He added more wine to her glass and then his own.
The waiter brought their pasta, bowls of steaming fusilli in a cream sauce with baby peas and prosciutto. Every bite was simple and delicious.
They talked like two people who wanted to know everything there was to know about each other. He ended a sentence, and she started another where he left off, their words stitching together the pieces of their lives like thread in a patchwork quilt. She told him about her mother and father, her two brothers, both of whom were married with children.
“Did you see them often?” Nicholas asked.
Audrey shook her head. “No.”
Quiet anger clouded his eyes. “He kept you from your family.”
“I realize now that I let him,” she said.
Nicholas changed the subject then. She could feel that he wanted to say more, but he didn’t. He talked about his job as a prosecutor, and this was where his voice came to life.
“You loved your work there,” Audrey said. “Why did you leave?”
He held up his glass and swirled the wine around the bowl once. “It just began to feel like the good never had a chance over the bad. Like being caught out in the middle of a blizzard with only a single shovel. You dig and dig, and it seems like you’re making headway, but then the snow keeps coming, piling up around you, until it’s over your shoulders. You can’t move your arms, can’t breathe anymore. You finally give up and just let it bury you.”
Audrey couldn’t pull her gaze from his face. She could see in his eyes a man who had once believed he would make a difference. “You must have been very good at what you did.”
He lifted a shoulder. “I thought so for a long time.”
“It must be a different world for you, working with Ross.”
Nicholas poured them each more wine, then set the bottle down. “I resigned from Webster & Associates. I don’t work for him anymore.”
Audrey put down her fork and stared at him for a moment. “Why?”
“Let’s just say we didn’t see eye to eye on some of the things Ross chose to overlook.”
“Me, you mean.”
“For one. I won’t deny that.”
Audrey’s heart responded to the seriousness in his voice. Suddenly, the walls of the tiny restaurant felt as if they were closing in around her. She stood, sliding back her chair. “I’ll wait outside,” she said and left.
NICHOLAS DROPPED some cash on the table and went after her.
He found her leaning against a lamppost, her face pale, her hands clasped together in front of her. Nicholas felt a sharp stab of remorse for the turn their night had taken. He wished for some way to erase Jonathan’s presence between them. Halfway around the world, it was as if he were here.
“What did you hope to prove in coming here, Nicholas?”
He stared at her for a long moment, and then said, “That I hadn’t dreamed you. That you were real.”
THEY WALKED BACK to the hotel, hands by their respective sides.
Outside the front door, she asked the valet to get her car and reached in her purse for the stub she had given him earlier. Nicholas felt the shift between them, a resignation on her part that had not been there before.
She looked up at him, one hand clutched tightly to the strap of her purse. “Thank you for the dinner. It was wonderful.”
He studied her for a moment before asking, “Why do I have the feeling this is goodbye?”
“It can’t be anything else.”
“You’re going to leave, aren’t you?”
“I’ll find somewhere. Please don’t follow me this time, Nicholas.”
“Will you spend the rest of your life running?” he asked, jerking his fingers through his hair. “Is that how you want to live?”
The answer flitted across her face in the millisecond before she caught it and covered it up with acceptance. “You can’t change this situation, Nicholas. I know that you want to, that some part of you needs to do so to set something right inside you. I don’t know what that is, but whatever blame you’ve leveled at yourself, I can’t be what changes it.”
The valet pulled up with the car, got out and stood waiting by the open door.
Nicholas looked down at her, reaching for words but finding none.
She put her hand on his arm. “Thank you for caring about me. I won’t forget that.”
She stepped back, handed the valet some money, then got in the little car and drove off into the night.
AUDREY WENT straight to Celine’s house to pick up Sammy. It was almost midnight when Celine opened the door. Audrey could see she had not slept. “I know,” she said. “It’s crazy.”
Celine sighed and ran a hand through already tousled hair. “I don’t have to tell you what the risks are.”
“No.”
“Just be careful,” Celine said, reaching for Audrey’s hand and giving it a squeeze, the concern in her eyes saying as much as any words could have. “You have so much to lose.”
Audrey nodded once, not trusting her voice. All the way back from Florence, she had tried to lay out another plan for Sammy and her. The burden of it felt enormous, and she thought if she could sleep first, then she might be able to face the task.
They went to Celine’s spare room where Sammy was curled up in the twin bed with George next to him. George opened his eyes, but did not raise his head.
“He can stay the night, Audrey,” Celine said.
Seeing her son tucked in beside the dog he had come to love and would soon have to leave, Audrey did not have the heart to wake him. She hated to uproot him again, after he was just starting to settle in. She went over and kissed the top of his head, then came back out into the hallway. “Thank you, Celine.”
“No thanks needed,” she said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
AUDREY SLEPT without dreaming.
A sound pulled her awake. She sat up, startled to see the room filled with light. She glanced at the clock. Eight already.
A knock sounded at the front door.
She swung out of bed and ran to the living-room window. A car sat in the little courtyard beside Celine’s. Nicholas stood on the steps, hands in the pockets of his leather jacket.
