Chapter 32
JENNIFER
Anna's on the phone, mid-sentence about the restaurant's new pastry supplier when I shift on the sofa and the baby makes her feelings about this known immediately, one firm kick to the ribs that I have come to understand means she has opinions about my posture and is not going to keep them to herself.
"Hold on," I say.
I readjust. She settles. I look at the ceiling for a moment and then turn my head toward the window, where the water is doing its late afternoon thing, the light coming off it in that particular way it has at this hour, gold and a little excessive, the way the island always does everything, without apology and with complete commitment.
"Sorry," I say. "She's redecorating."
"What did she do?" Anna says.
"Kicked my ribs," I say. "She has opinions about how I'm lying down."
"She gets that from somewhere," Anna says.
“Not me!”
Anna laughs. I hear the background noise behind her shift, the particular restaurant-adjacent chaos that follows my sister everywhere, then I hear a baby cry and someone speaking in French. It must be one of her alphas.
“Not long to go,” Anna says.
"Six weeks," I say. "Give or take. She'll come when she decides to and not a moment before."
"She really does take after you," Anna says.
"Don't start," I say.
"Are you still thinking of staying on the island?"
“Yes,” I say. “There is a doctor suite on the island. And they’ve been fixing it up, so it’s exactly how I want it to give birth in.”
“That sounds lovely. Jennifer, I’m really happy and proud of you.”
“It is. It’s better than any hospital I’ve ever been in,” I say.
"Sorry," she says. "The supplier situation is a disaster and Laurent is trying to fix it by being very large and calm in the direction of the problem."
"Does that work?”
"Surprisingly often," she says. "Jennifer. I want to come."
"I know," I say.
"Not just for the birth," she says. "Before.
I want to see you before she arrives. I want to see the island and the herb garden and this bay tree you keep talking about and I want to sit in the kitchen you love and drink wine with you and your three extremely large alphas and I want to do that before everything changes. "
"Come then," I say.
"The restaurant," she says.
Running your own restaurant is tough, especially when you have two kids. Sure, my niece can do things for herself and will be in middle school soon, but she just had a baby.
"Come when you can," I say. "Or I'll come to you before she arrives. We'll make it work."
“For sure!”
I press my free hand flat against my stomach and feel the baby shift, the low rolling movement, the contented one, the one she does when things are as they should be.
We talk for another few minutes, and then Anna has to go because the pastry supplier situation apparently requires her physical presence and I can hear in her voice that she is already mentally walking across the restaurant floor.
"Call me tomorrow," she says.
"I will," I say.
"I love you!”
"I love you too," I say. "Go sort out your supplier."
She goes.
I lie on the sofa and look at the water and let the quiet of the room settle around me.
The afternoon light is moving across the ceiling the way it moves at this hour, slow and golden, doing its thorough warm thing with no particular urgency.
Santos is somewhere in the kitchen. Tomas is in the library.
I close my eyes.
Then the door opens.
Matteo stands in the doorway with his sleeves rolled to the elbow and his pale blue eyes taking in the room with the automatic quiet assessment he gives to everything, and when he finds me on the sofa.
"Am I interrupting?” he asks.
"Anna just hung up," I say. "Come in."
He crosses to the window the way he always crosses to windows, standing with his hands loose at his sides and looking at the water for a moment.
"How is she?" he says.
"Overwhelmed and refusing to admit it," I say. "Which means she's fine."
He turns from the window and looks at me on the sofa with those pale eyes and that quiet, and I look back, and we do the thing we have been doing for weeks now, the looking, the quality of attention Matteo brings that is not like Santos's attention, not warm and immediate, but something more careful, more considered, the attention of someone who wants to get the full picture before he says anything.
"You look tired," he says.
“Thanks Matteo.”
It’s not the type of thing a pregnant lady wants to hear, but it’s Matteo so I know that he’s kidding, as his lips curl.
“I’m not a woman to mess with!”
“I wouldn’t dare! Come to the study.” he stretches out his hands to lead me to leave the very comfortable sofa.
I sigh, as I take it, thinking if there isn’t a good reason to leave this sofa, I’m going to have to come back soon.
