I shook my head. “No glamorous European sabbaticals for me, I’m afraid.”
“A tragic oversight.”
“I’ll try to survive it.”
The wine arrived then, followed by a plate of warm bread and olive oil so good I immediately understood why people becameinsufferable about Italian food. Pietro waited until the waiter stepped away again before speaking.
“Do you have siblings?”
“One sister,” I said. “Sophie. She’s fourteen and convinced she runs the household through intimidation and sarcasm.”
The severity of his expression eased just enough to make him look younger. “I have a sister too. Victoria. She’s ten and already a menace.”
“That sounds affectionate.”
“It is. She’s terrifying.”
I smiled. “Sophie too, honestly.”
“You’re close?”
“Very.” I traced one finger lightly along the stem of my wine glass. “She’s disabled now. There was a car accident a few years ago. My brother died and Sophie…”
I stopped, the words catching a little as they always did when I got too close to that night.
“She survived,” I said instead. “But things changed.”
The look that crossed his face then was so brief I might have imagined it if I hadn’t been looking straight at him.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
I gave a small shrug that convinced neither of us. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to turn this depressing.”
“It’s not depressing.” His voice was calm, steady. “It’s your life. I asked because I want to know about you, Emily.”
Nobody had said it like that before. Simply. Like it was obvious.
He glanced down then, just briefly, and nudged his cane a fraction against the side of his chair. “Aren’t you going to ask?”
I followed the movement with my eyes, then looked back at him.
“No.”
His brows lifted. “No?”
“No.” I took a sip of wine, buying myself a second. “Because it doesn’t matter.”
He went very still. Not offended, more like surprised. People like Pietro probably weren’t often surprised.
“That,” he said after a moment, “is not the answer I was expecting.”
I set the glass down carefully. “Would you rather I lied and said I was trying to be noble?”
“I would rather know what you mean.”
“I mean,” I said, meeting his eyes, “that you walk with a cane. I saw. I also noticed you looked like you wanted to bite my head off when I grabbed that book for you in the library, so I assumed you preferred not to be handled like fragile glass.”
To my surprise, that pulled a quiet huff of laughter out of him.
