The walk back to the bakery took longer than it should have.
Marina found herself slowing down, stretching the evening, reluctant to return to the apartment where Alessandro would go back to being her unwanted houseguest instead of… whatever he’d been tonight. A companion. A confidant. Someone who understood exhaustion and loneliness in the same language she did.
Halfway home, without thinking about it, she took his arm.
Alessandro glanced down at her hand on his sleeve. His surprise gave way to pleasure—not the performance kind, but the involuntary kind, the slight hitch in his breathing he couldn’t hide from the bond.
He didn’t pull away.
They walked the rest of the way in silence, her hand tucked into the crook of his arm, the stars coming out one by one above the harbor.
At the bakery door, Marina fumbled for her keys. Her fingers were clumsy. The lock stuck, as it always did when she was flustered.
“Here.” Alessandro took the keys from her, their fingers brushing. The contact sent a jolt through her, not unpleasant, just… intense. He unlocked the door and held it open.
“Thank you,” she said. “For tonight. For trying.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“You carried napkins without destroying them. That’s growth.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. Almost a smile.
“Goodnight, Marina.”
“Goodnight, Alessandro.”
She climbed the stairs to her apartment, hyperaware of him settling onto the couch below. She felt him removing his shoes, loosening his tie, exhaling slowly in the darkness.
She felt him not sleeping. The same way she wasn’t sleeping.
Sometime past midnight she reached for the alarm clock to check the date and stopped, hand hovering over the digits. The display blinked at her in a soft red countdown she could no longer remember the math of.
She turned it to face the wall.
Chapter Eight
Marina was developing a problem.
The problem had dark hair, a Breitling watch he never took off, and a habit of making coffee exactly the way she liked it before she was even awake enough to ask.
“Cream’s in the fridge,” Alessandro said without looking up from his laptop. He’d claimed one corner of her kitchen table as his office, surrounded by papers and legal documents that made Marina’s head spin when she glanced at them. “You were running low, so I picked some up yesterday.”
She stared at the fresh carton. “You went shopping.”
“I went to the market for eggs. The cream was incidental.”
“You remembered I was almost out.”
“You complained about it three times yesterday.” He still hadn’t looked up. “Loudly.”
Marina poured her coffee and added the cream.
This is temporary, she reminded herself.Twenty days left. He’s just being practical.
But practical didn’t explain why she was smiling.
She’d developed a routine. They both had, despite themselves. She woke at four, shuffled to the shower, emerged to find coffee waiting. He worked at the table while she baked,occasionally helping with tasks that didn’t require finesse. They ate breakfast together, actual sit-down breakfast, at six-thirty, before she opened the shop.
