14. Matteo
MATTEO
On the second morning after Villa Orsini, three people have suggested ways to tell the world who Claire is.
I dislike all three.
My communications director is on video from Milan, my general counsel is audio only, and the hospitality foundation has forwarded the Villa Orsini photograph with a note that begins unfortunately.
I have never trusted unfortunately before coffee.
“We can leave it alone,” my communications director says. “We can give the outlet her name and profession so they correct mystery woman. Or, if you want to get ahead of it, we can issue a short statement confirming that she attended with you as your guest.”
“No.”
Silence.
I hear how absolute I sounded after the word is out.
“No to which?” she asks.
“All of it.”
My hand is already on the trackpad. I have the article open, the editor’s contact information found, and the correction mentally assigned to someone who could finish it before nine.
Claire’s name belongs there only if she wants it there.
My reflex skipped the asking.
“Hold,” I say.
“Hold what?”
“Everything.”
I end the call before anyone can improve the plan.
Then I sit in my study looking at the photograph.
Claire’s back is against my car. Her hand is in my shirt. My mouth is at her temple. The image is distant enough that the photographer caught more intimacy than detail.
The headline irritates me more than the photograph.
MYSTERY WOMAN.
As if being beside me has temporarily removed the rest of her life.
My phone is in my hand before I decide what to do with it.
I stop.
Then I call Claire.
She answers on the fourth ring.
“If you are calling to tell me I am mysterious, I already know.”
Her voice is rough with sleep.
“You sound terrible.”
“Good morning to you too.”
“It is eight twenty-eight.”
“That is morning.”
“You have been awake by six every day this week.”
“Being internationally mysterious is apparently tiring.”
I laugh despite myself.
Then I tell her about the options.
All of them.
She is quiet long enough that I check the screen to make sure the call has not dropped.
“No statement,” she says.
“Do you want them to add your name?”
“No.”
“They can correct the language without saying anything about us.”
“I know.”
I wait.
Claire exhales.
“I don’t want to become the correction either, Matteo. The story is stupid. If we respond, it becomes a second story about whether I’m your girlfriend, your date, your photographer, your whatever. I don’t want to define this publicly because someone took a picture through a hedge.”
I lean back in my chair.
“I can ask them to remove the photograph.”
“Would they?”
“Possibly.”
“Would asking make it more interesting?”
I do not answer quickly enough.
“Exactly.”
Doing nothing feels like leaving a door open in a storm.
I know how to close doors. Claire asked me not to.
“Nothing,” I say.
“Nothing.”
“I dislike this plan.”
“I know.”
“How much?”
“Enough that I can hear your jaw from here.”
I look toward the window.
“That is not possible.”
“It is with you.”
I should argue.
Instead I ask, “Do you still have the shoot today?”
“Yes. A ceramicist above Maiori. Her family has used the same kiln for fifty years and apparently it behaves like a difficult relative.”
“Rain is coming.”
“I own weather-resistant equipment.”
“You also own sandals that squeak.”
“One pair. Stop building a file.”
I decide not to mention that I remember the exact pair.
Claire yawns into the phone.
“I’m fine, Matteo.”
I had not asked.
She knows anyway.
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yes.”
“That sounded painful.”
“It was.”
She laughs softly.
We hang up.
I call Milan back and say, “No statement. No correction. No outreach unless Claire asks for it.”
My communications director says, “Understood.”
I hear myself add, “Do not contact her directly.”
“Of course.”
That should be the end of it.
My head disagrees.
Work helps for approximately forty minutes.
There are contracts to review, a revised opening schedule, two financing calls, and a problem with a coastal property that has been described to me as urgent by three people who mean inconvenient.
I handle all of it.
Before eleven, two other sites have copied the article. One calls Claire a brunette companion. Another invents the word romantic. Neither has her name.
I close both tabs.
At eleven, I start a message to my assistant: Has Claire passed through Bellamare?
Someone at the gate would probably know. I delete the question before sending it.
At twelve thirty, rain blurs the eastern windows. I check the radar, glance toward Casa Ginestra, and reach for my phone.
Then I put it facedown again. Claire is working. I leave it alone.
By four, the rain has weakened to a thin, irritating drizzle.
I am crossing the eastern terrace on my way back from Casa Bellamare when I see Claire coming up the lower path.
She is carrying too much.
Camera bag across one shoulder. Tripod under one arm. A waterproof case in the other hand. Another strap keeps sliding down her upper arm every six steps, and every six steps she jerks her shoulder to put it back without stopping.
Her hair is wet enough that several pieces have escaped whatever arrangement existed this morning and are stuck to her cheek. There is a dark splash of mud up one calf. One sandal makes a wet squeak against the stone.
She looks furious at the strap.
I want to kiss her before she reaches the next step.
Claire sees me and stops.
“If you say anything about the squeak, I’m going home.”
“I was going to ask whether I can take the tripod.”
She considers me.
Then she hands it over.
“Yes.”
She gives me the waterproof case too.
The slipping strap slides again.
Claire catches it with an obscenity.
“That one?” I ask.
“I hate this bag.”
“You have defended that bag twice.”
“It betrayed me in rain.”
“Serious offense.”
“Capital.”
We walk toward Casa Ginestra.
She glances at me sideways.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You have a face.”
“I always have a face.”
“That one is different.”
Mud streaks her calf. The camera strap cuts a red line along her neck, and her damp shirt sticks unevenly to her shoulders.
My attention drops to her mouth.
Claire follows my attention.
“Oh.”
“Yes.”
She laughs once.
“I look terrible.”
“I was not going to use that word.”
“Do not say beautiful. I will push you into the rosemary.”
“I was going to say I want to kiss you.”
