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Maybe it was because she wasn’t fighting it here. Maybe it was because she simply let whatever emotions came up wash over her in this place of golden ease. It was grief, but it was sweeter, somehow, than it might have been otherwise.
When she finally rose in the mornings, she took her time in the bath, or in the shower. Often, she would find herself staring out the windows until the beauty of the small, perfect valley overwhelmed her and she would feel drawn to take long walks through the fields.
And as she walked, she thought about...everything. Her lost mother she hoped she resembled in as many ways as possible. Her father, who had loved her so. His confounding will, which seemed to refute that. The past month and a half. And Ranieri, who was so tangled up in all of it.
Some days he would come and find her out in the fields when it was getting toward midday. He would grin at her, that dark, fierce face of his set in such bold lines. He would tumble her down into the sweet grass or the soft earth, and teach her new ways to cry out. To hold that beauty in her hands and chase the wildness that was only theirs.
Other times she wandered back to the house, and would take a light lunch with him on the patio outside his study, if the weather was fine. Or inside near the fire if it was cool. And they would talk. The way they never had in all the years they’d known each other, stretching back to when she’d been a teenager. Not necessarily of big, emotional things, but all the rest of it. Small stories. Observations. The connective tissue that held all the big things together, she liked to think.
Like they were just people. Not enemies making the best of things.
Over lunch one day, she made some comment about needing to find more ways to teach him a lesson or two. Ranieri gazed at her with laughter all over his face and his eyes bright. And no matter how many times she saw it these days, it never failed to make her breath catch.
“I’m happy to teach you jujitsu,” he said after a moment. “Though I cannot promise that I will teach you to be any good at it.”
“I’ve actually taken a jujitsu class before.” Annika wrinkled up her nose. “It seemed like a whole lot of very dramatic cuddling.”
He stared across the brightly tiled table at her, looking as outraged as he did astonished.“Cuddling,”he repeated.
“All that clenching together. And then writhing about everywhere. You know, it all seemed like a lot ofthighs.” She shook her head. “And then quite a bit of heaving about. It was off-putting, I have to say.”
Ranieri continued to stare at her for a moment. Then he reached over, plucking her out of her chair and pulling her over his lap.
“Perhaps you need another lesson,” he murmured, nipping at her chin and making her shiver.
But what he taught her then, carrying her into the study and laying her down on the thick rug like an offering, was not jujitsu. Or any martial art Annika had ever heard of.
It was glorious all the same.
In the afternoons, she liked to check in with the museum back at home. Then she usually found a book and curled up with it, loving the afternoons when Ranieri ignored his own work, sought her out, and took her back to bed. But loving just as much the peaceful hours she got to spend in her favorite chair, sometimes dozing, sometimes unable to turn the pages fast enough.
And always, at some point, thinking back to when he’d brought up sex and she’d wondered whatregular sexmight even look like.
They dressed for dinner every night, and the dressing itself sometimes took longer than necessary. Because Ranieri’s “help” always ended the same way—with him surging deep inside her as they both took their pleasure, because the real magic was the way they fit together.
That friction. That heat.
His hardness so deep in her softness, his mouth ravaging her neck, her breasts. Her nails leaving marks on his shoulders, his back.
It only seemed to get worse, this need. This endless wanting.
Sometimes they had their dinner outside, taking advantage of the last of the mild nights. When it was colder—and it kept getting colder—they sat in the cottage’s pleasant dining room, or took trays before the fire of their choice. And always there was the sensual delight of the food they ate. Every night it was a feast of local fare, prepared to perfection. But for Annika, the real treat was the opportunity to get to know this man who had cast his shadow over her life for so long.
She knew better than to say out loud some of the conclusions she’d come to during her lazy mornings or out on her long walks. She knew better than to say that clearly, her father had known what he was doing here. That he’d been on to something. That he’d seen something in them that neither one of them would ever have come to on their own.
After all, Ranieri had only signed up for a year. Annika might already be hoping that they would last longer than that, but she wasn’t foolish enough to say that. She didn’t want to ruin the year he was willing to give her.
Because she wanted every greedy, glorious moment of it.
“Tell me about your grandmother,” she said one night, when one week had turned into two, and kept rolling on. “She’s the one you speak of most often.”
Tonight they were seated not in the cottage’s formal dining room, but one of the smaller sitting rooms. Like everything else in this lovely house, it was furnished in light, pleasing shades. The fire in the grate seemed to dance lovingly over the carefully placed objects that graced the tables, the precisely arranged stacks of books, and the quietly impressive art that was hung haphazardly over each wall.
Like every other room in this house, the elegance of the surroundings never took away from the room’s comfort. Even if the previous owner hadn’t been Ranieri’s grandmother, Annika would have been curious how anyone had managed to pull that off. She assured herself it was a professional interest, given she was the one responsible for staging the exhibits at the museum.
Ranieri sat back in his chair, the last of the night’s meal before them. They had eaten at a small round table that allowed them to sit closer to each other and he had fed her morsels throughout from his fingers, adding a glimmering undercurrent of fire to every bite she took.
And now that fire was banked, though still in his gaze as he held his wineglass and swirled it in his hand, taking a moment to glance around the room.
