It was just that the further she travelled with Matteo into the Italian countryside, the more she felt strong and…and…
Joyful. Truly joyful—the kind that came with assured peace.
She peeked at Matteo’s profile and his thoughtful gaze on the magnificent view spread out around them like a living map. Her eyes fell to the fullness of his lips. As if sensing her attention, he turned to face her.
She had no idea what he thought of her, and realised that was where her earlier irritation had come from. She wanted him to touch her. She wanted him to hold her in his arms and run his fingers through her hair. She wanted to feel those lips on hers, feel his heart beating against hers, feel his fingertips on her skin.
But she feared that in telling him the truth about her past she’d ruined any chance of him feeling the same way. How must she now appear to him?
The panicky swirl had started again, a whirlpool of fears and insecurities. She had to do something to stop it.
Instinctively, she reached out and took Matteo’s hand in hers, linking her fingers with his, the touch of his roughened skin halting her spiral and landing her right back here in this moment on the mountain, where nothing else mattered.
He pulled gently on her hand, drawing her to him.
Her feet inched their way forwards. Then she made them halt, digging them deeper into the soft leaf litter. Her chest felt as though it might explode, but she had to ask, before he kissed her. She had to know.
‘Why don’t you blow on your coffee to cool it down?’ she asked.
Matteo’s shoulders rose, startled. ‘Perdono?’
‘Your coffee.’ She could hear her voice shaking. ‘You hold it to your face to check the temperature.’
‘Sì.’ A corner of his mouth drew upwards and he shook his head ever so slightly, confused.
‘Why don’t you just blow on it?’
He studied her a minute, thrown by her questions. ‘The coffee is sensitive, yes?’
‘Um, I don’t know—I guess so, sort of.’
‘Most people blow…fff ffff,’ he mimicked, ‘…to force it to cool down, but I respect the coffee. It will be ready when it’s ready.’ He shrugged. ‘I am happy to wait; it will be all the sweeter.’
Lara stared at him, blinking fast against a wave of delicious tears.
‘Oh my God, I love you,’ she murmured.
Matteo leaned towards her. ‘What did you say?’
‘Nothing. Kiss me,’ she said. ‘Please,’ she added.
His lips met hers and she felt the solidness of him pressed against her, the full length of his body against hers.
If she’d been carrying wings on her back up that mountain, they would have opened right at that moment, stretching, ready to soar.
43
Samuel
Samuel limped as fast as his stick would let him into the kitchen. The tremendous crash had roused him from the sitting room, where he’d been cleaning his old pipe collection. Henrik was standing stock still, his jaw fallen open, staring at the pile of shattered plates and glasses on the terracotta tiles, the bottom drawer of the dishwasher on top of them, cutlery scattered all the way to the fridge.
‘What the hell happened?’ Samuel asked sharply, already cranky because his favourite blue dinner plate—the one he’d picked up in Milan about fifteen years ago—was in three pieces.
Henrik began to splutter and gesture to the dishwasher, its door dropped open like a drawbridge.
‘In English!’ Samuel snapped.
‘It’s not my fault,’ Henrik said, a finger thrust accusingly at the debris.
Samuel waited, his heart rate still recovering from the ear-splitting crash.
‘I just opened the door to finish loading it, to be helpful.’
The old man barely contained an eye roll. Helpful was not an adjective he would use to describe his current badante. He went for narrowing his eyes at the impossibly blond and pale Swede.
‘I pulled out the tray, then turned around to get just one more fork—’ Henrik picked up the utensil off the edge of the sink to show his employer, ‘—but the tray didn’t stop. Whoosh!’ He demonstrated. ‘It kept going, so full of dishes and with so much weight behind it.’
‘You must have yanked it out,’ Samuel said, poking the broken edge of a red baking dish with his stick.
‘I did not,’ Henrik said with a defensive tilt of his chin. ‘It came out all by itself. Whose dishwasher does that?’ he demanded, incredulous.
