In Italy for Love

Chapter 13

13

Julia was avoiding him.

While Alex could see it was only natural, given his inability to deal with the various sources of awkwardness with his new housemate, he was disappointed every time she quickly escaped the dinner table and when she disappeared with Arco all of Sunday. His disappointment made no sense, because he didn’t want the domesticity to begin with, and he only cooked for her because he wasn’t certain she’d eat a thing if he didn’t.

She appeared at the door of his workroom on Monday evening and he stood in surprise almost as quickly as Attila leaped, panicking, off the table and out of the room.

‘I never see him properly,’ she commented. ‘I wouldn’t recognise him in a missing cat poster.’

‘I hope he never goes missing,’ Alex blurted out.

‘Oh, shit. Oops, I’m sorry. Nothing’s going to happen to your cat. Sometimes I think I can see ghosts, but I can’t tell the future.’

‘You can see ghosts?’

She groaned. ‘I’m joking. It’s Halloween soon and there must be something in the water. Is the haunted accordion still haunted?’

‘It’s not working yet.’

‘I won’t take up too much of your time, but I need a little help with the Italian on my application form. It’ll get me out of here sooner.’

With a disapproving huff at her continued insistence that she was a burden, he nodded and followed her into the kitchen, where she’d set up her laptop.

‘I’ve requested a postal redirection because changing my address would require official proof that I live here. I can do the application now. I’ve completed the form for my Australian passport renewal, which was complicated enough, but this Italian one…’

‘Okay. I’ll make sure your name is on the post box – and the doorbell, just in case.’

‘Thanks. You know how to spell my surname by now?’

He nodded. ‘Calabrian Volpe. Did you come to Italy because of your family history?’

She glanced at him as though surprised he was making casual conversation, but he didn’t want to pretend he wasn’t interested. ‘No,’ was the only answer she gave initially. With another wary glance at him, she continued bitterly, ‘I came to Italy for a man.’ Clearing her throat, she pointed out the instructions causing confusion. ‘I’m not sure what I’m logging in for here.’

Skimming the text, he said, ‘You have to make an appointment with the state police in Parma.’

‘Damn it,’ she whispered, rubbing the heel of her hand over her forehead. He noticed an angry red mark on her thumb, probably from a popped blister. He frowned at the evidence that she was still working too hard in a position she wasn’t being paid for.

‘If you make an appointment for the afternoon, you can probably go and come back in one day. Look, there’s one available next week. I can take care of Arco.’

‘Oh, God, of course I can’t take him to the appointment. But he’s got his passport at least – his EU dog passport,’ she joked. She paused, biting her lip, then muttered, ‘Thanks for offering to help. Maybe I should have stayed in Parma, rather than cause all this trouble.’

He wondered briefly how he would have felt if he’d been stuck in London after everything had gone wrong. ‘Sometimes reacting is all you can do.’

Her expression was pinched. ‘Yeah, but there are constructive reactions and irrational reactions and coming here to the middle of nowhere is feeling more and more irrational.’

He couldn’t resist chiding her gently. ‘The middle of nowhere is somewhere for the people who live there.’ He was rewarded with an apologetic glance from her pretty eyes.

‘I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. But I survived a year of living with him after we broke up and surely I could have survived another two weeks for the sake of my bank account.’

‘You lived together after breaking up?’

‘That awkward situation is what I got for moving to a foreign country for a brand-new relationship that wasn’t ready for that step. Everyone I knew in Parma was a friend of his . I didn’t have anywhere else to go – as I’ve unfortunately proven by getting into this mess! God, I hope I don’t run into him.’ She dropped her hand and Arco came immediately, nuzzling her leg. ‘That’s what I got for moving to Italy for love .’

The disdain in her voice as she said that last word was clear and he wasn’t sure what to say in reply. A haze at the edge of his vision warned him against drawing parallels, even though his heart wanted to remind him of what he’d done for love , especially during the worst moment of his life.

His gaze zeroed in instead on the form she was filling out in her browser. ‘Your birthday is November 12? That’s soon.’ He wondered why she’d felt so much younger when he was only three years older than her nearly twenty-eight. To be honest, everyone felt younger than him most days – even Berengario, with his new girlfriend and the spring in his step.

‘If I’m still here then, you’ll be desperate to get rid of me!’ Her sigh was deep.

‘If you’re still here then Due Pini will be spotless with everything in working order,’ he commented lightly in reply. When she stared at him blankly, he brushed his thumb over the raw patch of skin on her palm. ‘Don’t work yourself too hard.’ He dropped her hand again in a hurry.

‘I think you overestimate the contribution I can make,’ she said drily. ‘Do you know why I chose Due Pini from the list of farms to contact?’ she asked. ‘Because it was the farthest I could easily get from Italy , while staying in Italy.’ Her laugh was pained. ‘As far away as I could get from him without crossing a country border.’

