Flirting with Italian
Flirting with Italian
Liz Fielding
Could stepping into the past make your future perfect? Sarah’s been dumped. Unceremoniously. Painfully. A romantic at heart and a historian by profession, Sarah has always wondered about her grandfather’s wartime romance in Italy. Who was that brave woman who cared for him during the war? Clearly this is the time to heal her wounds with the trip of a lifetime to Rome.Armed only with a photo of the house her grandfather stayed in, the village, and the name Lucia, Sarah sets out to find her…and meets the beautiful Italian count Matteo di Serrone there. Now here’s a man who could move Sarah on from her broken heart! It’s a fairy-tale romance, until Sarah realises she’s made the most rookie mistake of all: falling in love with her holiday fling…
Praise for Liz Fielding
‘Alongside the humour, this story contains a large sprinkling of emotion, synonymous with every Liz Fielding story, that will have the reader reaching for the tissues while swallowing the lump in her throat. This is one story you don’t want to miss!’
—romancereviewed.blogspot.com on
The Secret Life of Lady Gabriella
‘Fielding’s deft handling is a triumph. The characters are fabulous, the relationship between them complex and nuanced … and keep a tissue handy at the end!’
RT Book Reviews on SOS: Convenient Husband Required
‘… a magnificent setting, a feisty heroine, and a sexy hero—a definite page-turner. Who could ask for anything more?’
—Still Moments eZine on
A Wedding at Leopard Tree Lodge
About the Author
LIZ FIELDING was born with itchy feet. She made it to Zambia before her twenty-first birthday and, gathering her own special hero and a couple of children on the way, lived in Botswana, Kenya and Bahrain—with pauses for sightseeing pretty much everywhere in between. She finally came to a full stop in a tiny Welsh village cradled by misty hills, and these days mostly leaves her pen to do the travelling.
When she’s not sorting out the lives and loves of her characters, she potters in the garden, reads her favourite authors, and spends a lot of time wondering ‘What if …?’
For news of upcoming books—and to sign up for her occasional newsletter—visit Liz’s website at www.lizfielding.com
Also by Liz Fielding
The Last Woman He’d Ever Date
Mistletoe and the Lost Stiletto
SOS: Convenient Husband Required
A Wedding at Leopard Tree Lodge
Her Desert Dream
Secret Baby, Surprise Parents
Wedded in a Whirlwind
Did you know these are also available as eBooks?Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk
Flirting with Italian
Liz Fielding
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
I dedicate this book to my wonderful editor, Bryony Green,
who has held my hand, uncomplainingly, through more
than twenty books. She has saved a book gone wrong
with ‘Perhaps if you …’ We have agonised over titles,
dined in New York, celebrated an award at the Ritz and
danced the night away in Washington. It’s been great.
CHAPTER ONE
ITALIAN FOR BEGINNERS
My bag is packed, my flight booked. While my students are all flapping about in a last minute panic about coursework that needs to be handed to their new teacher in the first week of term, I’ll be getting to grips with the rush hour in Rome, first day nerves and life in a foreign language.
If they think that because I’ll be surrounded by art, culture, high fashion and endless sunshine, I’ve got the best deal, well, they may be right. At the moment I’m only concerned about where I’m going to live, how different this new school will be from Maybridge and whether my new students like me.
Watch this space …
‘I’VE got a new job, Lex. In Rome.’
‘You’re leaving Maybridge High? The “world’s most perfect job”?’
Sarah Gratton had been doing a fine job of convincing her colleagues that she couldn’t wait to get on that plane. Actually, that part was true, but it was more escape than adventure and she should have known that her great-grandfather would see right through a smile that was making her face ache.
He might be rising ninety but he walked into town each morning to pick up his newspaper, and his brain was still sharp enough to do The Times crossword in ten minutes flat.
‘Tom was so popular, the kids loved him.’ Her thumb automatically moved to fiddle with the ring that was no longer there. ‘I feel as if everyone blames me for him leaving.’
‘He’s the one who cheated, Sarah. If you give up the job you love, you lose twice.’
‘He didn’t cheat.’
Didn’t cheat. Didn’t lie. Didn’t pretend. He was incapable of that. He’d told her that he still loved her, but that he’d fallen in love with someone else.
He’d told her at the beginning of the half term holiday, giving her a whole week before she had to walk into the staff room. Face everyone.
What he hadn’t told her was that he’d resigned, taken a job she knew he’d hate at the sports centre in Melchester.
Until then it hadn’t been real.
She’d heard the words but hadn’t been able to take them in. Had convinced herself that when she turned up in the staffroom on Monday morning everything would be as it should be. Back to normal.
But he hadn’t been there.
He’d had time to think it through, to accept that working together in the goldfish bowl of school would be impossible. He was the one who’d sacrificed the job that was his life. That was how much he loved her.
How much he was in love with someone else.
She’d worked really hard to be worthy of that sacrifice. To think of her students when all she wanted to do was to curl up in a corner and bawl her eyes out.
She’d cleaned every trace of him out of her flat so that she wouldn’t keep tripping over the memories. Put away photographs. Stopped going to the places where they’d hung out with their friends.
But she couldn’t scrub him out of school.
He was an invisible presence in the photographs of the teams he’d coached to glory. In the whiff of steaming boys, the clatter of their boots as they came in from the cricket field. In the sound of a whistle on the sports field that had once linked her to him like an invisible thread, but now went through her like a knife.
‘Besides,’ she said, ‘I’m not losing, I’m catching up on my life. You were the one who was so keen on me taking a gap year, having fun, doing the travel thing before I settled down.’
‘You’re not eighteen now,’ her great-grandfather pointed out. ‘And you’re not taking a year off to see the world or have fun.’
‘I’d feel like a matron amongst the backpackers. This way I get the best of both worlds. Great job. Great location. I only hope I live up to the terrific reference the Head gave me.’