Oh, so he wanted to pick a fight, did he? Put the blame on Samuel’s dishwasher?
Samuel took a breath, ready to remind Henrik that he’d only been here a short time and the list of ‘accidents’ would make a coroner suspicious. Already he’d snapped off the slide bolt to the goat yard (and had no practical idea how to fix it), tried to move the terracotta pot with the bougainvillea in it and dropped it, cracking one side, and rested his foot on the edge of the short stone wall outside the kitchen door, tumbling a stone to the ground, leaving the wall like a row of teeth with a tooth missing.
In fairness, his blunders weren’t restricted to Samuel’s property alone. Henrik had tripped over uneven dirt in his experimental vegetable patch, flattening a sizeable section of young chilli plants and ripping his trousers; fallen up the stairs twice; and whacked himself fair and square in the nose while attempting to pull a cork from a bottle of wine. That one had really smarted, if the tears pouring from the boy’s eyes were anything to go by.
The lad might have some science smarts about him, but he simply wasn’t blessed with any of the physical dexterity that one required to live on the land.
And his pasta bake was terrible. That one had kept Samuel awake into the night as it repeated on him, not once tasting any better than it had the first time.
Samuel released the breath he’d been holding. It wasn’t as if he could fire the boy, unfortunately. And there wasn’t that long to go, really. Maybe he should just remove anything precious from the Swede’s reach. Toddler-proof the house, perhaps. The thought almost made him chuckle.
‘Just clean it up,’ he said, and noticed the visible relief on Henrik’s face, like a little boy who’d escaped a bollocking. Then Samuel turned on his slippered feet and went back to his pipes, wishing for some nice leaf from the village tabaccaio. Maybe he could send Henrik for some tomorrow. Surely he could handle that.
44
Lara
Matteo led Lara down the hillside. Her fingers were tingling in his, and she could feel a stupid smile on her face that she just couldn’t suppress. At the cabin, he nudged open the door with his shoulder and smiled at her, equally excited, she thought. Her skin hummed beneath her clothes.
Matteo held the door open for her to cross the threshold. She was careful to show restraint this time, not wanting to be that heady, mania-filled person who’d tried to seduce him once before. Still, she noted how on fire her senses were. She could smell him as she passed—moist earth and pine needles and maybe even the fresh mountain air embedded in his clothes—and she wondered if this might be a touch of elation that was just outside the range of normal.
He closed the door and leaned against it, his eyes taking in every part of her, from her windswept curls to her numb-with-cold fingertips, and down her legs. She didn’t know where to look, acutely conscious of that bed a few metres away—a bed with a brown paisley quilt and an ugly navy-blue throw cushion, which nevertheless begged to be messed up.
Matteo moved to her, each step assured of its destination.
She was his destination.
He paused an arm’s length from her and she took the chance to gather her wits, determined not to rush this, determined to enjoy every tiny moment, to be truly and fully present.
But then he blinked, and the invisible cord she’d felt holding them together fell away.
‘Er…’ He stepped back and rubbed his beard.
She thought her heart would seize. He didn’t want her? How could she have got that so wron
g?
Matteo stepped swiftly away towards the kitchen and began whipping open cupboard doors, looking for something.
‘What are you doing?’ Lara asked, trying to sound amused rather than ashamed.
‘Um, we haven’t eaten, and it’s a long time until cena, and I know you get hungry.’ He pulled open the bar fridge, found it empty and muttered in disapproval.
‘I’m not really thinking about dinner right now,’ she said slowly. The fire of rejection burned hot.
Matteo straightened, looking in the cupboards above the sink. ‘Ah!’ He pulled down a kettle, its cord banging against the door in his rush to get it connected to the power point. ‘Coffee?’ he asked, already searching for cups.
