JENNIFER LABRECQUE - Nobody Does It Better

She pasted on what she hoped passed for a smile. “Yes. Grazi .”

The woman left and Holly stood in the center of the room, rolling her head on her neck slowly to release tension. After nearly thirty hours of traveling, thanks to time changes and flight delays, she welcomed the room’s peace and quiet.

She longed for a hot shower, but first things first. She might be pushing the backside of thirty, but her father and her newly minted stepmother, Marcia, had insisted she call once she was safely ensconced in her hotel room. She and her father had always been close, but her decision to find Julia had strained their relationship, particularly once her father realized he couldn’t talk her out of going. Holly thought it was a combination of him not wanting her to get hurt, as well as his feeling as if her determination to find Julia was an insult to him.

She turned on the cell phone reserved for occasional use, thanks to the exorbitant prices per minute charged. Her dad answered on the second ring.

“I’m here. Finally.” No need to mention the lost luggage.

“Thank God. Have you talked to your guide yet?”

“No. Not until tomorrow. The flight delay didn’t affect that.”

“No trouble getting to the hotel?” her father asked.

“I had some help,” she admitted, crossing to open the shuttered window and look out onto the curved street. She almost felt as if she were dreaming.

“Be careful.” Her father was a little on the overprotective side. Most likely from being a single parent all these years, and the fact that she was the youngest and a girl. He definitely wasn’t this way with her brother, Kyle.

“I’m always careful.”

“Just remember, you’re in a foreign country.”

“I’ll be extra careful.” The conversation felt awkward, but then, things had been awkward for a few weeks now. Her father had nearly come unglued at Holly’s decision to find her mother. And when he’d grudgingly confessed that he knew precisely where Julia was because he’d kept up with her whereabouts all these years but never shared the information with her or Kyle, things had definitely been tense.

Actually, tense was an understatement. Kyle had been pissed off that Daddy had left them in the dark all this time. Even Sherrie, Kyle’s sweet wife, who always gave people the benefit of the doubt, had thought it was a crappy thing for their father to do.

Once Daddy had divulged that Julia was still in Venice after twenty-seven years—and saved Holly a ton of search time—she’d declared her intent to travel to Venice, which yet again polarized the family, this time along gender lines.

Kyle thought her spending the time, money and effort to travel to Venice to find Julia was, as he so charmingly put it, “bullshit.” Her father was also dead-set against it.

Her stepmother, however, had supported Holly’s decision. Marcia saw it as a means for Holly to balance her heart chakra. Holly wasn’t sure she bought into the whole chakra thing, but she appreciated Marcia’s support. Sherrie had also thrown her towel into the “Julia meet-’n’-greet” arena, sending school photos of Holly’s niece and nephew and a Wal-Mart family portrait of Kyle, Sherrie and the kids for Holly to share with Julia. Even her cousin Josephine, who had been raised by their grandmother after rebel African soldiers killed her missionary parents, and who was often standoffish and prickly, had jumped in to support Holly’s decision. Josephine, a veteran traveler, was the one who suggested Your Way Travel, a private tour guide operation, given Venice’s winding, confusing streets and Holly’s terrible sense of direction.

Holly found it ironic that Julia had ripped their family apart at the seams years ago and was still tearing at their familial fabric even now. It would’ve been so much easier if Holly had simply abandoned her plans for the sake of maintaining family peace, but scaling this mountain was too important to her.

She had all kinds of conflicting emotions about Julia and what she wanted the outcome of this meeting to be, but in a weird way, the outcome was almost secondary. It was the doing that was so important. It was Holly taking a proactive stance and not waiting on the elusive “one day” when her mother might contact her.

“Are you going to see her tomorrow?” her father asked. Maybe if Holly hadn’t known him so well, she might’ve missed the quiet yearning, the silent heartbreak underlying his question. She hoped Marcia was in another room and couldn’t hear the same thing Holly did.

“I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet when I’m going to…” What? March up to her door? Introduce herself as Julia’s long-lost daughter, one who’d been deliberately lost? “…initiate contact.” Ah, that had a vague, euphemistic feel to it.

“I still think you should call her first.”

“I’m not calling.” They’d had this discussion countless times, as well. He’d nagged her to call, send a letter, something before she hopped on a plane and traveled across the Atlantic. She was equally adamant she wouldn’t. Celeste McKinney, one of the teachers at her school, had discovered she was adopted and spent years tracking down her birth mother. She’d called first, to give her mother time to adjust to the idea of meeting her daughter, and the mother had flat-out refused, informing Celeste in no uncertain terms it was best to let sleeping dogs lie. It had crushed Celeste. Holly was determined to face Julia one on one. She wasn’t giving her mother the opportunity to turn her down.

Her father’s heavy sigh echoed over the phone. “How about you just call us after you’ve seen her.”

“Fine. Does this time work for you?”

“Whenever you want to call is fine.”

