Chapter 2 #2
As a single woman who wasn’t ugly, Parker got a lot of unwanted attention.
Neapolitan men somehow considered a single woman fair game, and she’d learned to walk fast, look straight ahead and never respond to catcalls, whistles, shouts.
No looking around, enchanted by the surroundings. Pity, because Naples was so beautiful.
Like right now, the Bay gleaming sapphire and silver, the sky impossibly blue, Vesuvius a blue-gray giant on the horizon.
There was a controlled sort of bedlam in the streets. A lot of people had swarmed out of the buildings along the Bay. This hadn’t been a bad earthquake. But earthquakes were weird, there were aftershocks, and if it had been a bad one, you wouldn’t want to be in a building.
The streets were filled with people, some still scared, some delighted to be alive, some just happy to have had their work interrupted, like being let out of school early. It was so Neapolitan. Some theatrics, some people overreacting, some people wanting to party.
And everyone very loud.
A young man broke into a run, heading straight for them. He was waving at someone behind him and turned around just in time. He took one look at Nikolai and swerved.
Must be nice to be so intimidating that no one bugged you, no one ran into you, no one jostled you.
She wasn’t intimidating at all. No one would mind running her down or brushing her shoulder. She often got unwanted comments and lascivious looks, whistles and shouts, someone trying to cop a feel. It was so tedious.
But not now. Now it was as if she were invisible, surrounded by a force field, and it was great. Nikolai’s size and body language warned everyone off and she didn’t think anyone would dare try to shout out a lewd comment or try to feel her up. Not with Nikolai by her side.
She was actually relaxed walking along the embankment in the hot sunshine. Parker loved Naples but it was a rough city for a single woman.
Another group of loud men was coming toward them, completely absorbed in themselves. They were raucous and not paying attention to where they were going. If she’d been alone, she’d have opted to walk around them or try to cross the street to avoid the tangle of men altogether.
Now…nope.
She sailed ahead on Nikolai’s arm without a care in the world, and sure enough, the group just split and flowed around them and regrouped behind them. Like magic.
She looked up at the blue, blue sky and the blue, blue sea, the sun reflecting off the tiny waves like pinpoint diamonds. To the left the city rose in a dramatic sweep of red and ochre and green buildings, set off by spectacular gardens. Such a delight to be able to enjoy it undisturbed.
“Must be nice being you,” she sighed. Nikolai looked down, head cocked.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Those guys back there? They’d have run right into me and would have tried to cop a feel while they were at it.
The other guy who was running toward us looking behind him?
He’d have knocked me down, for sure.” She studied him, tall and broad and strong.
A force of nature. “No one’s going to knock down Jack Reacher. ”
He gave a half smile.
“Not the first time someone’s called you that,” she guessed. He shook his head. “Must be nice. I have no desire to be a man, but if I did, I’d want to be you.”
He looked down at her and his voice turned husky. “I am infinitely grateful that you are not a man.”
It was definitely a suggestive comment, one of a million she’d received in her lifetime.
She’d mastered the art of ignoring or deflecting and hated it.
But somehow, his words didn’t strike her as wrong, just sincere.
He was happy she wasn’t a man. And she was happy he wasn’t a woman.
There wasn’t anything skeevy in his voice or demeanor.
He didn’t look smug or sly. Just stating a fact.
And then there was this curious reaction on her part. She didn’t resent his comment. It…pleased her. The mildest flirtation possible, and it pleased her. She was happy to flirt with him.
He was attractive and she was attracted.
Naples was full of beautiful people, and since about fifty percent were male, there was something like a million good-looking men around, and she hadn’t been attracted to one of them in the two years she’d been living here.
She was attracted to Nikolai Garin, which was strange because she knew nothing about him.
He could be married for all she knew, though probably not.
No ring—she’d checked. Not even a pale strip on his tanned hand.
And though Aunt Caroline was no prude, she’d have somehow let Parker know if he was married.
He was a security expert. She had no idea what that entailed, but presumably it entailed a touch of paranoia and violence. Not things that ordinarily attracted her.
But he looked and talked like someone sane and even pleasant.
Parker was used to these types of thoughts. She’d come across almost every type of male unpleasantness that made for a bad companion, no matter how attractive the package.
