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  “That is no longer your concern, is it?” Giovanna ground out between clenched teeth frozen in a smile.

  “As you said the last time we spoke, we’re still friends, Gia. You know I would help you. Don’t do something stupid. You’re in over your head.”

  “Ah, but it’s my head, is it not? Mi scusi, I’m running late for my appointment. But first, you must introduce me to your little friend.”

  Before Luca could respond, Calli stepped forward and stuck out her right hand while resting her left possessively on Luca’s forearm. “Hello, I’m Callista McAllister.” Her small chin rose a fraction of an inch. Luca bit back a grin as he realized Calli was looking down her nose at Gia though Calli stood nearly a head shorter. “And you are?”

  “Ah, piacere! I am Giovanna Moscato. So you are the infamous Callista McAllister back from the dead.” Giovanna smiled without warmth and failed to offer her own hand in return, simply staring at Calli’s as though it was something soiled and tainted. Calli dropped her hand to her side and curled the freshly lacquered nails into her palm. “And people say there are no more miracles. Yet here you are.”

  “Here I am.” Calli confirmed with an equally cold smile. “And here is exactly where I intend to stay.” Luca’s heart swelled. This was the Callista he’d missed. She’d suffered experiences she might never feel comfortable enough to share with anyone, but she’d survived. More than that, she picked herself up and dedicated herself to adapting and moving on. Gia was an intimidating bitch when she wanted to be, and Calli wasn’t backing down an inch. There was something incredibly beautiful about watching her rediscover her confidence. Welcome back, baby.

  “I would wish you buona fortuna, for you will need it, but we both know it would not be sincere,” Gia sneered.

  “I doubt I’ll need it at all, but by all means, tell yourself that if it will make you feel better,” Calli smiled serenely. “And now, as pleasant as this hasn’t been, you must excuse us. Luca and I have an engagement elsewhere, and we’re also running late.”

  “We do?” Luca’s eyes widened as he looked down at Calli. “I mean, oh yeah, we do. Think about what I said, Gia. Don’t let anger or disappointment blind you to the obvious danger you’re putting yourself in.”

  “You flatter yourself, Signore Fiorelli. I have nothing to be angry or disappointed about. My association with Igna is strictly business. My business.”

  “Suit yourself.” Luca nodded and strode from the salon, grabbing Calli’s hand and pulling her along behind him. He’d planned to take her to the church of Santa Maria del Popolo after the salon to see the paintings by Caravaggio, but he hadn’t planned on an uncomfortable confrontation with Giovanna in the interim. What was she thinking? If spending time with Monte was a ploy to garner Luca’s attention, she’d certainly succeeded, but not in the way she’d hoped. He would gladly help her financially. Heaven knew he could afford it, but the relationship was over and she needed to accept it. His placid expression betrayed none of the emotion seething beneath the surface as he headed out of the square, between the chiese gemelle, the twin churches of Santa Maria dei Miracoli and Santa Maria in Montesanto, and out onto the Corso. A few meters along, he ducked into the doorway of a shop, stopping so quickly that Calli plowed into him from behind. He pulled her around to face him, and then casually cocked a hip against an archway in the stone façade.

  “Exactly what in the hell was that?” He enquired mildly.

  “What was what?” Calli replied with deliberate casualness. She blinked up at him, once, twice. She looked as innocent as a lamb, but her nails gouged into the back of his hand as she spoke.

  “Cal?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Ouch,” Luca grinned as he pried her pink tipped talons away from his skin one at a time. Callista winced as the bloodied crescents were revealed. He started to release her hand then decided he liked the way it felt in his and kept hold of her fingers as he leaned back against the building again. “Now talk to me.”

  “What would you like to talk about?” She pretended to be totally captivated by the window display.

  “The tension in there was thick enough to cut with a knife. How can that be possible when you and Gia have never even met?”

  Calli continued to stare up at him. She knew how stubborn he could be and he wouldn’t let it go. He must be angry with her for being not only rude, but terribly presumptuous. Maybe he actually cared for the bitch?

