by Julia London
The three men exchanged a startled look. Edan arched a surprised brow, too, peering closely at her.
“Parli Italiano?” the man asked.
“Of course I speak Italian,” Jenny groused. “Doesn’t everyone?”
“No,” Edan said, inexplicably cheerful as he moved behind the reception desk.
The gentleman who had called her a beggar stepped forward—cautiously, she noted—and extended his hand. He spoke again in Italian, “I am Lorenzo. Lorenzo Bartolotti. Who might I have the very great pleasure of meeting?”
It was no pleasure, it was embarrassing. And it didn’t help to see Edan actually smiling behind the three of them, clearly enjoying her discomfort. “Jenny Turner.” She ignored his hand and folded her arms tightly across her body instead. “I’m going to my room now.” She gave them all a withering look before marching off down the hall with the clothes clinging to her and her boots squeaking loudly and her thoughts racing around Edan and the fact she didn’t have this perfect little inn to herself any longer.
Nine
After a bath and a nap, Jenny felt much better about her disastrous morning. The sun had peeked out, too, which helped her get over her unreliable weather app.
She’d also found a little clarity, too. This morning, her head had been filled with that sexy as hell kiss. But now, having seen the young woman at the care home look so longingly at Edan, and recalling his sober expression when he’d announced he loved his ex, Jenny had come to a few conclusions.
One: She loved it here, but she couldn’t stay indefinitely without purpose.
Two: Edan was going back to find his love and that was that.
Three: She could back to California and face her new family dynamic instead of avoiding it, and maybe take the job Vanessa had found for her.
Four: Or she could buy this inn.
The thought had come to her as she’d soaked in the tub. Edan was leaving, the inn was going on the market. Why not her? She had the money. Well, okay, her dad did, but he would be happy to loan it to her. This was exactly what he’d told her to do the night he’d invited her to dinner at Lolo’s Lounge and had sprung Cathy on her.
At the time, Jenny had thought the invitation was odd because her father rarely got out—between his work and his inability to find anything in his house, he pretty much kept to himself. Or so she’d thought. The moment she’d walked into the restaurant, her gut had sank, because he was sitting there next to a woman with a short crop of unnaturally yellow hair. Both of them were smiling at her. Too sunnily. Too eagerly.
“Jen, sweetie, I’d like you to meet Cathy,” her father had said, and his chest had puffed up a little, and his eyes had taken on a sheen of delight.
Jenny could hardly speak she’d been so shocked. “But how?” she’d asked. “How could you not tell me, Dad?”
“I was afraid you might, you know, insert yourself,” he’d said jovially.
They were going to live together, he said. Cathy was going to help him clean out his house.
Great, she’d thought. Good luck with that. “I’ve tried to help you clean out the house for years,” she’d reminded him. Years she’d never had anyone sleep over. Years of friendships she’d never had because she was afraid someone would find out their dirty secret. It wasn’t until she went away to college and attached herself to Vanessa, Brooke and Bethany that she had actual friends, and the only reason she did was because they were on the other side of the country from her family’s dysfunction.
But her father had smiled sympathetically and said, “It’s not your job to fix your dad, sweetie. It’s your job to live your life. You know what I wish? I wish you would find that thing that makes you happy. I wish you would find the place where you fit.” He’d reached across the table and had taken her hand in his. “Cathy and I both hope you will at last feel free to go and live your life.”
Jenny didn’t know what was more jarring—that her father was essentially telling her to get out of his life? Or that he had discussed it with Cathy?
But on the other hand, had it not been for him and Cathy, she never would have gone with Devin to escape. She never would have found the Cassian Inn. And she loved it here. She loved the lake, she loved the old Victorian mansion, she loved being far away from her awful childhood home.
This was where she belonged. It was becoming clearer and clearer to her.
So she grabbed her laptop, and headed for the lounge so she could email her dad about it.
As she walked down the hallway, she happened to see one of the Italian men walk into the lounge ahead of her.
