I stared at the children’s castle just waiting for a little princess to discover its magic. It stood at least six feet tall with four towers, latticed walls, a drawbridge with a royal carriage, and horses in a silent trot waiting to enter.
Ricco was taller. Six four, I guessed, running my fingers over the castle walls glistening white like spun sugar. I could feel my throat tightening, remembering the doughy sugar cookies I loved as a kid. A glimpse of a childhood ended all too soon popped into my head. I didn’t push it away as I usually did. Instead, a knowing smile played upon my lips as I recalled the day I’d gotten into my mother’s trunk when she left it open. A big old steamer covered with travel stickers. I pulled out a pretty tiara. Pink rhinestones. Put it on my head, lopsided, and then hung from the swing on the porch, blowing kisses to anyone who walked by. I pretended I was twirling around in a circle high in the big top and leaving a trail of starlight.
I was six and determined to be just like her.
A star on the trapeze.
Until I lost her tiara. Then I got a big scolding when she found it covered with dirt in a bed of flowers. Pink camellias. Her favorite. I was so upset until I saw her smiling when she thought I wasn’t looking, as if she approved of my aerial display. I never forgot that.
I’ve thought about that day often after my mother left us, wondering why she did it. How could she leave her family? I know Dad drank too much, but he loved her. We loved her, too, Emma and me. If anything, it made me more determined to show her I could fly high on the trapeze just like her. I think the idea for my princess routine was born then, bringing me here to Monterra.
And to think I almost deleted the email from the Monterran Cultural Arts Committee because I thought it was spam.
I flat out cried when the official travel agency for the festival contacted me and confirmed that everything was legit. All they needed was my info for the round trip airline ticket, hotel, even expense money.
I started packing as soon as I pressed Send. I couldn’t wait to tell Emma. I was already figuring out what I needed to get a passport and, after a celebratory binge, swearing to zap peanut butter cookies from my diet.
Then the truth hit me after I guzzled down a glass of milk and choked on a cookie.
What was I thinking? I couldn’t go to Monterra thousands of miles away and leave Emma alone. What would she do without me? What if something happened to her while I was gone? Worse yet, the social worker would take her away from me.
The Lane Sisters were like two peas in a pod, I always said, floating down the stream of life side by side. We intended to stay that way. I decided not to tell my sister about the invitation.
I sent an email back to the travel agency, explaining the situation about Emma, expressing my disappointment but I was sure they’d understand, when fate and a mysterious benefactor stepped in. The travel agency checked the reservation and assured me that Emma’s travel expenses were paid in full.
I freaked. I had no idea who this benefactor was, but when I read on the Monterran website that Princess Katerina’s pet project was bringing together performers from the U.S. to perform at the festival, I convinced myself the American-born royal had stepped in to help me.
I glowed for days.
We needed this trip. I needed this trip.
If I was ever going to make the leap to professional aerialist, this was it. My appearance here would look awesome on my resume and hopefully get me a full time position at the circus school. Then I could get my sister the professional help she needed, something I couldn’t afford on my assistant teacher’s salary. I wanted that more than anything. For Emma, too. A way to keep us together as a family so the social worker wouldn’t make a face every time she visited and suggested Emma go into foster care until she turned eighteen.
I couldn’t allow that. People didn’t understand her. Only me.
I had to find her.
My eyes searched the children oohing and aahing the play castle, darting in and out through a back door big enough for a small child but not a teenage girl, while a smiling old gent in a medieval costume handed out cherry lollipops with the Monterran royal crest.
No Emma.
“She’s not here,” I said, trying to keep the panic out of my voice. My little sister was missing in a strange land. She wasn’t a baby, seventeen on her last birthday, but her mind was as fragile as a spotted wildflower, given to bursting with glorious color and sharp fragrance one moment, and then lost the next on a sudden breeze.
Petals scattering on a cruel, brutal wind.
Emma was so gifted in some ways, and at odds with the world in others. I’d appointed myself her protector on a night too awful to recall. When the depths of despair blotted her mind with a fog that had yet to lift. The bottom line was, she was all I had in the world and I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to her because of me.
“I’ll ask the candy vendor if he’s seen her,” Ricco said, grabbing my hand and squeezing it. I got a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach when he did that. It happened so fast, I didn’t know what to say. I liked it, but it scared me, too. I like to keep my fairy tales at a distance. It’s safer that way. No one gets hurt and I get to indulge in the idea of having someone. This was getting too up close and oh so personal for me. I never let myself get involved with a guy because nothing would separate me from Emma. Nothing.
Ricco asked the vendor something my Italian skills didn’t cover. I didn’t need to ask what he said when the man shook his head. The look in his eyes said it all. He never saw her.
I lost it. My panic reached a new level. I hoped to find her here, living in her own world, daydreaming about what I was never sure, but she seemed happiest when she was creating a design.
I paced around in a circle. “I must find her.”
“Please, signorina, don’t worry. If she’s lost, she can ask anyone for help,” Ricco assured me. He never drew a breath carrying my two bags. “Everyone here learns English as a second language.”