Audrey opened the door, running a hand over her hair and tucking a few strands behind her ears.
He said nothing for a moment, his gaze dropping over her cotton pajamas down to her bare feet before following the same path back to her face. “I know it’s early,” he said, “but I was afraid you might leave before I got here.”
She stared at him for a moment, not sure what to say. “You shouldn’t have come.”
“Spend the day with me, Audrey. That’s all I’ll ask. Just the day. Whatever decision you make then, I’ll accept.”
She should say no, end this here before it flared into something more out of control than it already was. But she felt the weakness within herself; it slipped through her veins like warm brandy, altering reality, if only temporarily.
She wanted the day with him. Could one day really change anything?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ONCE AUDREY HAD DRESSED, she made coffee, and they both drank a cup on the small terrace at the rear of the house. The silence between them was peaceful, expectant, as if their time together held magic in its unfolding. When Audrey said she needed to get Sammy, Nicholas offered to walk with her. And that was how the day began. Nothing planned or discussed. It was as if he had been here all along, slipping into their lives with an unobtrusiveness that felt entirely too right.
At Celine’s house, Audrey introduced Nicholas to Sammy as a friend. She could see the immediate wall of reserve in her son’s eyes. He walked down the hill to their home with his hand inside hers. Nicholas didn’t try to win him with small talk. He walked a few spaces apart from them, and once they were back at the house, he stayed out in the yard, tossing a ball in the air.
Sammy stood at the living-room window watching him. “Did Daddy send him here, Mama?”
Sammy weighed the words. “How do you know?”
Audrey sighed, then dropped to her knees, one hand on each of his arms. “One of the hardest things for me right now is trust. Believing other people are going to be different. I know it’s the same for you. Maybe we can both work on that together. What do you think?”
Sammy looked down, then met her eyes. “What if he turns out not to be nice?”
“I think the biggest mistake either of us could make would be to judge the rest of the world by your father’s actions. Because if we do, we’re going to miss out on a lot of good things.”
Hearing herself say the words, Audrey recognized the truth in them. It would be so easy to let the past shape the rest of her life. With sudden certainty, she knew she wanted something different.
Sammy glanced out the window to where Nicholas was still tossing the ball in the air.
“Do you think he might want to play catch with me?”
Tears blurred her vision. “I bet he would,” she said.
THEY’D BEEN THROWING the ball back and forth for an hour or more, neither of them saying a word. Nicholas felt as if Sammy’s trust were too tenuous for him to do anything more than stand on the other end of the yard, pitching and catching.
He could see the stiffness in the boy, the lack of confidence in the way he threw. He reminded Nicholas of Lola when he’d first brought her home, the way she looked as though she were walking on glass, afraid the ground might shatter beneath her feet.
And so, he just threw the ball. Back and forth. Over and over. After one particularly good throw from Sammy, he said, “Hey, you’ve been holding out on me!”
Sammy glanced up, surprise in his eyes. A shy smile touched his lips.
“That was a great one.”
The smile grew. “Do you have a son?”
“No. But if I ever do, I hope he can throw like that.”
They threw in silence again for a while, and then Sammy said, “You’re not going to tell my dad we’re here, are you?”
The words took a chink out of Nicholas’s heart. He dropped the ball to his side, crossed the yard and knelt in front of the boy. “No,” he said. “I’m not.”
Sammy looked away, then turned back. “Good,” he said. “My mom is happy here.”
“I know. And I’m glad.”
The boy nodded once, the worry in his eyes giving way to gratitude. “Thank you,” he said.
AUDREY WATCHED from the window, wondering what they were saying to each other. Nicholas put his hand on Sammy’s shoulder, squeezed, then turned to walk across the yard.
They started throwing again, and she could almost see her son’s defensive barriers crumble. He had been hurt so many times by his father’s refusal to do the things with him that other fathers did with their sons. She had tried so hard to make up for it, but she could not take away the sting of rejection.
Without question, Nicholas’s presence here put her at risk. But somehow, she could not bring herself to regret that he had found them.
THEY SPENT the rest of the day doing ordinary stuff. It was the best day Nicholas could remember in a long time. They ate lunch in the shaded backyard. Audrey’s soup with a loaf of Celine’s homemade bread. She found a bottle of wine in the pantry, and they sipped from their glasses while Sammy played on the tree swing at the edge of the yard.
“I can see why you love it here,” Nicholas said.
Audrey nodded. “It’s so peaceful.”
“Sammy’s a really special boy.”
She glanced up at Nicholas. “He is. And his father never saw that.”
Nicholas frowned. “He obviously knows you love him.”
Audrey ran a thumb around the rim of her glass. “He was a happy, sunny baby. He almost never cried. When he was old enough to become aware of things, I could see it changing him.”
“I don’t see it in him now,” Nicholas said, his gaze on the boy.
“He’s better. Just in the time we’ve been here. It’s amazing.”
He was quiet for a moment, and then asked, “Did you ever try to leave before?”
