In Italy for Love

Chapter 12

12

Jules collapsed into bed as soon as she made it upstairs. Arco settled on his blanket and she thought, as she sank into drowsiness, that at least being bedraggled and smelling faintly of grass and nearly falling asleep at the table made kissing less of a temptation for both of them. It was only a shame that in return, he’d cooked her comfort food and stoked a fire that had felt like a hug. Except there hadn’t been any hugs. Only a horrified look when he’d seen the borrowed jacket and his obvious reluctance to share why.

She didn’t mind the guilt food thing. It was kind of sweet that he took care of her to make up for being less than hospitable, and she truly didn’t blame him for occasionally resenting his unwanted guest and being reluctant to tell his life story to a stranger. If only she hadn’t been so sleepy she could have looked into her passport application. Perhaps she’d wake up early and make a start.

But instead of waking refreshed with the first streaks of dawn sunlight, she roused in total darkness at some point in the night – freezing cold darkness. She’d forgotten to get Alex to look at the heating. The night-time temperature had dropped, and whatever radiant warmth the stove in the kitchen had sent up the chimney breast in the corner of the room was long gone.

Paralysed in indecision for a moment, she eventually accepted that she was wide awake and needed to at least pull on another jumper. When she slid her legs to the floor, the edge of the bed was so cold it gave her a shock. The radiator wasn’t working at all.

Tugging out her thickest fleece and an extra pair of old, loose tracksuit bottoms, she padded downstairs to the bathroom, trailed by a curious Arco, and she imagined they both threw a longing glance at the kitchen door, even though that blessed fire in the stove wouldn’t be flickering any more.

On her way back upstairs, she heard the ghostly hum again and froze. It sounded like an accordion, but distant and eerie, as though heard through a portal in time. Even though she called herself all kinds of idiot for feeling spooked, the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, and images of the twisted olive trees and Berengario with his scythe and Alex’s pale, stunned face when she came home in that jacket, mixed with the wheezy, breathy accordion soundtrack until her heart pounded.

A sliver of light shone under a door in the hallway she’d not taken note of before and with the vague sense that she was in a dream, she headed for it and gave it a sharp knock, turning the handle and peering inside.

‘Julia? Everything okay?’

It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the light and then… Oh dear, she needed to wake up from this dream. Alex wasn’t supposed to keep getting more attractive the longer they lived together. He sat on a stool at a scratched and pockmarked table, a set of tools laid out – apparently for performing surgery on accordions, if the one flayed open in front of him was anything to go by. He held a tiny screwdriver in one hand and a complex-looking wooden frame in the other. His wavy hair was mussed, his old sweater looked soft and had a couple of inviting-looking holes. And he had a pair of wire-rimmed glasses perched on his nose.

Just when she’d thought this man couldn’t get any cuter, she discovered he wore glasses.

Arco trotted over to him and began enthusiastically licking his knee while Alex peered doubtfully at him with a puzzled smile on his lips – a gorgeous, puzzled smile. With a blur of white, the cat jumped down from the table and fled past her ankles.

Only when the silence stretched and Alex’s gaze returned questioningly to hers did she remember he’d asked her a question.

‘Yeeeessss, I’m fine, just… seeing things and—’ Seeing things like Death in the mist and an adorable accordion doctor with fine, strong hands and bright blue eyes. She shook herself.

He rose and came around the workbench to where she was standing. ‘Do you have a fever?’

‘No,’ she insisted, ‘I—’ His fingers on her forehead stole any words she might have uttered in explanation. What did come out of her lips was something entirely unhelpful. ‘Those glasses look so hot on you.’

His gaze flew to hers in surprise as she clapped a hand over her mouth. ‘I took my contacts out.’ Tugging the glasses off, he rubbed his forehead self-consciously.

‘No, keep them on,’ she insisted, the damage done now so she might as well make it worthwhile. He eyed her as he slipped them on again, and even that was attractive. ‘What are you doing still up? I don’t even know what time it is.’

