Chapter 4
Ohhhhh no.
Toni bit her lip to stop the shaking in her jaw, her mind racing. The call was still connected, their months of chatting online visible on his phone screen, where he’d let the device clatter to the table.
How much she’d shared with… him, imagining he was a friendly female florist when in reality…
She gulped, unable to stop her eyes from running over him again: broad shoulders, casual ease, careless style with his linen shirt, unbuttoned at the collar, and cropped trousers.
Expressive, gentle face. Handsome. Oh dear.
She hadn’t thought she’d find a moustache so intriguing.
This was who she was supposed to stay the week with.
Turning away, she breathed fiercely through her nose to tamp down her panic.
Everything was wrong, but she couldn’t fall to pieces just because it turned out her friend was a man.
Her skin bloomed with goosebumps as she relived the past fifteen minutes in his company through a new lens of mortification.
She’d teased him, amused herself by flirting with him, free in the knowledge that it didn’t matter what he thought of her because she was away from home and she’d be safe with Gabri soon enough. But that freedom crumbled in her chest as she contemplated the end of her hopes for the week.
What to do?
He cleared his throat behind her. ‘Ehm, Toni?’
Even hearing her name in his accented voice was embarrassing.
‘Mmm?’
‘I think… perhaps we should get something to eat and discuss this.’
She whirled to face him. ‘“This”? You mean the fact that I thought you were a woman and you thought I was a man? And now I’m supposed to stay—’ She couldn’t finish the sentence.
‘You don’t have to do anything.’
‘Why are you called Gabri anyway? What man is called Gabrielle?’
With a muffled sigh, he tugged his wallet out of his back pocket and produced a business card: Gabriele Orzati, the owner of Fioraio Orzati on the island of Elba.
Toni could only kick herself for her own stupidity.
She had heard once or twice that names like Michele and Andrea – and Gabriele, with one l – were masculine in Italy, but she’d never connected that abstract information with her friend. She’d just assumed.
‘No one ever calls me Antonia, but I spell Toni with an “i”,’ she continued, losing steam.
‘Yes, I realise what that means in English now,’ he responded gruffly, stuffing his wallet back into his pocket, leaving the business card in her limp hand. ‘You didn’t mention you had a child.’
Something in his tone made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. ‘What difference does it make?’
‘I thought we were… friends.’ He seemed to realise how odd that sounded.
‘I thought you were a woman. You ended every email with kisses and hugs!’ An instant flush right to her hairline made her regret that sentence immediately.
‘I am Italian! It’s normal.’
‘And you’re a florist.’
‘I was very happy to find someone who didn’t comment on the fact that I am a florist and a man,’ he grumbled. ‘There is no law against it. I did not hide a child and a dead husband.’
Toni had been a second away from feeling guilt, but his last sentence banished any possibility of that. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Her voice shook.
He released a tight breath and eyed her warily. ‘Obviously not.’
She tried to remember if Gabri had ever said anything about her – his – marital status.
He’d mentioned having no partner, but Toni couldn’t remember if he’d mentioned any history.
Appearances could be deceiving, but he had to be in his thirties, far enough into that decade that he would carry some baggage.
Did it even matter? The relaxing week she’d pictured chatting and drinking wine now seemed embarrassingly na?ve.
She didn’t know how she’d ever managed to believe it would work out.
Instead of ease and friendship, there was only awkwardness and that misplaced spark she felt when he watched her under his thick, dark lashes.
He had blue eyes, striking with his dark-brown hair, and a cleft in his stubbled chin.
Her eyes seemed to snag on some new detail every time her gaze drifted to him.
Oh, God, she was supposed to stay with him – share a house, possibly a bathroom.
They might have to stand at the basin together brushing their teeth, pretending they didn’t notice anything about each other.
What if he walked around without a shirt?
‘Toni,’ he said again, his voice a purr this time, ‘come and get something to eat. It is a little early for dinner, but we can sit down like adults and talk about this.’
His choice of words made her raise her chin, sensitive to any hint of a patronising tone. She’d been mother and father to Cillian for his nine years and if she’d hidden her familial situation from her online friend, then that was her right. He had no idea about her and no business judging her.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said suddenly with an eloquent grimace. ‘I didn’t mean to say you weren’t like an adult. It’s my… problem. I did not expect—’ He raked a hand through his hair, which only made her notice his toned forearm, dusted with hair. He had nicks on his fingers – from rose thorns?
Roses were a necessary evil in his job, he’d told her once. Constant, unseasonable demand meant importing thousands of blooms per year for customers who would accept nothing else, and imported blooms often meant pesticides and growing methods that were not climate-friendly.
Toni could suddenly picture this brusque, lively man saying exactly that. The prick of warmth in her stomach was unexpected.
‘—you, Toni,’ he finished, jolting her out of her distraction. ‘I did not expect you. But that doesn’t excuse my words. Please, let me buy you a meal and we can unravel this together.’
