Chapter Seven #2
But Hannah didn’t think that she could bear to marry a man who she knew didn’t love her.
If she wanted more of that kind of life, she could move back to Nebraska.
She felt a helpless sort of laugh bubble up inside her at that, and when Léontine looked at her askance from beside her, Hannah made herself smile and lift her glass of sparkling wine. As if to suggest she was simply getting a little silly from all the bubbles.
Being profoundly French, Léontine nodded sagely, and carried on watching the carolers.
But Hannah finally understood something she’d been avoiding for a long time.
Not that Antonluca didn’t love her. She was used to that, after all.
And besides, as far she could tell, Antonluca not only didn’t love her, he didn’t love much of anything, so it wasn’t likely to feel as personal as it did when it was her parents.
Who clearly loved each other and Hannah’s sister, but had used it all up by the time they got to her.
What was tragic about this situation was that she was deathly afraid, all of a sudden, that she’d fallen in love with him very much the way a stone falls off the side of a cliff. And worse, that she’d done so that very first night.
Possibly the very first moment she had looked over and been caught so completely, so inescapably, in that grave gaze of his.
And for once, she didn’t shy away from that thought inside of her, the way she’d been doing at the faintest hint of it. She made herself breathe through it instead. She let it settle.
And then something else occurred to her. She remembered—as perhaps she always had, and had always convinced herself to ignore, push away, deny—that she had heard about this village from him.
That she and her mystery man had lain together in a tangle in that hotel bed, and one of the few things he’d told her was about a picture-perfect village in the hills of Tuscany, where the houses were ancient and bristled about on an old hill, there was a castle in the distance, and there were cypress trees on all sides, like guardian angels.
It had been Antonluca all along.
Hannah felt hollowed out by this realization.
What a terrible fool she’d been. What a terrible fool she was.
The next day, she made her dutiful call home to Nebraska, a habit she wasn’t sure why she insisted on keeping.
And as her parents talked, somehow managing to make it seem as if their very small lives doing the same small things they’d always done were somehow more virtuous and worthy of respect than anything Hannah could possibly be doing—off in Italy with what anyone else would agree was a high-level, exciting sort of job—she found herself getting more and more… not angry. That was too sharp.
Still, something was bubbling away inside of her and getting more insistent until finally, when they paused in the middle of a typical recitation of what was happening in their lives—which was in no way different from any other week, or any other year, because their implication was always that it should have been good enough for Hannah if it was good enough for them—she cracked a little bit.
She wasn’t proud, but she did.
“I have some news, actually,” she found herself saying, before they could recite the menu at the local diner where they liked to go on Tuesdays. She was standing at her window while Dominic and Cinzia were playing in the lane outside, bundled up against the cold, both red-cheeked and laughing.
“Let me guess,” said her mother with sniff. “You had some or other exciting promotion, no doubt.”
And it wasn’t new, but never failed to amaze Hannah how they could take things that ought to have been, if not good or thrilling, at least neutral. Who wouldn’t want a promotion? Why would that be something worthy of the disdain she heard in her mother’s voice?
But she shook that off. “Not a promotion, no,” Hannah said, the overly cheery voice she assumed whenever speaking to her parents, because she’d learned long ago that letting them see that she was upset not only didn’t change anything, it made her feel worse.
“Dominic’s father and I have reconnected.
” There was nothing but silence and she already hated herself for bringing this up, but she forged ahead anyway. “He wants to marry me.”
And surely, at last, she’d hit upon a thing they actually wanted. She waited for some expressions of excitement. Or at least a gesture toward a positive reaction.
Her mother sniffed. That was all.
After a while, her father sighed. “If he really wanted to do the right thing,” he said, as if Hannah was not very bright and he had to talk down to her to get her to understand how very not bright she was, “it wouldn’t have taken him this long, would it?”
And for entirely too long after they hung up, Hannah stayed where she was, staring out the window but not seeing anything.
Or maybe it was that she was seeing too much, and all of it clearly, for once.
When she could finally bring herself to move, she pulled on her warm coat and stamped into her cozy boots, then went outside to join Cinzia and Dominic in the fresh, bracing afternoon.
Dominic was running around in gleeful circles, shrieking with joy. It was impossible to look at a happy child like him and do anything but smile, so that was what Hannah did.
Her son was pure joy, and she took terrific pride in loving him fiercely, and absolutely.
Because over her dead body would he ever question whether or not he was loved.
“Another pleasant call home, I gather,” said Cinzia from beside her.
Hannah shook her head and didn’t get into it, because what was there to say?
It shamed her, if she was honest. Because surely there had to be something deeply unlovable in her if not a single member of her family could manage to muster up even the littlest bit of common courtesy.
There had to be something terrible about her that she just couldn’t see.
And if her friend couldn’t see it, Hannah certainly didn’t want to be the one to tell her.
“I told them some news that they were not particularly interested in,” she said instead of dissecting all the weary sighs and little digs. But she smiled at her friend. “I think you might be, though. Dominic’s father wishes to marry me.”
The old woman eyed her for a moment. “By Dominic’s father, just to be perfectly clear, we are discussing the maestro himself, are we not? Antonluca Aniello, local castello dweller and currently the owner of La Paloma.”