‘I’m trying to repair this for a student,’ he explained, taking the opportunity to step safely behind the bench again. ‘It’s making a phantom sound.’

Jules burst out laughing and he stared at her again, mystified. ‘A phantom sound is a very good description. I heard it last night too and it put me in the weirdest mood. I’m imagining ghosts everywhere.’

He gave her a strange look that reminded her of the way he’d looked at her when she’d arrived home from the farm that day. ‘You’re not the first person to suggest this accordion is haunted,’ he muttered. ‘But I think it’s only haunting me.’ He stretched, making his sleeves pull up over his forearms. ‘There must be a stuck pin somewhere but there are so many little things out of place in here I can’t find it.’

She peered at the carcass of the instrument, spread out on the table. The bellows, the vinyl concertina part in the middle, had been set carefully to one side and the two wooden ends taken apart to reveal a complex mesh of pins and valves.

‘These are the reeds,’ he explained, pointing to a set of metal strips in a wooden frame. ‘When the air moves along them, they vibrate and that’s how the sound is produced.’ Picking up one end to show her the grid of round buttons, he pressed a couple and little hatches opened and closed on the other side. ‘The pallets control the air flow to the reeds and that’s how you choose which note to play.’

‘It’s like a little machine and you’re a midnight mechanic.’

He gave a shrug in agreement.

‘At least your workshop is warm,’ she commented, pressing the backs of her fingers to her cheeks.

He glanced up sharply. ‘Your radiator wasn’t working. You said something earlier and I forgot.’

‘I forgot too,’ she admitted. ‘And I fell asleep fine at first.’

‘But now you’re freezing,’ he finished for her, getting to his feet again and selecting a pair of pliers from the toolbox on the workbench. ‘I hope it’s just the valve. Let’s have a look.’

While Alex inspected the radiator, Jules’s gaze wandered to his hunched figure in her room, drawn to study him. As she leaned over to peer at what he was doing at the radiator, she noticed he had an indentation in his earlobe, suggesting he’d had his ear pierced at some point, which only reminded her of the many things she didn’t know about him.

He got the knob of the radiator off and tugged gently at the pin with the pliers. The radiator gurgled and then warmth began to flow into the unit – to Jules’s relief and also, she guessed, to Alex’s, if his deep exhale was anything to go by.

Glancing over his shoulder at her, he froze to find her leaning close. Jules told herself sternly to move away, except her brain was sluggish with questions about why he was awake in the middle of the night, why he looked at her with such a pained expression sometimes, when she’d thought they’d had fun the night they’d been together.

She was so close she saw his throat move as he swallowed and could pick up the scent of him. Move away . She was supposed to be granting him privacy, not smelling the mix of woodsy cologne and old accordions that she found strangely compelling.

He drew back so suddenly that she had to clutch his sleeve for balance, then prised her fingers open again before he thought she was trying to pull him closer. He stood as soon as she released him.

‘I—’ she began, as she scrambled to her feet as well. ‘Sorry I was—’ Running an agitated hand through her hair, she noticed his eyes drift there and suspected she looked desperately unkempt – even more of a mess than she usually did. ‘I was just—’ She tried again, but with him regarding her expectantly from behind those gorgeous glasses, she could barely remember what she’d been doing leaning so close. ‘ Smelling the scent of old accordion and sexy cologne on you ’ wouldn’t do. ‘I was watching so I can fix it myself if it happens again. I don’t want to be any trouble.’

His brow knit and his sigh came from deep inside him as he rubbed a hand over his face. ‘It’s not your fault,’ was all he said.

‘I know, but I still don’t want to be a burden.’

‘You don’t understand,’ he continued. ‘I lost someone – important. It was a while ago, but it hit hard and I needed to be alone?—’

He looked so dismayed that Julia’s stomach twisted and plummeted. ‘You don’t have to talk to me about it. Something to do with the jacket, right?’

