“Did you get a selfie with the Leaning Tower of Pisa?”
“Of course,” I say. “What self-respecting tourist doesn’t? I’ve also spent a bit of time in Sicily.”
“Sicily? That’s off the beaten track for most tourists. What made you go there?”
“Oh, it was for my father’s work. We spent a few summers there.”
“What did he do?”
“Oh, uh…” I stare at the flickering candle and try to figure out how to respond. I can’t tell Preston that my father was a professor. That would lead to too many follow-up questions. Finally, I blurt out, “He was an animal trainer.”
“He trained animals? Like for the circus?”
“Uh, no, cats. He trained house cats.”
“Is that even possible?” He picks up a stray piece of tomato from the plate and pops it in his mouth. “I thought cats were untrainable.”
I avert my eyes. “Only if you don’t know the secret.”
“Does it have something to do with treats?”
“Not exactly.” I focus on rearranging my silverware, continuing to avoid eye contact. “But I can’t tell what it is because it’s a…you know…secret.”
“So let me see if I get this straight,” Preston says, leaning back in his chair. “Your father took you and your family to Sicily in the summers to train cats.”
“Yeah, that about sums it up.”
“Are there a lot of cats in Sicily that need training?”
Fortunately, Mama Leoni appears, causing Preston to forget about his line of questioning. Which is a good thing, because my knowledge of the Sicilian feline population is a bit lacking.
“Passatelli del noni,” she says proudly, setting bowls down. “Bread and parmigiano reggiano cheese soup. It’s a secret family recipe.”
After sampling the soup, we both agree that it’s delicious.
“It’s a shame that the recipe is a secret,” I say.
“Another family secret,” Preston says. “There seems to be a lot of secrets tonight—how to train cats and how to make this wonderful soup.”
“Surely, you have a secret or two.”
He doesn’t respond until he finishes his soup. After he sets his spoon down, he says, “Don’t we all?”
“Tell me one of your secrets,” I say playfully.
“No, I can’t. It’s too embarrassing.”
“Go on, you can trust me.”
“Do you promise you won’t tell anyone?”
“Pinky promise.”
“Frogs freak me out. I break out into a cold sweat whenever I see one.”
“Just frogs or all amphibians?”
“Frogs are the worse, but salamanders come a close second.”
“Sounds like batrachophobia. Fear of amphibians.”
Preston rubs his hand across his forehead. “See? Cold sweat. Just talking about it does it to me.”
“Well, let’s change the subject then.” I reach across the table and squeeze his hand. “What would you like to talk about?”
“Tell me more about how your dad wrangled cats. I bet you have some funny stories.”
I bite my lip and stare down at the table. There are funny stories about my father that I could share, but none of them have to do with cats. But it’s not just that. There’s another reason that I don’t want to talk about him, especially not today. Today of all days.
“Ginny, are you okay? You haven’t said a word for five minutes.”
I look up at Preston.
He frowns when he sees my expression. “What is it?”
“I shouldn’t have come tonight,” I say. “I thought this would be a good distraction, but…”
“A distraction from what?”
“Remember how I told you that my father passed away?” He nods, staring at me intently with those blue eyes of his. “Well, today is the one-year anniversary of his death.”
“Oh, my gosh. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
I smile faintly. “It’s not your fault. I thought I could pretend today was a day just like any other, but it isn’t.”
“Do you want me to take you back to the retreat center?”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “I don’t think I could stand being alone right now.”
“Well, I’m not going anywhere.”
“Thanks,” I say, looking off into the distance. My body feels cold. I take a sip of wine, hoping it will warm me up, but it doesn’t. “He died in a plane crash. I was at school when my mom called to tell me.”
His eyes widen. “Wow, a plane crash. No wonder you’re afraid to fly.”
“Yeah, I’ll never set foot on a plane ever again.” I straighten my shoulders and look directly at Preston. “Ever.”
* * *
Bless Mama Leoni’s timing. She always seems to come by with a new course at the exact moment when we need an interruption. She sets a shallow bowl down in front of each of us with a flourish. “Our famous ravioli with spinach and artichokes.” After grating some parmigiano reggiano cheese on top of our pasta, she gives a slight bow and retreats back to the kitchen.
“I hope no salivating burros were involved in the making of this,” Preston jokes.
I grin. “No, you only find them in tortellini dishes, not ravioli.”
I appreciate Preston’s efforts to keep the conversation light-hearted, and we continue to banter back and forth as we polish off our pasta. After two more courses—piccata di pollo and a generous slice of tiramisu—I lean back in my chair.
“I’m stuffed.”
“Me too,” Preston says, scraping the last bit of sweetened marscapone cheese off his plate.
My phone beeps. “Sorry, I need to check this. It might be my mom.” I feel my eyes start to water. “It’s been a tough day for her.”
“And you too,” he says softly, reaching across the table to squeeze my hand.
I squeeze his hand back, then pull my phone out of my purse.
“Was it your mom?” Preston asks. “You’re smiling.”
“No. It’s just a silly text from Mia and Isabelle.”
“What’d they say?”
