Chapter Six
LUCIANA HAD ALWAYS FOUND LIFE interesting, absorbing and fun, Now her life shifted to exhilarating. During the day, she would work on her business affairs, tour the market and talk to clients and customers. Little changed in her work world.
Then there were the evenings…and they became unpredictable.
She was surprised to find that Brice had no objections to spending as many nights at her house as she ended up spending in his sprawling glass and concrete palace.
“We’re supposed to be giving this our best shot,” he pointed out to her.
“To see where it goes and how long it lasts. I would be artificially constraining the arrangement if I insisted on not stepping outside the Palatine.”
“Or the Aventine,” she added with a smile, for some days she would find herself restless and would stop by the Tankball Association offices.
She swiftly learned that Brice did walk a lot. He would often arrive at her house as the sun lights were lowered, reeling and relying heavily on his cane, for he had walked from the Palatine hub.
“I’ve walked the length of the Artery more than once,” he confessed. “If I don’t want to lose all function in this leg, I have to use it, and often.”
Most of his walking was done at night, long after most people were asleep. He would walk around the Palatine, or the length of the Artery, when no one would see him and try to stop him and talk.
“I come up with good ideas when I walk,” he said.
Sometimes, Luciana walked with him. They would walk in silence…or not. One thing Brice was good at was silence. He didn’t rush to fill it or worry that she was not speaking to him because of some mood or other thing. He just let the silences stretch.
As Luciana’s days were filled with conversations, some of the quiet stretches when they walked through the forest in the Palatine, or late at night, when they strolled the Artery, were some of the most peaceful she had experienced.
And she, too, figured out solutions to knotty problems while walking, enough so that even when Brice was not there—which was not often—she would walk the Artery herself.
The sex was good. Of course it was. It was the entire point of the experiment, in Luciana’s mind. She had never had such wonderful experiences before. She printed a bigger bed and recycled the old one, even though the larger bed took up most of the room in her bedroom.
After banging her knees on the wall once too often, and when Brice drove his elbow into the doorframe as he moved around the end of the bed, Luciana paid contractors to come in and remove the wall between her room and Rayen’s old room, which had remained empty since she had left.
The combined space felt luxurious to her, and neither of them rammed into walls, anymore.
Brice had not insisted upon keeping the arrangement a secret, and didn’t seem to go out of his way to avoid being seen coming to and leaving her house.
Luciana followed his lead, and didn’t try to hide her movements to and from the Palatine.
Yet neither did she tell anyone about…well, she wasn’t even sure what to call it.
Besides, who could she tell? She had no best friend, or even friends that she would trust enough to tell.
When Devar met her at one of the market stalls for lunch, one busy day, she realized that despite not advertising their arrangement, she and Brice had become notorious.
“Don’t you keep up with the Forum, mother?” Devar asked. He added darkly, “It’s all anyone seems to be talking about. ‘The odd couple’.”
“I’m embarrassing you…” Luciana said, her heart sinking. She hadn’t been on the Forum for weeks, not to do more than deal with her personal messages. She was far too busy to gossip.
“No,” Devar said quickly. “I’m not embarrassed. Mostly, I’m baffled. What do you see in him?”
The direct question was just like Devar.
“I have no objections to answering that,” she said, “Except that I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t know myself. I just know that…” She could feel her face heating. “I like being with him.”
“The original recluse?” Devar shook his head, and picked out the pickles from his second sandwich. “I think I’m more surprised that he unbent enough to let anyone get as close as you have.”
“I’m not close at all,” she amended quickly. “I don’t know what we are, but we’re not close.”
Devar raised both brows. “I see.” He chewed, considering. “Well, he must be spectacular in bed.”
Luciana covered her face with her hands. “This from my son.”
“What? We’re both adults. Whatever he’s doing, it’s good for you, mother. I’ve never seen you look so well. You’re glowing.”
She found her voice and shifted the subject onto Caelen, for she knew that once she had Devar talking about Caelen, he would carry the conversation and give her a few moments to recover her composure.
And he did.
He was not the only person to have an opinion about her and Brice, which she discovered over the next few days and weeks.
Many of her clients and customers dealt with her differently. She couldn’t put her finger on it at first. Her chat with Brion, who owned the coffee stall where she and Devar most often ate lunch together, explained it to her.
Brion smiled as he put her morning cup of cappuccino on the counter and touched his temple.
He always refused her credits, even though she tried to pay every single time.
“Wouldn’t be right,” he’d told her nearly a year ago.
“I make great coffee but couldn’t sell it to no one.
I used to break out in sweat at the idea.
You got me turned around on how to not sell to people, and still have them lined up to buy and you were right.
Me and Katie, we’re living nicely now, thanks to you.
So no, I won’t take your money for the daily cup, even two on your tough days. ”
Yet on this particular morning, his smile seemed to have something extra in it. Wickedness, perhaps.
“Why are you smiling like that?” Luciana demanded, as she blew on the coffee peeping from beneath the foam.
“You’re looking mighty fine, these days, Luciana.” He winked.
She lowered the cup. “You know about Brice….”