‘Coffee? No.’ She stared at his back, his shoulders, his neck, trying to piece together what she must have done wrong, thinking back to the moment on the mountain. She’d been straightforward about wanting to kiss him. She’d been unambiguous. She’d told him she loved him! Though she was sure he hadn’t heard her. And he’d kissed her back. Hadn’t he? Surely she hadn’t imagined it. Maybe she’d been too blunt, too forceful. Men liked to chase and feel in control, didn’t they?
Dave did.
But Matteo wasn’t Dave; Matteo was the anti-Dave.
‘I am making one anyway.’ He turned to face her and smiled. Then frowned. ‘But there is no milk in the fridge, and I know you like milk.’
‘Matteo, I don’t need milk, really.’
I just need you.
‘Hm.’ He bit his lip and rested against the sink.
‘What?’ She struggled to find words. The kettle was rumbling gently beside him. What the hell is happening? was what she wanted to say. Maybe he really needed a coffee. He did have a high caffeine requirement; she’d lost count of how many coffees he had a day. Or maybe he really needed a coffee to, well, perform or something.
‘Right, okay, then. I’ll have a coffee with you,’ she said, trying to keep her hope alive. Had she truly misread this situation so badly?
‘Great!’ He smiled again, too broadly.
‘Great.’ Lara stood where she was, wringing her hands for a moment until her nails found the sweet spot on her left wrist and began to scratch, digging for calm.
‘But the milk.’ He slapped his hand to his forehead.
‘Please don’t worry about the milk. I will drink it black.’
I will take it purple and laced with bleach if you’ll just calm down and make love to me.
Matteo drummed his fingers over his lips, then snapped his fingers. ‘I will milk a cow.’ He launched himself off the kitchen bench, heading for the door.
She grabbed his arm as he neared, pulling him to her. ‘Stop. I don’t need milk, Matteo.’
He frowned at her and took a deep breath.
‘What is going on?’
Matteo’s head rocked backwards, and he gazed up at the ceiling where dried wildflowers adorned the rafters.
‘Don’t you…want me?’ she asked, about two beats away from a heart attack.
He took her by the shoulders. ‘It is not that.’
Lara let out an anxious breath.
‘I just don’t…’ He released her shoulders and took her hands instead. ‘What you’ve been through, what you’ve told me…’
‘Oh, God.’ She’d said it out loud, accidentally, but decided she might as well blunder on. ‘I’ve scared you. It was too much. Now you don’t see me as sexy anymore. I’m that helpless woman, the victim…’ She closed her eyes, hating that word. It would define her forever; that was the lens through which she would always be judged in the context of what had happened to her. She couldn’t possibly be attractive to anyone.
‘No.’ He said it firmly, firmly enough that she felt it could be true.
‘Then what?’
‘I just want to do it right.’
Her hands were sweaty in his and she wondered if he’d noticed.
‘I should be taking you to dinner, serving you wine, serenading you under a full moon,’ he said. ‘Not just hiking through a cow paddock and falling into a saggy bed. It should be perfect.’
She reached up a hand and stroked soft curls from his forehead. ‘It already is,’ she whispered.
Lust exploded inside her, an aching need.
He must have felt it too, because the next thing he was shucking off his jacket and kicking off his boots. She did the same, both of them stumbling in their haste, grinning like love-struck fools. And then he kissed her, his muscly thigh between her legs, his hands cupping her shoulder blades, gently but firmly guiding her backwards to that musty, saggy bed.
She pulled at his shirt, loosening it from his trousers, the skin on his back almost too hot to touch. He moaned as her fingertips traced his spine and she felt his hardness against her, and was ridiculously pleased that she had made him feel that way. She smiled against his hungry mouth, so excited to be here with him in this moment, both of them starting something new.
They tumbled into the sagging bed. He pushed her shirt over her head, his hot kisses on her neck and chest and, oh, her breasts, her nipples, her abdomen. She arched her back, staring up at the open beams, breathing hard now, helping him to pull off her trousers, and knew that she was totally safe in Matteo’s hands.
