CHAPTER NINE
Tommaso
The woman was brilliant.
Finding a source of goats’ milk on the island in such a short amount of time was nothing short of extraordinary. Danica was marvelous at every turn, and it made it more and more difficult for me to resist her.
She certainly didn’t have to stay here to help me with Angel and Midnight, but I was glad for her company. This wasn’t the first time I’d had to deal with a sick animal who ultimately didn’t make it, but it was the first time I had to deal with a foal, let alone an orphaned foal.
Would we be able to get enough goats’ milk to keep him full?
I didn’t know Fred Love—though I knew of him—and the man was a cheesemonger.
He would need that milk for his own livelihood, wouldn’t he?
I didn’t begrudge him eventually telling us no when we went knocking for more milk, he had to make money too.
However, I wasn’t opposed to paying for it.
Did Danica pay for it?
I would need to ask.
I already had my contacts on the mainland searching for a nurse mare though.
However, my caveat was that she be either without a foal herself, or hormonally induced to lactate.
I didn’t agree ethically with the whole business of nurse mares, who were bred to care for orphaned foals while being forced to abandon their own foals.
We sat side by side on the cot, our knees touching as we quietly ate our soup.
I liked that she didn’t have to fill the air with conversation. As a man who lived alone with just my pet pig and a yard full of animals, I was used to having rather one-sided conversations, or no conversations at all.
We finished our soup at the same time, and I took her bowl from her without a word. A brief glimpse at the watch on her wrist told her it was already eight-thirty. I went to bed rather early, since the animals—particularly Portia—woke me up sometimes before the sun.
She tried to stifle a yawn but failed, smiling at me when I glanced her way. “That was delicious. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” I stood up, both eager and reluctant to move away from her.
Her scent—vanilla and almonds—was driving me wild, and the heat of just her knee against mine had all kinds of woefully inappropriate thoughts crashing through my brain.
“I will take these to the house.” Then without another word, I rushed the tray and bowls back through the barn—with Portia by my side—and out into the rain and wind.
It was dark now, and only the porch light provided me any guidance toward my front door. Though I knew this property better than I knew the Hail Mary’s prayer and could get to my door without tripping with my eyes closed.
Portia, because she was a princess, went before me through her pig door.
But she knew better than to just scamper into the house without wiping the mud from her trotters.
She did the quintessential tap dance on the spongy mat I kept to the side of the door for her to shake the moisture and mud from her feet before heading into the kitchen and staring up at me expectantly.
“You do not need more food. You had a good supper. Stop begging.”
She knew she was being scolded and snorted at me as a form of back talk before dropping her head and going to rest in her bed in front of the cold fireplace.
She’d be rather put out when she knew I didn’t intend to stay in the house for the night, but rather head into the barn again. She liked the barn, but not overnight.
I washed up the dishes, since I didn’t have a dishwasher, and brewed a big thermos of orzo solubile, which was a caffeine-free barley coffee I often had in the evenings before bed.
The grunt of confusion and frustration that preceded my sliding back into my shoes made me smirk. Portia kept pace with me across the yard, snorting and grunting as if to ask what the heck was going on and what was with all the back-and-forth.
“You could always stay in the house,” I offered her, holding open the barn door so she could trot her royal curly tail in ahead of me. “You do not have to join us out here.”
She grunted again as if to say, “Try to stop me, Papa.” Picking up the pace, she made her way back to her bed beside my cot and curled up, giving me the stinky eye as a warning not to make her get up again.
Danica was not on the cot, but rather, in the stall with Angel and Midnight. Midnight was tucked in tight beside his mother, sleeping, but Angel was awake. Fear shone in her eyes. She knew her son was going to grow up in this world without her.
I recognized that fear better than I should have. It was the same look Erin gave me when her symptoms started to progress.
Danica sat in the straw beside Angel, stroking her head gently and whispering gentle, kind words to her.
It’d been a long time since I had seen anything so beautiful. So pure.
“She knows,” Danica whispered, lifting her gaze to mine. “She’s not in any pain though, right?”
“Justine gave her something for the pain.”
She swallowed. “Good. She’s suffered enough.”
I opened up the thermos and poured some of the barley tea into the lid and handed it to her. “Orzo solubile.”