  “I hadn’t expected to meet your lover,” Calli said in a quiet voice while looking somewhere over Luca’s right shoulder as though fascinated by the afternoon shoppers hurrying up and down the street. Her heart skipped painfully as she uttered the words. She’d known there was someone, more than one someone actually. It had been over a hundred years and Luca wasn’t a monk. Had she really expected he would be sitting on his thumbs mourning a dead woman? Still, the way he looked at her sometimes. She’d begun to hope it was the look a man gives a woman he wants, a woman he cares for. It was wishful thinking. Giovanna was a straight up man eater, one who was capable of molding herself into whatever a man needed her to be in order to get what she wanted. And what she wanted was very clear. Gia wasn’t ready to relinquish Luca without a fight. For all of her bravado in the salon, Calli knew she lacked the experience and killer instinct to go head to head with someone like Giovanna for any length of time. Calli didn’t know how to compete. She only knew how to be herself.

  “She was my lover,” Luca shrugged, watching her closely. “Not anymore. How did you know?”

  “Women’s intuition,” Calli returned the shrug, unable to meet his eyes. Women’s intuition and the kaleidoscope of intimate scenes Giovanna had been only too happy to open her mind and share. Calli didn’t know how Luca felt, but she knew with certainty this Giovanna was in love with him. She’d given Calli fair warning she didn’t intend to disappear quietly.

  “Women’s intuition, huh? Look, Calli, I never claimed to be some knight in shining armor. I may be an angel, but I’m no saint. So what? Now you know and you can’t even look me in the eye? Diavolo!”

  “She’s very beautiful,” Calli began in a hoarse voice. She cleared her throat, then threw her head back and met his gaze head on. “She obviously still cares for you.”

  “The feeling isn’t mutual. She’s a friend, nothing more.”

  “But you were…sleeping with her,” Calli persisted. “Surely you must feel something?”

  “Lust, Callista. What I feel…felt for Giovanna was lust. A certain fondness, but never anything more. I was honest with her from the beginning so don’t look at me like I’m some big, bad wolf who ravaged an innocent maiden,” Luca grumbled. “I’m not a wolf and she sure as hell wasn’t innocent.”

  As much as Luca enjoyed a woman’s body, only one woman had ever touched his heart. In all the years he’d believed Callista dead, he’d never offered any woman more than transient affection before moving on to the next tidbit in an endless antipasti. Detached promiscuity provided a welcome amnesia that allowed him to concentrate his efforts on thwarting the Fallen and their schemes. He’d convinced himself it was enough. He’d been good at lying to himself. Now against all odds, Calli was back, and he felt like a beggar who’d opened a paper bag and discovered a trove of priceless jewels. He’d been wrong about Calli and he’d been wrong about his father. Conceivably, he could also be wrong about love. He could no longer trust words like “never” and “impossible.” But neither had his comfort zone extended quite enough yet to trust words like “forever” and “always.” Luca was used to his head being in control, but when it came to Calli his body didn’t pay much attention to his head. Worse, his heart ignored it completely. She was the one woman he was afraid he couldn’t walk away from, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t walk away from him. Though he’d buried it deeply, after dozens of years and dozens of women he’d never really gotten Callista McAllister out of his system. Could that mean she was supposed to be there?

  Using the hand he st
ill held, Luca tugged Calli forward but she resisted. Her proximity afforded him a whiff of mint and flowers from her freshly coiffed hair, but underneath he could still detect the scent of vanilla and sunlight that was pure Calli. His groin twitched in direct opposition to his brain’s orders. Maybe Kat was right. He’d spent so many years protecting himself from what he might lose he’d lost sight of what he might gain. Maybe some things really were worth the risk.

  “Have you ever been in love with anyone?”

  “I didn’t used to think so, but now I’m not so sure,” he replied, wondering at the hard edge in her voice.

