In Italy for Love

Chapter 28

28

Alex leaned his head back against the wall in the vet’s waiting room and wondered when being only half alive would no longer be enough to keep his organs working. It hurt. So much. The half of his heart that kept stubbornly beating ached.

Jules sat beside him, her expression as blank as he was sure his was. She didn’t say a word, even though she must realise he was holding himself together by a thread. He hadn’t told her enough for her to understand why, but she was next to him, sparing him questions – or judgement or anything that would tip him over into not coping.

The wait for Dr Orsino to hear his doorbell and come to the clinic had been torture with that little lifeless form in her arms. Alex had only taken the briefest glance at Attila before shock had crept up his spine and he knew he couldn’t – he just couldn’t . Giving him questioning looks, Jules had gone with the vet into the treatment room to help, since it was out of hours and the nurse wouldn’t be able to get there in the storm.

She’d emerged twenty minutes later with a grave expression and a shrug. She’d probably struggled to understand the old man.

I should be in there …

He couldn’t, not if Attila wasn’t going to make it. But if Laura’s cat died and he wasn’t there, he’d regret that too. The worst possibility… No . The dilemma he’d lived with for three years felt fresh again and he couldn’t take it – didn’t want it. But cats didn’t live forever and sooner or later he’d have to?—

Dr Orsino came to the door of the waiting room. ‘Do you want to come and see him?’

Alex hesitated for long enough that Jules leaned forward to peer at him. Forcing his mouth open, he managed to ask in an alarmingly raspy voice, ‘Is he…? Did he…? Dead?’

The veterinarian smiled suddenly and a little indulgently, as though he were the only person in this city who didn’t know that Alex was fragile – something Alex usually resented everyone for thinking. ‘His name is Attila. Did you think a little drowning would be enough to send him off? No, he’s breathing and starting to wake up.’

Alex’s body responded before his mind did, tears burning and his face contorting, his spine losing all strength. But his brain lagged a few more seconds in disbelief.

‘Alex?’ From her tone, he could tell Jules was wondering what was wrong with him. He should have told her – everything, from the beginning, even if that meant she ran screaming in the opposite direction.

He forced himself up, ignoring the spots in his vision. Dragging his feet after the doctor, his emotions swam as he stepped through the door and saw the poor, bedraggled form of Laura’s blasted cat, staring at him accusingly from behind the metal grille keeping him in the box.

His muscles turned to mush and his heart started beating again – even if a little too fast. The memories of the past half-hour raced back as he leaned heavily on the treatment table and eyeballed the furry white cat as though he could make the creature understand what its stupidity had put him through.

Had put Jules through. As though watching a film, he relived the moment he’d realised the danger she intended to walk right into – for his cat.

‘Ah, he’s sitting up. He is a fighter, this one,’ Dr Orsino said.

Alex could think of someone else who was a fighter. When he’d been too panicked to comfort the poor animal, she’d done it. That ex-boyfriend of hers that he was supposed to punch in the face hadn’t appreciated her tenacity – her generosity. Julia Volpe was a strong woman – like a Furlane, he thought with a twitch of a smile. Berengario would approve of his thoughts.

He pressed his fingertips to the grille. ‘Does he have to stay locked in?’

Dr Orsino shook his head. ‘There’s a heat blanket in there, which will do him good for a little while longer, but if he’s awake and alert, then I think we can rule out hypothermia. I saw a little fluid in his lungs on the X-ray, but his vital signs are stable and he doesn’t need oxygen. In fact, you can take him home whenever you like. He’ll recover better in his familiar surroundings. You’ll just need to keep him inside for a few days and monitor his breathing, but animals bounce back from these things more quickly than their owners do.’

Alex glanced at the doctor in dismay. It seemed now even the town vet had worked out that he was an emotional wreck. Glancing at the door, he wondered what Jules was thinking.

‘Do you want to hold him?’ Dr Orsino asked.

‘He’s not normally the most affectionate cat,’ Alex said, but he did want to stroke the furball, reassure himself Attila was alive and there were no impossible decisions to be made tonight. ‘But are you serious, we can just take him home?’

‘I’ll check his temperature once more, but if he’s up and active and you can keep him warm, then he’ll do better at home.’ The vet opened the box and the damp kitty had the audacity to leap to the floor.

Alex snatched him up, stroking one hand down his back and allowing the tears to prick afresh. They weren’t all happy tears, but it would be better to unpack his feelings at home, in the house he’d inherited from Laura – with Jules.

