Page 52 of In Italy for Love

When she’d finished the dishes, she returned to the dining room to find him slumped against the wall, his head lolling. But he blinked and then gave her a groggy smile. She wondered how much he usually slept, how he managed to function. The hollows under his eyes were a deep grey, the skin puckered, but as he blinked at her, she caught glimpses of the vivid blue of his irises.

She didn’t want to be curious or hear a sob story that would no doubt upset her, but she couldn’t help butwonder. What had they looked like together, Alex and Laura? Had they bantered and joked the way she and Alex did?

How much he must have loved her. She knew him well enough for that thought to kick her in the stomach and that served as a warning. Perhaps he should have told Jules he was a widower, but she hadn’t really wanted the heartache of imagining what he’d gone through – what hewas goingthrough, she realised with dismay.

Even if she should have learned her lesson by now, she still scooted over to him on the bench and tucked herself into his side. He lifted his arm, draping it heavily around her back, and she sank into him and ignored the pricking of tears now she understood why he’d been so conflicted these past two weeks.

The platonic housemate thing had been a bad idea, when they could have been holding each other like this.

‘Do we need to talk about… this?’ he mumbled sleepily, pressing a clumsy kiss to her hairline and then his eyelids drooped and closed.

This, between them, whatever it was, she didn’t want to question it yet.

‘We don’t have to talk right now,’ she comforted him softly.

‘Good,’ he murmured. ‘I like this – you. But there were things about Laura’s death that I struggled with.’

‘I understand,’ she said, muffling the words in his old pullover when her nose began to sting with the urge to cry.

‘You don’t,’ he insisted with a sigh.

Settling her palm over his chest as though she were stemming the bleeding of his heart, she said, ‘Shh. I can tell it was traumatic. That’s enough. I don’t need the whole story.’

He took a breath as though he were going to say something, but stalled. ‘I suppose it’s enough for now – for you. That’s good,’ he finally said, his voice rough.

‘Keep your secrets,’ Jules whispered when his breathing evened out. He was more passed out than peacefully asleep, but even that must have been some relief for him. ‘I don’t think I can hear it.’

21

Jules was jolted awake by the tinkle of Alex’s phone, where it sat on the table. She lay awkwardly sprawled on him, nearly falling off the bench now he’d slumped further.

He grumbled something unintelligible and was so groggy she would have mistaken him for drunk if she hadn’t known it was just the long day and his erratic sleep. Snatching his phone, she silenced the ringtone and extricated herself as carefully as she could, slipping into the kitchen to answer.

‘Pronto,’ she said. At least she’d trained herself to confidently answer the phone in Italian over the past three years. The person on the line had a thick accent that she struggled with, so she asked him to speak more slowly, eventually understanding that the breakdown service had arrived. ‘Arrivando! Un minuto,’ she assured the man that she was coming, fetching her jacket and ending the call.

Glancing at Alex, she quickly collected a few more seat cushions and propped his head up, tugging his feet onto the bench seat with a silent apology to Gabriella. But his sleep was worth the bad manners. Finding Alex’s keys in the kitchen, she headed outside to deal with the car.

It seemed to be an easy fix, once the mechanic towed the Fiat down onto the flat and crawled underneath, and the car didn’t need to be repaired in the shop. When the flashing lights of the truck disappeared again down the mountain, the night was cool and still and dark. Glancing at her phone, Jules saw it was past ten o’clock.

There was no way she’d wake Alex to drive down the mountain now.

Instead, she locked the car and slipped back inside, sighing when the warmth embraced her. She opened the stove and carefully added another two pieces of wood. Tiptoeing to the bench, she checked that Alex was still sleeping, allowing satisfaction to creep over her when she observed his even breaths and the relaxed lines of his face.

She wanted to slip back onto the bench with him, but there wasn’t room now he was stretched out on it, so she fashioned her own bed on a row of chairs, turned off the light and tried to sleep despite her spiralling thoughts.

Now she knew about Laura, it was as though the stopper on his personality had been popped and the man from their first date had appeared in front of her again. Except now she knew he was also a stubborn, grieving husband, and that part didn’t just disappear. She didn’t want it to disappear, even though tearing her heart out over a man was not a sensible next step in working out her life.

Everything in Friuli had been more than she’d bargained for, but as long as she left at the end, these few weeks could be a seminal period of learning and change in her life, not another poor decision like moving to Italy for Luca.

When she opened her eyes, there was light creeping around the shutters. Awkwardly pushing herself up from the narrow chairs, her back twinged and her shoulder ached. She must haveslept for longer than she’d thought, if the crick in her neck was anything to go by.

‘There’s no hurry.’ Alex crouched in front of her with a half-smile on his lips. His hair was mussed and his beard a little fuzzy, but his eyes were bright and it was lovely to see his face first thing in the morning.

Arco bustled up to her, nuzzling her knee firmly until she gave him a rub. Alex had his coat on and she realised he must have taken the dog outside and let her sleep.

‘Don’t we have to get back?’

‘The clocks changed overnight, so it’s only six thirty.’

---