Julia nodded, getting her travel necessities out of her bag before shoving it under the seat in front of her.
“Business or pleasure?”
He punctuated the word pleasure with a flash of dimples that sent a tingle into places she’d all but forgotten.
“Both.” She buckled her seat belt, enjoying the feel of tightening it around a stomach thirty pounds lighter and much firmer than it had been a year ago. “I’m in interior decorating, so I’ll be on the lookout for unique pieces for my clients. But before I get to the work part, I’ll be hiking the area around Lerici and the Cinque Terre.”
Howard’s eyes squinted. “What’s the Cinque Terre?” He seemed genuinely interested, or else he just wanted to talk to her. She liked either option.
“There are these five villages in Liguria that are connected by a trail overlooking the sea. They’re called the Cinque Terre, and people hike from one to the next. That usually only takes five or six hours, but then there are extra trails running from the villages up into the hills. I plan to hike most all of them.”
Howard let out a low whistle and those jade irises did her a quick once-over. “You must be in great shape.”
Julia’s face grew a tad warm, in what she hoped was a becoming blush. “I’ve been training for a while, but it’s not that bad really. Five to seven miles a day. And the terrain isn’t too rugged.”
“Well, I’m impressed. Training for a while for the fun part of a vacation? I admire that conviction.”
Admire? What a great word. She hadn’t been admired in years. This guy was totally flirting with her and it felt marvelous—like someone had popped the cork on a champagne bottle inside her.
How long had it been since she’d had a fun, flirty conversation with a man? She was forty-eight, had married when she was twenty-three. Twenty-five years? No wonder it seemed so foreign. She’d forgotten how exhilarating it could be.
The flight attendants encouraged the passengers standing in the aisles to find their places quickly with reminders that the flight was already late.
Julia settled back into her seat for the ride. Howard propped his arm on the armrest between them, and when the tight setting brought their arms into contact, the temperature in the plane vaulted several degrees. Julia readjusted the vent above her head so the air streamed directly onto her face.
“So tell me more about these hikes you’ll be taking.” Howard shifted his posture toward her as much as possible with his long legs scrunched against the seat in front of him.
“Well, I have a couple of short hikes in the area around Lerici planned for the first two days. After that I’ll be playing it by . . .”
A willowy brunette with smooth, olive skin plopped into the aisle seat. Her black tank top clung to a pair of breasts that had no need of a bra to support their ample size. Denim short shorts showed off perfectly shaped, tanned legs that must’ve started at her shoulders.
“Scusi,” she murmured in a soft Italian accent.
Howard’s attention diverted so fast, Julia wondered if he would suffer whiplash. “Well, hello there.”
“. . . ear.” Julia finished her sentence, speaking to the back of the chair in front of her.
Howard extended his hand and introduced himself to the new seatmate. The fact she was native Italian must have fascinated him as he immediately started to bombard her with questions about her country, none of which mentioned hiking, his all-consuming interest three minutes before.
And with the appearance of Miss Italy, Julia once again vanished before her own eyes.
She told herself to ignore the slight. She should be used to it by now. But she wasn’t. Something short-circuited inside her every time it happened. More than once she’d noticed how the streak of gray hair running from her left temple looked ominously like burned wires. How long would it be before her motherboard burned out completely? Before she was just a gray box of dead, worn-out wires and fuses?
She reached inside to pinpoint the emotion churning there. It wasn’t jealousy precisely. Watching people fascinated her, and nothing was more intriguing than two beautiful people coming together for the first time. The magic. The spark. She saw that with Melissa and Michael and prayed every day it would continue for them and that the years wouldn’t extinguish it the way it had for her and Frank.
But at that moment, it was the obvious twenty-year age difference—at the very least—between the two people beside her that disgusted her. Men who’d reached the age of Howard and Frank should be interested in more than a woman’s physical makeup. Shouldn’t they have developed an “inner eye”? One preferably located somewhere other than their penis?
Her clenched jaws couldn’t exactly be chalked up to envy either. She didn’t want Howard, didn’t want what anyone else had, except in a general way.
If she had to put a name to it, it would simply be . . . longing. She so longed to feel full again—full of love and desire and life.
Of all the things she resented Frank for—his weakness, his abandonment of her when she needed him, his self-absorption—she shed the most tears over the loss of the life she used to know. The loss of who she used to be.
Now she was a white sneaker in a world of stilettos.
Howard’s right shoulder cocked far enough forward to give her a spectacular view of his shoulder and the nape of his neck. He chatted easily with the brunette, who soon discovered the book he’d placed in the seat pocket in front of him was “the most amazing book” she’d read in a long time. And it sounded infinitely more appealing described in a sultry, Italian accent.
Armed with her new copy of Interesting Interiors, Julia prepared for what was shaping up to be a very long flight.
In the seats next to her, the book club met throughout the takeoff, the climb to cruising altitude, the meal, and the start of the movie, which was one she’d seen recently. Although it wasn’t entertaining enough to sit through again, she watched it anyway, hoping it would put her to sleep.
It didn’t.
She donned her blindfold and her ear buds, willing the music on her Sleepytime playlist to drown out the sounds of the growing acquaintance.
The blow-up travel pillow wasn’t nearly as comfortable as the woman on the box, smiling in her perfectly restful sleep, implied. But Julia tuned her music to the series of Strauss waltzes and imagined herself as the woman on the box. She smiled dreamily and coaxed her mind into a restful frame for all of seven minutes, at which time she woke with a start to the mortifying realization she had drooled down the front of her blanket.
Fretting her seatmates might’ve noticed or that her fidgeting might bother them seemed needless, though. Howard’s left-hand lady had him so absorbed, three-year-old ADHD twins could’ve been sitting in the window seat and he wouldn’t have noticed.
With that comforting thought, Julia relaxed and enjoyed almost two full hours of sleep before the crew started waking everyone for breakfast.
Howard did acknowledge her presence once more when he passed a cup of coffee to her. His eyes took her in with a quick once-over. “Rough night, huh?”
She looked at him closely. Lancelot’s irises had changed. They were actually more jaded than jade. She took the coffee without comment, sipping it as Milan appeared on the horizon.
When the plane landed, Howard and Venus de Milo scurried off together, his hand casually pressed against the small of her back.
Julia managed to get her carry-on out of the overhead compartment by herself.
After a two-hour layover, a second flight took her from Milan to Genoa. A taxi ride to the train