He looked uncertain, hurt. She reached for his hand. “Oh, come on, Bear! It’s not you I’m excluding—it’s anything that gets in the way of my finishing and having my own life in hand. Maybe we got together too soon . . . maybe this should have happened later on. Listen, J.J.! I’ll put on my new tee shirt and we’ll go down to the Hotel Staffa.”

They walked down to the low, white hotel on the point overlooking the sea and entered the reception rooms through the terrace. Huge overstuffed couches and armchairs in light cretonnes and lemon-yellow slipcovers filled the white-walled rooms and stood out against the deep tones of smooth ox-blood-tiled pavements. Bouquets of natural flowers garnished the tables and groups of old prints were hung over antique chests. It was simple and stylish.

“I love this place,” Tina said to Jason as she looked around.

Stunning people in casual but expensive dress drifted through the rooms or sat in groups on the terrace.

“The Italians really know what luxury is,” Tina said approvingly. “You’d never catch them doing something hokey like Miami Beach hotels or all those disgusting Hiltons and Sheratons.”

“Yes,” said Jason. “When you have money enough, then understated is the thing.”

“This is the life . . . first class all the way.”

“You haven’t much of Weezy’s asceticism, I notice,” Jason said wryly.

“Oh, Weezy!” Tina said, frowning. “She’d like to be some modern version of a saint. Live in the country and make soup from thistles and jam from prickly pears—then run five kilometers into town to her class for preschoolers, reading the kids The Little Flowers of St. Francis in English to teach them a second language and spiritual socialism all at once.”

“You sound a bit defensive.”

“I’m more of a saint than Weezy any day, the way I’ve had to live in the States!”

Tina went over to the desk clerk, who smiled at her and nodded with barely perceptible movements of his balding head. Tina recognized Italian approval. The tee shirt was tight over her full breasts, and the rest of her curved and strained against her jeans. She looked good and knew it. The tan glow in her cheeks brought out the light of her hazel eyes, and heat made her long thick hair wisp around her face like curling grape tendrils. She was tall, not like the dark short women of the area, nor fair like the hotel guests from the North. She was both of the South and the North, something different.

“Do you have a bookstore or library in the hotel?” she was asking the clerk when a large blondish man in navy blazer, silk ascot, and white ducks came out from an inner office with papers in his hand and noticed her.

“Permit me,” he said. “Signorina . . .?” He hesitated.

“Morosini,” she said.

“Related to the author?”

“His daughter,” said Tina.