Page 22 of Edge of Oblivion (Night Prowler 2)
That, she thought, firmly closing the bathroom door, is exactly what I’m worried about.
Morgan was under much better control by the time breakfast was served.
The café was quaint and sunny, situated directly across from the Keats-Shelley Memorial House at the base of the Spanish Steps. It boasted an excellent view of the terraced garden staircase with its fuchsia riot of ruffled azalea beds, the imposing Renaissance bulk of the Trinità dei Monti church perched at the top, and the tourists that flocked past on the Piazza di Spagna like so many chattering, exotic birds. It was Xander’s choice; he had guided her to it with one hand held lightly under her elbow the entire four-block walk from their hotel.
They sat now in silence in the shade of a white umbrella, looking at everything but one another.
The aproned cameriere came with their demitasse cups of espresso and departed with a bow.
“So. What is your plan?” Xander took a sip from the tiny porcelain cup. In his big hand it looked like a child’s thing, small and easily breakable.
“I rather hoped you had one.”
Morgan shifted in her chair, settling better against its cushioned back, and lifted her own cup to her lips. She swallowed and tasted heaven: a tiny dose of coffee so fine and strong and sweet it was nearly dessert, topped with a creamy fluff of foam. “God, that’s good,” she said. She finished it in one long draught and sighed in pleasure.
Beside her, Xander smiled. “You don’t have espresso in England?”
“Tea,” she said. “Very fine tea, but nothing at all like this. This is—” She struggled for a moment until he supplied the perfect word.
“Decadent.”
He tur
ned his head to look at her, and the sunlight behind his head caught in his dark hair and haloed it with blue flame. It struck her again how beautiful he was, how savagely graceful, at once mythic and menacing. There was something oddly doomed about him, too, an air of weary sorrow like the memory of too much sin.
Like a fallen angel, she thought, and had to glance away.
“It’s better than what we have in Brazil also.”
She glanced back at him, watching as he drained his cup and set it down, every movement elegant and spare. He looked up at her, rested his elbow on the arm of his chair, then rubbed one finger across his full lips in a slow and thoughtful gesture that also managed to look profoundly erotic.
“Our espresso is grown at lower altitudes, in nonvolcanic soils. Italian blends are more refined.”
“Why does the altitude make a difference?”
“Like wine grapes, only coffee beans grown at high altitudes in rocky, inhospitable soil produce the best fruit.”
She lifted an eyebrow.
“It’s the struggle that refines them,” he explained, “the challenge. Give them too much water, sunshine, and fertile soil and they grow fat and tasteless, like a Concord grape, appetizing only when saturated with sugar and made into jelly. Or they wither and die of boredom. Like people. The best ones are survivors. Stripped of chaff, refined by struggle and hardship, they’re rendered complex and potent by their very endurance and ability to thrive in spite of deprivation.”
Poetic, she thought. My assassin is poetic.
“So,” Morgan said, gazing at him askance from beneath her lashes, “which are you, then? A fat jelly grape?”
He smiled, wry. “No.” His gaze flicked over her, once, hotly assessing. “And neither, I suspect, are you.”
The food arrived. Plates loaded with prosciutto and honeydew and cornetto, biscotti and boiled eggs with heir-loom tomatoes, toasted bread and more of the wonderful espresso. Morgan dug in, trying to avoid the burning stare Xander aimed in her direction.
“I thought perhaps the most crowded areas first,” she offered around a bite of buttered toast once the waiter had retreated. “The touristy areas. Ancient Rome, the Palatine Hill, places like that.”
“More sightseeing,” he said, with a tone that indicated his disapproval of this plan.
She swallowed her bite of toast and sent him a frosty look. “It’s just a numbers game. Jenna didn’t See their direct location, so I have to start somewhere. We can eliminate the bigger, more obvious tourist traps first, then move to the outer areas if we don’t find anything. But I have a feeling we will.”
“You think they’re hiding in plain sight?”
“Why not?” She shrugged. “We do.”