He dismissed her doubts with a wave of his hand. ‘Won’t the language be a problem?’
‘It’s an international school. Children of diplomats, UN officials, foreigners living in Rome,’ she explained.
Eight hundred miles away from everyone who knew her as half of a couple.
It had been Tom-and-Sarah from the first day she’d started at Maybridge High when, shaking with nerves, she’d managed to throw a cup of coffee over the blond giant who was head of the sports department. Instead of calling her the idiot she clearly was, he’d smiled, and in the gaze of his clear blue eyes the world had steadied.
She’d offered to wash his kit. He’d said he’d settle for a pint, and her world had remained steady until a new supply teacher had arrived one dark morning in January when half the staff were laid low with flu.
It had been like watching an approaching car crash that she was powerless to stop. The sudden silence as a new face had appeared in the staffroom. Tom, the first to step forward to welcome her—always, always so kind with new people. The contact had lasted no more than a second or two but time had seemed to stand still as their eyes met and, as Sarah looked on, she’d felt the scorching heat of the spark that leapt between Tom and Louise, and her world had shifted off its axis.
‘I’ll soon get to know people,’ she said. ‘Teaching isn’t a job you can do in isolation. And I’ll be in Rome,’ she stressed. ‘One of the most glamorous cities in the world.’
In one bound she’d freed herself from being the most pitied woman in the staffroom and become the most envied.
Not that she’d escaped entirely. She’d done her best to resist the Head’s suggestion that she write a blog about her experiences.
‘I know it’s been a tough few months, but things will look different after a break. I expect you back next year,’ he’d told her.
‘You don’t need me, Headmaster, you need Tom. Call him.’
‘And have everyone think I’ve got you out of the way so that I can bring him back? How would that look?’ he’d asked.
Dodgy, obviously, she thought, as the penny had dropped. That was why he wanted her to write the blog. So that it would look as if she was still part of the school.
Glowing references had, it seemed, to be paid for. And it wasn’t as if anyone would read it. The staff would be too busy and, as for the kids, well, why would they bother?
Sarah started as Lex took her hand.
‘It’s not far,’ she told him. ‘I’ll be home for visits so often you’ll be sick of me. Half term. The holidays.’
‘What for? To see an old man?’ His gesture was dismissive. ‘Don’t waste your time or your money. Enjoy Italy while you have the chance.’
‘I’ll have plenty of time to see everything.’ And she could travel with the money she’d been saving for her wedding, for the big dress. Her share of the deposit they had been saving for a house. One with a garden for the children they would have had one day.
‘There’s never enough time,’ he warned her. ‘Your life goes by in a flash. Enjoy every minute of it.’
‘Of course,’ she said, on automatic.
‘No, I mean really enjoy it.’ He regarded her with that thoughtful gaze that his patients would have recognised when he had still been in practice. The one that saw through the ‘headaches’ to the real problem. ‘I prescribe an affair,’ he said. ‘No falling in love, breaking your heart stuff, mind. Nothing serious,’ he warned. ‘A just-for-fun romance with some dark-eyed Italian. A memory to make you smile rather than weep. To keep you warm at night when you’re old.’
‘Lex! You are outrageous.’
He grinned. ‘Trust me. I’m a doctor.’
She laughed. ‘Outrageous and wonderful and I love you.’ They’d always been close. Her parents loved her, did all the parent stuff brilliantly. Her grandparents had spoiled her. But Lex was the one who never had anything better to do than tell her stories and, as he leaned back in his chair, his eyes on some unseen horizon, she knew exactly what he was going to say next.
‘Did I ever tell you about the time I was in Italy during the war?’
‘Once or twice.’ It had been a favourite story when she was a little girl.
How his plane had developed engine trouble and he’d had to bail out. How he’d nearly died of the cold.
It was a story that had grown with the years. With the telling. Embellished, embroidered. She’d never known her great-grandmother, but her grandmother had always claimed that he never spoiled a good story by telling the truth. Her mother had simply rolled her eyes.
‘Tell me again,’ Sarah urged him. ‘Tell me how you were saved by a beautiful Italian girl who found you half-dead in the snow. How she nursed you, hid you for months until the Allies arrived.’
‘You know it by heart.’
Maybe she did, but that was the point of a comfort story. Its familiarity.
‘Gran always said you made up most of it. That the lovely Lucia was really some tough old bird who hid you in her cow shed for a week,’ she said, knowing exactly how to get him going. And off her case.
‘Your grandmother knows nothing.’ Nearly ninety but still with a wicked twinkle in his eye. ‘The house had been grand before the Fascists reduced it to rubble. And Lucia was …’ He stopped. ‘Pass me my box and I’ll show you.’
‘Show me?’
There was always some new little twist to the story, some detail to be added: a new danger, a risk taken for food or warmth, a small pleasure to be found amongst the hardship. But this was totally unexpected.
‘The box,’ he repeated.
She’d seen the contents of the old tartan biscuit box a hundred times. There had never been a photograph of Lucia and, as she handed it to him, she half expected it to be a joke of some kind. But there was none of the usual teasing and when he opened the lid, instead of going through it—a memory recalled with each medal, photograph, memento collected during a long life, well-lived—he tipped it up, emptying everything on to the table beside him.
It was a small table and papers, coins, trinkets spilled over onto the floor. Sarah knelt to gather them up. Smoothed out the corner of the small sepia photograph of her great-grandma that he had carried with him through the war.
‘Leave those,’ he said. ‘Your nails are longer than mine. See if you can get this out.’
The base of the box was lined with a piece of black card, scuffed by years of wear. Now, as she eased it out, she discovered that it concealed a photograph.
He gave an awkward little shrug.
‘Not something to leave lying around where it would upset your great-grandmother.’
Upset?
