Page 17 of Italian’s Christmas Acquisition

He looked stunned by the question. “No,” he said.

“Just wondering. I didn’t think you were.”

“I’m not certain how to take that.”

“Oh, at face value, I would suggest. There was no hidden meaning. I was only curious. Plus you know you mentioned that whole thing about your mother, and marriage and a child. I thought maybe you’d taken steps toward that. I thought it was funny, because you’re the first eligible bachelor that I’ve ever met in this town—” She swallowed some of her tea, and her throat felt wretched. Then, she felt embarrassed, because she shouldn’t have exposed herself in quite that way.

“I am not engaged.Eligibleis another question.”

She laughed. “That’s funny, because I was thinking the same thing.”

“Have you got a husband?”

“If you talked to my mother then you already know that I don’t. And you already know that some of her objection to me staying in this place is that I’m not going to meet anybody.” She frowned. “One of the worst things about my mother wanting to get out of here so quickly is that it makes me feel like she never actually loved our lives. That she never actually loved my father in quite the way that I thought she did.”

He only stared at her. There was no kinship there. No understanding.

“Well, wouldn’t you feel that way if you found out that your mother was desperate to escape the life that she had lived with your father?”

“I never knew my father.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. It means nothing to me.”

“So you were raised just by your mother?”

“Yes.”

“In Italy?”

“Yes. In Italy.”

“Really only two people here. We might as well make small talk.”

It was just a polite thing to do. And yes, sometimes the out-of-towners, the people who came from cities, they resisted it. They didn’t really understand what the point of it was, or what she was doing in trying to engage them, but she was insistent on giving her guests the small-town experience. Plus she just liked meeting new people and hearing about their lives.

She loved her life.

But it was the only one she’d lived. Obviously. But she’d just never...gone away to college or lived in another state or tried life in a city or anything. So a window into how someone else lived always fascinated her.

“I was raised here,” she said. “Obviously. This place has been in my father’s family for generations. It means the world to me. My grandmother lived here as the innkeeper until she passed away, when I was fifteen. Then for a couple of years we had somebody else live here as a caretaker, and when I turned eighteen, I took the job.”

“And your parents lived where?”

“Oh, in town. We worked up here, but we lived closer to things. My mother already sold that house. To pay for her new condo in Florida. She likes it better where the sun shines all the time. But I don’t.”

“Have you ever lived where the sun shone all the time?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know you will not like it?”

“Did you think that you would like making soup?” she asked.

“No.”

“Sometimes you just know things.”

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