‘It’s covered under a dressing.’
I was dying to know.
‘What time are you going tomorrow morning?’ I forced myself to ask.
‘First thing. I have an early train.’
Can I sleep in your bed tonight?
‘Where are you staying until the Tour?’Want to come and stay with my mum and grandfather?
‘I’m spending a week in Poland and then arriving in Strasbourg a few days before the team presentation.’
‘Your family in Poland?’
‘Babcia – my grandmother. She won’t understand that I have to work, but I couldn’t come back to Europe and not visit.’
‘I’m visiting my nonno,’ I told her with a quick grin that she warily returned. ‘He doesn’t live too far from here. Do you speak Polish with your family?’
She nodded. Of course, Leesa would be effortlessly bilingual. ‘But it’s funny: in Poland, I’m an American and in the States I’m Polish.’
‘Tell me something in Polish?’
She eyed me. ‘What should I say? Hello? Sorry? Thank you? You could just download a language app.’
‘If I ever meet your grandmother, I will.’
She stilled, her brow dipping, and I berated myself for the stupid things I blurted out when she was next to me. But then she spoke: ‘Co ma piernik do wiatraka.’ Her tone was even, the consonants precise and delicate.
‘Let me guess, you’re calling me an idiot?’
That earned me a reluctant chuckle. ‘No. “What does gingerbread have to do with a windmill?”’
‘Is that a brain teaser? Am I supposed to answer it?’
‘It’s rhetorical, but you could answer in Italian,’ she prompted, shooting me a sidelong glance I wanted to bottle and store for months.
‘Hai voluto la bicicletta? E adesso pedala!’ I answered, exaggerating the variations in tone and pinching my fingers together in the famous Italian hand gesture.
Finally. A genuine smile. ‘I only caught the bicycle part.’
‘“You wanted the bicycle, now pedal,”’ I translated.
‘Sounds like a judgement on my life,’ she muttered with a rueful laugh. ‘But I like it better than “You made your bed, now lie in it”.’
We fell silent. I had a hundred things I could have asked her, but most of them led somewhere we shouldn’t go.
The drive was over more quickly than the distance suggested – either that or my thoughts had tied me up in so many knots that I hadn’t been paying attention. I pulled up on the gravel outside the hotel and set the park brake, but I didn’t move to get out of the car.
Neither did she.
Chapter 23
Leesa
This could be the last moment I had alone with him. I couldn’t just walk away without sayingsomething.
He’d parked the car at the far end of the row of team vehicles, facing towards the meadow. Our backs were to the hotel. The last time we’d been alone like this, we’d ended up on my bed.
