“Yeah. But nah, I don’t think he’s sick. I see him every day. If he is, the Oscar goes to, because he’s big and strong and tough as ever. The moods are getting to be a pain in the ass, but he’s not irrational. Just a son of a bitch. There’s something goin’ on, though. Somewhere.” Luca drained his beer and opened the cooler for another, tossing a fresh to Carlo, too. “But my shit with Pop is old news. How’d you end up bunking with me in the shithouse? Tell me what’s up with this chick. She’s hot—wicked rack on her.”
He guessed he’d staved this conversation off as long as he could. “She’s just a nice woman that I met. I only walked her home when she left the bonfire last night. Nothing’s up—she’s married.”
“Yeah, so I hear. To that Auberon bastard. You know Pop and I are writing a bid for him, right?”
“No. I didn’t. Pete and I are trying to get an invite to submit on something, too. Doesn’t matter. Seriously, Luc. Just walked the woman home.”
Luca laughed. “Big brother, you are either an idiot or a liar. There was some hardcore eye-fucking going on this morning. Right there in front of Pop, Trey, Father Michael and hell, probably God himself. I mean, it’s time you got back in the game, but maybe you don’t want to start out with a death match, you know? That guy is every bit as ruthless as the Uncles, and you know it. You’re sitting on the wrong side of the pews if you want to take on James Auberon. Especially if you’re doing it to fuck his wife.”
“Jesus, Luc! I was nice to her. End of story. And I met her two days ago. Why is everybody so damn sure I want to get into her pants?”
“Don’t you? Be straight.”
He hesitated for only a second, but that was enough. Luca laughed knowingly and slapped him on the back, and Carlo didn’t even bother to answer.
Yeah. He did want her. Or, at least, he was interested. But she belonged to somebody else. That she belonged to a sadistic bastard was irrelevant. She had taken a vow to another.
His family was right; he should stay away. In this cozy little nook of the world, staying away might not be so easy, though. Maybe he and Trey should cut their week short and head back to Providence.
~ 6 ~
When Sabina got back to the beach house, she removed her boots as quickly as she could and tried to flex her sore foot. She’d wrapped it well, covering the gauze bandage with an elastic bandage she’d wrapped around her foot and ankle to make sure it all stayed in place. But even the low, two-inch heels of these boots had been a small torture.
She changed from her church clothes into a pair of dark brown shorts, leaving her little sweater on but taking off most of her jewelry. Then she pulled her hair up into a ponytail and picked up her book. She’d stay on the veranda today. Sand was not yet her friend again.
Though she’d been enjoying the book she’d started yesterday—it was an old Ellery Queen murder mystery, which she’d found amusingly on point when she’d selected it—she had trouble focusing this afternoon. There were many thoughts in her head, and they all demanded to be thought at once.
She wasn’t completely certain why she’d gone to Mass. It hadn’t been to see Carlo, although she had felt a frightening thrill when she’d realized he was sitting near the front. She’d gone for the Mass itself.
She hadn’t been in more than fifteen years, not since she’d met and immediately become serious with James. He was nominally a Presbyterian. In reality, though, he had no patience for religion, and he sneeringly referred to Catholics as ‘papists,’ so there’d been no chance of her continuing to practice the religion into which she’d been born. They’d met at a time in her life when she’d been chafing at the rigid dogma of her Church and questioning her faith in general, so she hadn’t really minded or even noticed the way he’d pulled her from it. He’d given her youthful rebellion an excuse, and she’d taken it.
It was years before she’d missed it. Even after she’d known the hell she’d chosen instead, she hadn’t really pined for Sunday Mass or confession or communion , or any of it. And when she had, her faith had been bound up in a knot of nostalgia that held all the things about who she’d been and what she’d lost—her faith, her language, the last remnants of her family. All of it. She’d had no specific need to reconnect with the Church.
But something about talking to Carlo last night had touched that part of her. Perhaps it was the way he’d simply known she would be Catholic, and the way he’d expected her thus to understand why his marriage had been annulled. And she had understood. Divorce among Catholics was serious business, and Catholics who divorced could not remarry in the Church. An annulment allowed for the chance to remarry. It was the need of a man who had hope for his future.