She leaned against the window casing and tamped back a flash of homesickness. Venice was beautiful, but home was home. If she’d been home, she’d be in her chair with a book, with Ming curled up on the ottoman. She could do with a little kitty company right about now. And her own nice clean bathroom.

“You’re picking up Ming tomorrow?” She’d left her seal-point Siamese rescue at home with plenty of food, water and fresh litter. Dad and Marcia had offered to pick him up and baby-sit him at their house. She knew Marcia was behind the peace offering. “Be careful, he’s sneaky. He’ll get out if you’re not careful.”

“We’ll take care of him. Don’t worry.”

“I won’t. I’m not buying trouble.” The second the words left her mouth she recognized her mistake. She closed the shutters and latched them, propping the cell phone awkwardly between her shoulder and head.

“You bought trouble when you purchased your ticket and got on that plane.” Censure marked her father’s gruff voice. They’d had this discussion umpteen times since she’d made her decision. She was here and she certainly didn’t plan to enter yet another futile argument.

She hurried the call to an end and tossed the cell phone onto the bed. A shower, a good night’s sleep and her suitcase should be here tomorrow morning.

Glass half full.

3

THE LOCK CLICKED INTO PLACE on the other side of his door leading to the washroom, and Gage settled back onto the bed in his adjoining room, the laptop monitor giving him a clear view of the loo and the Gorgon’s room. The Gorgon proceeded to examine the washroom. She peered into the corners, stood on her tiptoes to check the showerhead and even gave the toilet itself a cursory once-over.

He grinned and crossed his arms behind his head. He wasn’t sure what she used in the way of spyware, but Gage employed cutting-edge technology. She could look all day and never detect the motion-activated audio-video equipment planted in both rooms.

She offered an almost imperceptible shrug and leaned into the washroom mirror, peering at her face. A queer feeling jolted through him and he shook it off. Her eyes were positively arresting, yet the rest of her face was singularly unremarkable except for a slightly lush mouth.

She sighed and stepped back. Without ceremony, she unzipped and slipped out of her trousers. He wasn’t a voyeur and he would only watch her undress for as long as it took to ascertain she didn’t have any information hidden on her.

Her top came past her thighs, but Gage would’ve had to be a eunuch—and he wasn’t—not to notice and appreciate the lovely length of shapely leg. The Gorgon boasted the legs of a 1940’s pinup girl. She neatly folded her trousers and placed them on a towel on the washbasin’s edge.

In one fluid motion she tugged the top over her head and all the air seemed to suck right out of Gage’s body. Lush rounded curves covered by black knickers, cut high on the thigh and low on the hip, and a black bra. In the center of her chest a small zippered travel pouch was affixed to her two bra straps. Unsnapping the pouch, she stacked it and her top on her trousers.

She raised her arms over her head as she arched her back in a sinuous stretch—a siren’s call, all the more difficult not to heed as she was unaware of her audience—and then brought them down and back. She slowly rotated her head on her neck, as if ridding herself of the day’s tension, and then rolled her shoulders in an unerringly erotic motion.

She reached between her breasts and unhooked her bra. One simple shrug of her elegantly rounded shoulders and it was gone, joining her trousers and top.

Throughout the years, his gallery had displayed countless art pieces with nude subjects in varying states of undress. Strictly as a chap who appreciated the human form as a work of beauty, he was appreciative. Her back, from neck to hip, was a fluid, sensual work of art. Golden brown nipples tipped full breasts. As a man who hadn’t had a lover in months, he noted the alabaster globes, the slight rounding of her belly and the curve of her hips.

She turned and started the shower, stepping aside to avoid the spray. While the water heated, she skimmed her knickers off. A triangle of crisp curls covered the apex between her thighs and her lush bum formed an inverted heart at the base of her spine.

Desire, usually buffered by an emotional distance, slammed into him with a force that shook him. Intense wanting knifed through him, bypassing all rationale and objectivity. She stepped under the shower spray and he deliberately looked away from the screen, drawing a deep breath and holding it before exhaling slowly.

He’d never reacted this way, felt such a…connection to anyone before. His detachment seemed to have deserted him at a most inopportune time.

His operative task was broken down into a series of small objectives, which would ultimately lead to him attaining his primary goal. This particular objective had been satisfied. His cock stirred and he grimaced. Satisfied was a piss-poor choice of wording. How about met? He’d met his objective. He’d ascertained she wasn’t hiding any documents or goods in her clothing, although it could still be in her knapsack or the small pouch she’d worn. To watch her shower moved beyond his professional role and there was no room for that. She was a job. An assignment. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Out of nowhere she moaned, a low, husky direct feed in his ear. Like an adrenaline hit, it shot straight to his cock. What the hell? He glanced at the screen. Her head was tilted back. Water cascaded over her shoulders and the slopes of her honey-tipped breasts, running in rivulets over her belly and down the length of her legs, darkening her pubic hair.

Blood pooled between his thighs, thickening his cock to full attention. So caught up was he in the water flowing over her nakedness, he reached between his legs before he realized what he was about to do.