that swam in it. Its gentle rhythm was soothing.
His family had beaten them to the lodge and were all sitting around a set dining table chatting noisily. One of his grandfather’s carers sat discreetly in a far corner of the lodge reading a book.
The meal passed quickly. His grandfather was tired and, fed by Massimo’s mother, ate only his soup before retiring for the night. Madeline and Raul quickly followed, taking an increasingly fractious Elizabeth, who’d turned her nose up at all the offerings they’d tried to tempt her with. Considering it looked like mushed vomit, Massimo didn’t blame her for smacking the plastic spoon out of her mother’s hand. When his brother-in-law attempted to feed her, her little face turned bright red with fury. If Massimo had been offered that excuse for food, he’d have been tempted to screw his face up and bawl too.
He was about to rise and retire to the chalet to check in on work, when his father’s suggestion of a game of Scopa, the traditional Italian game played with an Italian forty-card deck, gave him pause.
His mother’s hopeful gaze made his ready refusal stick on his tongue before he could vocalise it.
He didn’t need to look at Livia to know she was beseeching him with her eyes to accept too. Her earlier insistence that his family wanted only to spend time with him kept ringing in his ears.
He stretched his mouth into the semblance of a smile. ‘Sure.’
The beaming grins made his chest tighten.
He signalled to the barman. Soon, a bottle of bourbon, a bucket of ice and four glasses had been taken to the outside table they now sat around. Massimo and his father formed a team and sat opposite each other, the ladies playing as the opposing team. Livia sat beside his father, his mother beside Massimo. He shuffled the cards, dealt them three each and four face up on the table. The first game of Scopa began.
What began as a sop to please his parents turned into a couple of hours’ mindless fun under the warm starry sky. His parents were the most laid-back, easy-going people on the planet but when it came to card games, they became ultra-competitive.
And Livia’s competitive streak came out too. His wife and mother were both determined to beat their spouses and were not above cheating to achieve this. When the women were two nil down, suddenly they both found it necessary to halt the game for frequent bathroom breaks.
Soon after this mysterious onset of bladder issues, he spotted his mother furtively pulling something out of her handbag, which, when she was challenged, turned out to be a king with a value of ten points. Rather than display any shame, his mother giggled. Livia though…her throaty cackle of laughter filled his ears and suddenly he was thrown back to his sister’s wedding and the first time he’d heard it.
It was a sound that speared him.
Firmly dragging his mind away from that fateful first meeting, he confiscated the card but then found he couldn’t stop his own burst of laughter when, barely a minute later, Livia stood to use the bathroom for the fourth time and two high-value cards slipped out of her top.
‘Shameless,’ he chided with a stern shake of his head.
‘All’s fair in love and war,’ she replied, a gleam in her eye he hadn’t seen for so long that suddenly he could fight the swelling emotions no more, body blows of longing and pain ravaging him.
He couldn’t tear his gaze from her.
In the beat of a moment her amusement vanished and her dark brown eyes were swirling with more emotion than there were stars in the sky.
Hardly single-digit seconds passed as their stares remained fixed on each other but those seconds contained so much weight he felt its compression on his chest. He knew with a bone-deep certainty that she was thinking about their first meeting too and that the memory lanced her as deeply as it did him.
Then Livia turned her gaze from him.
‘I really do need to use the bathroom,’ she murmured, reaching down to pick up the illicit cards and placing them on the table.
In the plush ladies’ room, Livia put her hands on the sink and dragged air into her lungs.
For a moment there her heart had felt so full of so many emotions that it had felt as if it could burst out of her chest.
Teaming up with Sera against their husbands had been so wickedly joyful that for a while she had forgotten that she and Massimo were estranged and preparing for a divorce.
For a short, glorious time, it had been like slipping on a pair of shoes that transported them to their early days when there had been as much fun in their marriage as there had been desire and love.
She had adored making Massimo laugh. He was such a serious person that to see his face light up had brought her more joy than anything. Laughter had been in short supply in her childhood so to discover this side of herself with him had been joyful in its own right.
Like the smiles she’d been unable to form in the four months since she’d left him, laughter had become a distant memory too. Until tonight.
Back outside in the warm evening air, she found the cards had been put away and the glasses empty. Sera and Gianni got to their feet as she approached the table and both apologised for having to call it a night. They were tired and needed to get some sleep.
Kissing them both goodnight, Livia poured herself another bourbon and watched them walk away.
The silence they left behind was stark. Apart from the white noise in her ears.
‘I suppose we should go to our chalet too,’ she said, avoiding Massimo’s stare.
They’d spent a whole day travelling between time zones quickly followed by a day out at sea. All of this, when added to her frazzled nerves brought about by being with him again, was a recipe for exhaustion. Yet she felt anything but tired.
When he didn’t answer, she stared up at the sky. The stars were in abundance that night, twinkling like gold diamonds in the vast blackness. She’d thought the sky in LA was big but here, on this island, it seemed to stretch for ever.
‘I’ll sleep on the sofa,’ she added into the silence.
‘No. You take the bed.’ She felt his eyes on her. ‘I’ve work I need to get on with.’
‘The sofa’s too small for you, and you can’t work all night.’ But he could. She knew that. He’d worked through the night on many occasions.
‘I’ll work for a few hours then sleep on the hammock.’
‘We have a hammock?’ That was the first she’d heard of it.
‘I’m surprised you didn’t notice it earlier. It’s on the veranda by the outside table.’
‘I probably didn’t register it,’ she murmured, taking a hasty sip of her bourbon.
She wouldn’t have noticed any hammock because when she’d stepped out onto the veranda her eyes had been too consumed by Massimo to register anything else.
They finished their drinks and, as silently as they’d made the walk from their chalet to the lodge, walked the return journey together.
