The Way You Look Tonight (The Sullivans #10)
She’d made it sound to Jack as if she was looking after them, but the truth was they looked after her, too.
“Sorry about all of that. It can be a bit of a circus around here sometimes, especially on Friday nights.”
Jack was the first man she’d invited inside her house since moving in a month earlier. Seeing him looking so right in the midst of all the feminine disarray sent her thoughts into a different kind of disarray. What had she been doing before she’d rushed to see the girls off? Thankfully, the half-filled boiler of her moka pot beside the sink provided a clue.
Still feeling flustered as she went back to filling the boiler and then setting it on low heat on the stovetop, she decided to face the situation head-on. “I hope they didn’t make you uncomfortable. Especially,” she added with a small laugh, “with all their flirting.”
He laughed as he pulled up a seat at the bar. “They were charming, although I can see that they could certainly be a handful. I sometimes had trouble keeping a class of engineering undergrads from rioting in the middle of a lecture when I was a teaching assistant. My hat is off to you for taking on three energetic young women.”
She was still amazed that he hadn’t drooled over them the way men always did, especially when they’d been practically throwing themselves into his big, strong arms.
“Oh, we’ve had a riot or two around here in the past month,” Mary informed him as she inserted the funnel in the boiler, then filled it with espresso beans she had ground that morning. “Especially the night they were all fighting over the same worthless guy. I ended up banning all social activities for the rest of the week.” As she spoke she continued with the coffee preparations by screwing on the top container and watching as the coffee began to appear. “Of course, the girls are also a tremendous amount of fun.” Seeing that half the coffee had brewed already, she turned off the heat.
“I’ve never seen that kind of coffeepot. Is it from Italy?”
She nodded. “It’s called a moka pot.” She spelled out the word for him.
“Whenever you speak about Italy, your accent comes through.” His eyes were warm as he said to her, “Tell me about the country you were born in so I can hear it some more.”
She was a grown woman of thirty-two, not a naive teenage girl anymore. So how did Jack manage to make her blush so easily and so often?
“Much like the United States, Italy is a place with many different colors and textures. The golden ruins of Rome. The checkered Duomo of Florence. The canals and opulence of Venice.”
“It sounds wonderful.”
“It is,” she agreed. “And if you’re not careful,” she added with a laugh, “I’ll end up regaling you with stories of Italy like a travel agent all night long.”
“I’d like that,” he said, and then, “Especially if they're stories about your hometown.”
As always, just thinking about Rosciano sent feelings of conflict moving through her. On the one hand, she loved it like no other place on Earth.
On the other, it was where her heart had been broken for the very first time by the person who had mattered most to her.
“On warm summer evenings, the teenage girls flirt with the boys out by the fountain in the middle of the square.” She smiled as she told Jack, “Girls learn early in my town how to walk in heels on cobblestone streets without tripping. And once that flirting turns into something more, every couple in town marries in our church. As a little girl I would watch the beautiful women in their handmade wedding gowns. My mother made those gowns, and I used to help her even though I wasn't nearly as good a seamstress as she was.” Making herself focus on the other memories that were coming at her one after the other, she told him, “I used to love to watch the mustard grass bloom in the spring, the grapes growing plump in the summer, the vineyards turning color in the autumn. And Christmas was a time for celebration like none I’ve ever seen anywhere else.”
Realizing she was rambling, Mary stopped herself with a laugh that was a little bit hollow from speaking about her mother. “See, here I go acting like a travel agent, just like I said I would.”
“I could never tire of hearing you talk about something that you love.”
He was right, she realized. Regardless of what had happened between her and her mother, Mary only ever looked back on her childhood, and the people who had made it so special, with love.
Just as she had when she’d been speaking of home in the diner the night before and emotion had threatened to overwhelm her, she tried to dismiss it with a joke. “Next thing you know, I’ll have you on a plane to Italy with an itinerary of the best secret spots that no other tourist knows about.”
“I’d like that,” he said, and she could suddenly see it so clearly, the two of them holding hands as they flew across the Atlantic. She’d never taken a lover to her country, had never stolen a kiss with someone in a shadowed alley that had been there since medieval times while the bells of the church chimed above them.
“Has your hometown changed much from when you were nineteen?”
Mary slowly stirred their espresso with a spoon in the pot before pouring it into two espresso cups. Coming to sit beside Jack on a bar stool, she said, “I don’t know.”
He stopped with the cup halfway to his lips. “You don’t?”
“No, I haven’t been back.”
She had never spoken about her family situation with anyone outside her closest circle of friends and confidants. A voice in the back of her head reminded her that it wasn’t wise to reveal so much to Jack when they had met only a day ago. Still, when he lowered his cup and reached for her hands, his touch warmed her better than any cup of coffee could have.