“What?” she asked, and her forehead wrinkled in confusion.
The people flowed around her, the seemingly endless, monotonous stream of humanity he had lived among for five hundred years. But she stood, dressed in black, her fair skin flushed with life and her brown eyes lit with a kind of intelligence, curiosity, and humor that set her apart. For a moment, he allowed himself to forget his interest in her father and enjoy the unexpected pleasure of her company.
She was bold and shy, formal and friendly. She was young, he realized, and innocent in a way he could hardly remember, yet her short life seemed to have been shaped by loss and abandonment. She was, surprisingly, rather fascinating.
“Inexplicable,” he muttered under his breath, and walked toward her in the crowd.
He hadn’t realized she heard him, but her eyebrows lifted in amusement.
“Nothing’s inexplicable. Just not explained yet.” She smirked at him in the noisy mass of people, and he let his green eyes linger on her face for a brief moment before they kept walking through the fair.
“Perhaps, Beatrice. Perhaps you may be right.”
Chapter Four
Houston, Texas
November 2003
“Why do you dye your hair black?”
Beatrice looked up from the computer screen to see Giovanni staring at her again from his seat in the reading room.
“What?”
“It must be dark brown anyway; why do you dye it black?” he asked again, his eyes narrowed intently on her face.
She wanted to laugh at his confused expression but kept a straight face as she answered, “Because it’s almost black, but not quite.”
“I don’t understand.”
She looked at him over the reference desk, a small smile flirting at the corner of her mouth. “I just felt like it hadn’t really committed to a color, Gio. I don’t do things half-assed. I don’t want my hair to, either.”
He set his pencil down and leaned back in his chair. “So, you’re saying you dye your hair because you think it’s…lazy?”
He cocked his head in amusement.
She shrugged. “Not lazy, more indecisive.”
He smiled. “You realize that makes no sense, of course. Your hair color is determined by your genetic make-up and has no reflection on your personality or work ethic.”
She glared at Giovanni playfully before sticking her tongue out at him.
He looked at her in astonishment for a moment before he burst into laughter. She was startled by the unfamiliar, but not unwelcome, sound and joined him before she looked at the clock on the wall. It was already ten to nine.
Still chuckling, she said, “All right, hand over the book. I’ve got to lock up.”
He smiled at her and began to pack the manuscript for storage. She walked over, picked it up, and began her nightly closing ritual.
In the weeks since he’d joined her and her grandmother at the festival, Giovanni had become surprisingly friendly. She found him lingering around the student union on random nights of the week, holding cups of coffee he never drank and wandering through the student-study area in the library. He made a point of chatting with her, but she found his intentions as puzzling as his profession.
She had searched his name online, and though she found a myriad of rare books and antiquities dealers, his name never appeared. She found a copy of his business card with Charlotte Martin’s notes, but the only contact information on it was a phone number she was reluctant to call, though she did program it into her phone.
When she asked her grandmother about the intriguing bookseller, she was shrugged off.
“It’s like he’s from another planet, Grandma.”
“He’s old-fashioned…and European. Maybe he just doesn’t advertise online. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“But not even a public telephone listing for his business? Not a single mention? It just seems odd.” She sat at the breakfast table, drinking coffee and watching her grandmother start the chili verde for dinner that night.
“Do you feel unsafe with him?” Isadora turned to her, a look of concern evident on her face. “You’re alone with him in that reading room for hours every week. I won’t have you feeling unsafe.”
Beatrice shook her head. “No, it’s not that. There’s just something…”
Isadora turned back to the stove. “You’re creating a mystery where there is none, Mariposa. I think he’s a nice man. Just old-fashioned.” Her grandmother fell silent, and from her expression, Beatrice could tell she was reliving some of the dark times that had marked her granddaughter’s teenage years. Not wanting her grandmother to worry about her strange fascination, Beatrice attempted to lighten the mood.
“Do you know he doesn’t even have a mobile phone? Can you imagine?”
“Really?” Isadora may have not been as fond of technology as her granddaughter was, but she’d jumped at the chance to have a mobile phone when she realized she could talk with her circle of friends almost nonstop.
“Nope. I’ve never seen him with one. Come to think of it, he doesn’t have a laptop, either.” She frowned again. “And what researcher doesn’t have a laptop these days? It’s just odd.”
Her grandmother laughed. “Maybe he’s allergic to technology, mija.”
In the weeks that followed, Dr. Giovanni Vecchio became a small obsession to her.
He was rich, she determined, after noticing a silver-haired man hold open the back door of a Mercedes sedan for him on more than one occasion when they left the library. Giovanni had taken to walking her to her small, hand-me-down Civic some evenings when she got off of work, most often to continue a conversation they were in the middle of. He’d also tried to convince her that a brisk walk down five flights of stairs was the key to good health. She sometimes joined him and sometimes simply waited near the elevators. He was an unusually fast walker.
She also determined he was in his early thirties. He looked younger but had casually mentioned too many foreign universities for her to think he had seen them all in less than that.
What bothered her the most was that something about his appearance stirred memories of a time in her life she had tried very hard to forget, and reminded her of a face she had relegated to the back of her mind. She’d tried for years to put that dark chapter of her teenage years behind her, but the more time she spent with the mysterious book dealer, the more thoughts and memories began to surface.
He stood before her now, his soft smile and beautiful eyes the very picture of politeness. He was wearing a moss-green sweater that evening which made his eyes look both green and grey at once.
“Can I walk you to your car?”
She paused, and he must have been confused by the odd look on her face because he stepped away.
“I…sorry, kind of lost in thought.” She smiled. “You know, thinking about my indecisive hair.” She closed her eyes and shook her head, embarrassed that she’d used thinking about her hair as an excuse for her quizzical expression.
He frowned. “Did you want-”
“Sure,” she continued. “I’d like the company. Just let me shut the computers down. Can you get the lights by the door?”
He paused almost imperceptibly but turned to walk toward the doorway. As she waited to log out of the library’s system, she glanced at him from the corner of her eye. He slipped his hand into his messenger bag and pulled out a pencil to flick the lights off before he tucked it back in his bag. His movements were smooth and practiced, and if she hadn’t been observing him, she realized she never would have noticed.
She forced herself to look back at the computer and stood up straight when she heard the electronic sigh that indicated the machine was off. Gathering her bag, Beatrice plastered a smile on her face and walked toward the doorway to meet him.