A Sicilian Affair by Susan Lewis

Author:Susan Lewis [Lewis, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-02-28T12:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

‘So, you resumed your career and went on to become rich and famous?’ Giancarlo prompts playfully as he and Catie stroll a deserted beach a few kilometres from Taormina. Ricardo and Tony had dropped them off there half an hour ago, before driving on to carry out some sort of errand for ‘il capo’. Catie hadn’t understood the instructions Giancarlo gave them, only knew that they would be collected from this same beach in a couple of hours.

Matching his humorous tone, she says, ‘Neither – although maybe a little bit of both, depending on how you measure it. I was never a household name, but I was known, mostly on the blues and jazz circuit, and I sang with plenty of big bands. I also did a lot of recording, sometimes for albums of my own, but more often as a duettist, or as a backing singer for leading musicians right at the top of their game – and not necessarily just jazz. I got paid extremely well for that – I still do, in royalties – and I was happy to do it because we needed the money.’

He turns to glance at her and she smiles, feeling faintly disoriented as she vacillates between those music studios of long ago, the tours, the pressure and rivalry, and this tranquil, sun-filled bay of today. How different the people who populate the scenarios – loud, demanding, even ruthless producers, and this intriguing enigma of a man.

She has no way of knowing if he really had failed to wake up until the middle of the afternoon yesterday, when he was supposed to be bringing breakfast to her apartment. Considering how tired he’d seemed the day before, she guessed it was highly possible, especially as he’d seemed to be in some sort of pain, or at least discomfort. Whatever the cause, he doesn’t appear bothered by it now, and nor is she still delving into fantastical imaginings of knife wounds or beatings.

‘Are you OK?’ he asks.

She nods and after a moment picks up her story. ‘Our problems started when I began to get bookings for festivals and concerts overseas. Copenhagen, Juan-les-Pins, Montreux, Paris, there were so many. I even went to Asia and South America, various places in the States, except Chicago. I didn’t want to run into Carlin Monroe, which was crazy, of course, because he travelled even more than I did and I could have been in the same line-up as him at any time, and anywhere.’

‘But you weren’t?’

‘Actually, I was, eventually. I think we both always knew it would happen …’

When she doesn’t continue, he says, ‘And when you saw him again, was the chemistry still there?’

Not willing to answer that yet, she uses her sunglasses to push back her hair and turns her face into the warming breeze as she says, impishly, ‘How did I know you were going to ask that?’

He shrugs, ‘Probably because I am predictable and transparent?’

She has to laugh, given that he’s absolutely neither and he surely knows it.

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