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Edo woke up the next morning resolved. He’d dreamed about Samantha, and if that wasn't an answer, he’d probably never get one.
He’d thought long and hard the night before about what he wanted, and why. He was obviously attracted to Samantha, but it was more than just physical. She’d started coloring his view of everything—how he saw the Castello, how he interacted with his mother, how he thought about tourists... how he thought about his own memories. When he was with Samantha, the pain that had kept him away for years suddenly seemed silly. He could actually enjoy being here.
Now, he found himself fretting once more over what to wear. He only had six days to convince Samantha it was worth trying for a relationship—that he was worth missing her flight home for.
No pressure.
It probably wouldn't be easy. For Edo, if this didn't work out, he might have some heartache, but that would be it. But if Samantha chose to stay, she would have to uproot her entire life—new job, new friends, new language, new life in a new country...
Edo sat on the edge of his bed, leaning his elbows on his knees and dropping his forehead into his hands. He'd asked a woman to do this before. It hadn't ended well. Hadn't he learned his lesson?
Edo came downstairs to find his mother scrubbing the kitchen table with more fierceness than it probably deserved. He came up behind her and hugged her, but she shrugged him off and continued with her task, so he tried again. “Have you seen Samantha?”
That worked. His mother turned to glare at him. “She went into the city on her own this morning. Because she said she didn't want to bother you. What did you do? You must've said something.”
Edo held his hands up in surrender as she waved her dirty rag at him. “I didn't say anything.”
His mother shook her cloth right under his nose, causing him to lean backwards to avoid it. “Nothing does not make good girls run off into big cities by themselves.” Seeing he was about to protest, his mother finished, “not when they could be accompanied by handsome men like you.”
“I'll go look for her, Mama. If I did anything, I'll apologize.”
Her eyebrows went down, then up in surprise as she looked him over, noticing how careful he'd been with his appearance. “You'll actually try?”
It was almost more than Edo could do to admit his intention out loud, but he'd given his mother little enough of her own way the last decade. “I will try. I don't think it will do any good, but I'll try.”
Edo's mother hugged him, hard. “She said she would go to museums today.”
Of course she would—where better to hide than in mobs of tourists. He'd hoped to find her drawing statuary in the Loggia again, but it couldn't be that easy. “I'll try to find her. But if I can't, hold her at dinner no matter what. Don't let her slip upstairs.”
“I will watch the door all day,” his mother promised.
#
EDO SEARCHED THREE museums—The Uffizi gallery, the Academy Gallery, and the Palazzo Vecchio—before giving up. There was no way he could just hope to find her in a city like this; they could miss each other by half a block and he'd never be the wiser. He wandered back to the Piazza della Signoria and sat, watching the tourists mill past.
He needed to come up with a plan. He couldn't just walk up to her and say, “I really liked kissing you the other night and I'd like to try it again, so will you move continents?” He had to come up with a good reason for her to stay—and he knew from his experience with Paola that he himself was not enough reason for a move of this magnitude.
A tour group came bustling up; they spread out, surrounding the sculptures and sitting on the steps around the wall. Edo watched them, men and women of all ages, from young like Samantha to older than his parents. What had brought them here, aside from the obvious? Each of them must have their own stories. What would make them want to stay here?
Edo stood, and with his hands in his pockets so as not to be taken for a pickpocket, he approached a middle-aged woman standing apart from the group. “Excuse me,” he said, smiling disarmingly. Could I ask you a question?”
The woman had a round face with smile lines near her eyes and mouth, and hair that was just beginning to gray. She wore a lightweight button-down shirt and khaki capris with bright yellow tennis shoes. “Sure, I guess so.”
Edo wished he'd brought some business cards. “I am getting ready to take over my parents’ business, running our family’s bed-and-breakfast, and I wondered if you could tell me what brings you to Florence?”
The woman relaxed completely at this. “Oh, sure. The art, of course.” She waved her hand at the sculptures near them. “I'm no artist, but I have always been amazed by the creations of those at the top of their fields. This is a wonderful place to see examples of that.”
Edo thanked her, and moved on, questioning tourist after tourist, getting answers ranging from, “because my wife wanted to,” to “it's such a romantic place,” to “for business.”
At the end of half an hour, Edo understood more about tourists than he ever had from his years of living next door to them. But he still didn't know how to make Samantha stay. He waited by the statues for another hour, but Samantha never appeared.
#
SAMANTHA TRUDGED UP the path to the Castello, exhausted. She'd run herself ragged dashing all over the city trying to leave thoughts of Edo behind her.
She’d failed.
