Page 20 of In Italy for Love

‘Have you thought about starting it up again?’ Not that it was a simple thing to just open a B&B, she thought bleakly.

His grimace seemed to match her thoughts. ‘Sometimes it’s easier to leave things be.’ He sipped his soup without looking at her, a shadow over his eyes that made Jules think about ‘nots’ and bitterness and hard times. He was a puzzle of a man. His fingers were blunt and his hands a little raw, with specks of something dark under the fingernails. He’d arrived home with an accordion case and he’d inherited an old B&B from someone he didn’t want to mention and his family – at least she thought he’d called Maddalena ‘zia’ for aunt – seemed keen to imagine him together with any old stranger who turned up in his life and insisted they’d only had casual sex.

Perhaps he was right and it would have been less awkward if they hadn’t slept together the night before. Now her stomach was full, her mind kept snagging on the memory of his mouth on hers until she was worried she was staring at his lips. They were nice ones – the bottom lip full and soft – contrasting with the light scratch of his trimmed moustache and beard.

‘What about you?’ he asked.

‘You mean why am I at the very edge of Italy with all of my physical possessions stuffed in a backpack and only a dog for company?’

‘Exactly.’ Propping his elbows on the table, he leaned forward, his expression making her wonder again where his smiles from last night had gone.

‘That’s also a long story,’ she mumbled, eyeing him pointedly. ‘But I’m trying to leave Italy.’

‘Trying to?’

‘I told you I lived in Parma for three years… well… now it’s time to go home, except I’m at the mercy of the government. I don’t have a current passport. I’m officially Italian now, but I only have a certificate to prove it. It should only take two weeks to process the application once I’ve got an address for them to send it to, but until then I’m in a bureaucratic black hole with no savings.’

‘Which is why you were supposed to work on Maddalena’s farm.’

‘Yeah,’ she agreed with a sigh. ‘But apparently the room for workers at Due Pini could electrocute me, so that won’t work out. I just seem to stumble from one disaster to another. I spent today hauling water so the group booking at the restaurant could go ahead. I didn’t sign up for a bodybuilding boot camp.’

She flexed her arm for emphasis, but he ignored the joke.

‘Wasn’t there someone in Parma you could have stayed with?’

‘Well that someone is the reason I’m “not”,’ she said, catching his eye.

‘Ah.’ Alex looked as though he wanted to say more, his lips moving from uncertainty to a concerned pout. ‘He didn’t… Are you all right?’

‘Yes, I’m not on the run. You don’t need to beat anyone up.’

He choked on a sip of wine.

‘We wouldn’t want you to damage those accordion hands.’

This time he coughed and spluttered.

‘Do I need to pat you on the back?’ she continued while he got his breath back. ‘I thought you liked my jokes.’

When he met her eye, instead of the warmth from the night before, there was a sheen of dismay over his expression that made her neck prickle with disappointment. ‘I use these hands for lots of things – not just playing the accordion, you know.’

‘Oh, I know,’ she teased him with a wink, even though she knew she was poking the bear. Apparently hedidn’tlike her jokes today.

‘That— I… That wasn’t what I meant. I just thought I should mention my real job. I work in a bike shop – bicycles. I repair them.’

‘I thought you were a bad busker!’

‘Thanks,’ he muttered.

‘No, I mean you didn’t even have a hat set out for money.’

‘It’s one of the places people don’t usually mind me practising. Siore Cudrig – Signora Cudrig – in the building across the courtyard yells at me if I play here when she’s trying to take a nap.’

‘She must be one of the vampires! Have you ever actually seen her in daylight?’

‘Yes, I have. She hangs her washing every Wednesday afternoon at one o’clock.’

‘She probably also saw you half-naked in your doorway last night, right? I bet she wanted to put her fangs in that!’ She should probably have taken pity on him and stopped cracking jokes, but she was too tired to filter herself.

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