It suddenly occurred to her that he probably wouldn’t want her to stay either. That she wasn’t a man had been an equal shock to him, it seemed. She probably shouldn’t have shrieked at him because of an honest mistake.
He was right. They needed to discuss the week to come.
Dropping money on to the table for the coffees, he gestured her ahead of him with one of those nicked hands, the thumb brown and rough.
‘It’s a long time since I went to a restaurant here, but this way, we go past the car to put your bag in and I’m sure we’ll find something.’
The heavy heat of the early evening, the twisted stone pines and the endless blue sky, wispy with clouds, were a constant reminder of how far from home Toni had travelled since this morning.
The ferry trip from the Tuscan coast over the choppy turquoise waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea had buoyed her sprits almost unbearably, her first views of the island, wild and rocky, dotted with terracotta clusters of human settlement, capturing her imagination.
One unwise flirtatious conversation and a shocking realisation later, her mood had crashed into the sea.
Now she felt decidedly odd and pulled in two different directions as she strolled along a deserted street, lined with plane trees and historic buildings, with the sounds of the crashing surf in her ears – strolled next to a man who wasn’t at all the friend she’d wanted.
But he was Gabri.
‘Shall we eat here? I will ask for that table in the corner. There is a little sea view.’
She studied the menu at length, realising she was putting off the inevitable conversation.
‘I don’t know how to choose,’ she mumbled. ‘It all looks so good. I adore clams, but I’m also intrigued by the octopus tentacles that lady has.’
His only response was a lift of his shoulders. She glanced up to find him with his lips pressed together.
‘Huh, you don’t like seafood!’ she remembered. ‘How is that even possible when you live here?’
‘Perhaps it’s possible because I live here,’ he said sheepishly. ‘I do like fish, but I prefer it when I’ve caught it myself. But don’t deprive yourself of the tentacles if that’s what you want to eat.’
He gave her a small smile, just enough to hint at the devastation a grin could cause if he ever granted her one.
Toni’s head was a mess, completely unable to accept that she’d spent over a year chatting with this man online and never had the faintest clue he could make her heart flip just with half a smile and a few drawled words.
It was inconvenient, to say the least.
He ordered a lemon soda and she followed his lead with only a brief, forlorn thought for the Aperol Spritz she’d imagined enjoying by the beach. But she probably should keep her wits about her for this conversation – whatever it was going to turn into.
With their food orders also given – she decided on the clam linguini in the end, because clam linguini was always a good idea – the silence between them grew too long to be comfortable.
He shifted every few seconds, swallowing audibly. ‘I am very sorry I accused you of hiding your family,’ he blurted out. ‘You don’t owe me anything and I shouldn’t have blamed you for my own assumptions.’
Toni’s brow shot up at his words, the easy apology. ‘It was a shock,’ she ventured. ‘I’m sorry I was worked up as well. It’s my fault I didn’t realise Gabri could just as easily be a man’s nickname as a woman’s, and there’s nothing wrong with being a florist. It’s interesting.’
‘Interesting?’ He seemed amused by the word.
‘I’m sure it’s partly why I assumed you were a woman,’ she admitted, ‘but now I see…’ Her gaze snagged on his rough hands again, loosely clasped on the table.
‘Don’t worry. My mother still isn’t used to her son’s new career and your assumption makes sense.’
She picked up on the words ‘new career’, bursting with questions she probably should have asked online.
His gaze lifted to hers and swerved away again. ‘I am trying to get used to the idea of you as a woman.’
The statement washed over her with misgiving. She’d always had a lot of male friends. The mountain guides skewed slightly towards men, although she’d met plenty of female instructors and guides, including Kira, one of the only full-time employees at Great Heart.
‘Do you think it really makes a difference?’ she asked warily. ‘I know it was an embarrassing misunderstanding, but should it matter that you’re a man and I’m a woman?’
The waiter brought their drinks and she grasped hers with a restless hand to stop herself analysing the implication of those words.
He cleared his throat. ‘I suppose not. This is not a romantic film.’
She’d chosen that moment to take a sip and the carbonated liquid got caught in her throat. He was around the table in a heartbeat, his hand on her back, between the straps of her dress.
‘I’m okay,’ she croaked between coughs, still trying to catch her breath and also to stop herself wondering when she’d last felt someone’s fingers on her bare back.
Instead of removing his hand, he brushed his thumb once more along her spine in the most divinely casual touch that sent alarm bells ringing all through her.
She was not supposed to be enjoying this.
If she wanted to salvage something from her week on holiday, she had to find a way back to the easy – completely platonic – friendship they’d built online.
‘You’re sure?’
The coughing was subsiding, so she nodded, shooing him back to his side of the table.
‘That is the problem, no?’ he began carefully. Then he went right ahead and addressed the issue like a damned adult. ‘It shouldn’t make any difference between friends, but friendship is not exactly what we started over coffee this afternoon.’