She detoured.
She went outside into the sun and followed a path that took her past the inn and into the woods, and up to the top of a small hill that overlooked the lake. To her delight, she discovered a bench. Jenny put aside her laptop and sat down. Here was the opportunity to meditate she’d hoped for this morning, and she tucked her feet up beneath her, pressed her palms together at her heart center, and bowed her head.
The goal of her meditation was to clear her mind and breathe before she emailed her father, But her mind was not clear—she kept seeing Edan Mackenzie and the way he looked at her, even when telling her there was no possibility. Unfortunately, she was thinking of him so intently that she could practically hear him.
Wait a minute—she could hear him. And he was talking. In complete sentences. Jenny opened her eyes and looked wildly about. She could definitely hear him, but she couldn’t see him. She stood up, following the sound of his voice to the tree line. She peered into the woods and realized that the cluster of trees to the north side of the bench was nothing more than a copse. On the other side of that copse was a cemetery. She could see the top of Edan’s dark head—he was squatting beside a headstone and he was talking. Holy cow, the man was talking to a ghost.
Jenny suddenly realized she was watching him in a private, unguarded moment, which mortified her, particularly since he already believed she was stalking him. She hurried back to the bench, grabbed her laptop, and fled down the path. In her haste to get as far from his as she could, she took the wrong fork in the path and emerged in back of the inn.
“Close call,” she muttered, and tucking her laptop up under her arm, began the walk around the inn to the entrance courtyard.
“Ciao, Jenny Turner.”
Startled, Jenny almost dropped her computer. She hadn’t seen one of the Italians sitting on the wooden bench next to the hedgerow. He smiled, his teeth brilliantly white in the sunlight, and came to his feet. “You are dry and you are smiling. Bella, bella. Now, this day is made beautiful for both of us,” he said with a charming smile.
“It’s still a little muddy,” she pointed out.
“There is not so much of the mud. Come, sit,” he said, and gestured to the bench.
She eyed him skeptically.
“I am Lorenzo,” he said. “We’ve met.”
“Very briefly.”
“Si, but I will not bite,” he said breezily. “Not unless you ask me to.” He winked and patted the seat next to him.
He seemed fairly harmless as far as Italian males went. Plus, he’d just called her bella, and Jenny was not immune to the power of a compliment. So she sat, but kept a good distance between them.
“So?” he said, opening his arms. “You are an American who speaks Italian,” he said in Italian.
“Obviously. And you’re an Italian who speaks English,” she said in English.
“Obviously,” he said, and grinned at her. “But many Italians speak English. It is the language of the world, no? Not so many Americans speak Italian.”
“I don’t really speak it. I remember it.”
Her summers in Italy had ended with her mother’s death. Her grandmother had died the following year. “Broken heart,” her father had said.
“My grandmother was Italian, and I spent summers with her in Liguria.”
“Ah, charming Liguria!” He kissed the tips of his fingers. “Bello. And now, you
are at charming Lake Haven. Do you have a grandmother here, as well?” he asked slyly.
“Actually, I am here on something of a personal journey.”
He looked at her blankly.
“Umm…let me think. Spirituale viaggio.”
“Ah, of course, a journey of spirits!” he proclaimed.
“Something like that,” Jenny agreed, deciding it wasn’t worth the effort to clarify. “This is the perfect place for it, you know? So beautiful and pure here. It’s like one step closer to heaven.”
“No, this is no good, to be closer to heaven,” he said, wagging a finger at her. “If you reach heaven, then what have you left?”
“Who knows? That’s the beauty of discovery! You never know what’s around the corner. And you, Signore Bartolotti? What brings you here?”
“You wound me with this signore,” he said. “I am for you, Lorenzo.”
“Okay. Lorenzo,” she said smiling.
“And this?” he said, gesturing grandly to the inn and the grounds. “This is like home to me,” he said, patting his palm against his heart. “I come to Lake Haven many times.”
“Why?”