“Um…they want to know how the food was.” I feel my face grow warm as another lie escapes my lips. Of course they didn’t want to know if we enjoyed our meal. They want to know if Preston is a good kisser. I quickly type a reply—For the millionth time, it’s not a date—then tuck the phone back in my purse.
When I look up, he cocks his head to one side. “Why don’t I believe you?”
“It’s true. I’d show you the text to prove it to you, but I accidentally deleted it.” My face is burning by this point as the lies tumble out.
“Uh-huh.”
I look around for Mama Leoni. “It’s getting late. Maybe we should get the check.”
“You know what I think?” he says, leaning back in his chair with his arms behind his head. “I think your friends were texting about how you’re smitten with me.”
“Smitten? With you? Arrogant much?” I say with a smirk. “I think you have yourself confused with the ravioli. If I’m smitten with anything, I’m smitten with those little babies. What has you so smitten with the word ‘smitten’ anyway? It’s kind of an old-fashioned word.”
“I’m an old-fashioned kind of guy.”
I grab the last piece of bread and tear off a piece. “How so?” I ask before I pop it in my mouth.
“Well, I respect my elders, I try not to swear, and I wear bow ties occasionally.” Preston pauses as Mama Leoni places the check on the table, then pulls it toward him. “I also pay for dinner when I take a lady out on a date.”
“When did this become a date?”
“The minute I saw you in that dress.”
My mouth goes dry. I push back my chair from the table and mumble something about going to the ladies’ room. After checking my make-up, I make a few origami birds out of paper towels while I wait for my heart to stop beating so fast. Why did he have to say that about my dress? It’s not li
ke I wore it for him.
My face grows warm again. Now, I’m even fibbing to myself. Of course, I was thinking about him when I chose my outfit. I wanted him to see me in something other than jeans and t-shirts.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath. Time to nip this flirtation in the bud.
When I return to the table, Preston stands. “Ready to go?”
“Did you pay the check?”
He nods.
I reach for my purse. “How much do I owe?”
He smiles that nerdy smile of his, and my heart melts. “Nothing. Remember, I’m old-fashioned.”
I place my purse back on the table. “This isn’t a date,” I say firmly.
“Yes, it is,” he says, taking a step toward me.
“No, it isn’t.”
“Yes, it is.”
I take a step toward him, closing the rest of the gap between us before jabbing a finger in his muscular chest. “No, it isn’t”
He grabs my hand and pulls me toward him. “You always have to be right, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.” Then he laughs. “Look at us. We’re bickering just like Loretta and Mabel.”
I smile. “No, we’re not.”
“Yes, we are,” he says.
I tilt my head up and say softly, “No, we aren’t”
“Yes, we…” His voice trails off as he locks eyes with me. “I’m going to kiss you now, okay?”
I start to contradict him, but as his face nears mine, I whisper, “Yes, you are.”
He lightly kisses each side of my mouth before softly pressing his lips to mine. I moan as his gentle kiss turns more urgent. Running my fingers through his hair, I draw him closer to me and press my body against his. The rational part of my brain tries to remind me that we’re in public, but the other side of my brain tells it to be quiet. It wants these kisses to keep coming. It wants this tingling sensation coursing throughout my body to continue. It wants this sharp stabbing pain in my right calf to…
Hang on, what’s going on? Stabbing pain? Why does my leg hurt?
“I told you it’s them,” I hear a familiar voice say behind me. Then I feel a sharp stabbing pain in my other calf.
Preston pulls back, the glazed look in his eyes turning sheepish. He raises his head to look at the person behind me. “Good evening, ladies.”
I spin around, put my hands on my hips and glare at the silver-haired woman in front of me. “Mabel, would you mind not jabbing me with your cane?”
9
Calorie Bombs
Preston demonstrated his old-fashioned gentleman credentials after dinner on Saturday night. Once we got back to the retreat center, he escorted me to the residential annex where I was staying and paused at the entryway. After kissing me so thoroughly that I thought my knees were going to buckle underneath me, he stepped back, stroked my cheek, then bid me goodnight.
We didn’t see each other again until Monday morning. During the rest of the week we only saw each other in class as he continued to be swamped with his grant proposal, spending most of his free time in Bologna at the university. But by the time Friday rolled around, he told me he was now able to spend all of his spare time with me.
“I have a surprise for you tomorrow morning,” Preston says as he dices celery for the ragù a la rumagnôla we’re making, a meat sauce that’s a specialty of the region.
I grab an onion out of the basket on our workstation and place it on my cutting board. “What is it?”
“It wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you,” he says with a twinkle in his eye. “Just make sure you eat a hearty breakfast. You’re going to be working off some serious calories.”
“How many calories?”
“Plenty.”
“So I can have two bombolones?” My mouth waters as I think about the delicious Italian donuts crammed full of apricot jam that they serve in the mornings. I’m pretty sure the translation of bombolone into English is calorie bomb. I usually try to go for a healthier option, like a yogurt, but those donuts are awfully tempting.
“You better have three.”
“Three. That does sound serious. What exactly are we going to be doing that warrants three donuts?”
