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‘Maybe I want to be alone.’
‘Do you really, Dante?’
He didn’t answer.
‘If you want to be alone, just say so and I’ll go,’ Alicia said.
‘I think you should go.’
‘No.’ She would not let him off easily. ‘Tell me you want me to leave and then I shall.’
‘Stay,’ he said, for on this day he did not have the energy to lie. ‘Please.’
His hand found hers then, and the feel of his fingers interlaced with hers was so incredible, so beautiful. So beautiful that she felt the sting of tears in her eyes again and she closed them.
‘Stop crying,’ he said. ‘You never cry.’
She could blame it on the funeral, or thescirocco, or the heat—even on Beatrice—but she told a rare truth. ‘Maybe you just never noticed.’
He dropped her hand and Alicia regretted her words, her admission, but then she felt him turn beside her.
‘I noticed,’ he said, and her heart seemed to stop, for his voice was close and his breath was on her cheek.
He kissed her where her tear had fallen and it felt so nice—not hot, like the sun, but soft and warm, like velvet brushing her temple. So nice that more tears fell.
‘Please don’t,’ Dante said. ‘I can’t bear to see you cry.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
TEARSHADNEVERBEENher weapon of choice and Dante knew it.
‘Alicia, don’t cry,’ he said again.
‘You just left,’ she accused.‘Ciao...’She threw back his final word to her. ‘You left cross.’
‘No...’ he said. ‘Alicia, I didn’t want to get you into trouble. I didn’t want things to change between us,’ he said. ‘But they already had.’
‘How?’
‘Because of this.’
His mouth was on hers, and when her lips parted so did his, and she felt the slip of his tongue, and forgot how to breathe, and then he lifted his head.
‘You taste of apples,’ Dante told her.
‘I ate one as I was coming here,’ she said. ‘You taste of wine...’
He smiled down at her. ‘I wanted to do that so badly the day I left...’ She stared back at him. ‘Then you spoiled it...’
‘How?’ she asked—and then she recalled that she’d declared they might be related and went very red. ‘I was joking.’
‘Well, it didn’t help matters,’ he reproached.
‘I wish youhadkissed me,’ Alicia said.
‘You don’t,’ he refuted. ‘Alicia, you’d have jumped out of your skin.’
‘You don’t know that.’