“Why!” he scoffed. “Look around you, Jenny Turner. As you say, bellisimo. And I fish.”
What was it about fishing that was so appealing? She didn’t get it.
“But this time?” He waved his hand, and the two gold and diamond rings on his fingers caught the sunlight and almost blinded her. “This time, I do not fish.”
“Why not?”
“Because, my bellissima Americana,” he said, his eyes welling, “I cannot.”
“Is something wrong?” Jenny asked as he dabbed at his eyes. “Are you all right?”
“Si, si,” he said, dragging a finger beneath one eye. But then, just as quickly he said, “No! How can I be all right when my heart has broken?” He suddenly surged forward and buried his face in his hands.
“Oh,” Jenny said, wincing a little. “Can I help?”
“No. Everything is wrong,” he moaned. “Elizabetta, she is through with me.” He sat up and rubbed his eyes. “She’s thrown me aside like garbage,” he said. “I’ve made mistakes, many mistakes, I admit it freely. Yet I love her, and I am paralyzed by the thought of losing her.” He suddenly twisted about, and grabbed Jenny’s hand. “Have you ever lost someone you cared for very deeply?”
“Si,” Jenny said, nodding. “Not a lover, but you know, Grandma—”
“There is nothing more painful than this loss,” he said, tapping his chest with his fist. “It eats at me every day like cancer. That is why I’ve come here, Jenny Turner—”
“Actually, you can just call me Jenny—”
“Because I cannot bear to see Elizabetta and know that she hates me. I’ve come here, to the place I know so well, to put her out of my mind,” he said, shaking his fist at his head. “And yet, I can’t stop thinking of her. I can’t stop loving her because she demands it.”
He suddenly slumped against the back of the bench. “It’s hopeless. I’m ruined. I will never recover. I will never love again.”
Not likely. “So…” Jenny said, enjoying his performance. “May I ask what happened?”
“Oh,” he said, flicking his wrist. “Nothing to cause such heartache.” He shifted his gaze away from her.
“Well, something must have happened,” she prodded. A movement caught her eye, and she looked up—Edan had appeared on the drive with a bucket in hand. He slowed his step when he saw the two of them there.
Lorenzo didn’t notice Edan at all. He was too busy holding court. “I love her too much, what more can I say?”
“You can say what you did,” Jenny suggested, and waved at Edan. She got a lift of his chin in return. At least he didn’t hightail it into the entry hall and lock the door.
Lorenzo sniffed. He picked a piece of imaginary lint from his trousers. “It was not so big,” he said. “I kissed another woman in the heat of the moment. That is all.”
“Wow,” Jenny said, momentarily distracted from Edan.
“It was not my fault!” he insisted. “She kissed me, and yet no one will believe it.”
“Oh, I believe it,” Jenny muttered as she watched Edan walk on and disappear around the corner. “But it’s not like she attacked you and pinned you down when you were holding a sponge and forced herself on you... was it?”
Lorenzo sighed. “You women, you are all alike,” he said gruffly. “So easily offended, no? Very well, I made a mistake. But I die with this mistake. I would do anything to have my Elizabetta back. In qualche modo! I would gouge out my eyes—”
“That’s a little much,” Jenny said.
“I would not joke about such a thing. What else can I do?”
“Well, I’m no expert,” Jenny said, settling back, preparing to be an expert. “But I would start with a heartfelt apology. You probably said something like, ‘I’m sorry.’”
“Yes, of course, this is what I said,” he insisted, his hand stabbing the air with each word. “I am sorry, Elizabetta. But her friends, they talk in her ear,” he said, making a gesture of chattering. “They turn her against me.”
“Mmm,” Jenny said.
“Mmm? What does this mean, mmm?”
“It means that wasn’t enough. You said you were sorry, and she told her friends, and they were all like, girl, you’ve got to be kidding. I think you should send her an insanely expensive bouquet of flowers if you haven’t already. Maybe you could write her a letter explaining what she means to you. Not a text—an actual letter. And you should tell her why you made such a totally boneheaded mistake.”