It was an old grainy black-and-white photograph of a slender young woman with dark hair, dark eyes, dark brows, a full, sensuous mouth.
Scratched, carefully stuck together where it had obviously been torn into pieces—presumably by a very upset great-grandma—spotted with age, her face leapt out of the past.
‘She was lovely,’ she said, turning to catch a look of such tenderness in his eyes that she felt a lump rise to her throat. ‘I can’t begin to imagine how hard it must have been.’
It made her emotional hiccup seem pretty feeble in comparison.
‘Be glad of that,’ he told her, then seemed to drift for a moment, no doubt recalling the hardships. Or maybe it was Lucia’s beauty that he remembered.
She was sitting on a crumbling stone wall, her dark hair gleaming in the sun. Behind her were the remains of a house that might well have once been grand, but was now largely rubble.
It had not, after all, been a fairy tale but real and desperate. This woman had risked her life to save a stranger, shown courage it was hard to imagine.
Her full mouth was smiling and her dark almond-shaped eyes betrayed everything she felt for the man taking the photograph. Was this a secret memory that kept him warm at night?
‘I should have gone back,’ he said, rousing himself. ‘When it was all over. But I had a wife, a son at home …’ His voice trailed away.
Sarah covered his hand with her own. ‘It was wartime, Lex.’ He might have been discovered at any moment. Shot. Lucia, too.
‘Don’t waste your time …’
‘She risked her life to save me, but when the Allies reached Rome there was no time for anything. Hardly time to say goodbye before I was shipped out. Returned to a wife who had long since given me up for dead.’
‘Did you ever try to get in touch?’ she asked. ‘After the war?’
‘I wrote. Sent some money. Asked her to let me know if she needed anything. There was no reply and in the end I thought it best to let it go, thinking that letters, money from an English airman might cause her problems. Embarrassment …’ He shook his head. ‘Your grandmother was on the way by then, I was working night and day to catch up with my studies.’ He shrugged. ‘We got on with things.’
Lived with the rushed wartime marriage, vows made when his life was counted in hours rather than years.
‘It was a good life,’ he said, as if reading her thoughts.
‘I know.’ She’d turned the photograph over and read out, ‘“June nineteen forty-four. Isola del Serrone”. Is that the village she lived in? I wonder if she’s still alive?’
‘She’d be in her eighties,’ he said doubtfully.
‘A stripling lass compared to you.’ And with those bones, those eyes, she’d still be beautiful. ‘You should try to find her.’
‘No …’
‘It shouldn’t be that difficult.’ She reached for his laptop and searched the internet for the name of the village. ‘Let’s see. An actress was born there. And a racing driver …’ She glanced up. ‘How small was this village?’
She had clicked on the link to the racing driver and found herself looking at a photograph of a man in overalls, a crash helmet under his arm.
‘Oh, how awful!’ she exclaimed.
‘What?’
‘The racing driver was killed in a practice session in nineteen eighty-three, leaving a wife and young son.’ She skimmed through the caption. ‘But they lived in Turin. This looks more like it,’ she said, clicking on another link. ‘A vineyard. It’s a local co-operative producing prize-winning wine …’
‘Leave it, Sarah.’ She looked up. ‘Some things are better left in the past.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Lucia will have had a family. No one wants old skeletons to come rattling out of the cupboard.’
‘You’re not an old skeleton …’ Then, seeing that he really meant it, added, ‘Sorry. I’m being bossy. It goes with the job.’ But as he made a move to return the picture to the bottom of the box, she said, ‘Don’t shut her away.’
‘This is in no fit state to put in a frame,’ he protested.
‘I know someone who can scan it, clean it up so that it looks like new. We all need memories to keep us warm at night. You said it,’ she pointed out.
‘So I did. And I’ll let you take it, clean it up, if you’ll promise to take the medicine I’ve prescribed.’
‘The Italian lover?’
‘Night and morning until all symptoms of heartache are completely gone,’ he said with a smile.
ITALIAN FOR BEGINNERS
Oh, good grief. Where to start? Who was she talking to? Her students? Colleagues? Parents?
Herself …
I can see you all, sitting on the wall before assembly, grumbling about having to read Miss Gratton’s blog on top of all that revising you have to do.
You are revising? Do it right once and History will be just that. History. Unless you’re living in Rome, where you’re surrounded by it. No! Don’t switch off!
I know you think that this blog is going to be all about ancient Romans, old ruins and churches. Boring.
That if you leave a comment I’ll be marking it out of ten. Or worse, that if you don’tleave a comment telling me how much you’re missing me I’ll give you cyber detention.
Who was she kidding? No fifteen-year-old was going to waste time reading this. She was just going through the motions. A week or two and she could forget it. Not that the blog was helping. It was hard not to think about Tom back in the staffroom, his smile as he looked up and saw her …
She sighed, reread what she’d written so far.
…cyber detention.
You can relax. I’ll take it as read.
Before we get to the boring stuff …
Boring was good. The sooner they switched off the better.
… boring stuff, however, I thought you’d like to see where I live.
The street is very narrow, cobbled and so steep that it has a step every couple of metres. It’s inaccessible to cars, although that doesn’t stop boys on Vespas—a danger to life and limb—using it as a shortcut.
I live on the top floor of the yellow house on the left. No need for a workoutin the gym. The hill and the stairs will keep me fit.
It had been raining when she’d arrived and she’d been soaked through by the time she’d hauled her luggage up from the street. It hadn’t occurred to her to carry a raincoat; she was going to Rome, city of eternal sunshine. Ha!
And she was out of shape. The stairs might kill her …
I have a tiny terrace. The geranium is a gift from my new students (you might want to make a note of that), who are all extremely tidy …
More than tidy. Well groomed, fashion-conscious, even the boys—especially the boys—with their designer-label wardrobes.