She'd seen so many wonderful things, but they'd only made her sad, because she couldn't turn to ask his opinion or to exclaim over how beautiful they were. She'd seen statues on street corners, but Edo was not there to put flowers in the mouths of the dogs. He wasn't there to joke about being Neptune.
Florence hadn't disappointed her, of course—how could it?—but she was disappointing herself. One kiss and all her poise was shattered.
She stopped as she came into view of the steps leading up into the Castello. Edo sat on them, elbows on his knees and hands clasped in front of him. He jumped to his feet when he saw her, and stood there awkwardly twirling a plume of barely-blooming wisteria blossoms between his fingers. The cone of flowers drooped over at the top instead of standing upright, the little purple flowers never made to present like a rose. Still, as she came forward, he came down the stairs holding it out to her.
“I'm sorry.”
She stopped partway through reaching for the flowers. “For what?”
He shuffled from one foot to another awkwardly. “I'm not sure? But I promised my mother I'd apologize when I saw you again.”
He was adorably awkward, and it was so like his mother to read into things and make him apologize. Samantha took the flowers. “I accept your apology.”
Edo took a hesitant step closer to her. “Do I get to know what it was for?”
How to explain that she’d been trying to run away from the fact that she’d been falling in love with him? “If you figure it out, you can tell me.”
Edo let out an exaggerated breath. “You're not mad at me?”
“Why would I be mad at you?”
“I don't know—I just... Because I kissed you?”
“I’m pretty sure I kissed you first.” And standing here beside him now, this close, Samantha was tempted to do it again. That or cuddle up next to him, lay her head on his shoulder, and tell him all about the things she'd seen that day.
But she'd told herself she wasn't going to encourage anything more—it was already going to be hard enough to leave. “I've just been tired. Jetlagged, and lots of walking. I think I'll go to bed early again tonight.” She started to walk past, but Edo reached out and caught her hand.
“Wait! My mother is making dinner, and if you don't come again, she'll never forgive me.”
Just at that moment, Samantha caught a whiff of Maria's cooking, and her stomach rumbled. She’d packed a lunch, but it hadn't been much, and no sane person would be able to resist the smell coming from Maria's kitchen right now. And Edo didn't deserve to take heat from his mother just because Samantha had gone shy.
She let go of his hand under pretense of pushing back some hair that had fallen loose from her ponytail, but nodded. “All right. Just let me go change and clean up a bit first.”
She got a few steps further before Edo called her name, halting her once more. She turned to look back down the steps, where he was now a head lower than she was.
He looked up at her, and she couldn't read his expression. “I missed you, these last two days.”
Samantha felt her breath catch, and it was like the entire wide-open space around them narrowed in until there was nothing left but the sincerity in his eyes. Responding would have required being able to breathe, but she managed a quick smile before she turned and ran all the way up the rest of the stairs to her room.
#
SAMANTHA WAS PLEASED to find that Edo acted completely normal during dinner. He didn't try to hold her hand under the table, he didn't stare deeply into her eyes as he passed her the bread...
All right—she was a little disappointed as well as relieved. But it reaffirmed her decision to not move things forward anymore. If he was so totally unmoved, then obviously the kiss had not affected him the way it had her.
Maria, on the other hand, was watching them both closely and smiling any time they talked to each other. She couldn't have been more obvious had she tried.
At the end of the meal, Samantha thanked her hosts and prepared to return to her rooms, but Edo caught up with her before she reached the first set of stairs.
“Samantha, wait.”
Just his voice made her heart tug, and she stopped automatically.
He started to reach for her hand, then stopped like he wasn't sure if he was supposed to or not. “Are you busy tomorrow? I have somewhere I'd like to take you.” When Samantha hesitated, he rushed on, like he knew she might say no. “It's an art studio—a sculpting studio. An old friend of mine from school works there, and he said we could go—if you want to.”
That killed the refusal on Samantha’s lips. It had been so many years since she'd been in a studio and she was suddenly filled with a desire so powerful it made her gasp. “Really?”
This time Edo did take her hand, and she let him. “It seemed like something you might like.”
“But you're probably busy—too busy to keep showing me around.”
Edo ran his thumb up and down along the back of her hand. “I let work steal one of my days with you already, and because of it I lost another. I know you don't have many days left here, but I want to make sure they’re everything you hoped.”
His grip on her hand was so gentle, so tender—he was not directing her trip, he was requesting to be part of it. And as Samantha thought of continuing the rest of her few days left the way she had today, running all over the city by herself trying to forget about Edo, it was such a sad and lonely and anemic vision of what this trip could be that she instantly rejected it. “I'd love that.”
He didn't kiss her good night, but the look in his eyes as he squeezed her hand and turned to go had nearly the same effect on her resolution.