Lorenzo glanced curiously at her.
“Stupido mistake,” she clarified for him. “You need to grovel.”
“Ah.” He tilted his head to one side, considering what she’d said. “Do you think this can work?”
“I have no idea,” Jenny admitted. “I obviously don’t know your girlfriend. But I know a little about women and I know it can’t hurt.”
“Si, si,” he said, nodding emphatically. “I will do this today, and you will help me,” he said.
“What? No! That is not what I meant—”
“Grazie, grazie, Jenny Turner,” he said, and suddenly took her by the shoulders and yanked her forward, giving her a kiss on one cheek, and then the other. “Come, we write the letter now,” Lorenzo said, and stood up, taking her hand. “Look, you see? You’ve come with a computer.”
Jenny tried to protest, but Lorenzo was determined.
She did not notice that Edan had come back around to the courtyard. He was standing at the edge of it, watching Lorenzo usher her inside to write his letter.
Ten
Edan didn’t know how things like this happened. The last few days had seemed almost as if he’d imagined them, they were so foreign to his way of living. He didn’t know how fully formed women suddenly threw their arms around men they scarcely knew and kissed them. He didn’t know how that same impulsive woman was suddenly inseparable with another man she’d only just met.
But that is precisely what had happened with Jenny and Lorenzo.
One moment, she was stomping through his reception area with clothes clinging to her enticingly curvy body, and the next, she and Lorenzo Bartolotti had their heads together, bent over a computer, murmuring in Italian.
They’d even dined together last night. Jenny had tried to include him in their party, but Edan was not going to suffer being the third wheel at that table, particularly after Lorenzo’s brothers had left the Cassian Inn, bound for a proper resort with a proper golf course. And a proper bar. And proper dancing girls.
And again the next morning, there went Lorenzo and Jenny toddling off to East Beach on some mission of importance, chattering away as if they’d known each other all their lives.
Edan should have been relieved that the loquacious lass had something to occupy her. He should have been grateful that Lorenzo had come along and removed the unexpected problem of her in his
head and in his life. God knew he had enough to do without her nattering on in his ear.
But he was not relieved. He was, surprisingly, miffed. And it didn’t help that his dogs were moping about as if she’d left them behind. How long did she intend to stay and wreak havoc, anyway?
“I donna understand it,” he said to Clara’s headstone. “It’s no’ as if I care, aye?” He glanced sidelong at the headstone for a moment, feeling as if Clara was giving him the side eye from some celestial perch. All right, perhaps it was true that Jenny had uncovered some feeling in him. It was lying there, visible where his grief over Audra was beginning to rot through.
Jenny had set him on fire, and for a man who had not been set afire in a while, that was a dangerous thing to have done. Now he wondered if she was the sort of bird who flirted and carried on with any fucking penis that crossed her path. That thought was followed by the equally exasperating thought that it wasn’t his business. All those thoughts together put him in a very foul mood the following afternoon, which was much remarked upon by Rosalyn. She said his demeanor was colder than Highland snow. That his scowl could curdle milk. And then she’d made the mistake of summoning him to the kitchen to tell him she needed flour.
“If you need flour, Ros, you’d best say so before five o’clock. It’s no’ as if the markets stay open for the Cassian Inn, is it?” he’d snapped. “Now I’ll have to drive all the way to Black Springs.”
Sandra, who had been helping Rosalyn in the kitchen, gasped. In all the years she’d known him, she likely had never heard Edan say something so coldly.
“I’ve got a sack of flour,” she said. “ I’ll just fetch it.” She fled the kitchen.
“What’s put your knickers in a twist?” Rosalyn demanded. She was not as easily put off as Sandra.
Edan shook his head. He stood in the dining room, his gaze fixed on the windows that looked out over the garden and the drive. He was aware that Rosalyn’s gaze was boring into him. “I’ve no’ seen you like this since Audra left. Are you ill, then?”