… well behaved and produce their homework on time.
A comment guaranteed to have her students switching off en masse.
This is the view.
A fabulous panorama of the city. Domes, red tiled roofs and the Victor Emmanuelle Memorial like a vast wedding cake at its heart. It was a view made to share while you drank an early morning cup of coffee, or a glass of wine in the evening, with the city lights spread out below you.
Hard not to imagine sharing it with Tom, although he hated travelling. Getting him on the cross Channel ferry for a weekend in France had been hard work.
It was a little soon to have made any progress in the ‘Italian lover’ department so, for the moment, she and her mug of cocoa had it all to themselves.
You’re right, there are loads of churches. The dome in the distance on the left is St Peter’s, by the way. In case you’re interested. And this is the Mercato Esquilino, the local market where I shop for food.
There’s a lot of stuff that you won’t find in Maybridge market. These zucchini flowers—courgettes to you—for instance. I bought some and put them in a bowl because the yellow is so cheery …
She deleted cheery. She did not want anyone to think she needed cheering up.
… so gorgeous, but the locals eat them stuffed with a dab of soft cheese and deep-fried in a feather-light batter.
And, for the girls, especially the ones in the staffroom, this is Pietro, who sells the most sublime dolcelatte and mortadella.
The food here is fabulous and I am going to need every one of those four flights of stairs if I’m not to burst out of my new clothes.
Oh, yes. The clothes.
And suddenly she was enjoying herself.
She’d been met at the airport by Pippa, the school secretary, a young Englishwoman living in Rome with her Italian boyfriend. It was Pippa who had found her the apartment on the top floor of a crumbling old house. Apparently it belonged to the boyfriend’s family. Sarah’s first reaction on seeing it had been, ‘What?’
It was a world away from her modern flat in Maybridge but, having been in Rome for a couple of weeks, she realised how lucky she was to get something so central. And she’d quickly fallen in love with its odd-shaped rooms, high ceilings and view.
Pippa had introduced her to the transport system, shown her around and, having taken one look at her wardrobe, warned her that the cheap and cheerful tops, skirts and trousers that had been ‘teacher uniform’ at Maybridge High would not cut the mustard in Rome. Here, quality, rather than quantity, mattered.
New job. New life. New clothes seemed the obvious extension and Pippa had happily introduced her to cut-price, Italian style. Discount designer outlets that specialised in Armani, Versace, Valentino. Fabulous fabrics and exquisite tailoring that looked all the better for the weight that had dropped off her in the past few months. And, of course, a pair of genuine designer sunglasses.
Her knock-offs from Maybridge market wouldn’t fool anyone here, especially not her students, who wore cashmere sweaters and designer label everything with catwalk style.
Italians are incredibly elegant, even in the classroom, and my first task was a complete revamp of my working wardrobe. It was tough, but I know you’ll appreciate my sacrifice.
Spending so much on clothes had come as a bit of a shock to the system but her savings account was no longer burdened with the price of her dream wedding dress. And handing over her credit card to pay for her spending spree had slammed the door on any lingering hope that Tom might come back. Or that her sacrifice in giving up her job so that he could return to Maybridge High would bring him to his senses.
It was too late for him to be having regrets.
There is also a rule that no one should come to Italy without buying at least one pair of shoes. I bought these. And these. And these.
She stretched out her foot to admire the sandal she was wearing. Well, she wasn’t on holiday. One pair was never going to be enough and, just to make the point, she picked up her phone and took a photograph of it.
As you can see, there is a lot more to Rome than a load of old ruins, but since you’re expecting churches and I wouldn’t want to disappoint you, this is Santa Maria del Popolo. You’ll probably recognise it from one of the gorier bits in the film Angels & Demons.
Rome, boring? I think not.
The blog was probably not quite what the Head had in mind, Sarah thought, smiling to herself. With luck he’d remove the link from the school website sooner rather than later. Then, as she loaded up the pictures, she wondered if Tom would bother to read it. Whether Louise could resist taking a look.
Those shoes would provoke envy in the heart of any woman. Especially one whose ankles were swelling …
Several of her ex-colleagues had made a point of texting Sarah to let her know that Louise was pregnant, but not before Tom had told her himself. Wanting her to know before she heard it from anyone else. As if it would hurt any less.
She gave herself a mental bad-girl slap as she clicked ‘post’, but there were limits to her nobility.
Finally, she checked her email. There was one from her mother, attaching a photograph of her dad being presented with an award from work for twenty-five years service. Another from Lex, who wanted to know how she was progressing in her search for a dark-eyed Italian lover.
Short answer; she’d had no time.
Faced with a slightly different syllabus to the one she’d been teaching, getting to know her students and finding her way around a strange city, she didn’t have a spare moment. She’d even taken a rain check on Pippa’s offer to go clubbing with her and her boyfriend, and she replied to Lex, telling him so.
Or perhaps she was just being cowardly. Getting back into dating was hard. She couldn’t imagine being with someone else. Kissing, touching, being touched by anyone else.
There were a couple of emails from colleagues at Maybridge High, asking how she was coping. One wanting to know when she could come and stay. The other wanting to know when she’d be home for the weekend.
She wrote cheery replies saying, ‘any time’ to the first, ‘no idea’ to the second, telling them both about the shopping, sightseeing and her new colleagues, several of whom had invited her to spend her weekends with their families.
It was kind of them but the last thing she wanted was for her social life to revolve around work.
Been there. Done that. Using the T-shirt as a duster.
It wasn’t as if there was any shortage of things to see and do.
Her degree might be in History but the Romans, beyond Julius Caesar, Hadrian’s Wall and Antony and Cleopatra, were pretty much a blank page and her spare time had been spent being a total tourist, sucking up the sights, taking pictures.
But Lucia had been on her mind a lot and on Saturday she was going to visit the village of Isola del Serrone.
