“Where are we going?” she asked Vanni quietly twenty minutes later. He hadn’t spoken since they’d left the cemetery. He seemed thoughtful, although his driving was as skillful and adroit as ever as he maneuvered through crowded suburban evening traffic. He’d finally turned onto rural drive that paralleled the lakefront and flew down a country landscape, and that’s when she’d asked the question.
“I’m taking you home . . . the long way,” he said, staring out the front window fixedly.
“Good.” She noticed his sharp sideways glance. “Because I’m not ready to make a decision yet . . . about it all.” She didn’t want to go to the Breakers. She didn’t want to be seduced by him. Or she did, but she knew how important careful thought was in this situation with Vanni, with whom rational thought was most difficult.
He stared ahead at the unfurling road. Maybe he’d just take her home more quickly, if she wasn’t willing to continue with their agreement tonight? She felt cast at sea, sometimes, trying to imagine what he was thinking. It was an odd paradox to how inexplicably connected she felt to him at other times.
“I told you we were going to talk. That’s all right, isn’t it?” he asked, his gaze never shifting from the road.
“Yes,” she said, looking at his profile. He turned suddenly, his gaze sweeping over her.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked sharply. She swallowed thickly, both relieved and anxious that they’d approached the intimidating topic.
“Our agreement.”
“Are you regretting agreeing to see me? Now that you know that I’m the same man you saw with Astrid?”
“I’m not sure that ‘regret’ is the right word,” she said slowly, thinking. “I’m uncertain. Confused.”
“I realize you’re upset about what you saw that night. About what you think you saw,” he added under his breath.
“I know what I saw,” she said emphatically.
“Maybe you do,” he said soberly, smoothly taking a bend in the country road around a bluff. “But you don’t know what any of it means.”
“Are you going to want to do those things to me?” she asked the question that had been burning at the back of her throat ever since she’d agreed to come with him this afternoon . . . ever since she’d fully understood who he was.
He glanced sideways, his expression going rigid when he saw her anxiety. “I’m the first person to admit I’m not an expert on kindness, but if you actually think for a second that I’d be that selfish and uninspired as what you witnessed, you’ve got this all wrong, Emma. Besides, I could do those exact same things with you, and it wouldn’t be remotely the same,” he added under his breath, his lips curled into a frown.
She stared at him, wide-eyed, still confused, but also a little amazed at his burst of honesty.
He stopped at a stop sign and looked at her. “Just remember this. I’m not going to ask you to do anything you don’t want to do. If you don’t want something, just say it.”
Her mouth hung open. “It’s that simple?”
“No,” he said grimly, staring out the windshield. “But that part is as cut-and-dry as it comes.”
* * *
He pulled the car onto a narrow, weed-covered road with crumbling pavement that no one would ever have seen if they weren’t formerly familiar with it. A moment later, the vista of the great lake appeared. He put the car into park before a three-foot-tall wall that must serve as a damn during high water. Today, the waves struck rhythmically against a rocky beach a dozen feet below them. It appeared to be an old, forgotten lookout, Emma realized as she got out of the car and Vanni did the same, taking off his jacket and tossing it in the backseat. Weeds and grass were breaking through the pavement as nature reclaimed the area. She walked up to the wall and stared, the evening summer sun making the ruffled light blue blanket of water wink and sparkle at her. She knew immediately when he stepped up beside her, but for a moment, neither of them spoke.
“How did you ever discover this place?” she wondered, thinking of how remote the turnoff had been.
“Old high school and college drinking spot.”
Emma considered him for a moment. “Did you have a Montand car? When you were a sixteen-year-old?” she couldn’t stop herself from asking.
“Yeah,” he said, his shoulders twitching slightly as if he’d thought the question inconsequential.
Emma glanced around the secluded area. It would be an ideal make-out spot. Not that Vanni probably ever just “made out” even as a hardened, gorgeous high school boy in a car that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The thought made her shift uncomfortably on her feet.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, glancing over at her with a furrowed brow.
“I hadn’t realized Mrs. Shaw was your aunt,” she said quietly, sidestepping the issue.
He nodded and placed his hands on the top of the wall. “Yes. My mother’s older sister. Mom was the youngest, Dean is the oldest.”
“Was your mother . . . like Mrs. Shaw, I mean, Vera?” she asked, experimenting with the name.