The table is set for three, with a small bottle of mineral water, two wine glasses, and a bottle of chilled white wine in the middle, condensation running down the sides. My mouth starts salivating at the sight.
“Ah, you’re here,” Claudio says, appearing behind me in the doorway, carrying a giant bowl of salad. He places it on the table and then waves at me to sit down.
“Please sit.
I sit down beside Vanni and peer into the bowl. It’s definitely not a salad you’d find in Scotland. There are big pieces of red tomatoes, onions, olives, basil, cheese, and hunks of bread glistening with olive oil.
“It’s all we had left,” Claudio says. “And luckily it was all we needed to make panzanella.”
He leans over and using ceramic tongs, piles the salad onto the plates, then sits back and pours us both a glass of wine.
When he’s done, he gives me an impish smile that makes him look positively boyish. “I suppose it would have been polite of me to ask if you wanted wine. I just assumed.”
“Well, you assumed correctly,” I tell him, lifting my glass. “Cheers to that. And for letting me stay and for being so understanding.”
Claudio’s eyes are soft as he stares at me. He raises his glass, gaze locked on mine, and I feel strangely exposed. I’m not used to this much eye contact with a stranger, and while I guess he’s not so much of a stranger anymore, it still feels a lot more intimate than I’m prepared to deal with.
“It’s cin cin,” Vanni speaks up. “Not cheers. And when can I have wine, Papà?”
“When you can drink it and not make a face,” Claudio says to him while he continues to look at me. “Cin cin, Ms. Harper. Buon appetito.”
“Please, it’s just Grace,” I tell him, taking a sip of wine. It’s so cold, and so good. “Ms. Harper makes me sound like my mother.”
“You don’t like your mother?” Vanni asks.
I almost laugh at how earnest he sounds. “No, I love my mother. But, I don’t know, it makes me sound … old. Older.”
“How old are you?”
“Vanni,” Claudio chides him. “That’s not polite to ask.”
“Why not? I’m ten. And you are old.”
“I am not old,” Claudio counters.
“I’m thirty,” I tell them.
“Ah,” Claudio muses as he spears a tomato and munches on it thoughtfully. “You seem both older and younger than thirty.”
“That’s the first time I’ve heard that.”
“It’s a compliment,” he finishes. “You look young, but your eyes, they are the eyes of someone who has been through a lot, someone who is wise beyond her years.”
I’m not good with compliments, and I want to correct him because wise is the last thing I feel, but I manage to shove some of the salad in my mouth, letting the flavor explosion take me away. My god, why do simple tomatoes taste so good here?
“Thirty is old,” Vanni says after a moment.
I nearly choke on a hunk of vinegar-soaked bread.
“Vanni,” Claudio warns him. “Smettila. Enough.”
His son shrugs. “You’re at least fifty.”
Now Claudio is laughing. “Hey. What is with you? I’m thirty-six.”
“Then Mamma is fifty.”
“Your mother is forty-five.” He gives me an apologetic look. “I’m sure Jana shivered just now without knowing why.” I smile at the image. “She would probably kill me if I gave out her real age.”
I make a motion to zip my lips. “Her secret is safe with me.”
Meanwhile, I can’t help but be impressed. Jana would have been, what, thirty-five when Vanni was born? Claudio would have been twenty-six. Sooner or later I’d have to get to the bottom of how they got together because there’s definitely a story there. Perhaps Claudio likes older women. Maybe he’s attracted to the strong, confident, and assertive types. You know, the complete opposite of me.
But asking “how did you and your ex-wife meet?” isn’t the best conversation to have while eating, so I busy myself with more food and wine, which suits me just fine.
“How are you liking the wine?” Claudio asks.
I glance up at him, and he’s staring at me curiously, his dark eyes glittering as sun streams between the vine leaves, making the gold in his irises shine.
I swallow, totally aware now that I must have been making my food orgasm face. Robyn has pointed it out to me many times when I’m enjoying food I like. Pretty sure it’s not flattering.
“It’s really good,” I tell him, trying to compose myself. “Did you make it?”
He shakes his head. “No. I got that from the store. I don’t have the agricultural thumb that my mother and uncle had. The best I can do is keep the roses going when Emilio isn’t here.”
“Emilio?” I perk up. “He picked me up from the airport.”
“Yes, Jana told me as much.”
“He’s very nice.”
“He’s my uncle,” Claudio says. “His brother, my Uncle Giovanni, whom Vanni is named after, died. He owned this place before, when it was a hunting lodge. Emilio always has his hands on this property. He’s the one who planted the olive grove and the roses. Why we call it Villa Rosa. All of this.” He twists in his seat to gesture to the sprawling lawn behind us. “It was all roses. His wife, Lucia, she would grow them and sell them to the local stores. It was her way of making it feminine, to balance. She didn’t like the idea of hunting. Too barbaric.”
“She was right,” Vanni says through a mouthful. “But she’s dead now. Just like Zio Giovanni.”
The boy is so blunt.
Claudio gives him a lingering look before flashing me a quick smile. I know that look. It’s when you’re so used to someone acting a certain way, you forget sometimes that other people might not understand.
“So, Emilio,” I prompt, wanting to skirt past any awkwardness. “I guess he still loves the property if he comes here every other day.”
Claudio takes a gulp of wine and I watch his Adam’s apple bob in his throat, finding that strangely mesmerizing.
“He does. Sometimes he stays for dinner, sometimes he stays over after that if he’s had too much wine. I’ll show you his room later when we’re on our tour, just so you’re never surprised to see him. Otherwise he lives in the next village over by himself. He has his own plot of land, still keeps working it at his age.”
I glance at him and then at Vanni.
“What?” Claudio asks.
I shake my head. “Nothing. I just find it interesting that three generations of men can have such wildly different interests.”
Claudio’s angled brows come together for a moment, his full lips pursed as he thinks, another distraction. Then he grins at me. “You’re right. That’s terribly observant.”
I shrug. “One of my few gifts that only sometimes works.”
“What do you mean?” Vanni asks his father.
“Allora,” his father says, which I’m now guessing means so or well. “Grace pointed out that your interests are science, while mine is art, and Emilio’s is agriculture and growing things. Of course there is some overlap.”