“I need to pay a visit to campus to see my new office. It won’t take long.”
“There’s no rush.”
“Yes, there is.” Now Gabriel’s voice was heated.
She sighed heavily. “I could come over later.”
“Come for dinner. I’ll pick you up at six thirty.”
“I’ll take a cab.”
Julia broke the awkward pause that followed with an explanation that she needed to go.
“Fine,” said Gabriel stiffly. “If you wish to take a cab, that’s your prerogative.”
“I’m going to keep an open mind until we talk, and I’d like to ask you to do that too.” Her tone was conciliatory.
Gabriel felt as if he were hanging on to his hopes by a very thin thread. He was far from certain that she would take him back. And even if she did, the old specter of jealously taunted him. He didn’t know how he would react if she revealed that she’d turned to Paul in her grief and shared his bed.
God damned Angelfucker.
“Of course,” Gabriel said, his voice strained.
“I’m surprised you called me. Why didn’t you call me while you were away?”
He was silent for a moment. “That’s a long story.”
“I’m sure it is. I’ll see you tonight.”
She hung up the phone, wondering what his story would include.
* * *
When Julia arrived at Gabriel’s new home, she surveyed it with no little puzzlement. It was a two-story frame house with a simple, unadorned front, and it was painted a charcoal gray with darker trim. There was almost no front yard to speak of and a small, paved car pad to the house’s right.
In an email that included directions, Gabriel had sent Julia a link to the original real estate listing for the property. The asking price had been over a million dollars. The house had been built prior to World War II. In fact, the entire street had been a neighborhood of Italian immigrants who built the small, two bedroom houses in the nineteen twenties. Now the street was populated with old-moneyed yuppies, Harvard professors, and Gabriel.
As she took in the tidy simplicity of the building, Julia shook her head. So this is what a million dollars can buy you in Harvard Square.
As she prepared to knock on the front door, she was surprised to find a note on it in Gabriel’s hand.
Julianne,
Please meet me in the garden.
G.
She sighed, and just like that she knew that tonight was going to be very, very difficult. She walked around the side of the house and down the little paved driveway, gasping when she rounded the corner.
There were flowers and greenery, wisps of sea grass and elegantly trimmed boxwood, and in the very center of the garden stood what looked like a Sultan’s tent. A fountain sat on the right side of the green space, featuring a marble statue of Venus. Underneath the fountain was a small pond filled with white and red Koi.
Julia walked toward the tent so she could peer inside. And what she saw pained her.
In the tent was a low, square bed, exactly like the futon that graced the terrace of the suite she’d shared with Gabriel in Florence. In the suite where they’d made love for the first time. On the terrace where he fed her chocolates and strawberries and danced with her to Diana Krall under the Tuscan sky. The futon where he made love to her the following morning. Gabriel had tried to reproduce the ambience of that terrace down to the very color scheme of the bedclothes.
The voice of Frank Sinatra seemed to float from somewhere closer to the house, while almost every flat, fireproof surface held a tall, pillar candle. Ornate Moroccan lanterns were suspended from crisscrossed wires overhead.
It was a fairy tale. It was Florence, and their apple orchard, and the wonders of an Arabian night. Unfortunately for Gabriel, the extravagant gesture begged the question: if he was resourceful enough to construct a Moroccan caravan in his garden, why couldn’t he have told her he planned to return?
Gabriel saw her standing in his garden, and his heart leapt. He wanted to pull her into his arms and press their lips together. But he could see from the set of her shoulders and the stiffness of her spine that such an act would be unwelcome. So he approached her carefully.
“Good evening, Julianne.” A silky voice caressed her ear as Gabriel leaned in from behind her.
She hadn’t heard him approach, so she shivered slightly. He rubbed one arm and then the other, up and down, in an act that was supposed to be comforting but in reality caused a deep erotic flush to dance across the surface of her skin.
“I like the music,” she said, pulling away from him.
He extended his palm as an invitation. Cautiously, she placed her hand in his. He pressed an unhurried kiss to her knuckles before releasing her.