‘The rest of Italy might view Friuli as the middle of nowhere, but the Furlans know this is the crossroads of Europe. And your problems don’t worry us. We have a word, cumbinìn. It means we join together and find a way. You’re helping us. Let us help you.’

He’d said too much. She was watching him with so much scepticism in her gaze that he wondered what her ex had put her through before she’d been brave enough to leave.

‘Do you need help with the rest of the form?’ he asked, needing to change the subject before the glint in her smooth, brown eyes took him right back to their not-date. ‘Look, colore occhi: eye colour,’ he pointed out absently on the screen. ‘This says you need to put “M” for “marroni”.’ A faint smile touched his lips. ‘Do you know, as well as meaning brown, “marroni” is a word for the very sweet chestnuts?’ His smile faded as soon as he realised what he’d said.

When he risked a glance at her, she lifted her eyebrows and gave him an amused smile that sent heat up the back of his neck. He was surprised he’d managed to sit next to her for this long and continue breathing normally, so the tightness in his chest shouldn’t have been unexpected.

He stood to put some distance between them. ‘I’ll… um… The accordion? You don’t need any more help, do you?’ He barely waited for her to shake her head before he bolted.

When he escaped the kitchen and saw the jackets hanging on the hooks by the door, the sight stopped him cold. He’d managed to forget for a moment why he shouldn’t risk getting attached to Julia. The guilt that washed in with that realisation was almost as bad as the ache when he saw the jacket.

No matter how many times Berengario winked at him, even if her eyes were pretty and his skin tingled every time she was in the room, the best thing for both of them was to get her out of Italy before those tingles turned into something real – something that could hurt.

He took Berengario to task on Thursday evening as they drove to choir rehearsal. ‘Do you have any idea how tired she is every evening? Does Maddalena? She’s working too hard – for no pay!’

‘Are you sure she doesn’t have Friulian heritage?’ was all Berengario said in reply.

‘No, Calabrian Volpe apparently.’

‘I think she has Friulian heritage. Hard worker, that girl. Like she belongs here.’

Alex stifled a groan.

‘If not with you, maybe with Davide.’

Not Davide … He’d never got on well with Maddalena’s son and he couldn’t help thinking Davide wouldn’t appreciate Jules, but Berengario knew that. God, the old man knew how to press his buttons. ‘She’s not here for your matchmaking service.’

‘It’s not impossible that she’d fall in love with Davide. It was quite funny when they met. The dogs went wild and she fell over. It would make a good story to tell their grandchildren. Perhaps a little matchmaking is a good idea.’

‘She’s not falling in love with Davide or anyone else!’

The small smile Berengario didn’t manage to hide showed Alex he’d fallen into the trap. ‘But I thought you two weren’t together,’ he said smugly.

‘We’re not! But someone has to show some casual concern for Maddalena’s labourer.’

‘Casual “concern” is it? I thought it was casual something else.’

‘Ha! Can we change the subject?’

‘ You brought her up. You’ve talked about nothing else since we got in the car.’

Was that true? Alex certainly thought about her too much. ‘She has no one looking out for her.’

‘I won’t be on the farm after the harvest, by the way. I’ve got plans with Elena.’

‘On top of everything, she’ll have to walk there?’ He could take her. Perhaps he should, although she’d probably get up early and walk just to prove she didn’t need his help.

‘Julia’s hardy, a Furlan Volpe. She’ll be fine,’ Berengario insisted.

‘When did you last get your hearing tested? I said her family is from Calabria.’

‘When you admit you like her, I’ll hear it crystal clear.’

Alex gritted his teeth so hard that Berengario could probably hear that . ‘You know it’s not that simple. Stop pretending it is.’

‘Alex!’ he said, his voice high, as though he was the frustrated one in this conversation. ‘We all lost her! Don’t you think she’d want you to find love?’

‘Do you want me to have the guilt of disappointing a dead person as well as everything else? Of course she would want that. But I don’t. I won’t go through that, especially not with someone who’s determined to leave the country as soon as possible!’ He sounded desperate even to his own ears. ‘It’s not the first time I’ve slept with someone, if you really want to know,’ he added, hoping to shock his friend into silence.

Of course it backfired. ‘But it’s the first time you’ve wanted to take care of someone.’

‘Because she has no one else,’ he insisted. ‘Do you know she moved to Italy for a boyfriend and then had nowhere to go when they broke up and stayed living with him for a whole year? Her family is half the world away.’ Cutting himself off when he realised he was babbling about Julia again, he could feel Berengario’s gaze, even though he kept his own firmly on the road.

‘It’s not because she’s alone,’ the old man contradicted gently. ‘You want to take care of her because you’re waking up again – because it’s who you were before…’ Before everything he’d had to do for love .

‘I know you mean well,’ Alex said quietly, ‘but this isn’t going to happen. She’s not staying. She has to have a day off next week for her passport appointment and she won’t be here long after that.’

‘Anything can happen in a few weeks, especially in the autumn.’

Alex glanced at his friend and he did not like the glint in the other man’s eye.