Their food arrived, course after delicious course, and they ate their way through a delicate crab tart, monkfish, and a pumpkin and sage ravioli.
Luca dissected everything, examined it carefully, made a few comments about it needing more of something and less of something else.
She was fascinated. “Do you ever just eat and not think about how it was made?”
“No.” He frowned down at the food on his plate. “There is an ingredient in this I can’t quite figure out. Star anise, maybe. No.” He shook his head and took another mouthful.
“It tastes like—” She broke off as two women walked into the restaurant. Her heart pounded as she saw the blonde hair. “Oh no—is that? No, it’s not.” She breathed out. “Sorry. For a moment I thought it was Kristina from Guest Services.”
He put his fork down. “And would that really matter?”
“No.” She looked at him. “Yes. Maybe. A little.” It would matter a lot. Particularly if it turned out she liked him as much as she thought she probably did.
He reached across the table and took her hand, his fingers closing over hers. “Why do you worry so much about other people? Are you ashamed to be seen with me?”
He was holding her hand. On top of the table. Where anyone and everyone could see.
The seductive stroke of his finger sent electric currents under her skin.
“Ashamed? No! Of course not. You’re smoking hot, you have to know that, I mean part of me wants to draw attention just to make sure everyone has seen who I’m on a date with because it’s good for my credibility—” She saw amusement inhis eyes and stopped talking. “And now I’ve gone too far the other way. It’s not you, Luca. It’s me. For me, dating hasn’t been a particularly happy experience. It’s complicated, that’s all.”
“We are two people having dinner. How is that complicated?”
His eyes were like rich dark chocolate and the way he was looking at her made it hard to concentrate.
“Right now, it’s not. And maybe this is just dinner, and we’ll enjoy a nice evening and that will be it. Or maybe we’ll decide we had a good time and we’re going to do it again. Maybe we’ll even manage to find some quiet restaurants, sneak out of a few windows before dawn and keep it to ourselves. But eventually people will find out and soon it stops being our relationship and becomes everyone’s relationship. And that changes everything.”
“Why?” He looked puzzled. “It would still be our relationship.”
“It wouldn’t feel that way. People would be telling you every single thing about me.”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
“If I was trying to impress you, then yes. I’d be working hard to show you only the good things about me, and they’d give you examples of all the times I’ve messed up. You’d laugh, because there are plenty of examples. They’d take that as encouragement. Next, they’d be showing you my baby photos—”
“Okay, now I’m interested. Who exactly has these baby photos and how much do I have to pay to see them?”
He had such a great smile. Looking at him made her want to smile too and she realised this was the first time she’d been able to laugh about it for a long time.
Martin hadn’t found it funny at all, and because he’d been stressed about it, she’d been stressed.
“It doesn’t seem like much, but when you’ve got the whole village watching you, and commenting on your every move,it feels like a lot of pressure. And when it goes wrong, it can feel awkward. I get it.” And it wasn’t only dating, of course. It applied to every area of her life. If she failed at work she’d be letting people down, and these were people she’d known for most of her life.
The pressure felt crushing.
His hand was still on hers. “Who was this man who found it awkward?”
It wasn’t something she talked about. Since it happened, she’d made a point of being her usual smiley self and not sharing the depth of her pain.
But she hadn’t dated anyone since.
“Martin. We were in the same year at school, so I’d known him for ages before we got together. Which gave them twice as much to gossip about, of course. I reminded them once that they didn’t need to tell me what age he was when his voice broke because I was at school with him so I already knew, but they did it anyway. It drove him insane. He found it tougher than I did, probably because he wasn’t born here. His parents moved here when he was a teenager. It wasn’t a great time,” she admitted. “And if dating under a microscope is hard, breaking up is even harder. Which is why I prefer to keep things under the radar so that when it all blows up I don’t have everyone asking me if I’m okay and leaving cakes on my doorstep.”
“Cakes?” He raised an eyebrow. “Were they good cakes?”
She laughed. “Delicious. Okay, maybe I don’t mind the cake part. Especially if it’s chocolate. But I don’t like the scrutiny. It makes me feel like a failure. Also, these people genuinely love me so when I’m upset, they worry and the fact that they’re worrying puts more pressure on me to be okay. It’s tiring. Sometimes when life is crappy all you want is to lie in bed with a box of chocolates and not have half the village hammering on your front door to check you’re not contemplating jumping out of the window.”
Luca nodded. “Tell me about him.”
