“You own all of this?” They stood on the crest of a hill, holding their hands over their eyes to gaze across the rolling vineyards in the dappled sunlight in front of them.

“My family does. That is my brother’s home.” He pointed to a small farmhouse about a half-mile away. “He runs our vineyard with his wife and four sons.”

“And your uncle Francesco runs the family enoteca,” Tabitha said, and shook her head in embarrassment. “I believe I owe him an apology. I was not very nice last time we met.”

Giovanni waved her concern away. “People come to Italy to forget their pain. Francesco understands this.”

“Did you ever think of doing anything else?”

“Why would I?”

She laughed at his sturdy determination.

They walked along the ridge to a stand of cypress trees. “Is there any room to expand?” she asked. “If your winery grows, can you buy more vineyards?”

A stone banister ran through the land in front of them, and Giovanni leaned against it now, gazing out over the hills.

“It is enough. What we have is enough.”

“But do you ever want to do more?”

Tabitha watched his face as he stared out over his land. The light wind had died down, and he breathed deeply, as if taking stock of the land through all of his senses. The sun glinted off his olive skin, and Tabitha could see just the beginnings of stubble forming along the ridge of his neck. He wore a blazer over his linen shirt today, and his muscles pulled against the fabric. “I want to do different things. Sometimes we plant vines from other vineyards so we can make something new.” Giovanni pulled her to him, standing behind her, his body against hers. She leaned her head back so that it rested on his broad chest, and when he started speaking again, she could feel his mouth move against her temple.

“I do not want it bigger. That world, that need to take over everything, it is not for me.” He lifted his arm from her waist and pointed across the valley. “That is my cousin Elena’s vineyard. She also supplies us with grapes, and grows the best Pinot Bianco in all of Valdobbiadene.” He shifted his arm to the right, pointing to another field. “I grew up with their son; we attended the same school. The son now lives in Sicily but comes home every harvest season. His father helps me with all the bottling. Over there.” He pointed to the right, and Tabitha leaned her head so it rested against his bicep. “That farm is run by the first girl I kissed. Portia Santoro. She has two children, and they make taleggio cheese, which we serve at our winery.”

He dropped his arm back around her waist, and Tabitha closed her eyes and enjoyed the warm sun on her body, the cool breeze moving the folds of her skirt gently around her legs.

“It’s beautiful here,” she murmured.

“When people ask me why I do not make more wine, make it bigger, sell in every store, I have to tell them that I already have what I want.”

“You have everything.”

He hesitated a moment, then bent down to gently kiss her neck. “Not everything,” he whispered.

Tabitha closed her eyes and thought about the wine she would make to capture this moment. Scented with piney breezes and loamy earth and warm vanilla sunshine. Pulsing with possibility and an undercurrent of lust and electricity. A warm, soothing afterglow of something that felt suspiciously like love.

She turned to meet his mouth, to wrap her arms around him, to bring him closer to her.

“Don’t you want to frame these?”

The SommFest medals hung from a hook behind his office door. Giovanni glanced up from his work and seemed surprised to see the gold in her hands. He shrugged and went back to his work. “Someday, maybe.”

Tabitha had quickly fallen into a routine with Giovanni’s family. They took the girls to school and then she went to work with him, walking the fields, talking to farmers, tasting grapes. He introduced her to his staff, asked her opinion about new blends. She began to understand his method, as she watched him work, saw his focus on a pure expression of his corner of Italy. He moved slowly at work, thought through each decision, always put the taste of the wine first. Tabitha studied him, watched the way his eyebrows knitted as he thought out a decision, the way he closed his eyes and inhaled deeply every time he tasted a wine. It was a thoughtful, slow approach to work that she had never seen before.

In the late afternoon, they returned to his house to make dinner with the girls. He claimed to have never brought a woman home before, for the sake of his daughters. When they were around, Tabitha and Giovanni were careful to maintain some physical distance, at least initially. She still slept in the spare bedroom, at least as far as his daughters could see. If her hand grazed his or he kissed her chastely on the cheek, she would occasionally see the girls glance at each other. But they didn’t seem disturbed by it. It was almost as if they were seeing their father differently, or as if they hadn’t realized he had this kind of affection in him and they were startled, but not wholly upset, by it.

The evenings grew cool, and on most nights, Giovanni started a fire in the wood-burning stove in the center of the living room. The girls had spent dinner complaining about an exam they’d taken at school, and how much homework they had to complete. Now they all collapsed around the crackling fire, letting the quiet night overtake them. The sun set and no one seemed to have the energy to stand up and turn on any house light, so they let the room darken around them, let the auburn light bounce off their faces and dance around the room. Tabitha sat next to Giovanni on the couch, sipping a red wine he’d poured for them. Her head rested on the cushion behind her, and she had a sharp image of the night just over a week ago, when she thought her ribs might crack from the sadness in the back of Mark and Liz’s car. At the time, her loneliness overwhelmed her.

Giovanni had stretched out his legs and intertwined his ankle with hers on the coffee table in front of the couch. Tabitha looked at the way their legs matched, the way her ankle had locked in with his, and she had not even noticed that he did it. Positive and negative ions, searching each other out.

She took the last sip of her wine, and Giovanni took the empty glass from her and set it on the side table next to him. The heat of the fireplace enveloped her with a drowsy stillness, and she let her head drift to his shoulder. His arm went around her, and he pulled her in closer. They watched the girls, lying on their stomachs, flipping through magazines and peeling tiny tangerines, flinging the peels into the fire. A warm, smoky orange scent filled the room.

Nicoletta glanced back, took in her father on the couch with Tabitha draped against him, his arm around her. Giovanni’s fingers stopped the languid twirling of her hair. For just an instant, he froze. His daughter turned back to the fire.

“If you lived here, Tabitha, we could do this every night,” Alessia murmured.

Now it was Tabitha’s turn to freeze. She kept her head on Giovanni’s chest, tried to infer his reaction by listening to his pulse through his shirt.

“Wouldn’t you get tired of doing this every single night?” she asked.

“No,” the girls said in unison, without looking back.

“Neither would I,” Giovanni said, loud enough for the girls to hear.

Tabitha curved her arm around Giovanni’s chest and nestled into him, no longer listening for his heartbeat, as it matched her own perfectly.