“They certainly do train you guys well, I’ll say that much,” she murmured as she slipped back across the lake of gray leather.
“Mi scusi?” He sat beside her.
“Well,” she began nervously, “it’s just that practically no one has good, old-fashioned manners these days. My mother used to complain about that all the time.” She knew she was babbling, but she had to keep talking to control the runaway pace of her heart. “By the way, what should I call you, Prince?” She grinned, feeling silly just saying it.
He was looking at her that way again. As if she amused him. It wasn’t that she minded being entertaining. It was just that she so infrequently got that sort of reaction from men. From anyone.
“Antonio,” he said at last. “That’s my real name.”
“Oh.” Maybe it was.
“Your mother lives near you?” he asked.
“No,” she said regretfully, as the car pulled smoothly away from the curb. “My mother died two years ago. Cancer.”
“I’m sorry,” he said softly.
She was aware that he was observing her very closely. She blinked twice, taking care of the threat of tears. “It was hard. For both of us. We were close.”
“But for comfort you have the rest of your family—”
She was already shaking her head. “No one really close. But it’s okay. My father was never in the picture, and I was an only child. I have an aunt in Connecticut. We send Christmas cards,” she added with an effort to sound brighter.
“So you’re alone,” he said, “truly alone.”
She glanced across the car at him, and she could have sworn there was honest sympathy reflected in his eyes. Strange, she thought, someone in his line of work caring at all. After a while, she would have thought men like him would have become immune to their clients’ personal traumas. Sort of like bartenders.
“I have my work. It can be satisfying.” She slanted a quick look at him without turning her head. She could feel him still watching her. She wondered why he’d suddenly gone quiet, and what he was thinking.
A moment later Antonio sat forward on the seat and spoke quietly to the driver. She couldn’t make out his words.
They drove toward the center of the city, gliding over Wisconsin Avenue, through fashionable Chevy Chase. The car finally pulled up in front of a store she’d passed by many times but never would have dared step inside.
“Versace isn’t a restaurant,” she said helpfully.
“I know. But I’ve changed my plans. Where we’re going, you’ll feel more comfortable wearing something different.”
She looked down at her outfit. “This isn’t dressy enough?”
He tipped his head to one side and observed her objectively. “It doesn’t do you justice,” he stated. “Come. You decide after you’ve tried on a few pieces.”
Maria let out an involuntary little snort. “Now I know this isn’t part of the package deal. My office pals would never spring for anything this extravagant. Do you realize what stuff in a place like this costs?”
“It will be taken care of,” he said simply.
She stared at him then smiled, feeling a little daring. “All right. If you’re game, so am I. But no one in Versace is coming within ten feet of my charge card!”
He laughed and shook his head at her. “Agreed, cara.”
An hour later they left Versace Couture with a slim gold box, in which Maria’s old clothes, shoes and hose had been packed beneath shimmering layers of tissue. She wore an elegant powder-blue, cashmere suit with a gold brooch, and sleek Italian leather slings with tiny heels. All purchased for her through a mysterious arrangement between Antonio and the saleswoman that involved only a signature and not even a glimpse of a check or plastic. The sales staff all but genuflected as he left the boutique.
Maria had become a believer. Almost.
If he wasn’t actual royalty (which she still found hard to accept), he at least had one soaring credit allowance and the respect of high-end merchants—neither of which was likely to come as a perk for working as a professional escort.
This took serious mental adjustments.
Next stop was I Matti, an upscale Tuscan-style trattoria, on Eighteenth Street. Antonio ordered for her, and she was delighted with his choices. They dined on lamb shanks and pasta with a heady tomato sauce redolent with olive oil, accompanied by a delicious Barolo wine.
She couldn’t help questioning him further. “You’re really Italian then,” she said as they returned to the limousine.
“Yes.”
“And rich?”
“Very.” He seemed more amused than offended by her questions.
She nodded, thinking about times in the distant past when she’d been called gullible.
She had fallen for Donny Apericcio’s game, playing Doctor and Patient, when she was seven. She’d had to undress to be “treated” for her pretend ailment. And she had believed Becky Feinstein in high school when the popular girl had congratulated Maria on making the yearbook committee. It had been a cruel joke.
But those episodes were kids’ stuff, embarrassments she’d gotten over long ago. Allowing herself to be charmed, possibly even seduced by a stranger, was of the adult world. A game she wasn’t about to play with any man, rich or not.
“So-o-o-o,” she said pushing Antonio’s wide hand off of her knee where it had wandered as soon as they’d seated themselves in the limo. “You’re an honest-to-goodness prince, and you have a perfectly reasonable explanation for why you’re in this country, standing in for a paid date.”
“Si, my former valet, he was posing as me and causing my family terrible embarrassment.”
“Valet,” she repeated thoughtfully. “And what do you do in Italy? Own a vineyard or something?”
“Olive groves, a mill where the olives are crushed for their oil, and a bottling factory,” he corrected her, smiling proudly. “Passed down many generations through my family.”
She absorbed these new details. “Listen, I hope you’ll understand my confusion. I didn’t know you, but I do know my co-workers. They once hired a stripper dressed up like a pizza delivery person to surprise a man who was retiring. Then there was the singing kangaroo.”
“Kangaroo?”
“You don’t want to know,” she assured him with a roll of her eyes. “The thing is, I’m going along with this for one reason only. To save myself grief in the office.”
He looked a little disappointed. “I thought you were coming with me because you’d never ridden in a limousine.”
“That too,” she admitted quickly, uncomfortable that he’d remembered an unguarded moment of girlish enthusiasm. “But I really don’t need all this wining and dining stuff to be happy on my birthday. A good book and a hot bubble bath are just fine. And I don’t mind being alone,” she added quickly when he opened his mouth as if to comment. “I enjoy my privacy.”
Which was true. To a certain degree.
She’d always needed time to herself. Time to read, to write in her journal, to garden or listen without interruptions to a CD of her favorite opera. A cup of sweet tea and a melt-your-knees tenor singing to her while she soaked in steaming water was her idea of heaven.
But there were times, more and more often these days, when she’d