He steers me toward the new chair in the study with one hand at the small of my back, casual enough that he might think he is being subtle. He is not subtle. None of them are, when it comes to me. They keep trying to delight me as if it is a competitive sport.
I love them for it.
The chair sits near the window where the late light pools gold across the floorboards.
It is upholstered in soft cream leather, wide-seated and deep-backed, the kind of chair designed for lingering.
The arms are smooth walnut, polished satin-dark, and there is a matching footstool tucked neatly beside it.
It looks expensive in the restrained way Matteo prefers, beautiful without needing to announce itself.
Comfortable enough to nap in, read in, brood theatrically in.
Very me.
"It's nice. I like it."
I run my fingers over the armrest. The leather is cool and supple beneath my hand.
Matteo makes a small sound that means he knows perfectly well I love it and is pretending not to be pleased with himself.
Then he looks at me, those pale eyes steady and unreadable to anyone who does not know him.
I do. I know the softness he hides inside all that precision.
"Jennifer," he says.
He lifts my wrist where my hand rests at his jaw and keeps it there, fingers light over my pulse. His pale eyes are close now, darkened by focus, fixed on me with the kind of attention that makes furniture seem temporary.
I lean in and kiss him.
He goes still for a beat, the held breath before weather breaks. Then his hands come to my face and he kisses me back with that precise concentration that belongs only to him. No rush, no showmanship, only care. As if this, too, deserves to be done properly.
He is not Santos.
Santos kisses like sunlight. Matteo kisses like a conclusion reached after serious thought. Neither better nor worse. Simply him. I feel it in the structure of it, in the way each moment opens cleanly into the next.
He draws back enough to study me.
"The chair reclines," he says. "For your back."
I stare at him.
He returns the look, mouth curving slightly, which on Matteo is practically vaudeville. My strawberry lifts warm between us as he reaches past me for the lever.
The chair reclines.
Of course it does.
He bends over me and kisses me again, slower now. His hands move with the calm thoroughness he gives to anything worth knowing. I shut my eyes and let him take his time. Matteo's time is usually an investment.
He finds the hem of my shirt.
His palms slide over the changed curve of my stomach and do not pause there, not even for a breath. The certainty of that touch, the absence of awkwardness or caution, loosens something in my chest I had not realized was clenched.
"You're thinking," he says against my neck.
"I'm always thinking."
"Stop."
"Make me."
He lifts his head. That catches him. I see it happen. Then he smiles, the real smile, quick and warm and ruinously rare. He lowers his mouth to me again and does exactly as instructed.
After that everything is unhurried, warm, exacting.
He notices every response and answers it.
Builds carefully. Adjusts. Learns. Somewhere in the bright middle of it I understand that this is how he has always spoken, in gestures, in steadiness, in every measured kindness I nearly mistook for habit.
I say his name.
He answers with his hands, his mouth, the solid warmth of him. When I make the sound I cannot hide, he gathers me close and holds on, face tucked at my throat.
Later the study is quiet and honey-colored with afternoon light.
I lie back in the reclined chair. He sits beside me on the edge, watching my face with the grave concentration he usually reserves for contracts or mechanical failures.
"Say something," I tell him.
"I'm working on it."
"Matteo."
He looks at me. "I have never wanted anything the way I want this to work," he says.
"All of it. You, her, this island. I have wanted things before.
Built them. Rebuilt them when necessary.
" He pauses. "This is the first thing I cannot repair if I mishandle it.
" Another pause. "I find that significant. "
I take that in.
"You're not going to mishandle it."
"I did once."
"And then you acquired a medically strategic chair three weeks before I needed it."
His eyes flick to the chair, then back to me.
"All of it," I say softly. "I know. Me too."
He reaches out and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear with two careful fingers. No performance now, no management, only the plainness of being here.
The baby kicks.
One firm, declarative thump. A full sentence of a kick.
Matteo places his hand on my stomach at once and looks at the spot with that expression I have been quietly collecting for months, wonder, restraint, tenderness, and something larger than all three.
She kicks again.
"Hello," he says softly. To her. To me. To the warm air itself.
I cover his hand with mine.
Beyond the window, the sea shifts from gold to amber, and I gasp as I capture the beauty of it all.