In Italy for Love

Chapter 19

19

Jules sat in stunned silence as the Fiat climbed – and climbed. She had the impression of a wide valley beyond the sharp drop-off at the side of the road. Every few hundred metres, Alex slowed and then carefully swung the car around another tight bend – calmly, as though he hadn’t just admitted that he’d been jealous of Davide.

Jealous , when she’d barely listened to Davide, she’d been so caught up in her confusion. When she’d barely been able to look at Alex all afternoon because of the mess of thoughts and feelings about him that could go nowhere.

The worst part was that she had known, on some level, that this thing between her and Alex was causing problems. She’d just pretended she hadn’t – and hoped her suspicions about his great loss weren’t true.

She closed her hand around the grip on the car door, as though that could steady her light-headed emotions. Her other hand was curled around the cool glass bottle of fresh olive oil that was slowly making her legs go numb.

The road was so narrow she didn’t know how another car would pass without one of them tumbling into the valley. But people obviously lived up here. Every few minutes came another little settlement, houses with stone detailing and clay roof tiles and wooden eaves like the ones in Cividale.

She should say something, but she was torn between wanting to grumble at him for being hot and cold and apologising herself for intruding on his grief. Certainly, in comparison to her own recent misfortune, he deserved understanding.

That’s what she’d been telling herself all day anyway.

Before anything inside her had settled – and her stomach was roiling from more than just her emotions after all the hairpin bends – he finally pulled the car to a stop near a woodpile opposite a rendered building with the shutters closed. The verge was narrow and he had to park on a steep angle, tugging the manual park brake hard.

The last glow of light was rapidly disappearing over the mountains far in the distance and when she pushed open the car door, the cold rushed quickly at her skin. Alex got out and tramped up to the building, knocking at a blue door set under the weathered wooden balcony. The house was decorated with rusty old farm tools and woven baskets. A carriage wheel and an old barrel wine press stood on a small terrace by the door.

There was apparently no answer to Alex’s knock and Jules struggled out of the car, lugging the heavy glass. Worried she’d drop it, she dumped it into the footwell, hoping Alex would be able to heft it back out.

‘It doesn’t look open,’ she pointed out as she released the bouncing Arco from the back seat, attaching the lead.

‘They only open for lunch for day trippers. There are very few people around here in the evening.’

‘I noticed,’ she commented drily.

He knocked again, leaning his other hand on the lintel as he did so. He’d probably have to duck to get through the door. With a frown, he turned back in time to see her shiver.

‘I don’t have Gabriella’s number, but I’ll call Berengario. Put your… coat on.’

She grabbed the jacket self-consciously, trying not to dwell on the fact that it had belonged to his dead wife Laura.

He called the old man several times, but there was no answer and when he glanced up and met her gaze, the memory of what he’d told her in the car hung between them: Berengario was matchmaking.

‘I’ll call Maddalena,’ he murmured. That conversation was animated – and punctuated by deep sighs and an exasperated, ‘Che cosa?’ When he ended the call, he was still grumbling to himself. She caught something that sounded like, ‘Madonna,’ but was definitely not a prayer. ‘She says she arranged that the oil would be collected tomorrow morning. No idea where Gabriella is.’

‘Berengario has definitely been up to no good,’ Jules said flatly.

‘God, I’m sorry.’

‘It’s not your fault,’ she pointed out.

‘It is . I knew what he was doing and I still brought you all this way for nothing, after such a long day. I’ll find a place to leave the oil and we’ll go home again. Make sure you stay warm.’

She watched him as he hauled the bulbous bottle out of the footwell and stomped up the concrete stairs to the back of the building. He seemed to be even grumpier than he’d ever been with her.

He ran an agitated hand through his hair as he flung the car door open again and she rushed to close Arco into the back and climb in herself. ‘There’s nothing lost, Alex,’ she assured him. ‘It’s interesting for me to see this place.’

That only seemed to make him grumpier. ‘Merda,’ he cursed, leaning over her to rummage in the glovebox. He came away with a small torch. ‘I was supposed to show you the monumental chestnut.’

‘We can just go. It’s almost completely dark,’ she pointed out.

‘You don’t want to see it? Then I really have brought you out here for nothing.’

Confusion rippled over her skin again seeing him so worked up. He’d admitted he was jealous of Davide, had willingly allowed Berengario to trick them into spending time together, and yet he was moody and prickly, as though he couldn’t get away from her fast enough. ‘Fine!’ she threw back, lifting her hands in exasperation before reaching for Arco’s lead once more. ‘I want to see the tree!’

