He felt a prick of guilt at her apology. ‘To be honest, Toni,’ he began, glad her name was beginning to feel like hers in his mind, ‘I don’t have many visitors. I was looking forward to youcoming, showing you the place that—’saved me. That sounded melodramatic. ‘This place I love.’
‘You don’t invite every random stranger to stay with you then?’
‘Not at all,’ he responded to her teasing question in kind. ‘You don’t accept every invitation from a random stranger to stay at his house?’ She opened her mouth to say something, but he cut her off. ‘You see, we aren’t strangers.’
Nodding, she gave a thoughtful sigh. ‘I’m getting used to this.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ he replied lightly. ‘Do you want to have a friendly beer and we talk about what you want to do tomorrow?’
A smile touched her lips at his wording as she nodded. ‘Let me just call my son before bed.’
‘I’ll get you the Wi-Fi password. There’s no mobile coverage here, so you’ll need it.’
‘No coverage?’
He gave her a shrug. ‘Sometimes, it’s a blessing.’
With the bedroom door shut, he heard only the murmur of voices as she called home, her tone artificially upbeat. He imagined she would have spoken that way even if he’d turned out to be Gabriella Orzati and not Gabriele. She’d said her son was nine. That was probably young enough to miss his mother, not that he knew anything about kids.
Grabbing two beers and some schiacciata, the crunchy flatbread he’d bought fresh from the bakery that morning, he headed out onto the porch, where the evening air had finally cooled as the sun sank low over the water. Running his fingers over the rosemary and then bringing the tips to his nose, he breathed in. Snapping off a leaf of sage, he crushed it and stuffed it into the neck of his beer, then he dragged a seat near the crumbling wall so he could prop his feet up on it.
He wasn’t self-conscious – or he tried not to be. The Toni he knew from their chats wouldn’t judge him anyway. But the woman from the port…
Hearing the squeak of a door, he leaned back in the chair to peer through the mosquito curtain into the living room. There she was, running her fingers over the driftwood on the mantlepiece, her gaze snagging on the shiny metal oloid on the corner, the mathematical shape his ex-colleagues had given him when he left.
Her chin was up, shoulders straight, and he was pleased to see her looking more at ease. He considered interrupting her curious perusal and calling her outside, but he liked the little furrow between her brows when she concentrated, the way she pressed her lips together. He liked that she was curious about him.
When she was more obviously searching for him and no longer simply nosying in his living room, he waved at the doorway, calling, ‘Out here.’
He especially enjoyed the way her steps faltered when she gazed at the expansive sea.
Gesturing to the other chair, he pushed the beer bottle in her direction. ‘Everything okay at home?’
She nodded, almost serene now after her phone call. She took a long drag on the beer and sat back in her seat. ‘Wow, you get to do this every day.’
‘It’s a luxury worth a lot more than I paid for this place.’
She nabbed a fragment of schiacciata and took a bite. ‘Mmm, why does everything taste better here?’
‘You’ll find the answer to that question is usually olive oil,’ he answered her with a smile.
‘And you really don’t have many guests?’ she asked. ‘Not even… dates?’
He glanced at her doubtfully. ‘Do you still think I was down at the port waiting for some other woman?’
‘You sound offended.’
‘On the contrary, I was intrigued that you were teasing me.’
Her gaze dropped to her beer as she studied the bottle absently. ‘I’m not sure why I did. Something about being on holiday. The normal rules don’t apply.’
‘Flirting is normally against the rules?’
‘Absolutely,’ she said with a smile as her nail scraped at the label on the beer bottle. ‘But you didn’t answer my question. This is the sort of place that could make someone fall in love with you.’ She laughed at her own poor joke. ‘If they were interested in falling in love,’ she qualified with a lift of her brow that suggested she wasn’t.
‘I assure you, the few dates I have invited here havenotfallen in love with me.’
‘A few, huh?’