“You’re stunning, as always.”
Gabriel’s eyes slowly drank in the sight of Julia in her plain black dress, her pale, shapely legs in a pair of black ballet flats, and the way the gentle whisper of wind blew a few strands of hair across her glossy, reddish lips as she turned to face him.
“Thank you.” She waited for him to comment on her shoes, for his eyes rested on them a little longer than was polite. She’d worn the flats because they were comfortable and because she wished to assert her independence. She knew he wouldn’t like them. Surprisingly, however, he smiled.
Gabriel was a little more casually dressed in a white linen shirt and khaki pants, with a navy linen jacket. His smile was perhaps his most decorative asset.
“The tent is beautiful.”
“Does it please you?” he whispered.
“You always ask me that.”
Gabriel’s smile faded slightly, but he resisted the urge to frown. “You used to like the fact that I am a considerate lover.”
Their eyes met and Julia looked away. “It’s a lovely gesture, but I would rather have had a letter from you or a telephone call three months ago.”
It appeared as if he wanted to argue with her, but in an instant his expression changed.
“Where are my manners,” he muttered. He offered his elbow, escorting her to a small bistro table that was set up in a corner of the stone patio.
Small white lights shone down on the patio from the branches of an obliging maple. Julia wondered if Gabriel had hired an exterior decorator just for the occasion. He pulled out her chair, and when she was seated, gently eased it closer to the table. She noticed that the centerpiece on the table was filled with orange and red gerbera daisies.
“How did you manage all of this?” Julia unfolded her napkin and placed it in her lap.
“Rebecca is a wonder of New England industriousness.”
Julia gave him a questioning look, but her question was soon answered when Gabriel’s housekeeper served dinner. Rebecca was tall and plain and wore her salt and pepper hair in a short bob. Her eyes, which were large and dark, sparkled with amusement. Julia divined quickly that Gabriel had taken Rebecca into part of his confidence, at least as far as this evening was concerned.
Despite the elaborate décor and the perfect music, dinner was a simple affair by Gabriel’s standards: lobster bisque; a pear, walnut, and Gorgonzola salad; steamed mussels with frites; and then finally and most gloriously, a blueberry tart with sour lemon ice cream. Gabriel served her champagne, the same Veuve Clicquot he’d served the first time she dined at his apartment. That evening seemed so long ago, even though it was less than a year.
They made small talk during their meal, discussing Rachel’s wedding and Scott’s girlfriend and her son. Gabriel described the things he liked about his house and those he didn’t, promising Julia a tour. Neither of them were in a hurry to begin discussing the events leading up to their separation.
“You aren’t drinking?” She noticed that he’d imbibed only Perrier with his meal.
“I quit.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Why?”
“Because I was drinking too much.”
“Not when you were with me. You pledged not to get drunk anymore.”
“Precisely,” he said.
She looked at him carefully, at the way his eyes indicated there was a very unpleasant experience behind his words. “But you enjoyed drinking.”
“I have an addictive personality, Julianne. You know this.” He smoothly changed the subject to something more pleasant.
When Rebecca served dessert, he and Julia exchanged a look.
“No chocolate cake tonight?”
“Non, mon ange,” Gabriel breathed. “Although I’d love nothing more than to feed you again.”
Julia felt her cheeks grow red, and she knew it would be a poor decision to go down that road with him before they had their conversation, but as he gazed at her with undisguised passion, she couldn’t bring herself to care.
“I’d like that,” she said, quietly.
Gabriel smiled as if the sun had just returned to the sky after a protracted absence and quickly shifted his chair so he was seated next to her. Close. Very close. So close that she could feel his warm breath on her neck, which goose pimpled in anticipation.
Gabriel picked up Julia’s dessert fork and placed some pie and ice cream on it and turned to face her.
As she gazed at him with longing, his breath caught in his throat.
“What is it?” She looked at him in alarm.
“I’d almost forgotten how lovely you are.” He traced the curve of her cheekbone with his unencumbered hand and brought the fork to her lips.