She took the lid, our fingers grazing for just a moment, and brought it to her nose, inhaling deeply. “What is it?”
“Barley coffee.”
She went to hand it back. “Oh, I can’t drink coffee this late at night.”
“It is caffeine-free.” I pushed it back toward her, careful not to jostle the mug so that it spilled. Once again, our fingers touched, and this time, an electric zap shocked us both, making her gasp.
“Oh.” She brought it back under her nose and took a deep breath in. “It … it smells like coffee. Only … sweeter. But I also smell, like … toasted bread or something.”
I smiled. “Si. That is the barley.”
She blew on the steam, then took a gingerly sip, her eyes lighting up in surprise. “That’s lovely. Kind of has a Cheerios flavor to it. Not as acidic or bitter as regular coffee. It’s different, but I don’t dislike it.” She went in for another sip. “And it’s definitely warming me up.”
At the mention of being cold, I stepped out to the cot and returned a second later with a big Mexican blanket, which I draped over her shoulders. “There.”
She tugged it tighter around her with one hand while holding the cup with the other. “Thank you.”
Nodding, I slid down to the ground beside her, leaning against the stall. “We might be in for a long night.”
“I’m sure we will be. Midnight will probably want to eat again. So we’ll need to thaw some of that milk.”
I snapped my fingers and made a slow climb back to my feet. “Why didn’t I think of doing that when I was in the house?”
Her hand on my wrist startled me. She also used me to help her pull herself up to stand. “Actually … um.” She nibbled on her bottom lip, and I fought down the groan at the bottom of my chest. “I need to use the washroom. So, if you tell me where the milk is, I can do it.”
“Oh … uh. Si. It is in the fridge freezer. You will see it when you open it. I do not have a microwave. You will need to heat it on the stove in a pot of water. Pots are hanging up over the island.”
Nodding, she handed me the orzo solubile, but kept the blanket tight around her. “I’ll be right back.”
Was I anxious about the fact that Danica—a woman I found myself having feelings for—was heading into my house, my private sanctuary?
Of course. The pucker effect going on in the back of my trousers was so tight you’d be lucky to get a straight pin up there with a ten-pound sledgehammer.
But I focused on the horses. I stroked my hand along Angel’s forehead and kept my gaze on the sleeping Midnight. This was for him. For both of them.
Some deep, meditative breathing helped too.
She didn’t strike me as the type of woman to snoop.
And I kept my house tidy. I didn’t live like a slob, or keep inappropriate things out in plain sight.
Even though I lived alone and rarely, if ever, had visitors, I knew better.
Besides, I didn’t really have anything inappropriate anyway.
My anxiety medication was on the kitchen counter, but that wasn’t anything I was ashamed of.
We needed to normalize taking care of our mental health, and not make it this un-talked about thing that over half the population struggled with in one way or another.
I continued to breathe deeply, stroke Angel’s head, and whisper kind words in Italian to her. I have no idea how much time had passed, but the sound of the door opening and her gentle footsteps down the barn soothed me more than I expected.
“Here we are,” she said softly. “I put two more bags on the counter to thaw normally, because we’ll certainly need them.”
Midnight was still asleep, so I took the bottle from her and held it between my thighs where I sat on the ground to keep it warm.
“You have a very nice home,” she said, sitting down beside me. “I’m sure the view is lovely during the day.”
“Si. The water sparkles with endless diamonds in the morning.”
We fell back into silence, and it was almost ten o’clock when Midnight roused again, hungrily.
Danica fed him in her lap while I checked on Angel’s IV bag and swapped it out for the extra one Justine had left us.
Once the new IV bag was in place, I sat back against the stall wall and reached over to run my thumb over the white star on Midnight’s forehead.
“You mentioned that you have a son,” Danica said, adjusting the angle of the bottle so the foal could lean his head back and not strain forward to suckle. “Where is he?”
“Milano,” I replied. “Guiseppe is in fashion. He is a designer. His partner, Nico, is a photographer. They are young and love luxury, and this is not the place for them.”
She chuckled in a breathy, feminine way. “Fair enough. Sleepy island life isn’t for everyone. How did you come to be here?”
“My … my wife’s parents owned this property. It was supposed to pass down to Erin—my wife—when they died. But she, um … she died first.”