Too late.
By the time I drop the leaves onto the counter where James is already working on kneading the dough, they are crumpled and sad from me gripping them so hard in my fist.
“You okay?” he asks, looking sidelong at me. “You look like you saw something terrifying in the garden.”
I nod and swallow, then go to the sink to wash my hands before pushing into the dough he has set out for me on the counter. Maybe if I scrub hard enough I can wash this feeling off too.
“Alright, when you start kneading, you want the dough to be—”
I put up a wet hand and flick the droplets in his direction. “Don’t even start mansplaining pizza making to me. I’m Nina’s apprentice.”
He lifts his brows and smirks.
“Is that so? And I suppose a week with my aunt has made you some sort of expert?”
“Yup.” I slap some flour on my hands and press my fingers into the dough, ignoring his watchful gaze. “Shall we have a competition?”
“Absolutely. I love competitions. Winner gets to decide what we do for a date Friday night,” he tells me, reaching out his flour-covered hand.
I look down at it, hiding my smile as the word date marinates in my mind. Dating? It doesn’t feel like the right word—doesn’tseem to cover the breadth of this. But I reach out and shake his hand anyway, watching the cloud of white powder poof into the air on contact.
“Deal.”
He doesn’t let go of my hand. His fingers slide up the inside of my wrist and he tugs me toward him, turning me so my back is pressed against the counter. His hands slide up my bare arms, leaving a trail of flour as they go.
“I like having Tammy here,” he says, staring at my mouth.
Why is he talking about Tammy right now?
“You laugh more around her,” he tells me. “And your laugh is …”
He searches my face for the word.
“Is?”
“Intoxicating,” he says, his voice so low I feel it at the base of my spine.
His thumbs are running along my jawline as he lowers his mouth over my lips.
The sound of someone clearing their throat freezes his face an inch from mine. He sighs and lets me go, his hands falling to his sides as he sidesteps away from me without turning around.
“Zio, would you like eggplant on your pizza?” James asks as he returns to his dough, leaving me face to face with Leo’s smirk.
“No, grazie. I ate at Vincenzo’s,” he says, stepping into the kitchen and hanging his gray suit jacket over one of the chairs at the island. He drops a large manila envelope on top of the counter and smiles at me. “I found more pictures for you, cara.”
More intel on Mom? I bounce a little on my toes and start brushing off the flour from my hands and arms so that I don’t mess up the photos. I pull up a stool at the island, slide the envelope to me, and pull out the stack of pictures.
The first few are of my mother alone—reading a book on the hill overlooking town; head bent over her sketchpad in the piazza out front of Aldo’s; holding up a glass of red wine to the person taking the picture. She’s so beautiful. And so obviously at one with her surroundings.
Then there’s a series of images with her and the man from the picnic table picture Leo showed me weeks ago. In one they are holding hands in front of the Raphael statue in the park, my mother smiling dreamily at the camera. In another she is sitting beside him at a table in the university’s library, her fingers pressed to her lips, signaling for him to be quiet while he has his head thrown back in laughter. The man is older than she is in the pictures, maybe by a decade, but he’s undeniably handsome. And it’s obvious from my mother’s expressions that she adores him.
“Who is this?” I ask.
“Professore Genaro,” Leo answers from just over my shoulder.
I glance back at him to ask if there was something between them, and I get my answer without asking because Leo presses his lips together and looks away.
So my mother fell in love here.
