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“No, you have lots of places you can sleep, but this is your home. The one place you feel really, truly connected to.”
Marco’s eyes collided with hers and something sparked in the air between them, before he nodded once. “Si.”
“So why don’t you live here?”
“I spend time here.”
“Do you? How much time?”
“More during harvest.” He lifted his shoulders. “It depends.”
“On what?”
“My life. What else is happening.”
“You come back to Italy often,” she murmured, presuming, rather than knowing this to be the case. After all, Dante visited regularly, and she somehow just suspected Marco did too.
“I do.”
“But not here.”
“Our family villa is to the north. We all go there, most of the time, to see our parents.”
Portia’s lips twisted. “That’s sweet.”
He laughed, sipped his prosecco, kissed her, so she tasted it and felt the coolness of his lips. Her eyes fluttered shut on the sensory overload.
“My parents expect it. And yes, we like it.Famiglia é tutto.”
Something shifted inside Portia. Something heavy and unpleasant, something she didn’t want to think about in this perfect, sublime moment. But it was a weight she couldn’t shift and it must have shown on her face, because Marco asked, quietly, “What is it?”
Portia blinked, shaking her head. She really didn’t want to talk about it. But Marco was watching her with those intelligent, stunning dark brown eyes, raking her face, as if he could excavate her inner-most thoughts with his gaze alone.
She took a sip of her prosecco, cradled the glass in her hands as she turned to look out of the window, rather than at Marco, who saw far too much and perceived even more.
“I’m jealous,” she admitted candidly.
“Of…?”
“Your family.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re all so close. And big and loud, and loving.” A small sigh escaped her. “Growing up, it was just me. I’m an only child. My parents were older when I was born. We were never close in the sense of being alike in any way. They were loving and affectionate but we never played games together. Perhaps they understood how lonely I was, because when I was about seven, we started taking family vacations with the Hancocks. Jack’s family.” She added tightly, by way of explanation. “They figured he would be someone I could play with. And he was.”
“You’ve known each other a long time,” Marco murmured.
She nodded, angry to find tears stinging the backs of her eyes. “And I would look at the big families camping around us—we would always go camping. We didn’t have a lot of money. Anyway, I would look at these families with lots of kids and their shared jokes and laughter and even the way they would argue like crazy and just feel this gaping hole, right here.” She pressed a hand to her chest. “I was lonely.” Her lips pulled to the side. “But it was more than that. Out of my loneliness, came this clarity about my life and my future. Even as a teenager, I knew what I wanted.”
“Which is?”
“A big family, all of my own.” She couldn’t look at him. She was admitting something so important and crucial to her, something that made her feel raw and exposed, vulnerable as anything, that she didn’t want to see how he reacted in case it was a reaction that hurt her. “It’s been one of the hardest things about leaving Jack.” She cleared her throat. “We’d talked about it. He wanted kids too. The plan was to start trying as soon as we were married. It’s a dream I hated having to walk out on.”
“You can still have that dream,” Marco said, his voice gruff, as he wrapped his arms around her from behind and held her close, his body comforting her in a million different ways, soothing, somehow, the ache that sat heavy in her heart.
“I don’t know,” Portia murmured. “I don’t know what I want anymore. That’s the thing about growing up. You change. Everything’s different.”
“Is it? Or is it just that you need time to recover from his infidelity before you let yourself seek that dream again?”
