“We could wait a little longer for them to get up, or we could text Charlotte to let her know where to find us. She could bring Lilly and come later.”
“Except if she sleeps much longer, she might not have time to meet us before her appointment with Luca. Actually, we should be back here by then so she won’t have to leave Lilly alone when she goes.” Lilly was old enough to be left on her own for a couple of hours, but given the girl’s unique situation, Sloane knew today wouldn’t be the best time for something like that. “You promised we’d take her to the beach in Positano, remember?”
“Good point.” He stood and stretched. “We’d better get going.”
“Let me grab my purse.” Sloane hurried back to her room to get her phone and sunglasses, too, and found a text from Ben:
They sell limoncello here in the States. I’ll get some and make a spritz in your honor.
Feeling terrible for being in Italy without him, especially because he didn’t seem to be sleeping well and still had to work, she shoved her phone in her purse before hurrying out to meet Julian, who was waiting for her at the arched iron gate leadingoff the property. But it was only fifteen minutes later when she was tempted to text Ben about the lemon-cream-filled croissants she’d found. They had to be the best pastries she’d ever tried. It was so hard not to be able to share everything with him.
“How’s Ben since we’ve been gone?” Julian asked when she took out her phone.
“Good,” she muttered and quickly put her phone back in her purse and changed the subject. She didn’t want to talk to him about her marriage again. It just made her feel guilty, and she already felt guilty enough.
chapter 14
Luca wore linen again—shirt and shorts—with leather sandals and a gold chain. Today he’d added a straw fedora and smelled like he’d put on a whole bottle of cologne. Beneath the hat, his dark hair curled, still wet—presumably from a shower—and he had the dark shadow of beard growth on his cheeks and chin, all of which he’d neatly trimmed.
Charlotte couldn’t call him unattractive—he wasn’t. He was probably fifteen years older than she was, but he’d aged well and looked younger than that. She could see why her birth mother had been attracted to him. When he held the door for her and flashed her that dashing smile, she realized he was also quite charming.
“Let’s sit in the corner,” he suggested, immediately taking charge. “Mario will be over to get our order when he hasunmomento.” He called out in Italian to Mario, who was working behind a display case that had a pile of menus on top, two of which Luca grabbed before following her over to the table he’d indicated.
The restaurant’s wide glass doors were flung open to the street, letting in the scent of salt and citrus. Inside, the air buzzedwith English—mostly American voices trading travel tips over cappuccinos. Lemons gleamed everywhere: painted on plates and pitchers, curling across tilework, clustered in bright ceramic bowls. She was growing familiar with the blue and yellow that was so prevalent here, saw the same motif in shop after shop.
“I like all the ceramics you have here,” she commented as Luca hurried to pull out her chair. “It’s cheerful, clean looking and creates such a unique sense of place.”
He took his own seat across from her. “Fatto a mano, signorina—It’s made here. Some Italian families have been in this business for generations.”
“We love thelimoni. They growenormiin Southern Italy—huge, you know what this means? Some are as big as your head.”
“No!” she said disbelievingly.
“Si!” he insisted. “Thelimone sfusato Amalfitanois three times the size of your piddly US lemon.” He grinned. “But it is thecedro—the citron—that is really big. We havelimonieverywhere, which is why we put them in whatever we cook and on whatever we paint. Have you tried thepasta al limone?”
“I haven’t been here long enough yet.”
“I will recommend a place. But this morning, you must order thecrespelle. You say crepes, like the French,si? Sweet or savory. Both aredeliziose.” When he kissed his fingertips like she’d seen actors do in the movies when depicting Italian characters, she had to laugh.
“What?” he asked, taken off guard.
“That was just a very stereotypical thing for an Italian to do, I guess,” she replied.
He winked at her.“Eh, ma io sono italiano, no?”
She couldn’t help grinning. “And that means?”
He laughed. “Iamitaliano, no?”
She accepted the menu he handed her and decided to get the Nutella-and-strawberrycrespellewith an oat-milk latte. Heinsisted the burgers his friend Mario served were also the best in town, but her stomach was churning too much to eat anything as heavy as a burger, especially for breakfast. Although she was starting to like Luca, he was still handing her a very difficult problem. She needed to figure out what she was going to do about it.
When Mario didn’t come over right away, Luca called out to him despite all the other patrons in the restaurant. He joked that the owner should get his priorities straight and serve his friends first, and they both laughed as Mario ignored two other customers who’d been vying for his attention to walk over to them.
The two men exchanged a few moments of what sounded like cheerful banter. Then Charlotte heard the wordbellissimaas Mario looked her over with an appreciative eye. “I knew your mother,” he said to her in English. “She was also beautiful.”
Charlotte felt a pang in her chest. He was talking about a woman she’d never met, would never have the chance to meet, and the finality of that bothered her, even though, logically, she told herself it shouldn’t. She’d been far luckier than Lilly; she’d always had everything she needed.
The men sobered when she glanced away. Sabrina was gone, and she’d died quite suddenly. The fact that she was young and healthy at the time, and should’ve been around to finish raising Lilly, made it even more of a tragedy.
