“I came for the spa.” Typically, she would leave her answer there and hate herself later for sounding standoffish. “I’ve been living in London while going to school. I just finished. This is my reward,” she volunteered with an awkward laugh, waving at her cucumber water.
“Congratulations.” He sounded sincere, then turned his attention across the pool, mouth twisting. “I dropped out long before uni and never went back.”
He looked to be in his late twenties and must be doing well enough if he was staying here.
“What, um…” Small talk shouldn’t feel this big. “What brings you to London?”
“Business.” His tone was dismissive, but he turned his head again so he his dark brown eyes were pulling at hers. “What will you do now that you’re finished school?”
“Go home to Berlin and work for my father’s company.” Here again she would normally keep her mouth shut, fearful of sounding like a braggart, but she continued. “It’s an engineering firm.” With contracts around the globe. “Vorstoben International? Perhaps you’ve heard of it.”
“I have.” His jaw flexed as he seemed to ponder something, then he asked, “You took a business degree?”
“With a focus on accounting. I considered HR, but I’m not a people person.” Why had she said that? It made her sound like a sociopath. “I just mean I prefer numbers. They’re straightforward. Dealing with people is complicated.”
“Amen,” he snorted.
“Right? The intro-to-HR class gave examples of an employee stealing from a company because they were being evicted, then another about someone who was wrongfully dismissed, but was a terrible worker so you had to keep them on. I don’t want to be tasked with judgment calls on situations that are so murky.”
“Sometimes, there is no right answer. No right choice.” His expression was inscrutable, proving her point about people being difficult to read.
But his agreement bolstered her. She had feared she was babbling. Now, she smiled, pleased. Her heart hitched as their gazes tangled. Her pulse began to hammer in her throat.
A server arrived with a wine bucket and a pair of unbreakable glasses, defusing the subtle tension while the wine was tasted and poured.
When they were alone, Rocco held out his glass. “To complicated people.”
“And thorny situations?”
“Did you say ‘thorny’? Or…” His mouth twitched.
She couldn’t help her gurgle of amusement.
Was this what bantering felt like? She touched her glass to his and sipped. For once, all the knotted threads, inescapable labyrinths and tangled forests inside her weren’t tripping her up.
“Am I guessing correctly that you’re Italian?” she asked.
“I am. My office is in Rome, but I was born in Salerno.”
“My mother loved the Amalfi Coast!” She reacted from a place of pure, nostalgic joy, turning on her lounger to curl her knees and lean on her shoulder and hip, so she could face him. “She had a villa in Praiano.”
“Oh? Have you been?”
“Not lately.” She wrinkled her nose in disappointment. “She took me with her a few times when I was young, but she usually went while I was away at school. It came to me after she passed. My father arranged for it to be rented so I haven’t seen it in years.” She tapped her chin as she realized the choice to rent it or use it was hers now. “I should look into that.”
“You should.” Every glance from him had an impact on her, making her feel as though he knew her far better than she knew herself.
“Do you, um…” She was trying very hard to act like a normal person. “Do you still have family there?”
“No.” He averted his attention to the far side of the pool. “I lost my parents when I was a baby. My aunt raised me until I was nine. She’s gone now.”
“I’m sorry. That’s so young to be…” She stopped herself from sayingalone. Was he? Perhaps he had an ex-wife and kids. Or a current wife. She watched him closely. “To be without family.”
“It’s my observation that family is also very complicated.” His mouth twitched wryly. “One of those be-careful-what-you-wish-for situations.”
“It can be,” she murmured, thinking of the undercurrents she’d always sensed within her parents’ marriage, and the undiscussed hostility she received from her father.
Her mother had been her everything, always cushioning her against her father’s disregard.He doesn’t mean anything by it. He’s just very busy. Without her mother as a buffering presence, Mira’s relationship with him had deteriorated to now being distant and perplexing.
