He might have known that she wouldn’t want to be gifted any advantage. Taking a fifty-cent coin from his shorts pocket, he flipped and won. He settled over the cue, gave it a couple of practice slides across the bridge of his fingers, and then broke with a short, stabbing stroke. The balls clattered and ricocheted in a whirl of colour. Not one dropped into a pocket.
Jade studied the table for several seconds, then stooped and smoothly potted an orange spot ball in the end pocket. With so many balls in play, she had two more easy shots before the red spot rolled into the mouth of a pocket and lingered.
Erin and Rosalie brought the drinks over. Rosalie had joined Leo and Jade in drinking beer, while Erin continued with the tourists’ favourite of Aperol spritz. ‘We’ve come to see Jade win.’ Rosalie settled on a wooden stool.
‘Unless I clean up from here.’ Leo eyed a blue stripe ball for the centre pocket. But he missed and play switched between them twice more. Each time, Jade managed to pot a ball and then leave one over a pocket.
Leo frowned. ‘You’ve only left me half the pockets to play with.’
Jade assumed a deceptively innocent expression. ‘Oh? Sorry.’
He snorted, fluffed a long shot and sighed. ‘Go on, clear the table.’
She needed no further invitation, stooping tokapoweach ball into a pocket, then leaving herself on for the black. She indicated an end pocket and the black trundled obediently in, while the white stayed up with Leo’s last three striped balls, as if wondering where all the spot balls had gone. Rosalie and Erin applauded, with a loud, ‘Yay!’ and ‘Go, Jade!’
‘You put me off, wearing that low-cut dress.’ Leo shook his head mournfully. Truthfully, she put him off with her intriguing eyes, as much as anything, so bright and compelling.
Jade clutched her front and glanced down before realising that he was teasing, as her neckline was perfectly respectable. ‘Idiot,’ she said amicably.
Leo turned to Rosalie and Erin. ‘Either of you want to play the winner?’
‘Not now I’ve seen Jade play,’ Rosalie answered pragmatically.
‘Not my game,’ added Erin, so Leo and Jade played again, prowling around the table to examine shots or chalking their cues thoughtfully while they watched the other at work.
This time, Leo won. Erin and Rosalie had been chatting, but seeing that there would be a deciding game they finished their drinks and rose. Erin said, ‘We’ll stroll down to the lake.’
Jade paused as if wondering whether she ought to escort them. But when they appeared happy to saunter off without her, she turned back to the newly racked balls. She broke and potted a green stripe, the corners of her mouth lifting.
‘Sheesh.’ Leo glared at the table, where all the striped balls now seemed to lie neatly between the spots and the pockets. He got a couple of balls down, but then the white spun back and maliciously potted the black.
‘Foul. Two-one to me.’ Jade laid down her cue with satisfaction.
‘Loser buys the drinks.’ Leo heaved a mock-tragic sigh. Playing pool with Jade had felt almost like old times... though they wouldn’t be strolling through the velvet air to his bed at the end of the evening.
Jade didn’t object. As there were no longer any free tables, she perched on a bar stool, straightening the yellow fabric of her dress and smoothing back her wild hair. Leo noticed severalmale gazes following her movements. Not surprising. Apart from her striking looks, there was that statuesque body...
When he’d bought another couple of beers, he clinked her bottle with his. Mindful that his mum would be expecting a report, he asked, ‘How’s it going with the sisters? They seem OK.’
Jade’s gaze wandered along the row of optics behind the bar. ‘They are OK.’
He waited.
Her features drooped. ‘They don’t want to be bought out of Three Sisters. They say Gran wanted them to have it, so...’ She shrugged one shoulder, bare apart from those distracting straps. ‘And Rosalie pointed out that I’ll only be getting as much of the pensione as I am because Joey’s refused his right – and she’s correct. If Three Sisters had been in England instead of in Italy, Gran could have left it however she chose. But in Italy?’ She lifted her hands in defeat. ‘The law’s different.’
‘I’m sure it’s been a massive shock.’ He sipped from the cold beer bottle, noticing Jade’s warm, bare upper arm occasionally brushing his. It felt like a caress. ‘But you look to be getting on OK, generally.’
‘Yeah.’ But then she added a sigh. ‘Kind of. I feel weird about Rosalie.’
He appraised her from the corners of his eyes. She sat comfortably, an elbow on the bar, her beer bottle loosely encircled by her fingers, her hair pouring down her back in the riotous curls common in Italy. To most people, she’d look Italian and sound it until she spoke English. ‘In what way?’ he asked.
When she turned to look at him, her breasts pressed against the fabric of her dress. ‘Her experience of Joey is the opposite of mine and Erin’s. Sheknewhim. They lived together. He took her to school when she was small and bought her clothes, and—’ She rubbed her forehead as if it ached. ‘She loves him. Althoughshe says she doesn’t know where he is, he’s real to her. Not just a name and a few old photos. She talks about him fondly, with all his wandering from job to job and place to place, at ease in the world but unworldly. It feels like a barrier. I haven’t discussed it with Erin, but I sense she finds it weird, too. She only met him once when she was too young to remember, because her mum didn’t want Joey around. Not sure how Erin feels about that now.’
Her air of vulnerability made him want to hug her. Instead, he said, ‘It’s hard for me to imagine how you’re feeling.’ He’d been lucky to be brought up by two parents who lived and loved together. Jade had had no contact with her parentsat all. Not even a birthday present. ‘How do you think being in business with your sisters will go?’
She blew out a breath, misery entering her eyes. ‘I have to make it work out. We’re going to get Mary Smith to draw up an agreement. But it’s just...’ She used the side of her thumb to wipe under an eye, sniffed, then scrabbled in her bag for a tissue.
His heart shrank. He didn’t remember seeing Jade cry since school. Not even when they’d hadthatconversation about working in England that had led to her promptly excising herself from his life. He contented himself with briefly covering her hand, feeling skin like satin beneath his. ‘I hope it’ll be OK,’ he murmured.