Sarah had no intention of revealing her identity. She just wanted to know what had happened to Lucia. If she had a good life. And, if she was still alive, that she was well cared for. Her family owed her that.
CHAPTER TWO
ITALIAN FOR BEGINNERS
This weekend, dear readers, I abandoned culture, history, the familiarity of the city and took a train ride out into the Italian countryside.
It’s a bit unnerving, buying a ticket in a foreign language. I’m working on my Italian and I can ask the right questions. ‘Un’andata e ritorno, per favore …’
Unfortunately, I don’t understand the answers. It’s like listening to a radio that’s slipped off the station. My ear isn’t tuned in to the sounds, the inflections of the language. I have to listen ten times as hard and even then I’m only catching one word in five.
Somehow, though, I caught the right train and made it safely to my destination.
MATTEO DI SERRONE was furious. Isabella di Serrrone might be the darling of the Italian cinema, but right at that moment she was no favourite of his.
He’d planned an early escape from Rome, but had instead become embroiled in his cousin’s latest indiscretions when she’d arrived on his doorstep with an army of paparazzi in her wake.
She knew how he loathed the media. They’d all but destroyed his mother and they would do the same to her if she gave them half a chance.
Now, instead of a quiet early morning drive to Isola del Serrone, a day in the vineyards checking that everything was ready for the harvest, he was in her limousine, playing Pied Piper to her escort, with his sulky teenage brother for company.
‘Cheer up, Stephano. You, at least, are getting something out of this,’ Matteo said.
‘Stop acting the hard man. You know you’d do anything for Bella,’ came the swift reply.
He glanced at the boy. Made-up, in wig and dark glasses, with his cousin’s coat thrown around his shoulders, he was pretty enough to be mistaken for her. Pretty enough to have fooled the following pack of photographers.
‘Not quite anything,’ Matteo said and, as he grinned, the tension leached out of him. ‘I promise you that, not even for Bella, would I be prepared to wear lipstick.’
The mountains towered, clear and sharp, rising dramatically from the valley floor. Sarah looked up at them, peaceful, unthreatening in the sunlight, and tried to imagine them in the middle of winter. Covered in snow. The haunt of wolves and bears.
Unless, of course, Lex had made it up about the wolves and bears. Which was entirely possible.
Early in October, the sun was still strong enough for her to be glad of the straw hat she wore to keep it off her face. She paused by the bridge to look down at the river, trickling over stones, very low after the long hot summer. Took her time as she walked up the hill towards the village, looking around her for a glimpse of a familiar wall. The ruins of a once grand house.
Steps led up to a piazza, golden in the sunlight, shaded with trees. There were small shops, a café where the aproned proprietor was setting out tables and a church that seemed far too large for such a small place.
It was pretty enough to be a film set and she stood in the centre of the square, turning in a slow circle, taking photographs with her phone, making sure that she missed nothing.
As she came to a standstill she realised that she was being stared at by the man wearing the apron.
‘Buon giorno,’ she called.
He stared at her for a moment, then nodded briefly before retreating inside.
She shrugged. Not exactly an arms-wide welcome and, instead of crossing the square to have a coffee, ask him about the village, she walked towards the church. It was possible that the priest would be her best bet. She’d scanned a copy of Lucia’s photograph onto her netbook before framing one for Lex, but she didn’t have it with her. She wasn’t planning on flashing it around. But she could at least describe the house.
It was dark inside after the glare of the sun, but she could see that several people were waiting in the pews by the confessional boxes. Clearly the priest was going to be busy for a while.
It was a pretty church, beautifully painted, with a number of memorial plaques on the walls. Maybe one of them would bear the name Lucia? It would be a starting place.
As she looked around, a woman arranging flowers in a niche by a statue of the Madonna stared at her over the glasses perched on the end of her nose. Clearly the village wasn’t used to strangers and, feeling like an intruder, she decided to come back later when the church was quiet. Once outside, she followed a path that continued up the hill.
High ground.
That was what she needed. Somewhere she could look down on the village, see everything.
She continued upwards, passed houses tucked away behind high walls that offered only the occasional glimpse of a tiny courtyard, a pot of bright flowers, through wrought-iron gates. Above her there were trees, the promise of open vistas and she pressed on until she found the way unexpectedly blocked by a wall that looked a lot newer than the path.
There was a gate set into it but, as she reached for the handle, assuming that it was to keep goats from wandering into the village, it was flung open by a young man with a coat bundled under his arm.
It was hard to say which of them was most startled but he recovered first and, with a slightly theatrical bow, said, ‘Il mio piacese, signora!’
‘No problem …’ Then, as he held the gate wide for her. ‘Thank you.’ No … ‘Grazie.’
‘My pleasure, signora Inglese. Have a good day,’ he said, grinning broadly, clearly delighted with life.
She watched him bound down the steps. By the time he’d reached the square he was talking twenty to the dozen into his phone.
Smiling at such youthful energy, she looked around her. There was nothing beyond the wall except a rough path which led upwards through thick, scrubby woods to the top of the hill. With luck, there would be a clearing at the top, a viewpoint from which she could survey the surrounding countryside.
She closed the gate and carried on, catching the occasional glimpse of a vast vineyard sloping away into the distance on her right. Then, as she neared the top of the hill, the thicket thinned out and her heart stopped.
Ahead of her, the path edged towards a tumbledown stretch of wall. Part of it had fallen away so long ago that weeds had colonised it, growing out of cracks in the stone.
Patches of dry yellow lichens spread themselves out in the sun where Lucia had sat, smiling one last time for a man who was going away. Who she must have known she’d never see again.
Only a dusty footprint suggested that anyone had been this way since.
She took a step nearer. Reached out to lay her hand on the warm stone.
