Hannah had managed to be a part of all that, and had ruined it.
The man who’d turned up late and had watched her from the bar had seemed like an escape.
There was something about him. Stormy gray eyes. Close-cropped, inky black hair. He had been dressed in what should have been casual clothes—a button-down shirt thrown over trousers—but there was nothing casual about him. Maybe because it was clear at a glance that he was not American. American men never seemed so polished, nor so effortlessly beautiful. Even if it was his kind of beauty, that had seemed sharp at the edges.
The way she remembered it, she been drawn to him like he had her in some kind of tractor beam. Like she was helpless to resist.
You look unhappy,cara, he had said when she’d ventured near to pick up another silent order from the bartender she’d considered a friend, who had been acting as if she was a ghost.
What is happiness, really?she’d replied, realizing after she said it that it came out far more flirtatiously than she’d intended.
Maybe because she was so happy thatsomeonewas talking to her.
Something had shifted in that dark gray gaze of his. But if she’d expected him to flirt back at her, she was surprised. He had answered her question seriously.
To me, he had said, something intense in his gaze and all over his astonishingly perfect face, chiseled andmaleand beautiful,happiness is never the goal. It is too often used to achieve things that cannot matter. Do you not think? When truly, it is joy or pain that we remember, in the end.
He had said these things to her so intently. He had looked at her as if no other person existed in the world.
Looking back, was it any wonder that when he’d held out his hand, she put hers into his grasp without a second thought? It’d been a handshake, at first. When they’d still been in the restaurant.
Then, later, he had taken her in hand again. And he had taught her things that she still found herself dreaming about, all these years and his baby later.
She still didn’t know his name.
But when they had fired her the next day, calling her into the restaurant and dismissing her, she’d taken it better than she might have otherwise. Because there washimto remember. There was that long, wildly hot night. She had lowered her eyes and had attempted to look meek and remorseful while the chef and Antonluca’s business manager had decimated her.
Yet what she’d been thinking about was the way that beautiful man had moved inside of her. How he had kept her gasping and sobbing, trembling and begging, into the wee hours.
It had been like a balm.
Two months later, when she’d moved back to Nebraska because her name was poison in New York restaurant circles, it had been a bit less of a balm. Because she still didn’t know his name. He hadn’t given her that or his number or anything else. She wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to go about finding him, even if she could call the restaurant and ask them to go through the receipts of that night—and she knew they wouldn’t help her. Even if they might, she hadn’t seen what he was drinking.
She’d thought it was a bit magical until then. She’d had this whole night out of time. A memory to tuck in her pocket and keep with her, something that was entirely hers and that no one else would ever have to know about.
Because, of course, she had not intended to get pregnant.
Then again, maybe things worked out the way they should, she thought as she checked her watch again and stood up. She set her computer to sleep, and picked up her folder once more. Because she now could not imagine a life without Dominic. Just as she couldn’t imagine living anywhere but here. She had grown accustomed to Tuscan hills and cypress trees. And while her Italian was not fluent, it was getting there. She’d had her first dream in Italian a few months back and she lovedthinkingin a different language. Seeing and interpreting the world through the lens of a different vocabulary.
She also loved the small community she’d built here. She wasn’t sure that she’d ever trust a friend again, but slowly, Cinzia had made inroads. Not that Hannah ever intended to repeat her error, but she did feel that since she trusted her landlady and neighbor with her child, she could probably also trust her with anything else.
After what had happened in New York, and that particular ex-friend’s noted lack of remorse, that, too, felt like a balm.
So, too, did the hilltop village. There wasn’t much to it. Thetrattoria. A tiny market. A handful of other shops that seemed open on a whim, if then. All arranged around the little square where there was a war memorial and the old men sat about and told lies about beautiful women they had known in their youth.
It was a sweet, good life. Hannah would raise her son here and Dominic would learn the good things in life first so that when he encountered the bad, he would have all this goodness built up ahead of time. Like armor.
All she had to do today was convince the new owner—themaestro—that she had everything in hand.
“Nervous?” asked the concierge, a fiercely French woman named Léontine, who was the closest thing that Hannah had to a friend at work. And who was also giving her French lessons twice a week, to expand Hannah’s ability to interact with their international clientele.
If anyone else had asked her, she would have made it clear that the question was inappropriate. But this was Léontine, and Hannah could tell by the way she was asking it that she didn’t think Hannah was nervous, nor should be. She was simply bracing. It was part of her charm.
“I’m not nervous at all,” Hannah replied, which was true. She had always loved the art of pitching. She’d practiced it when she’d marched herself into this hotel, six months’ pregnant and here on a tourist visa. If she wasn’t good at selling herself, she wouldn’t be any good at her job, which required that she sell the concept and fantasy of this hotel to everyone, including its owner. “But I’m used to La Paloma. I spent a long time learning how to handle her idiosyncrasies.”
“Yes, but this is a man,” Léontine said with a particularly French sort of shrug. “Whatever idiosyncrasies a man has, they are always…easily handled, in the end. Every woman must know this is so.”
And Hannah wanted nothing more than to stand there and quiz her on what, precisely, she meant by that. But she couldn’t, and not only because that would betray how very little experience Hannah had ever had with men. Something that she thought made her seem…odd, at best. And not in a good way. Odd in a way that led to pity, or worse, offers to set her up on dates she didn’t want with men that she knew in advance she would dislike.
