Page 61 of In Italy for Love

‘Thank you,’ she said, her eyes bright.

‘I could thankyou,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘It felt good to get out on the bike in the morning.’

Her smile slipped. ‘Did you sleep okay, after last night?’

‘Not really. I shouldn’t get drunk, but sometimes…’

‘I’ve made your sleep worse, haven’t I?’ she asked, her eyes pinning him where he was.

He gave an ambiguous shrug.

‘Is that why you didn’t want me as a housemate?’

‘Partly,’ he admitted. ‘But it’s not your fault. Sometimes I sleep okay. It’s unpredictable.’

She took a step closer, chewing on her lip. ‘But you think if I… slept in your bed, it wouldn’t help?’ She squeezed one eye shut as she mumbled the question.

Even as his heart banged against his chest alarmingly, he smiled at her, the charmingly loopy expression on her face that perfectly expressed his feelings as well – this situation they found themselves in where the attraction only seemed to grow, but so did the complications.

‘You have a bed upstairs.’

‘You wouldn’t sleep worse than usual, would you?’

‘Youwould,’ he pointed out, although the sudden thought of her pressed into his side as she snuffled softly filled his mind and wouldn’t leave.

‘Alex, I slept on a row of chairs in a restaurant on Saturday night and I didn’t notice you getting up at the crack of dawn.’

‘You were fast asleep,’ he agreed with a lift of his eyebrows.

‘It’s worth a try, surely. It’s really cold in that room upstairs.’

‘I can fix the?—’

‘God, Alex, you’re trying really hard to stop this happening. Do you want me to stop asking? We’re going to leave things as they are?’

He licked his lips, staring at her as she drew closer, her face lifting to his. He didn’t want to leave things as they were, but giving in and kissing her, holding her, letting things happen, could trigger a host of responses he couldn’t predict.

Still, he replied, ‘No,’ his voice barely above a whisper. ‘I don’t think we’re going to leave things as they are.’ Her mouth opened on a slow breath. She set off so many fireworks in him,but he couldn’t pretend he didn’t like the explosions. ‘Jules,’ he said – a question, a statement, he had no idea.

He heard Maddalena calling out a greeting and jerked back, turning away and lifting a hand to his hair in a nervous move to cover the irregularity of his breath.

‘Mandi,’ he rasped, clearing his throat as he bent down to press a kiss to Maddalena’s cheeks when she approached. Laura’s aunt was wearing one of her usual long skirts, her hair tied back in a scarf.

‘What a wonderful idea to come on a bike!’ she exclaimed. ‘Dear, you’re a treasure for coming again so early after last night.’ She pressed kisses to both of Jules’s cheeks.

‘I’ll, uhm… I’ve got to—’ He gestured back in the direction of Cividale. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow night for the gnot dai muarts,’ he said to Maddalena.

25

Now that the clocks had changed, darkness fell swiftly over the clay roofs of Cividale. The last rays of the sun were reaching over the mountains as Jules cycled across the Ponte del Diavolo on the evening of Halloween after a day of pruning grapevines.

Pumpkins and withered ears of corn had appeared on the windowsills and the yellows in the trees had turned towards orange or red. The bite in the air had returned and Jules was wrapped up in both her thick cardigan and Laura’s jacket.

Although the pumpkins and scarecrows had brought to her mind excited children with buckets knocking on doors, Maddalena had explained that the gnot dai muarts – the night of the dead in Furlan – was an ancient tradition of honouring spirits who were said to parade through the town at midnight.

The celebration was also to mark the end of the harvest season and the coming of winter, which only made Jules conscious that her time here was ticking, even as she struggled to imagine a life where she didn’t go to Due Pini every day and come home to the white courtyard with the laden persimmon tree every evening.

Hurrying inside when she got home, she called out, ‘Sorry I’m late! Are you ready to go?’

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