‘Or the widow,’ she added, leaning closer, as though in challenge.
‘I’m… sorry.’
‘People always are,’ she said lightly, taking up the espresso cup and knocking it back with a wince. She could leave at any second, call whoever had failed to pick her up – and hopefully tell them off for abandoning her at the port. Despite the enormous red flag she’d waved provocatively in his direction, he was reluctant to let her go.
‘How old are your children?’ he asked.
‘My child – I have one. He’s nine.’
‘You don’t often leave him,’ Gabri guessed. He could hear it in her voice.
She shook her head. ‘This is the first time I’ve been out of the country without him. He’s with my parents and I’m supposed to be having a relaxing week away from real life.’ She glanced at her phone with a frown as she spoke.
‘Is it a man? The person you’re meeting?’
‘My film character? A handsome Italian lover?’
He suspected she was joking, but her words still made the tips of his ears hot, as though she could meanhim. He could picture it a little too clearly, spending a week trying to make her smile, brushing his hand down her arm to take her hand as she let go of the shadows in her eyes for the short time they had together.
He knew these things were never simple, had spent years rebuilding his life to gain the quiet balance he craved – but still he hoped she wasn’t meeting a man.
‘No, I’m also waiting for a friend. I can’t imagine what’s keeping her and why she hasn’t texted.’
At the sight of tight lines at her mouth, he realised he shouldn’t hold her up any longer, even if the thought of never seeing her again was disappointing. ‘Maybe you should call her.’ He could call Toni and work out where his own friend had been delayed.
Picking up her phone with an apologetic smile, she tapped the screen and raised it to her ear, taking a few steps away. His own phone lit up just as he grasped for it, the rather embarrassing old pop song he had as a ringtone sounding overloud between them.
He felt her surprised look as he lifted his sunglasses to peer at the screen:Toni Goschl. Good, he could work out what had gone— A kick of his heart accompanied a flash of suspicion. No. The call was a coincidence. Toni’s flight had probably been delayed.
But whatwasToni short for? Had he ever asked?
Swallowing unease, he connected the call. ‘Ciao, Toni.’ His voice shook.
A loud gasp was the only sound – a sound he saw as it happened, his gaze locked onto the woman he’d just flirted with over coffee. He squeezed his eyes shut, as though he could push away the realisation.
When he heard her voice, it wasn’t over the phone. ‘Gabri?’
4
Ohhhhh no.
Toni bit her lip to stop the shaking in her jaw, her mind racing. The call was still connected, their months of chatting online visible on his phone screen, where he’d let the device clatter to the table.
How much she’d shared with…him, imagining he was a friendly female florist when in reality… She gulped, unable to stop her eyes from running over him again: broad shoulders, casual ease, careless style with his linen shirt, unbuttoned at the collar, and cropped trousers. Expressive, gentle face. Handsome. Oh dear. She hadn’t thought she’d find a moustache so intriguing.
Thiswas who she was supposed to stay the week with.
Turning away, she breathed fiercely through her nose to tamp down her panic. Everything was wrong, but she couldn’t fall to pieces just because it turned out her friend was a man. Her skin bloomed with goosebumps as she relived the past fifteen minutes in his company through a new lens of mortification.
She’d teased him, amused herself by flirting with him, free in the knowledge that it didn’t matter what he thought of herbecause she was away from home and she’d be safe with Gabri soon enough. But that freedom crumbled in her chest as she contemplated the end of her hopes for the week.
What to do?
He cleared his throat behind her. ‘Ehm, Toni?’
Even hearing her name in his accented voice was embarrassing.
‘Mmm?’