Here. Lucia had sat here. And as she looked up she saw a house. The house. No longer a grey, blurry ruin in an old photograph, but restored and far larger, grander than she’d realised.
It wasn’t the front, but the side view of the house and what had been rubble in her picture was now a square tower, the stucco a soft, faded umber in the strong sunlight.
There were vines, heavy with fruit, trailing over a large pergola at the rear. A rustic table set beneath it where generations of a family could eat beneath its shade.
The garden was full of colour. And above the distant sound of a tractor, the humming of insects in the midday heat, she could hear water running.
The spring that had been their only water supply all through that harsh winter.
Her hands were shaking as she used her phone to take a photograph of the restored scene. Only the wall—Lucia’s wall—had not been rebuilt. But why would it be? There was no one up here to keep out. On the contrary, it appeared to be a shortcut into the village and she glanced back down the path, wondering who the rather beautiful young man could have been. Family? A friend. Or an illicit lover, maybe, from the smear of lipstick on his lower lip, making his escape via the back way.
She took off her hat, fanned herself with it, turned again to look at the house. Wondering who lived there. Could it be the same family who’d owned the house when it had sheltered Lex?
Unlikely.
According to the website she’d found, the Isola del Serrone vineyard had long ago become a co-operative run by the villagers.
And the glimpse of a swimming pool suggested that the house had been bought by some wealthy businessman who used it as a weekend retreat from Rome.
Whatever, there were no answers here. Only the wall was as it had been and on a sudden whim she turned, put her hat down and hitched herself up, spreading her arms wide to support herself as Lucia had done. Closing her eyes, imagining how she’d felt, the sun warm on her face, danger passed. A last moment of happiness before Lex was repatriated, sent back to his rejoicing family, and she was left alone.
‘Well, don’t you look comfortable?’
Sarah started, blinked. The man standing on the path had appeared from nowhere. His face was in shadow, his eyes masked by dark glasses so that she couldn’t read his expression but, while his tone was neutral, it was not friendly.
‘Am I trespassing?’ she asked, doing her best to remain calm despite the frisson of nerves that riffled through her. He didn’t look dangerous, but she was on her own. No one knew where she was.
‘This is private land, signora.’
‘But there’s a footpath—’
‘There is also a gate. Hint enough, I’d have thought.’
‘Yes, but …’
‘It was locked.’
‘Someone held it open for me. A young man in a hurry.’ Then, ‘Hold on.’ He was speaking in English. Sexily accented as only an Italian could do it, but English nonetheless. ‘How did you know?’
‘That you were here?’
‘That I’m English.’
‘Actually,’ he said, mocking her, ‘the young man, having made his escape, spared a moment of his precious time to warn me that I had an intruder.’
‘Warn you?’ She remembered him reaching for his mobile phone as he’d walked away, how she’d imagined him talking to some girl … ‘What on earth did he think I was going to do?’ she demanded. ‘Shin up the drainpipe and pinch the family silver?’
Torn between annoyance and amusement, she had hoped he’d realise how ridiculous he was being. Maybe laugh. She couldn’t see his eyes, but his generous mouth seemed made for laughter.
He did neither.
She’d left her bag at the foot of the wall and, without so much as a by-your-leave, he picked it up and began to go through it.
‘Hey!’ she protested as he took out her phone. The nerve of the man! ‘Didn’t your mother tell you that you must never, ever, under any circumstances look in a lady’s handbag?’
‘First we have to establish that you are a lady,’ he replied, glancing up from his perusal of her messages, regarding her for a moment as if he was considering whether to search her, too.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ she warned.
Maybe the silky scoop-necked designer T-shirt she’d teamed with cropped Maybridge market jeans convinced him that there wasn’t room to hide as much as a teaspoon about her person. Or maybe he was saving that pleasure for later.
It was a thought that should have made her feel a lot more nervous than it did.
Whatever the reason, he returned his attention to her phone, going through her messages, then her emails. Pausing at one, he looked over the top of his glasses at her with a pair of ink-dark eyes.
‘Have you found him yet, Sarah Gratton?’
For a moment she was mesmerized by the way he said her name. The vowels long and slow, like thick cream being poured from a jug. The man exuded sensuality. Every movement, every syllable seemed to stroke her …
‘Him?’ she repeated, before she began to purr. No … That wasn’t right. She was looking for Lucia …
‘The “dark-eyed Italian lover”?’ he prompted.
Oh, great. He’d found Lex’s email. But no one who taught a mixed class of teenagers could afford to betray the slightest sign of embarrassment. The first hint of a blush and you were toast.
You had to look them in the eye, stand your ground, come back with a swift riposte that would make the class laugh with you, not at you.
‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Are you interested in the job?’
It would have been spot on if it had come out sharp and snappy as intended, but something had gone seriously wrong between her brain and her mouth. Between concept and delivery.
It was his eyes. Dark as night but with the crackle of lightning in their depths …
Under that gaze, sharp had lost its edge, snap had turned to a soft, gooey fudge and, apparently taking it as an invitation, he reached out, slid his fingers through her hair, cradling her head in the palm of his hand. There was a seemingly endless pause while she frantically tried to redial her brain. Send out a call for the cavalry.
Her brain was apparently engaged, busy dealing with a bombardment of signals. The sun hot on her arms, her throat, her breasts. The sensuous sweep of the mouth hovering above her own. The scent of warm skin, leather …
The world seemed to have slowed down and it took forever for his lips to reach hers. Somewhere, deep inside her brain the word no was teetering on the brink. All she had to do was move her lips, say it, but her butter-soft mouth seemed to belong to someone else.
When it parted, it was not to protest and as his mouth found hers a tingle of something like recognition raced like wildfire through her blood, blotting out reason. Her body, with nothing to guide it, softened, melted against him, murmured, ‘Yes …’
It wasn’t enough and she clutched at his shoulders, fingers digging into hard flesh as she began to fall back, leaving gravity to take them down into the soft thick grass on the shady side of the wall.