Brion held up his hands. “Hey, none of my business. Only I always figured that when you did get around to finding a man, you would go whole hog. And I was right. You didn’t stint yourself, did you?”
“Everyone calls him the Great Recluse,” Luciana said. “That’s not exactly a great catch.”
“Yeah, but look at his bottom line,” Brion said. “If he’s not the richest man on the ship, he’s up there in the top three.”
I’m not with him for his money. The words rose in her mind. She didn’t speak them aloud. Instead, she said, “Well, I am learning a lot from him about growing a company.” Which was true. Not all of their talk was personal, after all.
“There you go,” Brion said, delighted. “Good for you, Luciana.”
Other market stall managers and residents of the Capitol seemed to have similar opinions, approving of her prowess at hooking up with a man who could do wonders for her business interests.
When she thought about it, she decided that everyone in the Capitol was following a trend that she had set. Ever since Devar had been small, they had only ever seen her working. Of course they would consider Brice to be just one more commercial acquisition.
As she lacked any other descriptor for what role he actually played in her life, beyond that of bedmate, she let the impression linger. It certainly wasn’t harming her reputation.
Oddly, her association with him didn’t seem to be harming Brice’s reputation, either.
“I get my hand shaken and a pat on the shoulder whenever you’re mentioned,” Brice said one night while they were waiting for their bodies to cool and their hearts to calm.
“Most of the men in the rooms you’re in I’ve had dealings with in the past,” Luciana observed.
“And got the better deal out of it, I suspect,” Brice said. “That would explain why they think I’ve handled you better than they managed.” He sounded sour.
“I’m not offended,” Luciana assured him.
“I’m rather pleased. They think the only way to get the better of me is to do what you’ve done, which means they respect my business sense.
Although if they think that because you’re in my bed, I’ll go easy on you in our business dealings, they’re clinging to an old, invalid idea. ”
“We don’t have business dealings,” Brice reminded her, drawing her closer and kissing her shoulder.
“We will one day.”
He answered with his hands, which did distract her.
For a while.
While the Forum speculated endlessly about them, Luciana wondered if Brice would get tired of it and end their arrangement.
Yet when she asked him, he said, instead, “If they won’t shut up about it, then we might as well make the most of it.
I have a box at the arena. We won’t be alone because the other six seats can be used by anyone in the Association.
We won’t be in the stalls, though. Come and watch the Hounds slaughter the Blues. ”
“I hate tankball,” Luciana replied.
“You hate it, or you’ve never understood it?” he asked, his tone deceptively mild.
“Yes!” she declared.
“You’ve never seen a game with me by your side, explaining it all. That makes a big difference,” he said. “Say yes, Luciana.” And he looked down at her steadily, while his fingers stroked her back.
She reminded herself yet again that he had played the game professionally. “I’ve never seen a full game at all,” she said, with a sigh.
Two nights later she found herself in one of the high boxes at the arena, looking through the transparent steel wall of the tank at twelve players rolling in zero gee, and threw the four-handled ball around the tank, aiming for the goal mouth at the top.
While, down at the bottom of the tank, the groundsmen fielded the ball when it reached them, and used all their strength to throw the ball back up into the zero-gravity zone.
Sometimes, the other team’s groundsmen would tackle them for the ball, and the crowd would go crazy, chanting “Fight! Fight!” as the two groundsmen grappled.
Not that there could be much fighting in two gees. “You’re twice as heavy down there as you are in normal gravity,” Brice pointed out. “You don’t want to blow all your energy swinging punches.”
As he had promised, he did explain the game to her, and it did make a difference, understanding the rules and why players were doing what they were doing.
Luciana was happy to go to games after that, only she knew she would never love the game the way Brice did.
His enthusiasm, while he watched a game, gave him a different appearance.
She could see the younger man, the groundsman, in his shining eyes.
Frequently, they would walk to the Capitol after the games.
They weren’t the only ones. A steady stream of Capitolinos would walk in front or behind them.
Often, they would tease Brice about his former team’s less than stellar season.
Brice would sometimes scoff back at them about the misfortunes of the other team.
He could cite statistics, wins and losses, all without apparent thought.
It wasn’t just games that they attended together.
Public functions that one or both of them had been invited to, including a Captain’s Table dinner on the Bridge with Captain Travers, Brice suggested with a casual air that he could withstand attending if only Luciana was there to distract him from the foul moods they generally produced in him.
There were performances in the Aventine. Brice arranged permission for them to have coffee—poured from a flask—while standing on the catwalk at the top of the ship, which stretched from the Aventine to the Palatine hub, and gave a stupendous view of the ship.
And Luciana got to see what public life was like for a former tankball player, turned wildly successful promoter, and why he usually preferred to stay at home.
Anywhere they went, Brice was in demand.
People surrounded him, put their hands on his arms, and sometimes his shoulders.
Women, and some men, would step in close and smile breathlessly.
And it never stopped, not even for a minute, unless he found a way to extract himself and find an empty room somewhere to breathe and brace himself for the next round.
In comparison, attending tankball games in the relative privacy of the Association’s private box was tranquil.
So when Brice suggested that they attend the Void Hounds’ last game of the season—as they had not made the finals, this year—Luciana agreed readily.