Audrey’s eyes took on a faraway look, and Nicholas wished he hadn’t said anything.
“Yes,” she admitted. “Three times. The last time I just put Sammy in the car and started driving. No idea where I was going. Just away. Some place where he could never find us. We got as far as Virginia when Sammy got sick. I took him to a doctor who thought it was probably a virus, and that he would be fine in twenty-four hours. We stayed in a hotel room for two days. I kept taking his temperature, agonizing every time it went up instead of down. He kept getting worse, and I finally had to take him to the emergency room. I just wanted him to be all right. When they asked for my insurance information, I didn’t want to give it to them. But they said we would have to go across town to another hospital if I didn’t have it. I couldn’t risk delaying Sammy’s treatment. Anyway, that’s how he found us the last time.”
Nicholas listened with a heavy feeling in his stomach, imagining what it must have felt like to wait there, knowing that Jonathan was coming. His fists tightened with the urge to hurt the other man as he had hurt Audrey.
“Hey, Mama, look!”
Sammy had climbed up in the tree and was hanging by skinny arms from one of the lower branches.
“Be careful, honey,” Audrey called out.
Nicholas reached over and took her hand in his. “You’re going to be all right this time,” he said. “Both of you.”
She looked at him, wiped the back of her other hand across her eyes, nodded and smiled. “Yeah,” she said. “I think we are.”
NICHOLAS DROVE back to Florence after dinner that night, claiming he didn’t want to wear out his welcome. Before leaving, he’d asked if he could come back the following day. She’d been unable to say no, watching him drive off down the gravel road with an undeniable sense of regret. She would have to move on. She knew this, but she couldn’t bring herself to do so just yet.
“He is nice, Mama.”
Audrey turned from the window. Sammy stood just outside the kitchen, a hopeful look on his face. She crossed the floor and dropped to her knees, wrapping her arms around him. “I’m sorry that our life was so hard before, honey. I wish—”
Sammy pulled back, the look in his eyes far beyond his years. “I don’t want to think about that anymore. I like our life now. Let’s just think about that part.”
She kissed his forehead, her heart aching with love for him. “Deal,” she said.
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Nicholas pulled into the driveway in a red BMW convertible he had traded his other rental in for.
“Wow,” Sammy declared, bolting out the door at the sight of him. “Can we go for a ride?”
Nicholas grinned, looking up at Audrey where she stood at the front step. “I was hoping I could take you and your mom to lunch.”
“Sounds fun,” she said, smiling.
They took their time on the winding roads leading to the small hill town of Certaldo Alto. They parked and walked up the cobblestone streets, ducking into a few shops. The town was mostly residential, few tourists in sight. The smells of home-cooking, bread in ovens and the delicious fragrance of herbs drifted through open windows. They circled the entire town, then decided to walk back to where they had spotted a small restaurant that opened at noon.
The hostess spoke no English, but they were able to communicate well enough to ask for a table. She seated them on an enclosed porch with casement windows thrown open to one of the most beautiful views Audrey had ever seen. Stucco houses with clay-tile roofs dotted the landscape as far as they could see. Olive trees and grapevines lined the rolling hillsides.
“It’s incredible,” she said, once the hostess had left them with menus. “You c
an see for miles. What a perfect place.”
Nicholas nodded, his gaze locking with hers. “Perfect,” he said.
It was clear that he meant more than the view. Warmth flooded her cheeks, and she looked away, somehow amazed that a man like the one sitting across from her might truly be attracted to her.
They started their meal with a delicious trio of pastas, all of which they sampled. The bread was wonderful, freshly made that morning, according to the waiter who spoke a little English.
Another couple arrived with a son close to Sammy’s age. He approached their table with a shy smile, waving a Game Boy at Sammy and saying something in Italian.
“Mama, can I play?” Sammy asked.
“Sure,” Audrey said, “just stay in sight, okay?”
The two boys found a bench at the other end of the porch and began playing.
Nicholas smiled. “Universal, huh?”
“Apparently,” Audrey said.
He leaned forward to rest his forearms on the table. “Thank you for coming with me today.”
“Thank you for asking. It’s incredible.”
“Someone at the hotel recommended it. A place you won’t forget, he said.”
The waiter arrived, and Nicholas ordered a bottle of wine which appeared at their table in no time. The waiter filled their glasses, placed another basket of still steaming bread in front of them, then made some recommendations for their lunch. Audrey ordered for Sammy and her. Once Nicholas had chosen, the waiter left them alone.
“Yesterday, when you were talking about your work,” Audrey said, “it sounded as if it was something you’d been called to do.”
He looked out at the incredible view before them, then met her gaze. “I guess maybe it was.” He hesitated for a long moment, and then continued, “I had a sister.” His expression was blank but for a flicker of something old and painful in his eyes. “At fifteen she was raped and murdered.”
Shock rolled over Audrey in a wave. She saw the pain in his face and regretted forcing him into the revelation. “Oh, Nicholas. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
A Year and a Day (Harlequin Super Romance) Page 16