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Was he in love with Paola? Edo remembered how well she’d fit into his arms when they’d danced, and how many memories it had triggered.
But that was all they had been—memories. He hadn’t had any thoughts of the future while Paola had been in his arms. He definitely hadn’t wanted to back her into a wall and kiss her.
Edo shook his head and leaned forward onto his arms on the table. “I wasn't in love with her, but it was weird to see her again.”
Samantha tried to hide her look of relief, but Edo was close enough to see the tightness around her eyes release.
But it was only fair that she play too. “What about you? Are you in love with anyone?”
She shook her head and quickly filled her mouth with gelato.
He didn't let it go, though. “No boyfriend back home? No ex you're still missing?”
“It's been years since I've dated.”
“Yes, but you got to meet my ex-of-six-years.”
“I've been busy taking care of my grandmother.”
“Oh?”
She hesitated, and several emotions crossed her face too fast for him to name. None of them had been happy, though. Finally, she spoke. “She had Alzheimer's. She died a couple months ago.”
“I'm sorry.”
Samantha looked away quickly. “It's fine. She lived a good, long life.”
Edo wanted to pull her into a hug. She looked like she needed one. But her answers had been pretty short—she didn’t seem to want to talk about it; still, Edo couldn’t help pushing a little. “Why were you caring for her? And for how long?”
“We were each other's only family. She raised me from the time I was ten, after my dad left and my mom remarried someone who didn't want kids.”
Picturing Samantha as an awkward, abandoned preteen was all too easy, but Edo couldn’t imagine how her mother could just walk away from her like that. And he wanted to punch her stepfather.
Samantha hurried on. “My grandma was amazing—she was always there for me. So when she fell and broke her hip my sophomore year,” she shrugged, “it was an easy choice.”
Her words said it had been easy. Her body language said otherwise. She still carried that red backpack and identified as an art student—she could spend all day staring at a couple sculptures—you didn’t get passion like that without pain when it wasn’t part of your life anymore. But she’d walked away from her dreams to take care of the grandmother who had been her world. The grandmother who had passed away so recently.
He'd been so wrong that first day, when he'd seen Samantha as just a little girl. She might be young, but she'd already had to make some very difficult choices. “Did she already have Alzheimer's then?”
“No, that came two years ago.”
So, she’d dropped out to take care of her grandmother until her hip recovered, but then stayed as her grandmother had slipped away from her. “And what are you doing now? What have you done since?”
Samantha stabbed at her Tartufo with her spoon. “I got a job at the home she lived in near the end. I still work there.”
“You work in a nursing home?”
Samantha nodded and smiled with false brightness. “So, no exes I'm still in love with, but Mr. Robinson does like to call himself my boyfriend. Well,” she amended, “my ‘beau,’ technically.”
“And Mr. Robinson is?”
“A dear soul who is ninety-one years young and missing all his teeth,” Samantha said, smiling for real this time. “And he did kiss me on the cheek once, so there is probably some truth to his claim. Closest I've been to a boyfriend in years.”
Edo had never expected to feel jealous of a ninety-one-year-old man, but he couldn't help determining to beat the old geezer to Samantha's lips. They were very nice lips — well shaped, not too large — Edo forced his eyes away from them. Even if Samantha was not the naïve young college girl he'd first assumed, she was still a guest in his home. He’d gotten carried away while dancing earlier, but Paola’s words came back to him now. He had the Castello’s reputation to maintain—a reputation his father would never forgive him if he ruined.
He glanced at her empty wrapper. “Are you finished?” He held out his hand for her trash.
She hesitated. “If I say yes, does it mean the evening is over?”
Her tone was teasing, but there was a wistfulness to her smile that made Edo want to wrap his arms around her and reassure her that he wanted more time with her.
He did. He wanted much more time with her—which was unusual for him. Usually he got bored after a date or two of forced conversation and didn't call again; but if he'd met Samantha two years ago...
She was still waiting for his response. Edo thought quickly. “Have you been up on the tower at night yet? To see the city lights?” Samantha shook her head, her eyes widening and a little smile turning up the corner of her mouth.
