2. Paolo
TWO
Paolo
"Ineed something simple," I tell her, because asking for a family arrangement would be too conspicuous and because there is a truth in the smallness of what I ask for. A posy, not a show—something modest I can keep close, something that won't draw a crowd.
Rosa looks up from a mound of dirt and laughs—short, immediate.
The laugh still disarms me. "Simple isn't in my vocabulary," she says.
She teases me with it like she already knows what I'm about to deny.
Her hair has escaped its knot again, a few strands catching the light.
Sun makes a halo of the dust motes in the window.
She smells of rosemary and wet earth. My mouth goes dry.
"Then make me a vocabulary I can learn," I answer, and she lifts an eyebrow, amusement brightening her face. Lucia, at the workbench, mock-gasps and waves a coffee like an offering.
"Paolo." Lucia's voice warms the room. "Our favorite mysterious client returns."
"I remembered your espresso," I say, because I did, and because pretending motive shaves the edges off whatever this is between us. Lucia beams and ducks behind a crate to hand me a cup like she's delivering a peace treaty.
Rosa wipes her hands on her apron and, for reasons I don't want to analyze, holds out the stem she's been trimming. I reach across the counter. My fingers brush hers while I take it. She doesn't pull away. The contact is small, domestic, and it detonates under my skin.
"You've been gone two days," she says. Not a question. A statement that reads curiosity and something softer. Concern, maybe.
"Business." I should leave it there, but the shop is a kind of exile I've come to prefer. "And a reason."
"A reason?" She plays it out like a line in a play. "Does the Moretti family send you on errands for flowers now? Or are you branching into horticulture?"
Her tease makes the corners of my mouth pull. My family does not send me on errands for flowers. My family sends orders. I do not correct her. I can be the civilian for an hour. I can be the man who studies stems and counts petals.
"Hardly horticulture," I say. "Just...keeping accounts neat. Flowers help with that." I set the coffee down too carefully and pretend the trembling in my hands is the cup.
She sizes me up—the tailored coat at the shoulders, the way the fabric sits across my chest. Her eyes flick to my neck where a thin white scar interrupts the smooth line of skin, and I imagine she reads it the way everyone does: a story without words.
She doesn't ask. She never asks. Maybe she knows better than to pry.
Lucia returns to arranging vases and prompts with a pointed look. "So when's the wedding? Because if Paolo's ordering flowers, it's either a wedding or a funeral. Which is it, signore?"
"Neither," I say, and the world narrows down to the curve of her wrist where dirt settles under the nail. There is a small, pale nick on the side of her thumb—no more than a gardener's badge. My fingers find it before I can think. I press, and she yelps.
"I told you to be more careful with the shears," she scolds, but her voice is softer. She doesn't pull her hand free.
"It's nothing," she says. But her eyes search mine, and I see the exact moment she recalculates me: dangerous man, present tenderness, uncertain history.
I produce a length of thread from my pocket because I keep odd things in odd pockets. I don't like bandages; they are final. Thread is provisional. I tie a neat loop, and when I touch her thumb with the knot, the air in the shop pulls taut.
"You're carrying sewing supplies now?" she ribs, but the laugh that follows breaks like light.
"Problem-solving," I say, and bind the nick with a businesslike flourish. My fingers work precisely; the motion is small, methodical, and I feel ridiculous with how much it steadies me.
She watches me with something like disarmed curiosity. "You do unexpected things, Paolo Moretti."
"Name and modest mischief," I reply. Too formal, and she smiles in spite of herself.
She steps closer to check the knot. Her face is near enough that I can see the gold flecks in her green eyes.
My pulse climbs. I notice, in a way that embarrasses the calculation, how her blouse fits over the slope of her shoulders.
I notice the soft hollow at her throat when she inclines her head.
I feel the old, familiar pull of wanting to remember everything about her.
"Show me," she says, and it's an invitation not to test a wound but to test a man.
I step around the counter because something in me needs to be on her side of the workbench.
The smell of the shop envelopes me—soil, citrus, rosemary—and it tugs at a place I keep locked.
Being here is dangerous, because it makes images easier to come back.
Close gestes. Hands at a waist. A woman I loved once with flowers braided into her hair.
