‘Can you stop by the mill on your way home? Maddalena promised Gabriella the fresh oil for her event tomorrow. You can take it out to her.’
That got his attention. ‘Gabriella? Can’t Davide take it?’ Gabriella was a family friend who ran a restaurant up in the hills.
‘He’s bringing the second load to the mill and then he has to get home to Palmanova. Gabriella’s place is close to Cividale. Take Julia. She hasn’t seen enough of the area and she’ll want to see the old chestnut.’
Alex must have been imagining that Berengario knew the nonsense he had spouted about Julia’s eyes. He gave his old friend a measured look. ‘It’s half an hour away and it’ll be dark.’
Berengario shrugged. ‘Take a torch. The tree’s not far off the road.’
Stifling a grumble, he nodded and went back to work with Julia and her new best friend, Davide, even more annoyed with himself for making too much of… everything. If she liked Davide then it was none of his business, and if she wanted to go and collect mushrooms with him, that waswonderful. She’d love it.
The sun had just dipped behind the distant hills when the harvest party packed up for the day and Arco was the first to bound back to the car. Although it wasn’t the car exactly that he returned to – it was Alex. He gave the pup a reluctant smile and a rub.
‘He’s had a good day,’ he commented when Jules approached, tugging her gloves off. She stretched and groaned, teetering as she worked the kinks out of her sore muscles. Watching her made his throat thick and he turned his attention back to Arco. ‘This is the happiest animal I think I’ve ever seen.’
‘And you have the grumpiest cat?’
His gaze snapped up. Her quip was a return to familiar ground, but there was a catch in her voice that hadn’t been there before. When he met her gaze – briefly, because she quickly looked away – he could see she was still working through what she’d learned about him that day. He hadn’t intentionally kept the information from her, but— Actually, perhaps he had. He hadn’t wanted her to know and now she did.
‘I’d say our pets copy our personalities, except that I know I could never be as purely happy as that,’ she continued as she slipped into the passenger seat after closing the door behind the contented dog. ‘And I know you aren’t always grumpy,’ she added, but he wasn’t sure she’d intended for him to hear.
Or perhaps he was just avoiding the conversation they should probably have. The prickle of emotions ran up to his hairline again when he remembered Davide casually explaining Alex’s connection to the family.
‘She died?’
A two-word question and a simple nod. So little for someone who held such an important place in his life.
‘What are we doing here?’ she asked when he turned into the parking lot at the agricultural school that housed the small mill on the outskirts of Cividale.
‘Come inside. I have to deliver some oil to a friend of Maddalena’s.’
‘The oil has already been extracted? Oh, I bet Arco can’t come in there. He’ll panic if I leave him in the car.’
‘I’ll just grab the oil then. But tomorrow we can leave Arco at home and I’ll show you around.’ There was that easy, familiar language again that had been kicking him in the shins all week, but he shouldn’t let it bother him so much. Something had obviously changed between them now she knew about Laura.
‘Are you sure I wouldn’t be in the way?’
‘You have to taste the oil fresh from the frantoio – the mill,’ he insisted. ‘It’s a rule.’
‘Well in that case.’ She gave him a tentative smile. ‘You’d better go get the oil.’
‘I won’t be long.’
He should have expected Berengario to fill a vintage damigiana with fresh oil and he lugged the bulbous green glass bottle laboriously back to the car, clutching it carefully with both hands. Tapping on the passenger-side window, he gestured urgently for Jules to open the door, heaving the bottle into her lap. Thankfully it was a ten-litre vessel instead of the larger ones which he wouldn’t have been able to lift.
She fumbled for it in surprise, her hands covering his for long enough for him to come up in prickles again.
‘Sorry,’ he said, out of breath, as he withdrew his hands. ‘It weighs a lot.’ Closing the door firmly behind him before he was tempted to pull the twig from her hair and brush back the strand that had fallen into her face.
Without looking to see what he suspected would be her pinched expression, he started the car and turned onto the main road out of town. Only when they reached the Ponte San Quirino, the border between Friuli proper and the Slovene-speaking Natisone Valley, did she sit up suddenly and peer out of the window.
Orange clouds glowed above the hills and the river rushed over stones, deep below the bridge, its signature aqua waters glowing pale in the evening light.
‘Where are we going?’
Guilt washed through him at her short tone. He deserved it. He’d been just as touchy as Attila – for days now. ‘Delivering the oil. I should have offered to drop you home. Berengario thought…’ He trailed off. Berengario hadn’t been serious. He’d been pushing Alex and Jules together again, the wily old man. ‘He said that you haven’t seen enough of the area.’
‘I suppose that’s true.’ She peered out of the windscreen at the rusty hills, dimming rapidly. ‘But how far is it?’