She had the antenna of a hyena, that could smell carrion meat from a mile away. She could smell a man who was wired wrong.
Her system, which hadn’t failed her yet, had given off no warning signals so far.
So…enjoy it. He would probably turn out to be terminally boring, or greedy, or something dire, and he’d be crossed off her mental list. But so far, he was definitely on it.
“Lotta complicated thoughts going on in that beautiful head of yours,” he remarked. She looked up sharply.
He gently ran a finger down her face, the gesture over almost before she felt what he was doing. “You don’t need to tell me what you’re thinking. Not going to pry. But I would love to know.”
Oh no. He was perceptive. This huge macho man, with muscles out to here, a man who worked in security, turned out to be sensitive to the thoughts and feelings of others.
Parker was used to keeping her thoughts to herself, but on her many dates, it wasn’t hard. The guy was always more than eager to fill the void. More than willing to fill the airwaves with his job, always an important one, his car, cryptocurrencies, world events…
And she realized that this Nikolai hadn’t once talked about his job, about how important he was, though she’d got it from Aunt Caroline that the Consulate had hired one of the best security guys in the world.
“I was thinking all over again how beautiful Naples is,” she lied. She wasn’t thinking that at all and she was well aware how beautiful the city was. “And now that I don’t have to worry about people bumping into me, I can enjoy it more.”
He smiled and tucked her hand more tightly into the crook of his arm. “Don’t worry about other people tripping you up.”
Well, no. Not while she was by his side. He felt like a concrete pillar, and no one runs deliberately into a concrete pillar.
Such a beautiful place. It was possible to appreciate it now that she was all but invisible.
The sparkling sea, with the ferries to the islands looking like tiny toy boats.
Massive, centuries-old palm trees swayed gently in the breeze.
Way farther down, you could barely see the huge cruise ships docked at Beverello Port, and farther still, on the horizon, across the Bay, Vesuvius.
This part of Naples was all baroque—huge sandstone palazzi dressed up as if for a Sunday parade.
And the light. Odes could be written about the light of Naples, a painter’s dream. Living here, she often thought it a pity that she had no artistic talent at all. Probably better that way. She’d spend all her time on her balcony trying to capture the colors.
Some of the excitement of the earthquake had died down, and traffic was slowly getting back to its usual chaotic self.
“Naples was the largest city in Europe in the seventeenth century,” she said. “Then it decayed quickly under misrule.”
“A lot of places decay under misrule,” Nick mused. “Seen it over and over again. And it’s a tragedy, every single time.”
“Like Rome. At the height of empire, it had over a million and a half inhabitants. By the sixth century, it was in ruins with fewer than thirty thousand inhabitants. Some say the population fell to fifteen thousand. From a million and a half. Almost all the buildings were decayed.”
Oops. She’d spoken without thinking and was probably boring him half to death. She looked up, expecting to find that usual expression of a suppressed yawn. “So sorry, I am probably boring you. I tend to get caught up in my enthusiasms.”
His pale blue eyes widened. “God, don’t apologize! This is fascinating. Like I said, I have seen so many places reduced to rubble. And a lot of atrocities where beautiful things were caught up in the madness and destroyed.”
“The statues of the Buddha at Banyan,” she murmured.
“Exactly.” They were at the end of Piazza della Repubblica and Nick stopped. “My rental is in Piazza dell’Olio. Do we dare take our lives in our hands and cross?”
She was charmed at the idea that he hesitated crossing the busy avenue.
He looked like a blond Superman. Cars would definitely bounce right off him.
But they wouldn’t bounce off her, and he seemed to have nominated himself as her protector, so they waited at the curb for traffic lights way up and down the avenue to stop cars and create a lull in the traffic.
Finally, there were no cars coming in either direction. It wouldn’t last. She could hear cars revving their engines. Neapolitans didn’t like traffic lights, particularly when they were red.
They looked at each other and grinned.
“Go!” he said and they went.
She didn’t know how he did it. His legs were much longer than hers, but he kept exact pace with her, only she’d somehow been kicked into a faster gear. In an instant they were across the street, just in time. Cars started whizzing past them.