‘Yes,’ he said, but he was watching her face. A tiny smile on his lips as her gaze darted about, each new sight making her eyes widen and her mouth open.
Champagne appeared on a tray and he took two glasses and offered her one. Absently she smiled and sipped and he could barely contain his amusement to see her so involved in the business of preparing the ship.
‘You really love this.’
Her eyes were shining. ‘Yes.’
He’d thought he had his walls up, solid, impenetrable walls around his heart, around his desire to even acknowledge his heart. He was doing all right on his own, had been on his own since he’d left home not long after his mother had died, but watching Emily, savouring her pleasure, this was different. Different from anything he’d felt before. And it was not possible. Non e’possibile.
‘Aren’t you?’
He’d lost the train of conversation. ‘Scusi?’
‘Aren’t you enjoying this too?’ She tilted her head and her cap of golden hair swung across her cheek. His fingers itched to reach out and brush it back from her face. It looked like silk. It would feel like silk. Such a caring face for one so beautiful.
This was outside his experience. Usually the more beautiful the woman the more shallow the water. Emily was not such a person. She waited for his answer with anticipation clear in her eyes.
‘Si, the night is very special. You are very special.’
She blushed again and glanced out over the water. ‘I wasn’t fishing.’
‘Of course not.’ This he did not understand. ‘You have no rod.’ He glanced around. ‘You wish to fish?’
She laughed. A throaty, infectious giggle she tried to hide behind her hand. Now, why would she try to hide such a thing of joy?
The waiter came. ‘Evenin’, all.’ Dressed like an English officer, he took their orders and refilled their glasses. Emily grinned at him and the waiter grinned back. Marco frowned.
She looked back at him. ‘I mean I wasn’t looking for a compliment. I don’t want to catch a fish.’ She laughed again and he had to smile back at her.
Her face glowed. Like the first time he’d seen her. ‘I see. A colloquialism. You Australians have many of them. Like the English.’
‘My gran married an Englishman. She told me he always said “give me a butcher’s hook” instead of “give me a look”. It was funny when she said it.’ She smiled at the memory. He’d never seen a woman smile so much. It warmed his cold soul.
‘Tell me about your family. Your parents. Your gran.’
She put her glass down and rested her chin in her hands. ‘My parents? They’re both dead. But they were very strict, traditional, not at all suited to having an unwed pregnant teenager for a daughter.’
He nodded. ‘I see.’ She could tell he did.
‘My gran? She loved me unconditionally. Like I love my daughter. One day I hope to find a relationship like that.’
From a man who could lay down roots and be there for her. One who didn’t immerse himself in his work for a limited time and then pack bags and leave without looking back. Not like him. ‘But not the father of your Annie?’
She shrugged. ‘His family were wealthy. Too good for me. Once the scandal broke he was packed off. We never saw him again.’
He could not comprehend this. ‘Never?’ Then no doubt she was too good for him. Bastardo. ‘He has never seen his daughter?’
‘Never.’ She broke her bread roll, picked up her knife and stabbed the butter. He flinched. She looked up and grinned at his expression.
‘I got over his lack of interest years ago. Though for Annie’s sake I’d have liked him to have made some contact. His parents send money every year on her birthday and I put it in trust. When she’s twenty-one she can do what she likes with it.’
She spread her butter and took a bite with her tiny white teeth just as the entrée arrived. He thought with amusement it was good she’d put the knife down or the sailor could have been frightened.
‘Ooh. Calamari. I love calamari. What’s the Italian word for calamari?’ She made short work of her few pieces and he held back his smile. He liked a woman who didn’t play with her food.
‘I’m sorry.’ He grinned. ‘The same. Calamari.’ He glanced down at his tiny fillets of fish on the bed of lettuce. ‘But the word for fish is pesce.’
‘Pesce,’ she repeated. ‘It almost sounds like fishee.’ She grinned and watched him put the last one in his mouth and he was very conscious of the direction of her eyes. ‘Your English is very good. Much better than my Italian.’
He swallowed the delicious fillet in his mouth without tasting it, his appetite elsewhere. ‘I have spent a lot of time out of Italy.’ He changed the subject back to her. ‘So you went into nursing after your Annie was born?’
She patted her coral lips with her napkin and his attention, again, was caught. It took him a moment to catch up when she spoke. ‘Annie was in Neonatal Intensive Care. She was four weeks early. A prem that took a long time to feed.’
She glanced up at him. ‘I never missed a feed in the three weeks she was there and I fell in love with the midwives. With the special-care nursery. With tiny babies. I’d found what I wanted to do. And Gran, not my parents, supported me.’
He could see her. A vigilant young teen mum with her tiny baby. Turning up, night and day, to be there for her daughter. Incredible. The more he found out, the more she intrigued him.
‘Enough about me.’ So Emily didn’t want to think of the early years. Perhaps what she’d missed out on in her younger days.
She glanced around the ship. ‘They must have engines as well because I don’t think they have enough sail on to make it move this fast. Can we walk around? Check out the other side of the ship?’ She glanced towards the thick mast. ‘Touch things?’
She could touch him. ‘You wish to touch something?’ She picked up on his double meaning and flicked him a warning glance. He was glad the knife was on her plate. She amused him.
‘Si. Of course.’ He stood and helped pull out her chair. Then he crooked his arm and to his delight she slid her hand through and he savoured the feel of her fingers against his skin.
They strolled the deck and the magic of the night fell over them like the soft wrap she wore around her shoulders.
The lights of the harbour twinkled and shone across the water, ferries and paddle-wheel dinner cruisers floated past, and occasionally the sound of a band floated across from a party barge filled with revellers.
This was so much better, to have Emily quietly beside him. Few couples were walking, and the awareness between them grew with the unexpected privacy a bulkhead or a thick mast could provide.
Always the Sydney Harbour Bridge dominated the skyline, they passed under it, the soaring iron structure a thing of great beauty lit like a golden arch, and it receded and became even more magical with distance.
He wished he could hold onto this moment so that he could pack it away in his suitcase when he left here. Perhaps to remove and examine one lonely night in a hotel room on the other side of the world. Stupido.
This would all be over too quickly.
TWO hours later Emily held his hand as they