“She—she doesn’t speak.”
What could I say? Emma didn’t live in the real world. She reminded me of a ladybug sitting on a leaf, watching, observing. You’d never know she was there.
“I see.”
A flash of understanding crossed his handsome brow.
“No, it’s not like that.” I said, flustered. “She hasn’t spoken since—” How could I tell him Emma never recovered from the night that killed our father? A night burned into her mind so deep, so raw, that it shut down her desire to speak. She hadn’t lost the ability—the doctor said her vocal cords are fine—just her will.
Ricco picked up my cue and didn’t pursue the matter. “I’ll ask the flower woman. Monterrans love flowers, everyone comes here. Perhaps she saw her.”
I clapped my hands together in glee when the woman nodded. Ricco smiled and bought a bouquet of flowers from her and, from the happy look on her face, added a big tip. I didn’t think much about it. I was so happy to have info on Emma.
“A girl fitting your sister’s description stopped to smell the flowers when a woman approached her and started talking to her,” Ricco said, his manner light as if this was a regular occurrence. “The woman bought her a bouquet of daisies, making her smile.”
I exhaled. “That’s Emma. She loves flowers.”
I didn’t elaborate that when she stopped speaking, her other senses had grown more acute. She was especially in tune to fragrance. She’d taken to growing flowers, especially camellias when she found an old newspaper clipping of our mother.
Corrina Pova.
The story made a big deal of her wearing a pink camellia behind her left ear when she performed on the trapeze high under the big top, and how she’d shower the audience with flower petals.
I didn’t take to it, seeing how my mother eft us when we were kids. Emma was only five, but I know it broke Dad’s heart. Mine, too. I couldn’t forgive her for what she did, leaving us, never writing to us. Dad started drinking more and at times, he didn’t show up for work. We never knew what happened to her and when I searched her name online, nothing came up but old photos and stories long out of date. Nothing recent. Like she dropped into a swirling sea of lost souls and was swallowed up.
Dad never got over it. He forbade me to take to the silks, but I had to prove to him, to me, that I was just as good as she was, but that I’d never leave my family. Never.
I looked around. Emma was here somewhere, I was sure of it. If we found the woman who gave her the flowers, maybe she could help us.
We walked down a narrow road strewn with rock and edged with flowers toward a small lake. A red-painted bridge made me think of simpler times. When Emma and I were kids and we’d cool off on a hot August day with the water hose in our tiny backyard. Laughing, squealing.
I stopped and listened. “Do you someone humming?”
“Si,” Ricco said, then not waiting for my confirmation. “Your sister?”
“Yes. She often hums when she’s sketching or sewing. It’s Emma, I’m sure of it.”
I raced over the bridge without giving a thought to leaving everything I had with a man I barely knew, a man who moments ago I thought would run off with my suitcases. What happened to my dream didn’t matter.
Only Emma.
I spotted her seated on a big rock, weaving daisies into a chain. She reminded me of a curious mermaid come out of the sea to break a spell. Not surprising. When she wasn’t sketching or sewing, her hands were always moving. It was a way of keeping her mind busy, a way of not thinking about anything that made her sad.
“Emma!” I cried out, relief making my knees weak. “Thank God, she’s safe.”
Silly, impulsive me. I was so happy to find her, I acted like a crazed contestant on a reality show. In a moment I would later remember as the most daring thing I’ve ever done, or the most stupid, I grabbed Ricco and kissed him.
Smack on the lips. Those wonderful, sexy lips.
Zing. Was that a heart string busting?
He didn’t say a word. He just smiled and gave me the sexiest chuckle I’ve ever heard and then shook his head. He was more surprised than I was. Oh, God, what came over me? Throwing myself at him. This gorgeous man didn’t need a klutz like me kissing him.
And me?
I just stared at him. And stared. My heart racing all the way to the end of the world and back again.
Did I really kiss the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen? Where did I get the nerve? Let’s see. I was delirious, overcome with emotion, tired from the long trip, or just plumb loco. Whatever my excuse, I couldn’t stand there and pretend it didn’t happen.
Yes, I could.
I had to regroup. Think fast.
“Thank you for helping me find Emma,” I said, my lips still stinging. Without thinking, I touched my mouth to cool it off. “I’ll never forget it.”
“Neither will I, signorina.” His voice was a deep shade of pleasure.
Did he mean finding my sister? Or my ninja smooch attack?
Whatever. You messed up.
Apologize before he has you deported for a full frontal assault on his lips.
“Look, I’m sorry. Really,” I gushed like a fangirl. “I shouldn’t have kissed you. I do things without thinking. I’m like that. I’ve got an artistic compulsion to go the extra mile before I think it through.”
But he wasn’t going for my dumb apology.
His sharp intake of breath made me shiver. A raw, hungry look flooded his dark eyes. As if he wanted to eat me up.
I’ll never forget it till the cows come home.
“Show me again, bella signorina,” he said in a husky voice. “How American girls kiss.”