Chapter 18
He was back at the apartment in Milan, the buzz of countless motorini and the haze of street lights through the curtains. He came awake with a choked breath – and recognised the ceiling fan in the exposed beams, making slow revolutions above him.
Not Milan. The house on Elba. Rosa – no, the person in the bed was Toni.
Toni.
She had her back to him, her shoulders rising and falling in the morning light, half under the cotton sheet that he’d kicked off during the night.
He’d loved the T-shirt she’d worn that first morning, scruffy and touchable.
But last night, she’d pulled on a strappy top that made him want his hands and lips all over her.
The little skip of his heartbeat echoed in his head again, the same one he noticed whenever she smiled at him – or kissed him, or touched him in any way.
It wasn’t entirely pleasant, the skip – a reminder of mortality, in a way.
He’d let another person affect his heartbeat once and it hadn’t ended well.
This wasn’t at all the quiet companionship he’d imagined would do him good – as selfish as that sounded now. She teased him and questioned him and studied him closely enough that he was worried she’d find all of his flaws; she’d come very close.
But then she’d kissed his cheek and smiled at him over her Aperol Spritz on the square in Poggio, after their foraging hike. She’d drawn him into bed after dinner, putting his hands on her body so he didn’t have any space in his mind for doubt.
She seemed able to keep everything light – although, whether she realised or not, he recognised the flicker of shadows in her eyes when she was thinking about her husband – but he was still wary of this muddied friendship, of what they’d be when she left for the hotel on Monday.
Not wary enough to call a halt to anything, though.
She’d be gone from his bed on Monday and he’d survive a few skips of his heart until then.
She stirred and rolled over to face him, tucking one hand beneath her head. Her shirt had ridden up around her ribcage.
The domestic intimacy of seeing her asleep like this ramped up the full cocktail of extreme emotions in him: protectiveness, desire… poignancy. She’d been alone a lot longer than he had – so long, she didn’t question it any more.
For now, she was right here with him, where he could feel her breath on his shoulder and reach out and touch her.
First, her hair – soft and straight and the colour of liquorice root – then her warm shoulder.
His fingertips trailed down her arm. As she shifted with a sigh, his gaze snagged on the neat scar peeking out of her shorts and he paused.
The waistband was down around her hips, low enough to reveal the faded pink blemish.
He’d noted it before, but only in the fever of foreplay. In the peaceful morning light, he couldn’t look away and his blood rushed loudly. She’d brought her son into the world – fatherless. A doctor had made this cut. There was a boy out there with half of her DNA and all of her heart.
What the hell was he doing, lying here, his lungs seizing up, feeling things he had no idea how to process? He’d been so relieved to tell Rosa he couldn’t do it any more, couldn’t try to make this family that never seemed to work.
He thought about rolling out of bed and putting on the coffee, as he had yesterday morning, but he still had a hand on her, his fingers moving restlessly on her waist, and she flinched, her eyes opening.
‘Are you tickling me?’
Her smile instantly quieted the clamour in his head. ‘No,’ he said gravely, even as his fingers pattered again over the sensitive spot he’d found.
She recoiled and laughed, slapping his hand away.
‘Rude!’ But even as she said it, she grasped a fistful of his hair and dragged him closer and he was giddy as he anticipated kissing her, reeling from the affection she wouldn’t let him escape from.
He wasn’t aware of anything except the places where they touched: her ribcage, the hand in his hair, his mouth, all pressure points in this exercise in intimacy.
She kissed him deeply, slowly, open-mouthed, as though she were undressing him, undoing him, and it wasn’t long until they were undressing each other and his mouth was at her throat and his body pressed tightly against hers.
He took the time to explore, memorise her, even brushing a finger over that scar, although he hoped she didn’t notice what he was doing. The string of freckles at her collarbone drew his mouth, the ripples of curves and muscle in her thigh.
By the time they finally reached the part where he fumbled with a condom and joined them with a groan, he was out of his mind, sparking with electricity, lighting up with energy. The urgent grip of her hands suggested she felt every pulse that he did.
And when they were both spent and panting, sweat cooling on his lower back, he didn’t even want to know what time it was and whether he was going to miss his delivery at the shop.
‘I’m having an amazing time.’
Gabri couldn’t help looking up from his workbench at her words, spoken into her phone as she wandered around his shop in Sant’Andrea.
Did she mean the food or the sex or the sunshine?
Was she even telling the truth, since there were some other things she was certainly hiding from her mother, on the other end of the phone?
He liked the way she dawdled through his shop, eyes bright, fingers busy on the potted plants. She was wearing a dress today – light and breezy, falling to mid-thigh – and a pair of sandals, since he wasn’t dragging her out into the forest.
‘No, I’m in Gabri’s shop,’ she continued, a faint smile on her lips. ‘H— She closed it this week for my visit, but there’s an order coming today. Wedding stuff. No, not the flowers. It’s too early for that.’
Toni stilled, listening, and he suspected what was about to come.
‘I suppose, if you want to see it,’ she blurted out. ‘No, she’s not here right now.’ This time, her grimace was sent in his direction, her scrunched-up features making him laugh, even as his insides also squeezed at her words.
Throwing up his hands and glancing around in disgruntlement, he gestured towards the door to the storeroom with a roll of his eyes, stepping out of sight as she pulled the phone from her ear to turn on the video.
‘It’s a bit like a forest in here – but it smells sweeter.’
Gabri leaned his head against the wall and just listened, wondering why everything she said sounded intimate.
‘Here are the orchids. Apparently, there’s a place on the island where you can see them in the wild.
No, that’s not where we went foraging yesterday.
I don’t know if you can see this properly, but it’s all different kinds of moss.
