Arcadia Awakens Read Free

you.”
    “Did you wreck it?”
    “Not as far as I know.”
    “No need for you to be sorry, then.”
    She examined him at length, since he left her no other choice. And he showed no signs of sitting down again.
    He didn’t look very Sicilian, even though she could tell from his voice that he’d grown up on the island. Now she remembered seeing him at the airport in New York. Going on vacation to see relatives, maybe. Or back home after a semester abroad. Though he wasn’t much older than her, so he couldn’t be studying at some Italian university yet. Maybe it was the other way around: He went to college in the States, and was on his way home to visit his family in Italy.
    She thought his face looked familiar, though she couldn’t have said whether she had ever met him before the airport. Straight, narrow nose; thick, dark eyebrows. A touch of cynicism in his eyes and around the corners of his mouth. He had tiny dimples even when he wasn’t smiling. His skin was pale gold, unlike her own. Rosa never got a tan, in spite of her Italian father. She had inherited her mother’s Irish-American complexion. And that, she fervently hoped, was all she’d inherited from her.
    His dark brown hair looked as if he’d just been running his hands through it. The tousled strands surrounded a face that, now that she let her brain study it more closely, seemed to have something aristocratic about it. Not that she knew any aristocrats except from TV. But she instinctively knew that the word fit him. A touch more symmetry, a little more regularity and perfection, and he’d have been almost too good-looking, although his features still had to develop. Over the next two or three years they’d become harsher, more rugged.
    “Am I keeping you from reading?” He pointed to the rolled-up magazine she had jammed between her armrest and the side of the cabin. She didn’t even know which one it was. She’d simply picked one up from the stacks of them on the way into the plane, just because they were there. Her usual impulse.
    “No,” she said, but she took the magazine out and put it on her lap.
    “Interesting?”
    The amused glint in his eyes drew her glance to the cover. A self-help manual for men. Ten Tips to Make HER Happy said the caption above a photo of a couple who looked like waxworks. And in smaller print: She’ll never get enough of it .
    Rosa looked up at him. “I write for them. Tips, firsthand personal stories. Tough job, but somebody has to do it.”
    “You want me to leave you alone, right?”
    “If I did, I’d just say mind your own business.”
    His eyes darkened. Turning around, he started to sit down.
    “Hey,” she said.
    He looked over his shoulder.
    “Why are you flying to Sicily?”
    “Family business.”
    With that he disappeared from view. She heard him settling into his seat. The back of it vibrated slightly against her knee, making her legs tingle gently and giving her goose bumps.
    She opened the magazine and studied the ten tips.
    They didn’t make her any happier.
    As they were coming in to land in Palermo, Rosa peered through the small gap between the seats in front of her and saw the veins and sinews standing out on the back of his hand. His fingers were clutching the arm of the seat tightly. He had slender, suntanned hands with neat fingernails. On the other side of his seat, beside the cabin wall, she could see part of his leather jacket. It was no trouble at all for Rosa to reach into the side pocket.
    A moment later she was holding his passport. Alessandro Carnevare. He’d be eighteen in a few weeks’ time, three months older than Rosa. An intriguing address. Castello Carnevare, Genuardo. No street, no house number. She’d never heard of Genuardo, but that meant nothing. She’d been four when her parents took her to America, and she hadn’t been back to Sicily since then.
    Alessandro Carnevare.
    She was annoyed because he’d brushed her off with such a brief answer. Family business.