For a moment she could feel it, was breathing in the green, sweet scent of grass, herbs crushed beneath them. The weight of his body, the sweep of his hand beneath the silk, lighting up her skin as it moved over her ribs. Her nipple, achingly hard in anticipation of his touch.
There was a sickening jolt, like that moment when you were on the point of falling asleep and something dragged you back.
‘Lucia …’
‘What did you say?’ he asked.
Sarah opened her eyes. She was still sitting on the wall, not clinging to this stranger but being supported by him, as if he thought that she was about to fall.
‘Are you all right?’ His voice seemed to be coming from under water.
‘What? Yes …’
She was back from wherever she’d been, whoever she’d been—because she wasn’t the kind of woman who invited total strangers to kiss her.
‘This was where they said goodbye …’ she whispered.
Lex had taken her photograph and kissed her and they’d made love there in the soft thick grass of early summer one last time before he’d taken the path down into the village. Flown away.
She turned and looked behind her to where her hat was lying in the grass. Not the sweet and green grass of early summer—
‘Sarah!’ the man said, rather more urgently.
‘It’s dry,’ she said. And a little shiver ran through her. ‘The grass.’
‘It’s autumn.’
‘Autumn?’ She shook her head, forced herself to concentrate.
‘Are you all right?’ he repeated, eyes narrowed.
‘Yes.’ Pull yourself together … ‘Yes, of course I am.’
He touched a thumb to her cheek, his hand cradling her face as he wiped away a tear. ‘Then why the tears?’
Tears? She swiped her palm across her cheek. ‘Hay fever,’ she said, grabbing for the first answer that came into her head.
‘In autumn?’
Had he actually kissed her?
Her lips still tingled with a lingering taste of the perfect kiss but had it been a fleeting fantasy? A phantom conjured up by the place, by old memories, by her own loss?
She blinked, saw a tiny smear of lipstick on the corner of his mouth. Of course he’d kissed her. She’d practically begged him to. What on earth had possessed her?
There were no answers, but her brain finally picked up, answered her call for help. Speak. Move. Get out of here …
‘I’m allergic to chrysanthemums,’ she said, sliding down from the wall, forcing him to step back. ‘It’s hereditary.’ Her knees buckled slightly as she hit the ground, her legs unexpectedly shaky beneath her and he caught her elbow to steady her. ‘Great interview, by the way.’ She took a breath, reached for her bag. She really needed to get out of here, but he was blocking her way. And he still had her phone. ‘Leave your number with my secretary and I’ll let you know.’
She’d made a stab for crispness but her voice could have done with longer in the salad drawer.
He continued to look at her for a moment, as if half expecting her to crumple at his feet.
She lifted a brow. The one guaranteed to bring a sassy fifth year into line.
Apparently reassured that she wasn’t about to collapse, he said, ‘Don’t wait too long. I’m not short of offers.’ But his voice, too, had lost its edge and the accent seemed more pronounced, as if he was having a chocolate fudge moment of his own.
‘My phone.’ She held out her hand, praying that it wouldn’t shake. ‘If you please.’
‘When I’m done.’ Then, ignoring her huff of outrage, he turned away, propped his elbows on the wall beside her and began to flip through her photographs.
They were mostly typical tourist shots. A few pictures of the school, her apartment. The kind of things she’d taken to send home or for her blog.
‘You’ve come from Rome?’ he asked.
She didn’t bother to answer, instead leaned back against the wall to give her wobbly knees a break. Vowed to have more than an espresso and pastry for breakfast in future.
‘You’ve been busy sightseeing.’
He glanced at her when she didn’t bother to answer.
‘I’m new in town. I’ll soon run out of things to photograph.’
‘Don’t count on it.’ Then, as he continued, found the photographs she’d taken of the wall, the house, ‘What’s your interest in my house? It’s not an ancient monument.’
It was his house?
He didn’t fit the image she had of a middle-aged businessman setting himself up in a weekend retreat. At all.
‘It’s a lovely house. A lovely view. Have I done something wrong?’ As he glanced at her, the sleeve of his shirt brushed against her bare arm and the soft linen raised goosebumps on her flesh. ‘I thought taking photographs from a public footpath was okay.’
‘And I thought I’d made it clear that this isn’t a public footpath. It’s part of the Serrone estate.’
‘You need a sign,’ she advised him. ‘“Trespassers will be Prosecuted” is usual. Not that I’d have understood it. Maybe a “No Entry” symbol, the kind they use on roads would be better, or a picture of a slavering dog.’ She should stop babbling right now. ‘Give it to me. I’ll delete them.’
‘No need. I’ll do it for you.’ Beep, beep, beep. He still didn’t return the phone. ‘We don’t get many visitors to Isola del Serrone. Especially not from England.’
‘No? I can’t say I’m surprised.’ It was quite possible that she was the first English person to visit the village since her great-grandfather left. ‘Maybe you’d do better if you were a little more welcoming.’
His eyes were now safely hidden behind those dark lenses, but the corner of his mouth tucked up in what might, at a stretch, have been a smile.
‘How much more friendly do you want?’
And she discovered that, classroom hardened as she was, she could still, given sufficient provocation, blush.
‘I’m good, thanks.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s your call.’ Then, clearly unconvinced by her ‘walk in the country’ story, ‘We’re not on the tourist map.’
‘That’s okay. I’m not a tourist.’
‘No?’ He didn’t sound entirely surprised. Which was surprising. Italy was, after all, chock-full of tourists and some of them must occasionally wander off the beaten track. Take photographs of views that hadn’t made it into the guidebooks. ‘So what are you really doing here?’ he asked.