In the daylight, the narrow paths between the run-down stone buildings of the tiny village would have been charming. Even at night, the place was atmospheric, especially with the mist beginning to swirl as the temperature dropped. She couldn’t see many lights on – and the shutters of most of the buildings were firmly closed – but there were street lamps set at intervals and Jules had that feeling again of travelling back in time with each step. Unlike Cividale, with its ancient roots in Roman and mediaeval times, here she could imagine the hardy farmers from the previous century holing up and preparing to defend themselves from a variety of powers, all of them foreign in this isolated valley.

They took a paved walkway with grass growing through the stones, heading steeply up behind the town, and Jules followed as Alex took long, impatient strides. Arriving in a clearing, she saw the silhouette of a craggy tree trunk that split in two about halfway up. It wasn’t enormously tall, but so wide her outstretched arms wouldn’t even span half of it. She stayed close to Alex – to the light – as they took the makeshift stairs of earth and wood and Arco bounced happily ahead of them in the dark.

The tree was perched on a slope facing the wide valley behind. Without daylight, the view was more a sense of openness and the glint of white on a distant mountain top. The sight of snow gave Jules a start – a reminder that winter was coming, time was passing, faster for her than for this wizened old tree.

Alex moved the torchlight over the trunk and she skimmed her fingertips along the crevices in the bark, taking in the jumble of knots and shoots and the vine growing up the middle.

‘It’s about four hundred years old. So at one time, this tree was a citizen of the Republic of Venice,’ he said softly.

‘I wonder if the Doges liked chestnuts.’

He peered at the ground, then twisted his foot carefully in front of him, before bending to retrieve something. Opening his hand in front of her, he held two smooth, brown nuts in his palm.

‘I doubt it. Chestnuts were always considered peasant food, although that could be true for most delicacies in Fri?l.’

He continued to hold his hand out, so she reached hesitantly for one of the nuts, brushing her fingers over his rough palm. The nut was smooth, curved on one side and flat on the other, where it had nestled against the second. She glanced from the grand old tree clinging stoically to the mountain to the cold evening glittering with mist and broken by spots of light from the hillside settlements.

‘It’s so isolated, but you can tell that many people have visited this place.’

‘Chestnuts are also a symbol of endurance,’ he continued quietly. ‘Sometimes we call it the bread tree.’

‘Emergency rations from the forest,’ she mused.

‘Exactly.’

‘Maybe Berengario had a good idea,’ she commented, appreciating the stillness of the cool evening, the feeling of being far away from the real world. A smile on her lips, she glanced at Alex to find him studying her warily. She gulped. ‘I meant suggesting you bring me here. This is why I came to Europe in the first place: to explore and see new things. I didn’t mean the matchmaking.’

‘Of course you didn’t. Should we go back?’

She glanced doubtfully at him, wishing she could make out more of his expression.

The darkness had drawn in on them as they stood contemplating the ancient tree and she had to stay close to Alex or risk tumbling head over heels down the hillside.

‘I can’t see,’ she explained when he appeared unnerved by her snuggling up to him. ‘Take it easy, Alex. It’s not my fault that you don’t want to hang out with me.’

‘What?’ There was an edge to his voice.

‘I know you’d rather I weren’t gatecrashing your life. I know it’s awkward that we slept together and inconvenient that I keep reminding you of… life with your wife, but I can’t do anything about it! You don’t have to share your deepest secrets, but I’d appreciate it if you’d stop treating me like chewing-gum on your shoe! I’ll be gone as soon as I can arrange it.’

He caught her arm, stopping them both under the dim glow of a street lamp at the edge of the village. Arco tugged at his lead, but the expression on Alex’s face was too wild for Jules to look away. Uncertain, he stuffed his hands into the pockets of his threadbare jeans.

‘There doesn’t seem to be anything in between,’ he said, his voice strained.

‘In between what?’

‘Being complete strangers and…’ He lifted a hand to her face, gritting his teeth when he gave in and grazed his fingertips over her cheek and under her chin. The touch was so light, Jules should barely have felt it, but the ripples it sent over her skin told her exactly what he was going to say. ‘Between being strangers and whatever we were that first night. I’m using so much energy on not kissing you…’ He swallowed audibly, his gaze darting to her mouth and away again.

Her breath stalled. The circle of light from the lamp and the intimate darkness, the deserted streets of an isolated village made the perfect set of circumstances to think about kissing. She had such vivid memories of the first night, standing next to the stone wall by the river as a simple goodbye kiss transformed into a joyful kind of heat and wanting.

Would he do it? Kiss her again here, tonight? What would she taste in the kiss now? His jealousy? Grief?

She understood deep in her skin what he’d meant, how much energy they’d been expending to suppress this, the crackle of awareness. What would happen if she just?—?