“You’re having a hard time understanding the concept of a surprise, aren’t you? You just have to trust me.” He scrapes the chopped celery off his cutting board into a bowl, then casually asks, “You trust me, don’t you?”
While I peel my onion, I think about his question. Do I trust him? Can I trust him?
I shake my head. The better question is, do I want to trust Preston? I trusted what’s-his-name and look where that got me. When he offered to review my research paper before I turned it in, I eagerly agreed. I valued his expertise. His feedback would be a huge help. My paper would be ten times better with his input.
What a fool I was.
My hand trembles as I recall the day my thesis advisor called me into his office. I had turned my paper in the previous day, five minutes before the deadline. Normally, I liked to turn them in at least twenty-four hours before the cut-off, but I had been waiting for what’s-his-name to send me his feedback. Usually we grabbed lunch between classes, met up at the library at night to study, and hung out over the weekends. But after I gave him my paper the previous week to review, he had become scarce, coming up with all sorts of excuses from his parents being in town (they weren’t), being sick (a hangnail doesn’t require bed rest), to having to walk his neighbor’s dog (she has a hamster).
When I didn’t hear back from him about my paper, I turned the original version in and hoped for the best.
I should have hoped for the worst, then I wouldn’t have been disappointed. Because I can’t imagine anything worse than having my thesis advisor show me a copy of the paper what’s-his-name turned in three days prior to mine. A paper that was exactly the same as mine, except for the name on the front.
Even when I pulled out my laptop and showed him the date stamps of the original paper on my hard drive, I was met with disbelief. Those things can be faked, I was told. You’re not smart enough to have written this. You’ve been coasting along on your father’s coattails. That’s the only reason you were accepted into this program.
I was devastated by his assessment of my intellectual capability. But my devastation turned to anger when my thesis advisor stood by what’s-his-name, despite all evidence to the contrary. When I demanded a formal hearing, he pulled out the trump card—my father. My dead father. Did I want to ruin my father’s reputation with a formal hearing? It would get out that his daughter had been accused of plagiarism and, whether or not my name was cleared, the damage would be done. Wouldn’t it be better to drop quietly out of grad school?
It wasn’t until later that I found out why my thesis advisor didn’t support me. Turns out he had lost out on a prestigious research grant to my father. My mother said that he had never really had a shot—my father’s academic credentials were far superior—but that didn’t stop him from blaming my father and finally taking his revenge out on me years later.
When I asked my mom why my father hadn’t told me about this professor’s feud with him when I was accepted into the grad school where he taught, she shrugged. “It would have never occurred to him that he held a grudge,” she said. “He always believed in the best of people. Just like you do.”
“Like I used to,” I told her. “Now I know better.”
“Hey, you didn’t answer me,” Preston says, resting his hand lightly on my shoulder and snapping me back to the present. “Do you trust me?”
I plaster a smile on my face. “Of course I do.”
No, I don’t.
He smiles back, then reaches across me for the carrots.
I breathe in his scent of pine and leather. My fingers itch to touch his skin, to leave a trail of kisses down his neck, to press myself…
Get a grip, I tell myself. You’re in public, surrounded by twenty senior citizens. If you start making
out with Preston, there’s a good chance more than one of them will have a heart attack from the shock of seeing the heat between the two of you. The retreat center only has one defibrillator. Do the math. It would not be a good outcome.
“That onion’s not going to chop itself,” he says, pointing at my cutting board.
As he busies himself peeling the carrots, I bite my lip. Who cares if I trust Preston or not? Cooking school will be over at the end of next week. This is just a short-term fling, right?
* * *
“Did you get enough calories at breakfast?” Preston asks the next morning as I walk down the marble steps of the villa.
I nod and rub my stomach, wishing I was wearing my yoga pants.
“Good. Are you ready?”
“Yes,” I say warily. “But ready for what? What are you hiding behind your back?”
He grins and hands me a bike helmet.
“So your surprise is something that’s going to give me bad hair?”
He places the helmet on my head, gives me a quick kiss on the cheek, then fastens the strap underneath my chin. “You’re cute no matter what your hair looks like.”
“I’m not entirely sure if that’s a compliment. Are you saying my hair normally doesn’t look nice?”
Instead of answering, he grabs my hand and leads me around the corner. “Ta da!” he says as he points at two bikes—one black and one pink.
I walk over to the black one. “I’ll take this one, thanks.”
He frowns. “I thought you’d prefer the other one.”
“Why do people always assume girls like pink?” I ask, putting my hands on my hips.
“Is it pink?” He shrugs. “I didn’t really pay attention. I picked it out for you because of the bell.”
“The bell?”
“Yeah, come have a look.”
I squint at the bell attached to the handlebar. There’s a woman on it in a white gown holding some sort of sword. She looks vaguely familiar.
“It’s right up your alley, isn’t it?”
I look at him blankly.
“Princess Leia. I thought everyone liked her. Oh, wait, do you prefer Luke? Sorry, this is the only Star Wars bell they had. It was either this or one with a dinosaur on it.”
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