Page 68 of Hard Lessons

She pulled her head back. “Do you though? Do you really understand what I’m saying?” She sighed and looked away. “I don’t think you do. And that’s not your fault. I just think it’s in your wiring, Luca.”

Chapter Fourteen

The next day dawnedwith a clear pale blue sky. When Luca opened the front door, a heavenly briny breeze skittered into the cottage. He breathed deep and closed his eyes. This was a scent he’d never forget. It was the smell of freedom, of love, of a good place to be in the world.

“Coffee is ready,” Serena called from the kitchen.

He tossed his cigarette packet to the bench, the thought of Serena and coffee considerably more appealing than a smoke.

She walked out of the kitchen carrying a tray holding steaming mugs, toast, and a pat of sunshine-yellow butter. “I found honey.” She nodded to a jar by the toast. “Local by the looks of the label.”

“Nice.” He smiled. “Honey reminds me of home.”

She set the tray down and looked around. “This was someone’s home once. I wonder whose.”

“A woman on her own for a long time, from what Paulo said.”

“Alone here... how peaceful.” A wistful look came over her eyes.

Luca sat and took his coffee.

“I wonder if she raised a family here. It’s small but with so much space outside, the children would have a wonderful playground.”

“I guess.” He took his attention from her and stared out of the window.

“What with fields, a beach, the ocean too. An idyllic childhood, don’t you think?”

An unwanted memory from his childhood caught Luca off guard. He was peering around the kitchen door late at night. He’d been woken by a gunshot and instead of doing what he knew he should—hiding under the covers—he’d gone to investigate. The image of his father holding a gun to another man’s head was instantly seared onto his child’s brain as was the image of the man in the opposite chair—a hole in the center of his forehead leaking blood in a dead straight line that dripped off the end of his nose.

His father had seen Luca, and the icy look Luca had received was as effective as a bullet in getting him back to bed. The next day he’d taken ten lashes of the belt. He’d hoped that might get the images out of his head, it hadn’t. Instead he’d become used to them—used to being the man holding the gun.

“And the garden,” Serena went on, “it would be perfect for growing vegetables, tomatoes too, don’t you think?”

“Er,si.” He looked at her again, glad those images were memories and not today’s reality.

But would they be tomorrow’s? He couldn’t hole up here forever with Serena, much as she seemed to be taking to the Scottish way of life. The time would come when business as usual would come knocking and he’d have his finger on a trigger again.

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