hit her like a gut punch. She paused for a few seconds, sinking into a sea of doubt, but quickly gathered her wits about her and flew down the steps.



Anton was swimming below the surface, shooting across the turquoise bottom of the pool. When he surfaced at the shallow end, Lillian was pacing back and forth on the cement deck. She couldn’t catch her breath.

He took one look at her and said, “Is everything okay?”

Two guests were sunning themselves on lounge chairs at the far end of the pool.

“He’s back,” she whispered heatedly, pacing like a caged tiger.

“Who’s back? Freddie?”

“Yes. It was exactly like you said. He wanted to surprise me. He was sitting at the kitchen table when I walked into the apartment just now.”

Anton wasted no time climbing out of the pool. He padded to a deck chair, dried off, and pulled on his shirt.

“Come with me,” he said, leading her to the gate.

She followed, and they climbed a sloping gravel path to a nearby building that housed the game room. They entered, and there were no guests inside.

Anton closed the door and locked it behind them. While he switched on the overhead lights, Lillian crossed to the Ping-Pong table in the center of the room.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said. “This changes everything.”

“No, it doesn’t. You knew Freddie would come back eventually. Nothing has changed. It’s the same as it was last night.”

She felt as if she were hyperventilating. Unable to look Anton in the eye, she paced around, chewing her thumbnail. Anton watched her with concern.

“He finished his book,” she told him. “He mailed it to a New York agent this morning. Then he suggested that we go home.”

“Home to America?” Anton strode forward. “What did you say?”

“I told him that I liked it here, that I’d made a commitment to work until the end of the summer, and I didn’t want to leave. He seemed to accept that. He said we could stay.”

There was a steely edge to Anton’s voice. “It’s not up to him. It’s up to you.”

She glanced at him. “I know that. If he had pushed me to quit, I swear I would have fought him about it. But he didn’t do that. He was unreasonably agreeable.”

Anton studied her expression, then moved slowly around the Ping-Pong table, approaching her as if she were a fawn in the forest that might spook and run. “Lillian . . .”

She held out a hand. “Please, don’t come any closer. Just give me a minute to digest this. I need to figure things out.”

“I thought we had it figured out last night.”