“Yes,” Hannah said quietly. “You’ve met.”
They stood there together, watching as Dominic found a stick that delighted him and started up an imaginary sword fight right there in the middle of the lane.
“You do not seem overcome with joy at this news,” Cinzia pointed out, rather diplomatically.
“I just…” Hannah shook her head. “He doesn’t want to marry me, just to be clear. He wants to marry the mother of his child so that his son will have his name. Let’s not romanticize this.”
After his epic sword fight, Dominic looked to be approaching a level of excitement that would likely tip over too quickly into a meltdown, so Hannah and Cinzia moved to each take one of his hands and set off on a more sedate walk down the lane, the better to avert disaster.
For a time, as they walked, Cinzia was quiet. When they got to the bottom of the lane and turned back, Hannah picked Dominic up and settled him on her hip. He was already sleepy, and he rested his head on her shoulder, pressing his face into her neck.
Hannah breathed him in, and felt her load lighten that easily.
Only then did Cinzia comment. “The man is not simply a gift horse with a mouth you could look into all day, and happily,” she pointed out.
“He ticks every box. He’s outrageously attractive.
You should hear the women in the village swoon and flutter over the very thought of him when attractive men are easy enough to come by.
” She waved a gloved hand. “This is Italy. Ovviamente.”
Hannah laughed. “Ma certo,” she replied, because she knew better than to argue about the riches of Italy with Italians.
“Antonluca Aniello is not any run-of-the-mill Italian man,” Cinzia continued. “He is also wealthy beyond measure. He can provide for both you and Dominic, forever.”
Hannah blew out a breath. “I understand. I know that. But…”
“But?”
“Is that enough?” Hannah shook her head, and found that Cinzia’s intent gaze made her feel…raw. Too vulnerable. “Surely a marriage should be something more than simply…convenient.”
“Should it?” Cinzia shrugged. “But who’s to say that convenience cannot be the gateway to something marvelous?”
“He doesn’t love me, Cinzia,” Hannah said, baldly. She caught her friend’s gaze, then looked away. “He doesn’t love me. He doesn’t pretend to.”
They walked on, the only sound between them the wind rustling through the hills and the fields and the church bells in the distance. When they reached the front of their cottages, Cinzia turned to her again.
“You must do as you see fit,” she counseled Hannah, and it seemed to Hannah that there was wisdom pouring out of her kind eyes and those lines in her lovely face. “But I will say this. A wise woman uses the tools she has, and fashions precisely what she wants with them.”
Hannah shook her head, holding Dominic tight. “I don’t know what that means.”
The older woman’s gaze was knowing. “It is not as if the man is immune to you, is he?”
And Hannah thought about little else once she put Dominic down for his nap. She answered emails and a few calls from the hotel. She moved around the cottage, but she was thinking about that castle on the hill.
She continued to think about it the following day, when she and Antonluca did their daily walk-through of the Christmas Market and then put their heads together over sets of figures and projections.
And, she thought, as long as I can work, I can survive anything.
That was the key, she thought as they sat close together and had a very dry conversation about revenue and occupancy.
As long as she could do her job, she could make everything else work.
She’d already done it once, as a single mother in a foreign country.
She could do it again, and this time with the added benefit of being a very rich man’s wife.
If La Paloma was any indication, that was its own cottage industry.
That night, he walked her out to her car in the staff forecourt, as had become his custom.
There were flurries of snow spiraling down all around them, though not sticking to the ground.
And when they reached her vehicle, he insisted on waiting there at the driver’s side window until the car was properly warm and the windows defrosted.
He stood there and insisted that she wait until he was satisfied that she could drive safely.
And something about it pierced her straight through.
Possibly because it was sad, really, that she couldn’t think of anyone else in her life who had taken this kind of care of her, not so consistently. Cinzia was a wonder, and they were truly friends, but Hannah also paid her rent. So really it was only Antonluca.
Sadder still, the kind of care he was taking with her here was so matter-of-fact. She felt certain she could have been anyone. He was simply being polite to the mother of his child.
But something about that was soothing, too.
Because she couldn’t really mourn what she’d never had, could she? And if he took care of her like this, on a snowy night when he could as easily have done nothing at all, then certainly he would take care of his child.
He would insist upon it.
And if Hannah and Dominic could depend on that, well. That was no small thing.
There, in the dark, with only her headlights against the night and the snow dancing all around, it felt expansive.
Something close enough to miraculous.
“Very well, then,” Antonluca said in his grave way, apparently deciding that her windshield was clear enough. “I will see you in the morning.”
“All right,” she agreed. But he was looking down at her and that gray gaze seemed to be as much inside her as in front of her.
And this time, instead of simply falling off the side of a cliff and plummeting against her will into a life she couldn’t have imagined in advance, she could decide. She could choose the fall, and that felt powerful.
So she did.
She reached over and she put her hand on the sleeve of his coat.
“Yes,” she said.
“Yes?” he repeated.
She swallowed, and asked herself if she meant it. If she really, truly wanted this. But she did.
Hannah jumped, and it was much, much better than falling. That was clear at once. This way, it felt like she was flying.
“Yes, Antonluca,” she said, with all the gravity the moment deserved, though her heart had wings and she let them unfurl, where only she could see them. “I will marry you.”