45
Sunny
Sunny pulled into the driveway and cut the engine. Down the back of the house, her current project lay waiting. It was an old television cabinet that she was turning into a dog bedroom for Midnight. She had taken off the cupboard doors to open it up and was just about to start sanding it all back. She planned to paint it bright red and wallpaper the backboard and fit a gingham-covered mattress inside, with a little pillow for Midnight’s head. It was a dream project, one Sunny hoped she might be able to replicate for customers. The creative prospects were endless—tiny pictures framed and hung on the ‘wall’ of the canine bedroom, doonas, tin roofs to waterproof them, windows and wall-mounted potted plants on the outside.
Sunny walked down the drive towards the gate, feeling so lucky that Midnight had joined their family; as well as giving the kids so much pleasure, the pup had brought a whole new inspiration to her work. She was just about to reach for the child-safe lock when she realised that the gate was already open.
‘Midnight?’ She hurried into the yard. ‘Midnight?’ She whistled and looked under the steps, then headed down to the vegetable garden in the corner. The pup had recently enjoyed digging up all the kale and lettuce, and loved to flop onto the earth and smile as though she was the cleverest dog in the world. Sunny’s throat tightened and her eyes stung, her mind going to the worst possible places.
She began to run. She ran up the back steps, let herself in and checked all the rooms, just in case Eliza had somehow accidentally left Midnight inside when she went out. ‘Midnight!’ Sunny called again and again. ‘Here, girl, come here.’
Sunny jogged along the street, hoping Midnight had somehow got out and chased a cat into a yard and then forgotten how to get home. She asked everyone she met along the way if they’d seen her puppy. But no one had.
Five blocks away, she gave up, crying loudly as she made her way home, not caring at all who heard her, and sat down by the phone, her head in her hands.
She called the local vets and left her details, called the council and the pound and left information there too. She called her mother, who was out again at mahjong.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Eliza. ‘Midnight was there when I left, I’m sure. She was chewing a bone, last time I saw her.’
‘What time was that?’ Sunny pressed.
‘I don’t know. Maybe eight-thirty, just after you left for kindy. But I’m not sure. I’ll come home now and help you look.’
Their elderly neighbour on the high side said she hadn’t seen Midnight at all. The work-from-home dad on the low side said he hadn’t seen the pup either, but he had seen a blue sedan out on the street not long before Sunny had come home from the kindy run. He’d noticed i
t because he’d been making a coffee about then and had been looking out the window while waiting for the kettle to boil.
‘A blue sedan?’ Sunny could barely get the words out.
‘Definitely blue. My brother has one quite similar.’
Sunny swiped at the tears on her face and staggered back home.
A blue sedan.
She went back downstairs and searched the yard again, hoping that maybe Midnight was sick or injured and lying somewhere in the garden, needing help. Hoping, because it was a preferable alternative to what she now feared.
She looked at the cabinet that was supposed to become Midnight’s kennel. ‘Please be okay,’ she whispered, then started her search all over again.
46
Lara
The next day, Lara practically skipped outside, every cell of her body singing its own happy little song. Matteo had stayed longer than he should have inside the cabin with her, their naked bodies nestled together, their rumbling bellies ignored, sleeping just enough to refresh themselves enough to celebrate their pleasures again.
But finally he’d pulled himself away, shrugging into his clothes and battered jacket to brace himself against the stiff breeze outside. He headed off to visit the cheese factory, another whitewashed, dark-roofed, flower-adorned Austrian-style building on this dairy farm. Lara—knowing she had no self-control when it came to cheese—had chosen to stay outside in the fields, talking to the cows.
Accompanying her now was Isabella, a tall woman in her early twenties, Lara guessed, who strode across the hills in her boots and pinafore dress as though she’d been doing it since babyhood. Which she had, actually, having been born in the very hut where Lara and Matteo were now staying.
Lara scanned the scene before her, taking in the dozens of pale brown and white cows lying down together and chewing their cud, drinking in the sheer brilliance of the day.
Then she stepped in a huge cow pat.
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