Sandra Marton - The Real Rio D'Aquila

“Breakfast stuff. You know, eggs, bacon, bread. And steaks, some local corn and tomatoes, even a couple of bottles of wine. Just in case you decide to spend the night.”

Rio thanked him, though he had no plans to spend the night. As it was, he’d canceled a couple of meetings so he could get here but it had turned out to be the only chance for all three landscaping candidates to show up for interviews on the same day.

Four. Four candidates. How come he couldn’t keep that in his head?

Probably because he wasn’t hot on interviewing that fourth one, he thought, and gave a mental sigh. It was never a good idea to mix friendship and business, but when one of your pals asked you to at least talk to his cousin or uncle, or whatever in hell somebody named Izzy Orsini was to Dante Orsini, well, you bent the rules and did it.

After a few minutes, Rio took a picnic hamper from the Silverado’s cab. His housekeeper in Manhattan had packed lunch at his request. It turned out to be an elegant one. Thinly sliced cold roast beef on French baguettes, a chunk of properly aged Vermont cheddar, a bottle of chilled prosecco, fresh strawberries and tiny butter pastries.

Plus, of course, linen napkins, stemware and china mugs.

Rio and the contractor grinned at each other. They were both wearing jeans, sitting on a pair of overturned buckets on the unfinished terrace, their meal arranged on a plank laid over a sawhorse.

Cold beer and a couple of ham and cheese on rye might have been more in keeping with things, but the lunch was good and they finished every mouthful.

The landscapers started arriving not long after that. They showed up one at a time, exactly as scheduled, Rio buzzing them in through the gate, which seemed to be working perfectly. They were local men, each efficient and businesslike and politely eager to win what would be a substantial contract.

All of them came equipped with glossy folders filled with computerized designs, suggested layouts, sketches, photos of prior projects and spreadsheets of mind-numbing detail.

Each listened carefully as Rio explained what they already knew. He wanted the perimeter of the terrace planted in as natural a manner as possible. The decks, as well. Greenery. Shrubs. Flowers, maybe. Or flowering shrubs. Rio was willing to admit what he knew about gardening could fit into a teaspoon with room left over, but he made it clear that he knew the overall effect he was going for.

“What I want,” he told each applicant, “is to have the terrace seem to flow out of the fields behind the house. Does that make sense to you?”

Each man nodded earnestly; each roughed out some quick ideas on a sketchpad and though none of the sketches had been exactly what Rio intended, he’d known instantly that he could choose any of the three guys and, ultimately, be satisfied.

Three excellent landscapers.

But, of course, there was a fourth.

The contractor said he understood. A friend of a friend. He knew how that was. The friend of a friend was late but the two men settled in to wait.

And wait.

After a while, Rio frowned.

“The guy should know better than to be late,” he said.

The contractor agreed. “Maybe he had a flat. Or something.”

“Or something,” Rio said.

Another ten minutes went by. Damnit, Rio thought, if only he hadn’t gone to that party, he wouldn’t be waiting to interview another landscaper at all.

The party had taken place a few weeks ago. Dante Orsini and his wife, Gabriella, had invited some people to their penthouse for a charity bash. Rio had gone with a date, a woman he’d been seeing for a couple of months.

She went off to the powder room.

The “little girls’ room” she’d called it, and Dante had rolled his eyes at Rio, put a drink in his hand and led him out to the terrace, where it was quieter and less crowded.

“The little girls’ room, huh?”

Rio had grinned. “All good things come to an end,” he’d answered, and Dante had grinned, too, because he still remembered his bachelor days.

The friends had touched glasses, drunk some of their bourbon. Then, Dante had cleared his throat.

“So, we hear you’re building a place in the Hamptons.”

Rio had nodded. Word got around. Nothing new to that. New York was a big city but people like he and Dante moved in relatively small circles.

“Southampton,” he’d said. “I visited a friend there one weekend last summer. Lucas Viera. You know him? Anyway, Viera has a house on the beach. Very private, very quiet. I liked what I saw, and now—”

“And now,” Gabriella Orsini had said, smiling as she joined the men and slipped her arm through her husband’s, “you need a landscaper.” Her smile broadened. “You do, don’t you?”

Rio had shrugged. “Well, sure, but—”

“We just happen to know a very good one.”

To Rio’s amazement, Dante had blushed.

“Izzy,” Gabriella had said. She’d nodded toward the lush plantings along the borders of the terrace. “That’s Izzy’s work. Spectacular, don’t you think?”

Rio had looked at the plantings. Not spectacular, but nice. Natural-looking, which could not have been easy to accomplish when the setting was a three-level penthouse in the sky.

“Uh,” Dante had said, “see, Izzy is sort of trying to branch out, and—”

“And,” Gabriella had said sweetly, “we’re not above a bit of nepotism. Are we, darling?”

The penny had finally dropped.

His friend, actually, his friend’s wife, was hustling the work of one of her husband’s relatives. A cousin, maybe an uncle, because there were only four Orsini brothers. Rio had met them all and not one was named Izzy.

Whatever, it didn’t matter.

The terrace plantings had looked good. And, what the hell, Rio liked Dante and Gabriella, who happened to have been born in Brazil, his adopted country. So when it came time to deal with the landscaping, Rio gave Izzy Orsini’s name and email address to his contractor, who’d made the contact and set up the time and date of the meeting.

A meeting for which Izzy Orsini had not showed.

Time had passed, with the contractor trying hard not to look at his watch until, finally, Rio had thought, basta. Enough. He’d told the contractor he was free to leave.

“I’m sure you have better things to do than wait around for some guy who’s going to be a no-show.”

“You sure, Mr. D’Aquila? ‘Cause if you want, I can—”

“It’s Rio, remember? And it’s not a problem. I’ll hang around for a while, just in case.”

Which, Rio thought grimly as he dug the shovel into the soil in the trench, brought things straight to the present.

To two bloody hours, waiting for Izzy Orsini to put in an appearance.

“Merda,” he muttered, and stabbed the shovel blade into the earth again.

His temper was rising in inverse proportion to the depth of the trench which would ultimately be the foundation for a low stone wall but at the rate he was going, he was liable to dig his way to China.

He’d run out of excuses for Dante’s cousin.

Rio leaned on the shovel handle, wiped sweat from his eyes with a tightly muscled forearm.

Maybe Orsini got the time wrong. Maybe he’d had a flat. Maybe his great-aunt had come down with an attack of ague, or whatever it was great-aunts came down with, assuming he had a great-aunt at all.

Any of those things could have been explained by a phone call, but Orsini had not called.

Rio’s lips thinned.

Okay. He’d wasted enough time on this. It would be sticky, telling Dante and Gabriella what had happened, but he’d had it.

A shadow passed overhead. Rio looked up, tilted his head back, watched a squadron of pelicans soar overhead, aiming for the ocean. The cool, refreshing ocean.