“I don’t know if I can,” she confessed.
He stroked her knuckles with his thumb, tiny circles she felt in the pit of her stomach. “You’re doing fine so far.”
She had a feeling he wasn’t just talking about their search for Lucy Hunter.
The red awning of Antonia’s Ristorante stretched over the sidewalk, glowing from the lights outside and in. The bel over the door jangled as Iestyn opened it for Lara to precede him inside.
Red vinyl booths and crowded four-top tables, a scarred wooden floor, and an open pass-through window. Voices hummed. Dishes clattered. Smel s floated on the air, a rich broth of garlic, onions, clams.
Lara inhaled appreciatively and heard Iestyn suck in his breath behind her.
She turned at once, her nerves jumping, but he only opened the door wider, stepping back to let an older couple leave.
Inside, a few tables were clearing. A black-haired busboy who couldn’t be more than fifteen stopped with a tray ful of dishes.
His face lit with pleasure when he saw them. “Zack!
Man, why didn’t you tel me you were. ” His dark eyes flickered. His face flushed. “Sorry. I thought you were somebody else.”
“Who?” Lara asked.
The boy jerked one shoulder in a shrug. Apology.
Dismissal. “Sit anywhere,” he said. “Hailey will take your order.”
They found a booth near the kitchen, with a view of the chalkboard menu.
“Zack?” Lara repeated quietly when they were seated.
Iestyn rubbed at the front of his shirt, over the burn.
“Who knows?”
“You don’t recognize the name?”
He shook his head.
Their waitress — young, blond, with a face ful of freckles—
arrived at their table. “What’l you have?”
“Do you have bottled water?” Lara asked.
“This isn’t the Galaxy. You can drink out of a glass here.”
Iestyn smiled. “You can even order wine.”
Wine was a bad idea. Wine belonged to celebrations and candlelit dinners, the whole ordinary dating world she’d never real y been part of. But just for tonight, she was tempted to go with the flow, to pretend they were out to dinner to enjoy each other’s company, to imagine that they could have a future together.
“I’m not finished with you yet.”
She swal owed. “Maybe. a glass of white?”
“A bottle of the pinot grigio,” Iestyn said. “A bottle of Sam Adams. And the swordfish for me.”
“I hear the lobster fra diavolo is good,” Lara said to the waitress.
“Wel, yeah, it is, but. ”
“I’m not making it,” a raspy female voice shouted through the pass. “You can have the steamed lobster or the clam linguini.”
Lara bit her lip, wavering between offense and amusement.
“She’l have the lobster,” Iestyn said.
“One swordfish, one lobster.” A strong-featured Italian woman, with one of those faces that looked the same at forty and at sixty, appeared briefly in the pass, her mouth a hard red slash, her dark eyes snapping in satisfaction.
“Coming up.”
“Cole slaw, fries, or baked potato with that?” their waitress asked.
“Cole slaw, I think.”
When their waitress was gone with their order, Lara met Iestyn’s eyes, resisting the urge to giggle.
“If that was Dylan Hunter’s wife,” he said, “more has changed than I thought.”
“Don’t mind Nonna.” The busboy appeared with a basket of bread and a bottle of olive oil. “Mom’s out of the kitchen tonight, so she’s feeling feisty.”
“Nonna?” Lara repeated.
His smile was quick and charming. “My grandmother Antonia.”
Antonia’s Ristorante.
Lara squeezed her hands together under the table. “So the regular chef — your mother — would be Regina Hunter.”
The boy drizzled oil and herbs onto a thick white plate.
“That’s right.”
“Your father is Dylan Hunter.”
“So?”
“So?”
“Where is he?” Lara asked.
The question earned her a measuring look from those big, dark Italian eyes and another charming smile. “At work.”
“What kind of work does he do?”
The boy’s smile faded.
Iestyn’s foot pressed hers under the table. “Good bread.”
“Glad you like it,” said the boy and escaped.
Lara frowned. “Why did you stop me?”
“Because you were scaring him.” Iestyn’s long, strong fingers tore a hunk from the loaf of bread. “And because I want to enjoy our dinner.”
She didn’t understand him. Everything inside her was alight and alive with impatience. If this was the end, she wanted to get there as quickly as possible. Minimize the pain, she told herself. Like ripping off a bandage. “Don’t you want to find them? Dylan? Lucy?”
“We will find them.” He dipped the bread into the olive oil.
“Tomorrow.”
She stared at him, frustrated. “But we’re so close.”
He offered her the bread across the table. “Lara, I’ve been gone for seven years. We’ve been searching less than two days. Another night won’t make any difference.”
Reluctantly, she reached for the bread. He pul ed it back, holding it teasingly away from her mouth until she leaned forward to eat from his hand. As her lips closed around the bread, he added softly, with intent, “Especial y if it means I get to spend that night with you.”
Her gaze met his.
She almost choked, bathed in golden heat.
“Another night won’t make any difference.”
Oh, but it could. How long could she be with him, how many times could she lie with him, and stil survive a separation?
And yet how could she resist this chance to know him better? To make love with him one more time?
Deliberately, she picked up her wineglass. “So,” she said.
“Tel me how you learned about wine.”
He narrowed his eyes at her obvious change of subject, but he played along, tel ing her about the yachts he’d crewed, the jobs he’d handled, the places he’d been.
Their lives could hardly have been more different, she reflected, listening to his stories about a delivery to Bahia, a race in Key West. In thirteen years, she’d rarely left the wal s of Rockhaven. Yet he seemed genuinely interested in her life there, encouraging her to talk about her job in the school office.
“It might seem like busywork to some,” she said. “But I like the routine. I like being organized.”
His eyes gleamed. “I noticed.”
Under his subtle prodding, she told him things that should have bored him sil y, details about living in the dorms, minor infractions after lights out, stories about Bria.
“You must miss her,” he said quietly, and tipsy with wine and attention, Lara blurted out a truth she had barely admitted to herself.
“I hated her. She was the person I was closest to in the whole world, and she left me. She didn’t care enough to try to talk to me, she didn’t tel me she was going. And then I wondered if she left because of me. Because she knew I resented her for having the courage to do al the things I wasn’t brave enough to try.”
“Bullshit,” Iestyn said.
Lara blinked. “Excuse me?”
“First, you’re one of the bravest people I know.” He reached across and took her hand, holding it in his warm, strong clasp. “Second, your friend didn’t leave because of you.
She left because she had to, because of something inside her that couldn’t be there anymore. Maybe she real y cared about you.” He looked down at their fingers, joined on the table; up into her eyes. “Maybe she was afraid if she told you, you’d talk her out of it.”