“Are you sorry I kissed you back?” He demanded, more gruffly this time, his fingers feathering over hers, the touch simple and light but enough to send lightning bolts through her system.
“I’m just sorry that I –,” she searched for words, her eyes pleading with him to understand, but he gave her no lifeline, no chance not to say what she was thinking. “I overstepped the mark,” she finished quietly. “I’m a guest in your house – well, as you’ve pointed out, more of an intruder, really. I should have respected your wishes and stayed away, instead of –,”
Again, he waited, not rescuing her by supplying the end of her sentence, nor allowing it to dwindle by moving conversation onto new ground.
“Attacking you.”
Her honesty was rewarded with a half-smile, but it was gone in an instant, his expression unreadable once more. “You should have stayed away,” he agreed.
She sighed softly, her eyes falling to the coffee cup.
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
His finger pressed into her chin, lifting her face to his, and desire arced between them, as real as any electrical current running through the walls of this house. “So am I. I tried to ignore you, Isabella Moss, and then you kissed me and now I find I can’t get you out of my head. That is a problem for both of us.”
Her only reply was a short gasp. He dropped his hands, dismissing her with a tight smile as he turned to lift his own coffee cup. He stood holding it, his eyes boring into hers, watching her, waiting for her to say something that might indicate how she felt about that.
But Isabella’s mind was spinning, desire making it hard to think straight, a sense that she was misunderstanding him in some way making her quite numb.
“Why did you come to Italy?”
It was a welcome change of subject, and yet it wasn’t. The truth was something she hadn’t shared with anyone, for fear of how stupid it sounded. But there was something about Gabe – no. Not about Gabe himself, per se, so much as the fact they were closed off from the rest of the world. It all felt like it was a million, trillion miles away, reality a very distant consideration on the edge of another galaxy.
She sipped her coffee, taking a small step away from him, even when her body complained about that, needing to be closer to him, not further away. Her heart was stuttering in her chest.
“It’s a long story, and I’m sure you have more important things to do than listen to me.”
He lifted his shoulders. “I asked the question, didn’t I?”
Warmth lifted her soul. She knew she was crossing a one-way threshold, and yet that didn’t deter Isabella. She dug her teeth into her lip for a moment, trying to work out where to start, not sure if she would regret this even as the words began to untangle inside of her of their own volition.
“I guess I came for answers,” she said cryptically, sipping her coffee. As she lifted it to her lips, she noticed there was a love heart in the pattern, an obvious accident, because this man would never do anything as twee as that, but it made her smile regardless.
“To what?”
“I never knew anything about my biological parents. I’m adopted,” she added, for unnecessary clarification. “And I always had questions. I mean, so much of who we are comes from our parents, I would have thought. I used to wonder about the physical stuff – like did my mum have red hair, or my dad?” She lifted her fingers to her ponytail, brushing her fingers over the feathery ends. “Or eyes like mine, skin like mine, a nose like mine?” She gestured to her tilted nose tip.
“And this led you to Italy?”
“When I turned eighteen, I was able to apply for information about my birth parents. My dad’s not listed on the certificate, but my biological mum is. Isabella Maria Varizzi,” she said the name she knew inside out, a name that had swirled through the recesses of her mind for many years.
“So you came to find her family?”
“No,” Isabella shook her head. “I know it sounds stupid, but I came to – to find myself, I guess,” she whispered the last words, embarrassed by the over sentimentality of it all.
“In what way?”
The question seemed genuine, not cynical or mocking.
“I wondered if I’d get here and feel an affinity to the people, the place. The food.”
“And do you?”
She nodded slowly. “Yes.” It was an admission she hadn’t even really made to herself. “But then, Italy has such star-power, doesn’t it? Everyone who comes here seems to fall in love with the place, so maybe there’s just an element of that?”
He was quiet, watchful.
“Or maybe I’m just so desperate to feel a connection to my biological parents that I’m looking for something that’s not there. I mean, for all I know, my mum was a third generation Aussie, and her connection to Italy is tenuous at best.”
“You haven’t met her?”
Isabella’s heart clunked in her chest. “There was a note attached to the file that she wanted to veto future contact with me. The records were only released to me on the basis that I would respect my mother’s wishes.”
His eyes narrowed slightly, but otherwise his expression didn’t change.
“Then you were raised by adoptive parents?”
Isabella’s spirit of confiding clamped up. She spun away from him on the pretence of moving towards the fruit basket, her heart heavy. She lifted out an apple, wiping it on the thigh of her jeans. “For a time.” She bit into it, the chewing an excuse not to answer further. He watched, drinking his coffee, then looked towards the window.
“You will be stuck here for a while longer.”
She was glad he’d moved the conversation on; she’d half-feared he might push her to answer. And she wasn’t entirely sure she wouldn’t.
“How long, do you think?”
He finished his
