“I can’t imagine turning my back on what you have.” She ignored the pang in the region of her heart. She ignored the fact that they would both be turning their backs on this marriage in eleven and a half months. “If I had what you have, I’d reach out and grab it with both hands, to hell with how I’d been raised.”
“I can guarantee you wouldn’t.”
She blinked across at him, and saw the determined set of his features. “I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.”
He reached out then, putting his hand on her knee, running a finger over the skin there so goosebumps lifted and her contentment wrapped around her anew. “I’m glad you don’t want to be alone.”
For a second, hope flared inside of her. It was the work of an instant, and yet it was enough. Enough to make her realise there was a danger between them she had underestimated. A desire and need that she would be wise to carefully guard against. Because that idea of reaching out and grabbing something with both hands? For a moment, she had that feeling about their marriage, and Luca.
“You deserve all the things you described. A family. People in your life who love and cherish you; people who have your back, just as you said. When you go home, I hope you find that, Allegra.”
Home.But not here. He was no longer talking about his villa as home, but rather describing her life in America. A life thatfelt somehow distant, as though she were viewing it through a fogged up mirror. She could see yet not really recognise herself anymore.
“Me too,” she said, as he seemed to be waiting for an answer, and in that moment, a simple white lie seemed safest.
“What’s your earliest memory?”
She felt him shift beneath her, hours later, as they lay staring up at a starlit sky, naked and exhausted, bodies satiated yet stirring with renewed desires.
“I’m sorry?”
Her lips tugged to the side. “Is that a weird question?”
“In the sense that it’s come out of nowhere, yes.”
She laughed softly. “You don’t have to answer.”
She dropped her head back to his chest and listened to the solid, steady beating of his heart, and the reliable rippling of the waves at the side of the boat. It was hard to believe that they were here, somewhere in the Tyrrhenian sea, between his grandfather’s island and Luca’s home, just the two of them. No staff, no pressures.
“I was eating strawberries.”
She shifted a little, to hear him properly.
“They were wild grown, and sun warmed. They left stains down my shirt and my legs, pink blotches.”
Ally’s tired smile stretched. “That sounds beautiful. Were you in Italy?”
“I cannot remember, but I imagine so.”
She dropped her head again.
“What is your earliest memory?” His hand stroked her back, running over her spine, and each movement gave her an unmistakable sense of comfort.
“Hmmm,” she murmured. “I have several.”
“Several earliest memories?”
She rolled her eyes at his scoffing tone. “I mean that I remember a lot from my childhood; I don’t know which memory is earliest.”
“And yet you asked me,” he pointed out.
“You chose to answer.”
“Where you are concerned, I sometimes feel I have no choice.” His tone held a firmness, and a hint of complaint, but it was belied by the way that he slid his arm beneath her and wrapped Ally’s body against his chest, holding her there.
“I remember building Lego with my father,” she said, slowly. “I liked to make people.”
“People?”