That stops her.
The strap slips again.
She does not fix it this time.
“Still?” she asks.
She says it lightly but does not look away.
I set the tripod against the wall.
“Can I?”
Her mouth curves.
“Yes.”
I kiss her in the drizzle with a waterproof equipment case still in one hand.
Claire tastes like rain and coffee. Her fingers close around my shirt, then flatten against my chest when I move closer.
The camera bag knocks lightly against my hip.
She starts laughing into my mouth.
“That bag is trying to participate.”
“It has poor boundaries.”
“You chose it.”
“I was young.”
“You bought it last year.”
“Historical Claire.”
I kiss her again, longer this time.
Her wet hair catches against my jaw. She pushes it back impatiently, misses half of it, and gives up.
I want that too.
She catches me at it.
“No poetry,” she warns.
“I do not write poetry.”
“You look like you’re about to become emotionally inconvenient.”
“That sounds imprecise.”
“There he is.”
I pick up the tripod.
At her gate, I ask, “Do you want company?”
Claire’s hand stops on the latch.
The answer takes a second.
I wait.
“For a while,” she says.
Casa Ginestra is smaller every time I enter it.
Not physically.
Claire has simply filled more of it.
Two contact sheets are clipped to a line near the window because she ran out of table space. Three batteries charge beside the sink. A scarf is hanging from the back of a chair for reasons I cannot identify. There are two mugs near the laptop and one spoon on the windowsill.
Claire drops her camera bag on the floor and immediately takes off the squeaking sandals.
“Do you want a towel?” I ask.
“I want dry clothes and five minutes without straps touching me.”
“Specific.”
“Important.”
She disappears into the bedroom.
I put the tripod beside the wall instead of where I think it should go.
That requires effort.
Claire returns wearing an old gray T-shirt and soft shorts, hair wrapped badly in a towel that is already coming loose.
The camera strap has left a narrow red mark from the side of her neck to the top of her shoulder. I noticed the same kind of mark after her first day here. Back then it was simply information.
Now I want to put my mouth on it.
She catches me looking.
“If you start again, I’m charging admission.”
“I can afford it.”
“That is the least attractive billionaire answer you’ve given me.”
“I am having a difficult day.”
She laughs and reaches for the refrigerator.
I lift a hand before she gets there, then stop.
Claire looks at my hand, then at me.
“May I?” I ask.
“May you what?”
I indicate the red edge the strap left on her shoulder. “That.”
Her expression changes.
“Yes.”
I slide the loose collar of the T-shirt aside by less than an inch and kiss the unmarked skin beside the line. Claire exhales. Her hands settle at my waist.
I kiss the other end of the mark near her neck.
“That is a very strange reaction to equipment damage,” she says.
“I am not reacting to the equipment.”
“Apparently.”
Her towel gives up and drops onto one shoulder. Damp hair falls against my hand. She makes an annoyed sound and tries to push it back.
I do it for her.
Her hands pause at my waist.
Then she kisses me.
Slowly this time. Rain ticks against her kitchen window while Claire’s fingers curl into my shirt.
When she pulls back, she stays close enough that her nose brushes mine.
“If this turns into sex, dinner is going to become crackers.”
“I can live with crackers.”
“I cannot. I have standards.”
“You ate half a peach for dinner two nights ago.”
“That was different.”
“How?”
“I was wearing a dress.”
I have no answer to that.
Claire smiles and finally opens the refrigerator.
Dinner is bread, cheese, tomatoes, and something Luca sent over in a container with instructions neither of us reads.
We eat at the small kitchen table because the rain starts again.
Claire tells me the ceramicist fired the same bowl four times because the glaze kept coming out wrong. I tell her Milan has moved an opening inspection twice in one day. She says my problem is less interesting because nobody involved threatens to smash pottery.
Halfway through the container from Luca, her phone lights on the table with another alert.
She turns it facedown without reading it.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I ask.
“No.”
“Okay.”
Claire studies me over a piece of bread. “You are getting suspiciously good at that.”
“At what?”
“Having an opinion and not making it my problem.”
“I have many private skills.”
“That sentence is going to make Sebastian appear through a wall.”
I look toward the door. “Do not summon him.”
She laughs, and the phone stays facedown.
After dinner, I expect her to ask me to leave.
Instead, she opens her laptop.
“Do you mind if I edit?”
“No.”
“You’ll be bored.”
“I have email.”
“That is a tragic sentence.”
I sit in the chair opposite her with my laptop balanced partly over a stack of magazines because the table is not designed for two people working at once.
Our knees touch under the table.
They stay there.
For an hour, we barely speak.
Claire makes small irritated sounds at photographs. I answer messages. Rain taps against the shutters. Once, she reaches across without looking and steals half my water.
At some point she closes the laptop and moves to the small sofa with a blanket.
I sit beside her because there is nowhere else to sit without returning to the kitchen table.
She puts her feet beneath my thigh without asking.
I move enough to make room.
“This cottage is badly scaled,” I say.
“It is perfectly scaled.”
“My knees disagree.”
“Your knees are wealthy. They’ll adapt.”
I laugh.
Claire’s eyes close.
Then open again.
“I’m not asleep.”
“I did not say you were.”
“Good.”
Five minutes later, her head settles against my shoulder.
I keep reading the same email because moving my arm would wake her.
Ten minutes after that, she is fully asleep.
Her hair is still damp against my shirt. One foot has escaped the blanket. Her hand is curled loosely near my ribs.
My house is less than five minutes away. The bed is larger, the desk better, and everything there fits me.
Claire does not wake when the rain strengthens against the shutters.
I close the laptop with one hand.
Then I stay exactly where I am.