  Calli let herself be pulled into Luca’s arms on his second attempt and buried her face in his shirt. She knew he felt lust for her just as he did for…how many others? In fact, the hard evidence of it currently pressed against her where their bodies met. She wanted him to desire her, of course. For over a hundred years, with her nose buried in books describing every conceivable erotic fantasy, it had been his face, his body she’d envisioned. Beyond all hope of rescue, she was convinced it was all she would ever have of him. Yet, now she stood in his arms, and with the slightest bit of encouragement she suspected she could find herself in his bed. Lust. How empty the word sounded to Calli now. Because now she understood it wasn’t enough.

  “I thought we were going to see the Caravaggio paintings,” Calli mumbled against his chest.

  “You still want to go?”

  She nodded without looking up. She didn’t want to talk about his lovers anymore, didn’t want to contemplate his feelings for other women. She detested and resented every curvaceous, faceless one of them. Still, she was the one in his arms at the moment. If he didn’t love her, she knew at least he wanted her. They had a shared history, a certain closeness the other women in his life could not claim. Maybe she could use it to her advantage. The problem was, she had no idea how to do that. She had no idea how to be a seductress. And she wanted more than his hunger. She wanted his heart.

  Chapter Eight

  Situated next to a gate in the Aurelian Wall, Calli saw nothing notable about the long side of Santa Maria del Popolo facing the piazza. The façade, which sat perpendicular to the Porta del Popolo, was in a simple Baroque style. Compared to the prominent façades and conspicuous domes of the twin churches on the opposite side of the square, Calli thought it would be easy to overlook the unassuming church altogether.

  After climbing a short set of stairs, they stepped through the tall marble door-case and into the hushed and reverent shadows of the interior. Calli’s nose stung with the scent of incense and lemon wax. She gasped with delight as she saw the church’s unremarkable exterior hid incredible artistic and architectural treasures. Except for a few small groups of tourists, guidebooks in hand, who whispered in respectful awe at the chapels around the perimeter designed as mortuaries for prominent Italian families, Calli and Luca nearly had the church to themselves. Calli smiled inwardly when Luca reverted to professor mode, understanding now that he used it as a way to distance himself and remain emotionally detached. He guided her to the first chapel on the right of the entrance, pointing out the must see features, though the details were clearly identified in both English and Italian on printed cards along the altar rails.

  Their footsteps echoed on the uneven stone and marble floor as they slowly worked their way toward the front of the church with Calli picking her way around the interesting slab tombs set directly into the main floor. Luca pointed out other tombs worth looking at on the arcade pillars in the aisles and on the walls in between the chapels. When they finally reached the front of the church, Calli paused to admire the huge altarpiece painted by Carlo Maratta.

  “Tradition says the emperor Nero was buried here,” Luca whispered. “After the burial, the people living nearby complained of being constantly disturbed by a horrible noise coming every night from a walnut tree growing on the site. They were convinced it was the ghost of the mad emperor and that a flock of crows living in the tree were demons waiting for the re-incarnation of Nero as the Antichrist. Pope Paschal the Second wanted to suppress veneration of the dead emperor by the fearful locals who were leaving flowers in his tomb, so he had Nero’s ashes thrown into the Tiber, and the tree cut down. Then he had the chapel built right here where the grave had been.”

  “Really? Do you think the pope believed the crows heralded Nero’s reincarnation?”

  “No,” chuckled Luca quietly. “I think it’s far more likely he wanted to pacify the peasants by chopping down the tree. He actually built the chapel to celebrate the capture of Jerusalem by the First Crusade.”

  “Still, demon crows and the ghost of a mad emperor make for a great story,” Calli smiled back and wandered off to the left of the altar where they finally reached the Cappella Cerasi, The Chapel of the Assumption. The Caravaggios were on the side walls, facing each other with Carracci’s Assumption serving as the main altarpiece in between. Calli had always loved art, and in Italy, it seemed a work of genius waited to capture her attention around every corner. She’d been eager to see this chapel as soon as Luca told her it was one of the few places in Rome where masterpieces of such importance could be viewed in their original setting. Even after the difficult scene with the brazen woman earlier that day, she was glad she’d decided to stick to the original plan and have Luca bring her to see the works. They were incredible.

