that maybe if I came here for a month I could get my writing mojo back. I’m from Edinburgh and the weather’s been awful and…” I’m lost in grief. “…I just needed a change of scenery.”
While I’ve been talking, Claudio has been listening intently, his brows knitting together in thought.
“I see,” he says slowly and then breaks eye contact to have a sip of his coffee. It’s only when he’s looking away that I get a bit of my breath back. “So Jana said this place was unoccupied?”
“She just said she had a villa in Tuscany and I was welcome to use it. That’s all. I swear.”
He glances at me. “I believe you.”
Another soft smile curves his lips, and for the first time it hits me that, wow, Jana was really married to this guy? He does seem a bit younger than her, in his mid to late thirties, while she’s in her mid-forties. And not that Jana is bad looking or anything—she looks like Anne Heche with her sharp glasses and short blonde hair, but their personalities have to be the complete opposite, at least what I’ve seen so far.
“I’m used to Jana doing…” He gestures into the air with his hand. “Stuff like this, though not exactly like this. You should feel special. You’re the only author to have stepped foot in here.”
“None of her other clients have ever, erm, borrowed the house?”
He shakes his head, which does make me feel a wee bit special.
Then it makes me realize that she must have more riding on me than I know.
Or maybe no other author has ever struggled like you have, I think to myself.
“Vanni and I were supposed to be gone all month,” he explains. “We have family friends that we go on a trip with every year. This year we were going to sail to Sardinia. Have you ever been? Bella. It’s beautiful. Alas, my friend’s son broke his leg falling down the steps of the boat, and we had to cut the trip short. The boy will be okay, but Vanni is a little crushed that our annual trip got cancelled.”
“And I guess it didn’t help to find a stranger in his house.”
“Well, in his pool. But don’t worry about him, he’s nothing if not resilient.”
“You speak perfect English,” I can’t help but say. “The both of you.”
“Many Italians do,” he says, almost as if he took offense to that. “It helps that we travel so much, especially when we visit his mother in London.” He pauses. “So, she never told you she had a son?”
I swallow hard, feeling like I might get in trouble for saying anything. “No. She didn’t. We, well, we very much have a client-agent relationship. I actually don’t know anything about her and she doesn’t know much about me either.”
“I don’t think that’s so unique with her,” he says. He finishes the rest of his coffee and then gives me another arresting stare. “So, now what?”
I shrink into the couch a little, hands folded in my lap. “I guess … I go back home.”
My focus is on my hands, but I can feel his gaze on me. When I finally look up, he’s observing me like I’m a sort of puzzle, which I suppose I am. What to do with the writer?
“Do you think you’ll be able to finish your book if you go back home?” he asks.
I shrug. “Who knows at this point? I know I won’t give up on it.”
He nods and then gets up. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to make a call.”
He starts down the hallway and I quickly yell after him, “You’re not calling the cops, are you?”
I don’t think he hears me though, because he goes into the study and closes the door.
Before I can dwell on it, there’s a clamor of footsteps on the stairs and then Vanni bounces toward me. “You’re still here.”
He sits down on the chair his father was just in and takes such a similar pose that I bite my lip, trying not to laugh.
“I’m here for now,” I tell him. “Pretty sure I’m going.”
“Are you Irish?”
“Scottish.”
“Outlander,” Vanni says knowingly. “That show has got time travel all wrong. E un peccato.”
I can’t help but frown. “The time travel is wrong?”
He nods, serious as can be. “Their time travel theory is based on timing, location, and the person traveling. There is no such thing as time traveling traits in people. Jamie Fraser can’t time travel? Why not? It’s not, how