speak for a moment. “It’s nothing. I’m sorry if I’ve spoiled your day.”
She laughed. “You haven’t spoiled my day at all. Listen, I haven’t had this much fun in as long as I can remember. Ever maybe. You’re great company, Antonio. I just wish I took the time to museum crawl more often. I should. It’s not as if it costs much.”
“I should too,” he said, testing his voice, relieved to find it didn’t break. “I should live again.”
“What?” She frowned at him.
“Never mind, cara. Let’s have lunch. I know just the place. You will love it.”
He took her to Coeur de Lion, a popular city restaurant he hoped to make one of his first American clients. His plan was to introduce Boniface Olive Oils to the U.S. market through fine restaurants.
The Coeur de Lion’s vaulted ceiling with its sunshine-filled skylight brightened his mood. Besides, he was determined to not rain on Maria’s day, a continuation of her birthday celebration.
They sat on tufted chairs at a table apart from the others, covered with a heavy white damask cloth. He told her stories of Apulia, his ancient homeland in Italy, and she listened intently.
Tomorrow, he thought, I will be gone. He’d rescheduled his flight again, but would delay his return no longer than that. Now that Marco had been dealt with, he needed to return to the groves. Although it was still barely spring in Washington, already there was important work to be done in Carovigno.
By the time they left the restaurant and had driven back to her apartment, it was nearly three in the afternoon.
“I shouldn’t have had so much wine.” Maria giggled as she fumbled her key into the lock. “I’m going to be sleepy before dinnertime, though I don’t think I could eat another bite all day. Oh, that was delicious!”
He smiled, took the key from her and let her into her apartment. She spun around twice before flopping like a little child on her couch and laughing to herself—a final comment on the fun of the day before letting her eyes drift drowsily closed.
“You’re leaving now, aren’t you?” she asked without opening them.
“Yes,” he said, with honest regret, “I should.”
She nodded. “Probably best.”
“Probably?” He frowned. Was she sending him a different message now? “I thought you didn’t want my company other than as a touring companion.”
“Didn’t…don’t…not sure anymore.” She sighed and opened her eyes with obvious effort to nibble at a corner of one fingernail, her brow delicately furrowed. “Must be the wine talking. It’s just that I was thinking last night, after you left— No, I can’t say that.”
“Say what?” he asked, smiling indulgently at her confusion.
Her cheeks flushed a pretty pink. “I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong idea. But the concept…the theory of being coached, so to speak… Well, it appeals to me.”
He laughed softly but felt a nearly forgotten masculine tug down low in his body. “Does it now? But you said you’d have to know me better to trust me.”
“Yes, I did.” She seemed to be having trouble remembering her earlier statements through the wine. “I definitely said that. And it’s true, you need to trust a person to be intimate with them. Don’t you?”
“It’s wise,” he agreed, walking closer to her and dropping her keys on the coffee table in front of her. “Especially for a woman.”
“Yes, and espe—” She had trouble getting that word untangled from her tongue. “—es-pe-cially when that other person has had a lot more experience than you. Experience in activities that might cause him to be exposed to dangerous viral things and such.”
“You needn’t worry about that with me,” he assured her.
“Why not?”
He loved the way she scowled at him, her lips pouting, her brow wrinkling, a shadow of the little girl…inside the body of a woman. He ached to kiss her, but wouldn’t take advantage of her. The wine’s effect hadn’t yet begun to wane.
“Because I have been very careful,” he stated. Because, he could have added, there has been no one to share my bed in two full years. And for the five years before Anna died, he’d been only with her. “Let’s just say, I’m safe. But if the situation arose, I’d still use protection to ease your concern.”
“Of course you would.” She pulled a tasseled pillow toward her and hugged it so hard he wondered if the seams might pop. She squinted up at him speculatively. “If the situation arose,” she echoed him. “But your teaching…well, it wouldn’t include that arising stuff, right?”
He laughed delightedly and shook his finger at her. “Signorina, something definitely would rise, but we wouldn’t go all the way, as you say in this country.”
Her brow smoothed. “That’s right. We wouldn’t. So there would be no need at all to worry. Would there?”
“None.”
“All right,” she said, looking suddenly wide-awake and sober as she pushed the pillow away. “Let’s go for it.” She smiled up at him.
He was shocked. “Aspetta un momento! I thought you didn’t want to…that you were saving yourself for—”
“I am. Of course I am. I just want you to show me what I need to know. Everything except the end part.” She looked up at him solemnly.
He roared with laughter. “You don’t know what you’re saying. You’ve had too much wine, Maria. Tomorrow you’ll regret asking this of me.”
“I will?” She pouted again, and he nearly dragged her into his arms then and there.
“Yes,” he said softly. He took her hand, sat on the couch beside her and drew her close. “We will sit quietly together, let the wine wear off. If you feel the same way after another hour, we’ll do whatever you decide.”
She looked up at him with wide, trusting eyes. “All right.”
Maria wasn’t aware of the moment when her eyelids floated shut, or when she first awoke. The subtle lingering scent of a man’s aftershave came to her, then the sense that the surface beneath her was shifting.
Her eyes flashed open. “Antonio!”
“Yes?” a deep voice answered from above her.
She rolled over to discover that she’d been lying with her cheek pressed into his lap. She sat up abruptly, causing him to lift his arm, which had been draped protectively over her.
“You’re still here. What time is it?”
“Nearly five-thirty,” he said.
“I slept for over two hours?”
“Si. I took a little nap too. Sitting up.”
She had slept with a stranger in the room…with a stranger under her. Unexpectedly, the intimacy warmed rather than frightened her.
“Thank you for staying,” she whispered.
“I wouldn’t have left without saying goodbye,” he assured her.
“Then you are leaving?”
“That’s what you want, isn’t it?” He tenderly touched the tip of her nose, just once, with his long finger. “Do you remember what you asked of me before you fell asleep?”
She did. Vividly.
And, strangely enough, the only thing that had changed was her confidence that she could handle the lessons she’d requested of him.
“I remember,” she said, watching his expression. “I’d still like you