I tuck the memory away before it can sharpen into guilt. I have learned to keep the edges of who I was dampened with distance. Touch now is a trial. It could call up the man I fear I once was. The man who did things with a ledger and no questions about consequences.
"Do you really want me to show you?" she asks, voice low, teasing.
She reaches for a pair of ribbon scissors, and our shoulders brush as we both go for the tin.
The brush is deliberate, and my palm rests flat at the small of her back to steady her as the space between us tightens.
My fingers linger where her spine curves into her hips.
Heat blooms at the point of contact. It is not just warmth; it is an electric thread running from my palm into the hollow of her back.
I map that heat with an attention that makes it more dangerous—intense.
She inhales, and I catch the scent of rosemary and citrus and something softer, a note that belongs only to her. My breath finds its rhythm.
"Be careful, Moretti," she murmurs. "You're going to make a regular habit of saving my fingers."
"I could practice," I answer, half-joke, half-truth. The joke falls between us and turns into something thinner. I feel exposed. Hands here are intimate: steadying, guiding, claiming in the smallest domestic ways.
Lucia claps. "Enough saving of hands. We have a bouquet to assemble. Paolo, if you are going to be part of our afternoon entertainment, you must at least help wrap."
I wrap. My fingers, accustomed to other kinds of precise work, fold kraft paper with an economy that matches the thread binding.
Rosa selects blooms as if making choices with a private language—peonies for softness, sprigs of lavender for sleep, a single sturdy rose tucked low like a secret.
I watch the way she angles stems, how she leans into the bouquet with a domestic grace that aches.
"You move like someone who counts things for a living," she says suddenly, and the observation is ordinary but electric. "You line things up in your head."
"Numbers are honest," I say. "They don't ask for forgiveness."
Her mouth softens. "Maybe they don't, but people do."
Her voice is small and earnest for a heartbeat. It's the kind of admission that could tilt the room, but then she laughs and the tilt rights. "Are you trying to be philosophical? Because if so, you'll need more coffee."
"One cup was supposed to be enough," I say, but instead I stay. She hands me a piece of ribbon, and there is no ceremony to tie the bouquet to me, yet it feels tethering.
She kneels to reach for a spool in a low basket, and the brief bend lets me see the line of her neck again. I think of saying something idiotic like you look beautiful when you arrange things. Instead I say, "Do you miss it? Teaching someone to care for a plant?"
She straightens slowly. "Sometimes. I like teaching patience. The world needs more of it." She glances at me, and there is a dare in her look. "Do you have patience, Paolo?"
"I learned to wait," I say. It isn't the same as patience, but it's something. The honesty is minor; the admission so small it might be swallowed by the shop's ordinary noise. She studies my face as if she is pulling apart a stitch to see how it was made.
"Good," she says. "Because I will be testing you."
"Annoying, but fair." I tell her. "What are the tests?"
She jabs a finger at the bouquet. "If you can carry this without dropping a stem, you pass."
I take it. The weight is nothing compared to the ledger folios I lift at night, but it sits in my hands like a promise. She watches me walk across the shop, and when our fingers brush against the paper, a current shoots up my arm like a reminder.
"You make everything look like it fits," she says, and the compliment tugs at something tender. I return her gaze; my face must say something the words do not.
"You're dangerous with compliments," I answer. "They should be used sparingly."
"Then I'll use them often," she says, and her smile makes the space between us too small.
A bell at the door jangles—a late customer or a delivery—and I find my phone buzzing against my thigh.
I know the pattern of the vibration. I know the hand that has put that terse text in my life before.
My thumb hovers over the screen like it wants to look, wants to read a command that would pull me away.
The message buzzes again. I don't look.
"Are you all right?" Rosa asks, softer now. She watches the way my jaw tightens. She reaches out and touches my wrist; her fingers are small and callused, and the contact is a call to anchor.
"It's nothing," I say, and the lie is clean and practiced.
She doesn't rebuke me. She leans forward to hand me the wrapped bouquet and, in that movement, our hands brush across the paper and our palms meet.
I notice the soft heat of her hand, the slight dampness from her work, the quick intake of her breath.
I smell rosemary and sea salt and something that reminds me of myself before memory split me into two men.