Edo collected their trash, and just barely stopped himself from taking her hand in front of the store’s employees. No more fodder for the gossips. “It's like stargazing, only looking down. You'll love it.” He’d wait to hold her hand. At least until they got outside.
#
SAMANTHA WAS FLOATING home, not walking. As they’d left the car in the parking area at the bottom of the hill and begun their walk up to the Castello, Edo had taken her hand in his again.
It had worked—her crazy idea had worked, and now she was walking hand-in-hand with a man who gave her butterflies and made her feel safe and protected.
It was strange how such a little thing—two hands together—could make her feel so much less alone. And even though Samantha knew she would have to leave, it still felt worth it, this evening of not being alone.
They reached the Castello and got all the way to the door of Samantha's room before she came back to earth enough to remember her bedroom was the only way into the tower. She stopped dead, and Edo jerked to a halt beside her.
“Is something wrong?”
Samantha's mind raced. He'd said he wanted to look at the stars—no, the city lights—that wasn't a euphemism, was it? She’d been hanging out almost exclusively with geriatrics, who warned her about things like going to drive-in movies, but hadn't someone mentioned stargazing as another dangerous activity? Things might have been moving too quickly. He didn’t know her enough to know she hadn’t meant this to go very far, just a little fun on her vacation, that was all... “I—I forgot to make the—I mean I forgot to clean up. Maybe we should—”
“I promise to close my eyes while you guide me through?”
Samantha had dumped her backpack out on the bed earlier to make it less heavy for her excursions into the city. Her things were scattered around the room now; no way he would keep his eyes closed enough to miss all of it. And that was if he really intended to just walk through to the roof. She didn't know how to do this dating thing; she probably should have thought of that before making the first move earlier.
Edo's eye brows drew in a little in confusion. “It's really not a big deal; I grew up here so I know the path well. I promise not to look.”
He probably thought she was so stupid. “Just...” Samantha unlocked the door and stepped inside, poking her head back out behind her. “Give me two minutes.”
He chuckled behind her as she shut the door in his face and ran up the stairs, through the kitchenette and the living room, and up another round of stairs into the bedroom, where she rushed to throw everything onto the bed and toss the comforter over all of it.
When she got back to the door, Edo made a point of looking at his wrist, even though he wasn't wearing a watch.
“Okay, okay, maybe it took me four minutes.”
Edo bumped her with his shoulder as he came through the door. “Maybe four hours. How much did you have to clean up?”
Thankfully, he took the lead up the stairs, so Samantha didn't have to worry if she was blushing or not.
At the top of the steps, just inside her bedroom, he turned to look at her, and her quickened pulse was no longer just from running up and down the stairs. She'd known he was good-looking the first time she'd seen him, but she kept being struck by just how good looking he was. Paola was an idiot not to have followed him to America. Giovanni had nothing on Edo.
“You know, when I cleaned my room by shoving everything under the bed or hiding things under the blankets, my mother made me clean it again.”
“Yes, well, I can only do so much if you're only going to give me four hours to work with.”
Edo grinned and continued up the narrow wooden stairs to the door that led out onto the top of the tower.
The air was chilly, and Samantha shivered as she stepped back out into it. She was still wearing the fancy chiffon dress Edo's mother had let her borrow which had let her feel like a princess on the dance floor, but was definitely not made for warmth.
Edo stood over against the battlement that looked down over the town. Samantha went and leaned forward on her elbows to see over the edge better. She let out a little gasp at the sheer picturesque beauty of the church and village below them lit up with warm yellow and orange lights.
“It's beautiful, isn't it?” Edo shifted to his left foot, and Samantha could feel the distance between them shrink; the hair on her arm closest to him prickled. “This was always my favorite spot—in part because I was only allowed up here when we didn't have guests, which meant I usually only got to see it sporadically unless it was winter.”
“You liked it because it was forbidden?” Samantha teased. The light from the town was enough for her to make out the contours of his face as the light reflected off the edge of his brow, the bridge of his nose, the line of his jaw. Oh, that jaw.
“I was a teenage boy once, so I'm sure rebellion was part of it.” His voice changed, growing reminiscent. “When I was little, this castle was my world. I fought enemies from these ramparts, warned my pirate crew from the crow’s nest of my ship—all the usual games.”