He nodded.

‘I’ll give it back to Maddalena tomorrow.’

‘God, no! Use it. And don’t work yourself to the bone like you did today. I don’t want to feel guilty about that on top of everything else.’

It was a shame he was such an adorable grump. Something of her thoughts must have shown on her face because he bolted for the door with a mumbled, ‘It’s warm now.’

‘Are you—?’ she began before she could stop herself. He turned to her warily. ‘Are you going to be able to sleep?’

His answer was an eloquent shrug, his fingers open and hesitant and although Jules didn’t know his situation, the vulnerability in the gesture was clear and shot straight to her heart. ‘We’ll see,’ was all he said.

‘Buonanotte,’ she said, hurrying him off before she started wishing he’d stay.

‘Buine gnot,’ he replied quietly, turning away before she could ask him to repeat the words in Furlan so she could learn them.

When she was wrapped in blankets in bed and trying to stop her thoughts from spiralling with suspicions and assumptions, she glanced at her phone, charging on the bedside table. It was past two o’clock.

She tiptoed downstairs the following morning, a pacifying hand on Arco’s back to keep him quiet, but despite her attempts not to make any noise, they were greeted in the kitchen by a hiss and the clang of pots and pans as the cat ran for his life, zipping past in a furry white blur.

‘Shit,’ Jules muttered, righting the pans and glancing warily back down the hallway. When Alex’s door opened and he appeared, utterly rumpled and wearing only a pair of loose cotton boxer shorts, she felt triply guilty for enjoying the sight.

Wrenching her eyes away, she hurriedly set the coffee on, determined to get out of his way as soon as she could. He didn’t come into the kitchen until fifteen minutes later, when she’d grabbed some toast and slugged her coffee. Slipping past him into the hallway and definitely not noticing the scent of his soap, she legged it for the door, pausing only to give him an awkward wave because it felt rude not to acknowledge him at all.

Safely out at Due Pini, she accepted both her mission for the day – which would mostly involve washing and sterilising steel tanks in preparation for the new oil – and a pair of worn, sturdy boots that belonged to Maddalena’s son, Davide. She hesitated before heading into the storage lean-to by the farmhouse – long enough even for Maddalena to notice.

‘What’s wrong, dear?’ the older woman asked.

‘Are you sure it’s okay for me to borrow this jacket? I got the impression from Alex… Now you have that look on your face too. I don’t want to keep reminding people of someone who—’ Oops, she was making it worse, if Maddalena’s stricken expression was anything to go by.

‘Alex told you? About Laura?’

‘He…’

Maddalena grasped her arm in a firm grip. ‘He needed to. If he’s going to keep living in the past like this, then at least he should explain himself. We’ve been so worried about him, but it’s not your fault.’

‘That’s what he said,’ Jules mumbled, feeling that somehow the opposite was still true.

‘We just all want to see him smiling again. It’s been so long.’

‘He smiles,’ Jules insisted. Her memories of their not-date were vivid and he’d definitely smiled. She could still remember the way his deep laugh had tingled over her skin. ‘At least I’ve seen it on occasion,’ she added – just no occasions since she’d moved in with him.

‘Good,’ Maddalena said with a look that was a touch too hopeful. But before Jules could protest – again – that there wasn’t anything romantic between her and Alex, the older woman continued briskly, ‘I’m glad the jacket is useful. You’ve been such a help already. I don’t know what we would have done without you.’

If Maddalena only knew how good those words made her feel. A grin spread across her face – which abruptly died when the older woman continued with a humph, ‘And it’s not as though my sister will come back for the jacket.’

Her sister… If she was Alex’s aunt, could Maddalena mean his mother ? He’d inherited the building, returned home from London. If Jules lost her mother, she’d be in a state too. She had suspected something else, but losing his mother made sense.

But it was clear that Jules should keep her questions to herself and get on with work – and her escape from Italy. This family’s grief wasn’t any of her business.