The storm was over by the time they left the veterinary practice and headed back, but there was hail strewn across the roads and Alex was chastened to realise that he barely remembered the drive there. It was a miracle he hadn’t crashed the car and caused more damage – or worse.

Jules held her hand out for the keys and he gave them to her. Only when she parked the car and hauled herself out did he realise she was still soaking wet.

Images from the incident at the creek flashed in his mind and his stomach clenched as though someone had punched him. Let her get inside and warm and dry and all the words would spew out of him and then she’d see more than she bargained for – she’d see who he was under the protective layers.

‘I’ll just have a shower,’ she said after hanging up her sopping jacket and giving the leaping and panting Arco a quelling stroke.

It took some effort to keep his jaw tightly shut and answer only with a grim nod. He found an old electric blanket and set it up in a pile on the windowsill in the kitchen, placing Attila on it to be well out of Arco’s reach. He struggled to look at the cat, seeing only scenarios of what could have happened, each more terrible than the last – or the terrible scenario that did happen: Jules wading into a rushing storm drain.

He was just wondering what to prepare for dinner when the doorbell rang and he opened the door to find Siore Cudrig standing behind an enormous saucepan.

‘Goulash,’ she said instead of a greeting. ‘I saw what she did, your… the girl.’

‘Jules,’ he supplied. ‘She saved his life.’

With a nod, his neighbour handed over the pot. ‘Goulash,’ she said again.

‘Graziis.’

She began to turn, then stopped and fixed him with a look from under her curls. ‘Jules,’ she repeated with a nod. ‘She has a nice… dog.’

‘Mhm,’ he responded.

As she walked away, she tutted under her breath. ‘…can’t see what’s right in front of him!’

Closing the door with a lift of his eyebrows at the words she wouldn’t say to his face, he breathed in the scent of onions and rosemary and paprika and headed for the kitchen. The bathroom door opened with a burst of steam as he passed and he looked up to see Jules with her head wrapped in a towel.

‘Oh my God, what is that divine smell?’

‘Goulash,’ he said with a twitch of a smile. ‘From Siore Cudrig. She said you have a nice dog.’

Jules stared at him, her mouth turned down, and his smile grew. ‘You have the weirdest neighbours.’

‘I did warn you, that first night.’

‘I think you’ll find that I warned you that they were zombies.’

He stared at her, the normality of the moment overwhelming on top of everything already churning inside him. He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to throw her out – of his life. And he wanted to make her stay.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked, her tone still light.

‘No.’

She laughed at first, before something in his expression made her smile fade. ‘Are we going to eat that?’

‘Hmm?’

‘Goulash.’

‘Oh, yes. Goulash.’

‘And after we’ve eaten, you can say all that stuff you’re holding in.’

She understood Alex had had a shock, but the strange intensity coming off him unnerved her. There was something he hadn’t explained about Laura. It might well be none of her business, but when he sat opposite her strongly vibing at her and saying little, she thought she had a right to know something .

Especially annoying was the fact that his vibes made her want to clasp his face and press her forehead to his and try to explain without using words that he was breaking her heart.

‘I didn’t understand everything Dr Orsino said,’ she began warily, taking a spoonful of thick broth and trying not to groan. How had Siore Cudrig known the overload of iron and vitamin C and the prick of spice were exactly what she needed?

‘There is a little liquid in his lungs,’ he explained, glancing up to check on Attila again. He was curled up peacefully, his little chest rising and falling – nothing to cause the shadow that crossed Alex’s features. ‘We should just monitor his breathing.’

‘Okay,’ she said with a firm nod. Alex studied her for a moment, but then his shoulders relaxed.

Either Alex had taken her seriously about waiting until after they’d eaten to talk or he had no intention of explaining himself, but Jules was itchy from the silence by the time she took her plate to the sink. He came close behind her to slip his in afterwards – very close. Glancing at him, she wondered whether she’d misinterpreted the vibes and he wasn’t suffering his usual attack of difficult memories, but was focused on her .

Her hair stood on end as she turned to find him… looming . There was no other word for the way he stood, dipping his head to look her in the eye, his body taut. His hands landed on either side of the kitchen bench behind her and his face, tight and grim with emotion, was close to hers.

‘Is this the talking bit?’ she squeaked.

He nodded, then seemed to reconsider and shake his head. ‘Some of it.’

Jules gulped, her throat suddenly thick.

Then he said something entirely different from what she’d expected. ‘Don’t you ever do something like that again.’