Page 12 of In Italy for Love

‘Arco?’ she cried in alarm, and he pulled himself together to follow her as she snatched up her underwear and stumbled out of the room – too quickly for him to properly appreciate theglimpse of her long, long legs. Wow, she was stunning. ‘Arco!’ he heard her scolding the dog, a dismayed edge to her voice.

When he arrived in the kitchen, it was to find a windowsill planter on its side, soil spilling onto the floor, and a suspiciously innocent-looking dog hiding under the table, his eyes partially obscured by brown fur.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Julia said, scooping up soil with her bare hands while wearing only her bra and knickers.

He stilled her with a hand on her wrist. ‘Don’t worry. It’s my fault.’ He gestured silently towards the kitchen door – where a fluffy white tail extended from behind the wood, flicking occasionally in apparent annoyance at the intrusion. ‘I obviously didn’t look hard enough for him when we got home.’

‘I suppose I share the blame for distracting you,’ she said. ‘We’re lucky they stayed quiet this long.’

‘Very lucky,’ he agreed earnestly, only to find her grinning at him with a cheeky smile.

‘What’s her name?’

‘Hisname is Attila.’

‘The Hun?’

‘I didn’t name him,’ Alex admitted before he’d thought it through. ‘But it suits him.’ He continued before she could voice the question he could see on her face. ‘Here. You’re getting soil everywhere.’

Taking her hands and gently washing them at the sink, wiping the smear from her forehead with a cloth, he pulled her close for a quick hug that was supposed to be tight and friendly, but there was far too much skin in the equation for that.

He didn’t have the words to describe what had happened that evening, but he suspected he would never forget it – forget her.

Even her name made him smile. Not the Italian Giulia, but Julia, as though she’d belonged here in a past life. Cividale had originally been named for Julius Caesar himself – Forum iulii.She was leaving tomorrow, but she’d spent tonight with him. He wasn’t sure how to explain to her how much he valued the gift of an evening outside of his usual reality.

So, he didn’t try. He just said, ‘I’ll clean it up. You don’t need to stand around in my cold kitchen in your underwear.’

She glanced around her as though seeing the kitchen for the first time, her eyes settling on the window and darting away again. Then her gaze fell to his chest, where it stuck for a few breaths until heat rose up his neck. She licked her lips and his skin was tingling and he suddenly had no idea where to go from here, what he wanted.

‘Do you want?—’

‘I suppose I should?—’

Her laugh this time was a little strained. She got to the end of her sentence first.

‘Go. I should go.’

Brushing past, she shook herself visibly and hurried back down the hall to his bedroom. He hesitated and when he finally made it back to the door to the room, she was stuffing her arms into the sleeves of her pullover. It was for the best.

‘I hope you don’t…’ It seemed he was still incapable of talking in complete sentences.

‘I don’t, Alex,’ she said with a faint smile, looking up. There was something he liked about the way she said his name: softly, almost carelessly, the way people wore their favourite items of everyday clothing.

‘Because… thank you.’

‘You don’t need to thank me,’ she assured him.

‘No, I mean, tonight… you… Not just sleeping together, although that was…’ Putane, sentences were long gone and now even words were a struggle. He took a deep, halting breath and looked away so he could try to explain himself. ‘Tonight was the best evening I’ve had in a long time.’

‘Me too,’ she agreed quietly.

As she shrugged into her jacket, he picked up Arco’s lead from where it lay discarded on the floor by the door and called the dog. Giving him a thorough rub and petting his curly head, he crooned softly to Arco in his native dialect.

‘I’m not sure Arco understands Friulian,’ Julia joked as she wound her light scarf around her neck. ‘I sure don’t.’

‘I don’t know how to talk to animals in English,’ he explained with a wry smile and one final pat for the dog. ‘I just told him to look after you.’

When she glanced at the dog, her expression tightened briefly with dismay – hinting at the vast array of topics they’d avoided tonight, even though it felt as though they’d shared everything. ‘We look after each other.’

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