Gabri’s really interested in using wild flowers and local and seasonal blooms.’ She paused.
‘No, I don’t know how long she’s had the shop. It hasn’t come up in conversation.’
He squeezed his eyes shut. There was a lot that hadn’t come up.
‘No, she doesn’t have any children. Look at these begonias, Mum.’ That was a poor attempt to steer the conversation away. ‘You should see the gardens here. People have agave and bird of paradise and bromeliads growing outdoors. No, you won’t need a car to see most things.’
Her voice grew quieter as she stepped out into the little cobbled square with glimpses of the marina, where the sailboats bobbed in the wind. It was the scirocco wind today – stern and dry and stifling hot, even on the northern side of the island that was protected by Monte Capanne.
Gabri slinked back to his workbench to continue unpacking.
‘I’m fine, Mum.’ Toni’s grumble carried through the open door.
Why wouldn’t she be fine? ‘Just because I had a wedding once a long time ago isn’t going to make me sad about this job.
I’ve had nine years to get used to the idea that he’s gone.
’ Another pause. ‘No, I have not been enjoying that kind of scenery, Mum!’ Her voice was high now.
‘You should stop watching those short travel videos and don’t let Dad hear you say all Italian men are attractive.
’ The last part was said through gritted teeth, but the words came through to him loud and clear, although he had no idea why she was talking about attractive Italian men with her mother.
She came through the door without warning, holding up her phone, and he panicked, dropping down behind his workbench in case he was in the back of her video. Striking his knee on the floor, he muttered curses as quietly as he could. A moment later, her head appeared around the side of the bench.
‘Are you okay? I came back inside and you did a comedy number and fell to the floor.’
Jumping to his feet, his defensive action was undermined when he slammed his hands onto the counter and knocked a piece of chicken wire up into his arm. ‘I was trying to stay out of your video, so you could preserve your ruse.’
‘Do you think I should tell her you turned out to be a man and I jumped into bed with you after the first two days?’ she asked doubtfully.
‘It’s the truth!’
‘She probably wouldn’t believe me anyway,’ Toni mumbled.
‘What do you want me to do next week? I have to go to the hotel to prepare for the reception. If she sees me with a crate of flowers, shall I tell her I’m Gabri’s assistant?’
Toni gulped and he felt a tingle of remorse for his tone. ‘She won’t be hanging around the reception room and she’ll be busy with Cilli, so I’m sure there’s no reason you’d meet. I’ll just tell her you’re very busy.’
‘You’ll make me sound rude.’
‘My mother making the assumption that you’re rude is the least of our worries,’ she said with a sigh.
‘Why were you talking about attractive Italian men?’
The colour seeping into her cheeks made her look younger – certainly in comparison to the woman he’d seen glimpses of who wore her ageless grief in her eyes. ‘Your compatriots have a reputation. Mum was just teasing me.’
‘It runs in your family?’ he asked gruffly.
She gave him an amused look. ‘Apparently.’
Leaning on the workbench, his chicken wire forgotten, he asked, ‘Is she trying to push you into dating?’
She considered her answer for a long moment, framed in his shop windows with the ornate lettering announcing Fiorista Gabriele Orzati, with the sailboats in the marina in the distance.
Finally, she took a deep breath and said, ‘I think she doesn’t want me to be a widow any more.
It doesn’t make sense, because I always will be.
You can’t undo a marriage; you can’t unbreak something that’s damaged.
’ Her lips snapped shut when she heard her own words.
‘I mean, you can break it, but you can’t—’
Brushing his hand over hers, he gave her a rueful smile of reassurance.
‘I know what you meant.’ He hesitated before uttering his next sentence.
‘My mother would love to see me married again,’ he added with a grimace.
‘That would be proof for her that it was all Rosalba’s fault.
She refuses to see what’s broken about me too. ’
‘I do understand. It’s hard for them to see us hurting,’ she said softly.
‘It’s not that I’m ashamed of you,’ she began, which only made him think she was a little ashamed, ‘it’s just that I’ve lived my wretched relationship history in front of the whole world.
Everyone knows Cilli’s father died tragically and they feel they have a stake in my situation.
You can be mysterious, or even mention your divorce and people will leave you to your private problems. I don’t want people to think my life is so hard, so lonely that I needed a short-term affair with the handsome florist.’
There was so much to unpack in her words, his thoughts spun for a moment.
‘The handsome florist?’ was what he blurted out in response, when he was smarting somewhere deeper at the way she’d reduced their friendship to a short-term affair, framed it as an itch to scratch, rather than a tentative step into intimacy that he suspected could be transformative, if they allowed it to flourish.
‘I thought you were telling your mama that not all Italian men are handsome.’
‘I’m sure they aren’t all attractive.’ The wave of her hand was a gesture he was coming to recognise.
‘Just the ones you’ve seen so far?’
‘Now who’s teasing?’ Her smile faded quickly. ‘I am sorry about how this is working out, with my mum coming,’ she said, her brow low.
‘I understand.’ He just wasn’t sure he was happy about it.
‘There’s one important thing I need to say, though.
’ Her expression was grave and he was equal parts wary and drawn in.
‘I know you don’t like kids, so I’m sure this won’t be a problem, but I don’t want you to talk to Cillian.
I don’t want him to have any idea that this happened.
As he gets older, I already worry he blames himself for so much of what’s happened in my life.
I won’t give him the impression I’m anything other than completely fulfilled. ’
Gabri was glad he was already leaning on his workbench, because her words socked him in the gut with more gusto than he would have expected. He got the message: Stay away from my son. He was only too glad to comply.
‘Of course,’ was all he said in reply, swallowing the rest. ‘As you say, I don’t like kids anyway.’