Page 9 of Italian Weddings

Willow toyed with the edges of the table before a voice in her head—unmistakably Meredith’s—told her to stop fidgeting and she shoved her hands beneath the tabletop, squared her shoulders and held Francesco’s gaze.

“She was very young when she married my father. Younger than I am now, come to think of it,” Willow said, pulling a face.

“And I guess my mother was a pretty intimidating person to try to replace.”

“I never met your mother.”

She tilted her head to the side. “I don’t really remember her,” Willow said, wistfully, ignoring the throb in her heart because the only position in her life that had been filled by a mother was that occupied by Meredith. “But I know what I’ve been told, by family, family friends.”

Once again, he waited in silence.

“She was very beautiful, and she came from one of those very wealthy, very old families from the north. My father apparently adored her,” she added. “That’s a tough act to follow, for someone like Meredith.”

His lips pulled to the side, as if deep in thought. “Meredith is, I suppose, beautiful. And I presume she is also of some kind of aristocratic background.”

“Ah, yes, but not like my mother’s,” Willow said with a lift of her shoulders.

“She was hired to help care for me,” she said.

“Meredith had taken a gap year from university, not sure if she wanted to finish her degree. Her parents mentioned it to Baxter, and then, there she was, in our house, looking after a four-year-old whose whole world had been plunged into grief by the sudden, inexplicable loss of her mother.”

Willow was glad for the interruption of the coffees arriving, because it gave her a chance to blink quickly, surreptitiously forcing away the unexpected—and unwanted—moisture that had built in her eyes.

“She’s hard on me,” Willow continued, “because she wants to show the world that she’s raised me as my mother would have wanted. I sort of understand it.”

His dark, moody eyes rested on her face, scanning her features for so long she forgot the thread of their conversation and lost herself in the depths of his gaze instead, in the flecked brown tones of his eyes, in the way they shifted and moved.

Her hands trembled a little as she reached for her coffee, lifting it towards her lips and taking a quick sip.

“Good coffee,” she murmured, self-conscious because he was still staring at her in the way he had.

“Do you think this is how your mother would have wanted you to be raised?” he asked, finally.

Willow’s heart twisted. “Who can say?”

“Your father, for one.”

“You’ve met my father, haven’t you?” she joked. “I mean, I love him, but he’s pretty laid back. Meredith stepped into a role he needed filled—he wanted a wife and mother, and there she was. I don’t know if he even notices that she has a certain…quality to her.”

“Has she always been like this with you?”

Willow laughed then, a soft sound of incredulity. “I’m sorry, it’s just—yes, of course. It’s just who she is.”

“But not with the twins,” he reminded her.

She bit into her lower lip, the pain of that something she’d lived with for a long time.

Knowing that she didn’t belong. That she wasn’t as highly valued.

That she had to be utterly perfect, all the time, or she risked not being part of their family.

Feeling that her connection was tenuous and transient.

“Do you mind if we change the subject?” she asked softly, taking another sip of her coffee.

Francesco’s eyes rested on her face for a beat and then dropped to her hands, which were still slightly unsteady, as they replaced the cup in the saucer.

“ Certamente. Tell me about your lover.”

It was such an unexpected statement that she almost spat her coffee. “My lover?”

“This man you’ve been dating.”

“Oh.” Her cheeks flushed bright pink at the vivid description of Tom as her lover.

It was just so physical. So descriptive.

Beneath the table, she shifted unconsciously, but the motion brushed their legs together in a different way, the friction sending little darts of heat and awareness through Willow’s whole body.

“Tom,” she said, slowly, thoughtfully, not sure if this conversation was any better.

Francesco raised a brow, almost skeptically, which made her lips twitch with a smile.

“He’s great,” she said, trying to think of ways to describe the other man. “Kind, and smart, and thoughtful. He’s a painter.”

“An artist?”

“No,” she shook her head a little. “A house painter. He took over from his father a few years ago,” she added, defensively, but Francesco only nodded, no hint of judgement in his expression.

“How did you meet?”

“In a bookstore,” she said. “He was buying a gift for his sister; I was knee deep in the romance section. I helped him find a book, he asked to buy me dinner to say thanks.”

Something sparked in Francesco’s eyes. “I see. And yet you are not currently together?”

She shook her head. “We broke up a few months ago.”

“For what reason?”

“That’s a little personal, isn’t it?”

“You are the only person, besides my brothers and cousins, who’s seen me so drunk I almost passed out. I trust you with my life. Is it wrong to ask a personal question?”

Her heart did a funny little skip. He raised a valid point—he’d well and truly let down his guard with her.

And in a way, she’d done the same with him, by asking him to do this for her.

While he knew her family, in that tenuous, family friend kind of way, he was really seeing behind the veil now, by being squarely placed beside her, as part of her experience of the whole messed up thing.

“There were…a few reasons, I suppose,” she said, a little unevenly, frowning as she tried to put into words what had led to their separation.

“We have different friends, different lives, in many ways. Ultimately, he found it hard to get over our comparative financial circumstances.” Her gaze dropped to the table, because it was such a stupid reason to have argued.

“He worked hard, but money was always tight. If we wanted to do something—go on a holiday, or out anywhere nice for a meal, I would want to pay. He hated that.” She massaged her lower lip with her teeth. “It’s infuriating.”

Francesco nodded slowly.

“For years, society has had this expectation that rich guys can marry whomever they want, regardless of finances or social status or whatever, why doesn’t that work in reverse?”

“I suppose it depends on the couple,” he said thoughtfully. “There are probably a lot of couples who would make it work regardless.”

It was like a hammer blow to her sense of reality, because that was such a simple thing to say, and worse, he was right.

She focused her eyes on the view from the window, because it was too hard to look at Francesco, to feel his gaze on her, to have him see the recognition slowly unfolding through her.

“You think we didn’t love each other enough? ”

“I think it’s an insufficient reason to end a relationship, if it otherwise works.”

“But then, you’re no expert in this territory,” she said defensively, flitting a glance at him and quickly softening the words with a tight smile that hurt to paste across her face. “What’s the longest relationship you’ve ever had? A week?”

His gaze narrowed, his inspection of her all the more intense now. “I don’t need personal experience to see this situation clearly.”

Didn’t he understand what he was doing to her? What he was saying?

All her life, Willow had felt not good enough.

Not good enough for anyone, not good enough to love.

Every ounce of her self-esteem had been conditional—she’d sought Meredith’s impossible-to-get approval as though it were her source of oxygen.

Deep down, Willow was still that same little girl who just desperately wanted to be loved.

And Tom had loved her.

At least, Willow had believed he loved her, and for the first time in her life, she’d felt…something different. Wanted. Valued. Needed.

Yet here was Francesco, sitting across from her and casually telling her that she’d imagined it all. That Tom hadn’t really loved her.

With another hammer blow of truth, she recognized that maybe her grief over losing Tom was less about the man and more about what she’d thought their relationship represented?

She finished her coffee and replaced the cup. “We should go,” she murmured, trying to catch the threads of their earlier, laid-back tone. “My hair isn’t going to do itself, you know.”