‘You know, I always swore I’d never come to Italy,’ she said, shifting her gaze to his face as her heart gave a little jolt. He was just too handsome. Especially now, with his hair wet and slicked back from his brow, the top half of his hair-roughened chest exposed to her. His dark eyes locked to hers, probing.
The lights on the deck glowed gold, casting them in a warm ambience.
‘Because of your mother?’ he pushed, when she didn’t elaborate.
She reached for her prosecco and took a sip. ‘Yeah. I pretty much rejected everything to do with her when she left.’
‘How old were you?’
‘Just a girl. And she was my whole world,’ Amelia murmured. ‘I worshipped her. Then one day, she was just gone.’ He made a gruff sound in his throat, a noise of sympathy. Her eyes shifted back to the view, but in her mind, she was drifting into the past. ‘They fought a lot, my parents. I think Mum got caught up in the romance of meeting |Dad, rebelling against her parents. Eloping. And then she was pregnant with me. Maybe if she hadn’t conceived, they’d have split sooner.’ She swallowed quickly.
‘What did they fight about?’
‘My mother had a lot of male friends,’ she said, not trying to make it sound pointed. ‘Looking back, I’m pretty sure she had affairs, though my dad never said as much to me. But as an adult, remembering the tenor of their arguments…’
‘Which makes how I reacted today even worse.’
‘It made it familiar,’ she said. ‘My dad was pretty chill, except when they fought about her “friends”.’ A plane flew overhead, a distant, rumbling jet engine noise that drew her gaze upwards. ‘I suppose it’s why I knew that when I agreed to marry you, I would honour the sanctity of that institution, even when we weren’t, you know. A couple.’
She glanced at him, to find his eyes simply resting on her face, his expression inscrutable.
‘Anyway. Neither of them was happy. My mother’s infidelity wasn’t the only problem. I mean, we had no money. That was stressful. And then, one day, she just disappeared.’
Beneath the water, his foot reached out and rubbed her calf, so she flicked a half-smile in his direction. ‘I stopped speaking Italian. I removed any photos of her from the house. Any gifts she’d given me. I was so mad, Massimiliano—I swore I’d lose any part of me that was Italian.’
‘Understandably.’ His toe moved up to brush her thigh, sparking flames in the pit of her stomach. ‘So what changed your mind?’
‘You can be pretty persuasive.’
‘Me, or the money I was offering?’ he teased.
She ignored the way her stomach lurched, the immediate instinct she had to reject that. ‘Both,’ she said in the same spirit.
His expression shifted. ‘And learning Italian?’
Memories of that afternoon came back to her. His jealousy. She ran her fingertips over the water’s surface, feeling the bubbles pop beneath them. ‘I’m not doing it for my mum,’ she said. ‘If anything, it’s for my dad. He always wanted me to stick with it. To keep talking Italian. Losing him, it’s sort of made me think about the anger I’ve held, and I guess, made me want to be everything he thought I could be. Plus, I’m here for two years, so it does make sense.’
He dipped his head in acknowledgement of that. ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’
‘It never came up.’
He nodded slowly. ‘And your medical studies?’
For a long time, becoming a doctor was all she’d thought about. Strange, now, that it felt ephemeral. ‘Ever since I was a girl, I’ve wanted to be a doctor.’
The surprise on his face was obvious. ‘This is what you’re planning to study?’
She nodded. ‘About a year before Mum left, my best friend died. She had leukaemia. It was the first time I faced death, and I was too young, really, to fully understand it. I just knew she was sick, and everyone around her was worried. We couldn’t play together any more. When I did get to see her, I had to wear a mask, sanitise my hands. I felt so powerless. I was just a kid, and all I could think was, I want to save her. And then, anyone like her. When Dad got sick, I was struck by that same sense. I want to make a difference.’
He leaned forward then, his palm cupping her cheek, eyes locked to hers in a way that made her pulse trip. ‘I have no doubt you will,cara.’
Her smile was shy, his praise so heart-warming. It wasn’t as if she needed external validation—she knew she had the grades to get into medicine—it was only because of life circumstances that she’d had to put it on hold. But having his support was like a shot in the arm, regardless.
‘You’re very smart,’ he said, after a beat, the praise glowing inside her. She knew it was true, though. Her grades had always been excellent, but hearing it from Massimiliano set her pulse alight. ‘I don’t think I was expecting you to be so well read, so interesting.’
She pulled a face. ‘I think you meant that as a compliment, but I’m not so sure.’
‘I mean because you are young. Working in a diner.’