“But with a real castle instead of a pretend one.”
“Yes. But when I was eight my parents fixed up this suite and made it the main draw of the bed-and-breakfast, and it wasn't mine anymore—now it belonged to the tourists who came from all over the world. They stood up here and looked out over the valley all the way to Firenze, not me.”
“Is that why you don't want to run the bed-and-breakfast? Because the tourists took your home?”
“It sounds a little silly when you say it like that, doesn't it?” Edo leaned forward on his forearms like she was, arm to arm like they had been earlier when overlooking Florence in the gardens. He hooked his pinky finger around hers. “It's not like the castle isn't big enough; I get my own suite.”
“But not the tower.”
“Not the tower,” he echoed.
Samantha leaned into his shoulder, thinking about the little boy he'd been when he'd been told his special place was no longer his own.
He leaned into her as well, warm and solid. “You can see six other castles from here on a regular day; eight if it's very clear, and lots more if you use a telescope.”
He stood, keeping their littlest fingers connected, and led her across to the far side of the tower, the one that looked out over the valley toward Florence. It was lit with a hazy glow all above the city, but individual lights twinkled below the haze, and the lights of smaller towns speckled the darkness all across the hills between them and the city.
He pointed. “You can see all the way to the Duomo with a telescope.”
It was darker on this side of the tower, away from the immediate glow of the town. Directly below them were the olive groves, shrouded in darkness but still alive with the sleepy calls of birds. Without the warmth of Edo's shoulder against hers, Samantha shivered. It really was too chilly to be out here in a dress like this.
The shiver passed through the hand Edo held, and he turned to her. “I'm sorry; you’re probably cold.” He drew her in with the finger he held, wrapping her arm around his own waist before placing his arms around her.
She froze, her cheek suddenly against his chest, his arms solid and warm around her. Then she wrapped her other arm around him, and they stood there, in the dark, not speaking, not concerned anymore with stories from childhood or views from the tower.
Samantha breathed deeply, trying to memorize the smell of him. She would take this back with her, this memory, this moment.
Samantha had been hugged a lot at her grandmother's funeral and a few times since then by residents of Apple Grove, but it had been years since anyone had held her, keeping her close for more than a second or two. It had been even longer since a man had put his arms around her; so long since she'd felt this kind of safe and cared for.
Standing there with her head leaning against Edo's chest, she could hear his heartbeat, feel his breaths rising and falling—breaths that were faster than warranted by just standing here. Samantha drew back a little, looking up into his face, watching the way the faint light hugged that strong line of his jaw; watching that jaw twitch as he watched her back from only inches away. Releasing her arms from behind his back, she brought her hands between them, sliding them up his chest and around his neck. His arms around her tightened, and he leaned the barest half inch toward her.
“Samantha...” He hesitated, leaning forward another fraction of an inch, “I don't usually—”
Samantha was done waiting. Standing on her toes she pressed her lips to his.
She dropped back onto her heels, looking up at his surprised face. Had she misread? Had he been about to kindly let her down? Maybe he'd just been being nice—maybe he'd just been playing the kind host and she’d taken complete advantage—it had been so long since Samantha had been in a situation like this, she could easily have—
A smile stole over Edo's lips, slow and warm. “One kiss is for old men,” he said, echoing the words his father had said to her on her first day in Italy. Edo leaned in, his hands slipping to her waist and pulling her closer as he did so. His lips were so close she couldn't believe they didn't touch as he whispered, “young men get two.”
He brushed her lips gently, lifting the edge of her top lip with his, exploring the curve of her bottom lip. He traced his lips along her cheek, then came back to her lips, more sure this time, more firm.
Samantha’s stomach wasn’t doing gymnastics anymore, it was tying itself into a complex knot, taking the aching loneliness she’d learned to live with over the years and turning it into a different sort of ache, one that made her lean into this kiss.
This was as far from kissing John as her little high school in Georgia had been from Italy. Samantha felt it washing away the old hurt, the lingering feeling she’d had since John had left that she wasn’t attractive enough or interesting enough to catch another man’s attention.
Her thoughts slid away, and she forgot she’d ever been cold, forgot she’d ever kissed anyone other than this man here with her right now. Forgot she’d ever have to leave.