Tabitha woke in the predawn light and looked around the room. She was in a twin bed in a bare room with stucco walls the color of butter. She stretched her hands over her head and pulled the sheets around herself. She wondered what time it was. There was no clock in the spare room. Her suitcase was on the floor at the foot of the bed, and she could see her cell phone on top of it, but she didn’t reach for it. Her clothes lay in a heap on the floor, next to a white towel. Giovanni had brought her here last night, and the haze of her international travels and the lingering hangover from her sleeping pill and the gallons of beer had hit her with a wallop. She’d showered and collapsed into this bed, falling into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Her senses were on high alert, her skin against the linen sheets, everything around her sharp and in high relief, as if she’d come out of a deep fog. The window near her bed was cracked open, and she could feel the dewy air coming from outside, perfuming her room with the rich scent of rosemary and an undercurrent of vanilla and black soil. A unique, sweet, and savory memory that told her immediately that she was in the Italian mountains.

She wondered where Giovanni was now, where he slept, if his daughters were here, where they slept. She hadn’t seen much of the house when they arrived; she’d stumbled to the shower and into the bed. Giovanni, to his credit, hadn’t pushed her for details on the drive here. It was a hazy blur to her.

She rolled over and pulled the bedsheets around her. He’d been in here at some point during the night, she remembered. He tiptoed in and stood over her, turned off the light next to her bed, and kissed her forehead. She looked over at the night table and saw a large glass of water. She sat up now and gulped it down gratefully. Surely this was her imagination, but it tasted like the best water she’d ever had in her life. Oranges and basil and clear mountain air. She guzzled it, rivulets of the cool water dripping down her chin and onto her bare chest.

She finished the glass and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, opening her eyes wide when she saw a person standing at her door. It was Giovanni, wearing boxer shorts and an untied robe. He pushed the door shut behind him and looked at her.

Tabitha glanced down. She was naked, cross-legged, the dawn light surrounding her on the bed. She pulled the sheet up over her body and put her hand to her head to smooth down her hair. Giovanni moved to the bed and pulled her hand down.

“Do not touch it.”

“I’m a mess.”

He only stared at her. She let the sheet drop and met his stare.

“Tabitha,” he breathed, and his lips went to her neck, where his tongue chased the droplets of water down over her breasts. He lifted his head to meet her lips in a deep kiss, and put his hands on her waist, pulling her down on her pillow. He moved down her body, his soft lips heating every inch of skin they touched. His hands moved slowly around her, cupping her backside and pulling her from behind so her center would meet his mouth. She gasped in pleasure, and he glanced up and put one finger over her mouth. This house wasn’t big; she would have to be quieter. She put her hand over his and took his fingers in her mouth, matching the rhythm of her tongue to the soft, slow strokes of his. She gripped his hair as she climaxed, arching her back in pleasure. He pressed his hand harder to her lips to quiet her gasps, until, spent, she collapsed on the bed, giggling into a pillow. He grinned up at her and dragged his tongue up her body, between her breasts, to whisper in her ear.

“Buongiorno, bella mia.”

His girls spoke nearly perfect English, which hardly surprised Tabitha. She walked them to school with Giovanni, and they peppered her with questions.

“Have you met Chris Pratt?” Alessia asked.

“No. Is that a YouTube star?”

The girls turned to each other and laughed, and Tabitha winked at Giovanni.

“No. He is an actor.”

“Oh. No, I have not met him. Do you eat pasta every day?”

“No. Have you been to Las Vegas?”

“Yes. It’s foul. Have you been to Milan?”

“Our mother works there. We don’t like it. Do you own a convertible?”

“No. But I once crashed my car into Kevin Bacon’s. Sort of the same thing.”

“Is he in the Avengers?”

“No. But he’s a movie star.”

The girls looked at each other in what Tabitha hoped was amusement and not derision.

“Do you live near Hollywood?”

“Not really.”

“Do you live near a beach?”

“I live near the ocean. It’s rocky and not too beachy. But it’s an easy drive to the beach.”

“Can you surf?”

“No. One time I tried and a pod of dolphins swam by me, and I got distracted and fell off the surfboard.”

Their eyes widened.

“You were surfing? In the waves? And the dolphins surrounded you?” Nicoletta made a cresting motion over her head, simulating a giant wave.

“No. I never stood up, and they were very tiny waves. Beginner waves. Had it been up to my—to the person I was with, we would have started on massive waves, the kind you see in movies. But I’m not good at those things. Balancing, I mean. So I convinced him to start on small waves. Anyway, I was paddling out to the waves, and I saw the dolphins, and I fell off the surfboard.”

“And then you surfed?”

“And then I tried to follow the dolphins, and the person I was with got angry at me. Because he only wanted to surf. But I never cared about surfing; I just wanted to see the dolphins. There were baby dolphins with them, and they kept jumping out of the water like they were playing. I didn’t know dolphins played like that. They were so excited that they couldn’t contain themselves. I swear, I saw the mother dolphins giving the babies the stink eye. You know?” She gave the girls a mock dirty look, and they laughed. “But the babies kept jumping out of the water anyway. And I kept thinking how cool it would be if one of them jumped right over my head. I didn’t want to bother it or anything, but I just wanted it to go over me. I could imagine the spray of water as it leaped over me. So I kept following along trying to catch up to them. But I never did.”

The girls stared as she talked.

“That sounds wonderful,” Giovanni finally commented.

“You know what? It was. And the person I was with was so angry with me. I didn’t learn to surf, which he said was the whole point. But it was one of my best days ever, so I didn’t understand what made him so mad.”

“We saw dolphins from the boat once when we went to Turkey,” Nicoletta said. “But I’ve never been close to one.”

“Nicoletta is going to be a marine biologist,” Alessia announced, looking at her sister with pride. “The best one in the world. She will stop the countries from polluting the oceans.”

“That’s amazing,” Tabitha said. “What about you?”

Alessia didn’t lower her gaze. “I don’t know.”

Tabitha smiled at her and nodded. She had a feeling this child very much did know what she wanted.

The girls walked ahead of them, lapsing into Italian. Tabitha and Giovanni stayed behind, watching them move in unison. They did not touch, careful to remain casual in the presence of the girls, to be, as he told them at breakfast, colleghi. Colleagues. But he smiled at her now, a mixture of affection and pride. When their hands brushed against each other, she let her pinky finger catch his thumb just briefly. But then she jerked it away. She did not mind being his colleghi with benefits. She was here on a break, nothing more. There was no point in getting attached.