Annabelle decided Marcella gave out good advice. The change in Lucca from that first night in the hall was like night and day and had thrown her off her guard. As long as she knew to stay on guard, she’d be all right.
“I like your nickname for me, Lucca. No one else I’ve met has thought of it. It’s very clever in fact, if you don’t mind my saying.” She felt him give her an odd glance while she pulled their cartons out of the sack and opened them. “Here you go. And a spoon.”
“This is a local specialty,” he informed her. “I’ve been salivating for one of these for ages.”
“How long has it been since you were here last?”
“Maybe eight years.”
“That’s too long a time to be away from this.” She’d almost said home, but caught herself in time.
He was too busy eating to comment.
“Umm,” she moaned with pleasure after eating several mouthfuls. “It’s like an undercooked brownie, but much better with that almond flavor. I can’t stop with just one. I should have bought seconds.”
He lounged back when he’d finished, looking amused. “When I stumbled up the hill between the fruit trees a few nights ago, I couldn’t imagine being alive by morning. Now here I am stuffing myself with sweets in the backseat of a car with my new nurse.”
No doubt he’d beguiled a ton of willing Italian female nurses, but he didn’t know who he was dealing with. She put their empty cartons back in the sack. It was time for this American female nurse to go into action. He’d confided part of his soul to her. Now it was her turn so he wouldn’t get the wrong idea that she was blindly attracted to him.
“I, too, can remember one night in the past believing that I wouldn’t live through it.”
She saw his expression quicken with curiosity.
“One of the nurses working on my shift at the hospital told me my husband had been having a full-blown affair with another nurse, whom I thought had been my friend.”
Lucca eyed her for a lengthy moment. “When did it happen?”
“Two years ago. But evidently I did survive, and now here I am having eaten a decadent dessert with an Italian war hero. Who would have thought?” Before this went on any longer, she reached for the handle and got out of the car.
He continued to stare at her. “I hope you realize your ex-husband didn’t deserve you. But if you’re still so in love with him you can’t sit still, then you need to talk about it.”
She let out a measured breath. “My love for Ryan was burned out of me when I learned their relationship had been going almost from the beginning of our marriage.”
After a period of quiet he asked, “How long were you married?”
“A year and a half.” She stopped herself before she said anything more. Lucca didn’t want to hear it, not when it sounded so trivial after what he’d lived through. She shut the door and opened the driver’s door to get in.
“A very wise nurse I met the other night explained that a man who has seen combat needs to validate his existence to another warm body,” Lucca continued as if
she hadn’t left the backseat. “It’s vital that what he did in the war did matter to at least one other human being besides himself. You’ve been in combat of a different kind, Annabelle. Isn’t that what my father meant about you deserving a break?”
She started up the car. “Yes.”
“Why didn’t you get help for it?”
Touché.
She waited until they were out on the main road before answering him. “I did. I divorced him and transferred to another hospital in Los Angeles.”
“And now you’re involved with this Mel Jardine?”
Lucca didn’t miss much. “I met him after I moved to L.A.”
“Where were you living before you moved?”
“In Fullerton. It’s near L.A., where my family lives. My husband was finishing his residency at the same hospital where I’d been getting my nursing degree.”
She heard him grind out something in Italian that needed no translation.