  Calli stepped away from Luca and craned her neck to study the artwork. Luca moved to follow, then stiffened and glanced around the church. The faint shocks racing along his spine warning of evil were faint, but he sensed them nonetheless. He stood near the entrance to the chapel and moved slightly to the side peering around the marble pillars running the length of the building on both sides of the center aisle. His jaw tightened as he spotted Giovanna cautiously making her way along the left side of the nave. She looked decidedly uncomfortable and he guessed the sensations he felt were from someone who waited for her outside. A Fallen did not willingly enter a consecrated building without a damn good reason.

  Gia looked up and flinched at the unmistakable anger on Luca’s face.

  “Luca, to the sacristy, quickly.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest and planted his feet, unmoving as she sent the mental message.

  “Please. I’m being followed and I need your help. There isn’t much time.”

  The fear in her voice was evident. He fought the urge to walk away, but maybe he owed her this, at least. He turned to grab Calli’s arm as Gia headed toward the sacristy to the left of the chapel.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Giovanna is here. She says she’s in trouble. I’m sorry, cara, but I…feel obligated to help her. We’ll come back another time, I promise.” He stroked a finger across her cheek feeling genuine regret at tearing her away from the paintings she’d so longed to see.

  “Of course, we must help her if she’s in trouble, Luca. We’re Earthbound. It’s what we do.”

  Luca felt humbled by her generosity of spirit. She had no reason on earth to feel compassion for Gia, especially after the woman’s earlier stunt. He’d also seen the images Calli had been privy to, even if she wasn’t willing to discuss it. Yet she didn’t hesitate to offer her assistance. With a hand at the small of her back, Luca propelled her in the direction of the sacristy, hidden from the main body of the church.

  “In case I forgot to tell you today, cara, you are beautiful.”

  “So you do like my hair?” Calli tossed over her shoulder as they hurried along the dim corridor past even more Renaissance tombs.

  “What? Oh, yeah, your hair looks great, too.”

  They made a quick right and entered the sacristy. Giovanna already waited near the door, wearing a path in the tile floor and anxiously wringing her hands. A wizened priest of indeterminate age watched her from the corner of his eye as he made a great show of arranging a rack of ornate vestments in a walnut cabinet on the far side of the room.

  Luca strode to the wary man, who, after a
few abrupt words from the Defensori, bowed his way from the room. Luca returned to the women, surprised to see that Calli, drawn no doubt to the look of fear and distress on Gia’s face, had taken the other woman’s shaking hands in her own.

  “I know I have no right to ask anything of either of you, especially after…but I did not know where else to turn,” Gia began.

  “Just tell me what’s going on.” After her little escapade earlier, Luca didn’t trust Gia as far as he could throw her.

  “Not here. We need to leave. They’re watching all of the entrances, and it’s only a matter of time before they come looking. Consecrated ground will not stop these fiends.” Wild-eyed, Giovanna looked around as if expecting her pursuers to appear in the sacristy at any moment.

  “Fine. Do you know the McAllister villa on Via Dandolo? We fade there.” He pulled Calli into his arms and reached for Gia’s hand. The sigils protecting the house were woven with the molecular signatures of only those allowed to enter and leave. Unless Gia was touching him, she couldn’t pass the barrier. Calli clung to Luca as the world spun away. In a heartbeat, the three Earthbounds materialized in the kitchen of the McAllister home. Poor Maria, standing at the sink and peeling vegetables for the evening meal, nearly jumped out of her skin.

  “Mi dispiace, signore,” she fanned herself laughing breathlessly. “I never get used to that no matter how many years I have served this family.”

  “Maria, could you excuse us please? In fact, take the rest of the day off. Signorina Callista and I will eat out tonight.”

  “Well, if you are certain, signore.” Maria’s full face crinkled in delight. “My daughter is visiting from Milano with my grandson and I would not mind spending the rest of the day at home.”

  “Certo! Vai, vai. Go, go…we’ll clean this up later.” Luca made a shooing motion, and Maria wasted no time gathering her handbag and heading out the door with a wave, not even pausing to remove her apron.