‘If he loses a tooth here, we have a little mouse called Topolino who comes and collects the teeth – not a fairy. Allora, we kind of have the fairy too, but she’s lazy and uses the mouse to do her dirty work.’
‘Topolino the tooth mouse?’
‘Just be glad you’re not here in January when the ugly old witch visits all the children. The good ones will receive gifts, butthe bad ones only get coal and if they try to look at her, she hits them with her broom.’
‘We’ll take the mouse.’
‘Good. And I will be your ice cream fairy this week.’
She burst out laughing. ‘I can kind of imagine you with wings.’
‘What?’ He straightened, puffing out his chest, which only made her laugh harder. ‘Aside from ice cream, what would you like to do tomorrow?’
‘Maybe we should do something a little busier than relaxing on the beach, since I might need to work up to that one.’
‘How busy? Kayaking? Windsurfing? I must admit, when I thought you were a man working for Great Heart Adventures, I assumed we’d be out hiking or on the water every day.’
‘You changed your assumption simply because I’m a woman? One of our best guides is a woman, you know.’ She smiled thinking of Kira, the tough and prickly climbing instructor who hadn’t dealt well with Great Heart’s pivot to weddings. But she’d softened since the winter, when she’d finally met someone special enough to make her believe in love.
Gabri gave an apologetic shrug. ‘You have a point. You did tell me you like to go open water swimming – and climbing in the gym.’
She hesitated with her own sheepish lift of her shoulders. ‘Neither as often as I’d like. I am only the receptionist at Great Heart. My husband was a mountain guide and I just got a job there because the owner knew I needed one.’
‘A mountain guide?’ He sounded impressed.
She nodded, resisting saying more. ‘You don’t want to hear me talk about him,’ she muttered. And she didn’t want to talk about her husband when she was continually distracted by the glimpse of Gabri’s chest as the breeze caught his open shirt.
Lines came up on his forehead – lines that had the audacity to make him even more distinguished. ‘You don’t have to hold things in just because my marriage ended in a different way from yours. Say what you want to say.’
She turned her fork around in her hand. She was obviously too transparent in person. This had been easier in the online chat. ‘I don’t particularly want to talk about Miro. I mean, I wish I could talk about him in some other context, but in every single context, he’s dead. It sounds horrible, but I’m sick of him being dead.’
The fork clattered to the table as something cold seeped through her skin. Despite the sunshine, despite the vibrant garden all around and the very warm and real human being sitting across from her, she’d just remembered that part ofherwas dead too.
‘I’m even worse company than I thought I was,’ she muttered with a wobbly smile.
Then all her senses were firing on overdrive, like a shot of adrenaline, because his warm, rough hand landed on hers. His hold wasn’t firm – it was hesitant, as though he wasn’t sure he wanted to touch her either – but he didn’t move it away when she flinched.
Neither said anything. She didn’t meet his gaze. She just let the pressure of his hand hold her together for a moment.
‘I can’t imagine,’ he said eventually, his tone suggesting he knew it was a trite platitude. ‘Perhaps the island will…’
While he paused to consider the end of his sentence, Toni shook her head. ‘The island can’t fix anything, as beautiful as it is. You just think so because you were able to leave everything behind when you came here. I don’t have that choice. I’m not looking for refuge like you were.’
She glanced at him in time to see a grim nod.
‘Was it before or after?’ The words spilled out before she could think them through. ‘You don’t want kids because of what happened with your wife? Or you never wanted kids to begin with?’
His jaw was so tight, the muscles were delineated like the cracks in the stone around the cove. This time, when he looked up, the darkness was impossible to miss. ‘I don’t know.’
She wanted to push him, since she was pushed by everything that she’d felt over the past day that she hadn’t wanted to feel, but she was too much of a coward.
Dipping his head and leaning closer, Gabri proved he was not. ‘No. If I’m honest, I never wanted kids. I wantedherandshewanted kids and then… I had neither.’
The way he saidI wanted herrippled over Toni’s skin, setting off the foolish spark. To bewantedlike that…
‘Now you’re blissfully alone, answering to no one but yourself,’ she filled in as gently as she could manage.
‘So are you,’ he countered.