Until now he’d been in the shadows, a voice, a pair of dark eyes, a mouth so tender that his kiss could bring a tear to her eyes …
Now that she was back on the path, out of the sun’s dazzle, she could see his face. It was hard to judge his age but his jet-black hair curled tightly in a thick mat against his scalp, his skin was golden, his cheekbones chiselled and his nose was so damn Roman that it should have been on a statue.
He was good to look at, but there was something about his manner, the arrogant way he’d kissed her, had gone through her emails, making quite unnecessary comments that—the blush notwithstanding—brought out what her mother would, in her teenage years, have described as ‘a touch of the awkwards’.
It would have been easy enough to tell him exactly what she was doing but Lucia’s secret was not hers to share. And, anyway, it was none of his business.
‘You have me at a disadvantage,’ she said.
That raised the shadow of a smile. ‘Undoubtedly.’
She was right about his mouth. Definitely made for it …
‘Having read my messages,’ she said, making an effort to concentrate on reality, ‘you know my name. I don’t know yours.’
‘No?’ He responded with a slight bow. ‘Mi spiace, Signora Sarah Gratton. Io sono Matteo di Serrone.’
‘Di Serrone?’ About to say, Like the racingdriver?, she realised that would betray a deeper interest in the area than mere sightseeing and, back-pedalling madly, she said, ‘You’re a local boy, then.’
‘I was born in the north of Italy, but my family are from this village.’
Turin was in the north. Was he the young son, orphaned when his father was killed on the racetrack? He had to be about the right age.
‘You have my name. Perhaps you will be good enough to answer my question?’ he said.
‘Of course. Someone I know visited the village a while ago and he was so full of it, the hospitality of the people,’ she added, heavily stressing ‘hospitality’, ‘that I wanted to see it for myself.’ It was as much as she was prepared to tell a perfect stranger. Almost a stranger. Not perfect … ‘Has anyone ever told you that your English is amazing?’
‘He must have been impressed,’ he said. Then, the smile deepening to something that could very easily make a woman’s heart beat faster, with or without the added kiss, ‘Has anyone ever told you that you can change the subject faster than the English weather?’
‘No, really,’ she assured him, doing her best to focus on the view instead of the way her heart was in sync with the pulse beating in his neck. It was a little fast, suggesting that he was not as calm as he would have her believe. ‘It’s not only the idiomatic speech. You’ve got both irony and sarcasm nailed and that’s tough.’
‘I had an English nanny until I was six. She was strong on all three.’
‘That would explain it. What happened when you were six?’ she asked, but rather afraid she knew.
‘She left, and I came home.’
‘Oh.’ Not what she’d expected.
He raised his eyebrows a fraction, inviting her to elaborate on that ‘Oh’, but, while his voice had been even, his lack of expression suggested that his nanny’s departure had not been a happy one. No doubt it had left a painful gap in the life of a small boy. Better not to go there …
She shook her head. ‘Nothing. She did a good job of teaching you English, that’s all. Considering how young you were.’
‘She was well rewarded for her dedication.’
Definitely something—and his ‘I came home’ was now suggesting, to her overactive imagination, that daddy had an affair with the nanny and mummy packed her bag. She really had to stop reading rubbish gossip magazines in the hairdressers.
‘I took a post-graduate degree at Cambridge,’ he offered, as if he, too, would rather change the subject. ‘That was a useful refresher course.’
‘I imagine it would be.’ She’d bet there were any number of girls queueing up to give him English lessons. She sighed. ‘I envy your ability to speak two languages so fluently. I’m doing my best to learn Italian, but without much success. I’m still struggling to order a sandwich.’
‘Then allow me to save you the bother,’ he said.
‘Of ordering a sandwich?’
‘I’d recommend something more substantial. You almost fainted, I think, and I’m not vain enough to believe it had anything to do with the fact that I kissed you.’
She’d almost done something, what or why she couldn’t have said, but he was definitely underestimating himself.
‘I skimped on breakfast,’ she admitted.
‘Always a mistake.’
‘Absolutely.’
‘And my rudeness could not have helped.’ He looked down at the phone he was still holding. ‘My cousin is an actress and we have problems with the press. Photographers.’
‘I’m sorry. I had no idea.’
‘No?’ He shrugged. ‘Well, Bella hasn’t yet made the leap to Hollywood so your ignorance is forgivable. Perhaps you’ll allow me to restore your faith in our hospitality by joining me for lunch.’
As he spoke, a woman appeared on the terrace below them and began to lay the table beneath the pergola. Without waiting for her answer, Matteo called down to her in Italian so rapid that she didn’t manage to catch a single word.
The woman waved to show that she’d heard and he said, ‘Graziella is expecting you. You cannot disappoint her.’
She could. She should.
Every atom of sense was telling her that if this was a movie she’d have been yelling at the stupid woman, dithering between going and staying, to beat it.
But she’d come to see the house and she’d never get another chance like this. It wasn’t as if she’d be alone with him.
‘I would hate to disappoint Graziella,’ she said.
‘And if you want to take another photograph,’ he said, ‘please go ahead.’
‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’ A gesture assured her that he said nothing that he didn’t mean. ‘Well, to be honest, I was wishing that there was someone to take a photograph of me when you turned up.’
‘Were you? To prove to your friend that you were here?’
He was frowning, as if he couldn’t understand why she would want to take one in this particular spot.
‘Yes. No …’ She put her hands on the wall, using her heel against the rough stonework to boost herself up before he could help. ‘Why wouldn’t he believe me?’
‘I don’t know. But maybe, in future, you should be more careful what you wish for.’
‘I don’t know. This isn’t going so badly.’ She’d wished and Matteo di Serrone had turned up right on cue.
It hadn’t started out well, but things were looking up.
Ignoring her somewhat provocative response, he said, ‘Do you want to take off your dark glasses?’
‘Oh, right.’
She pulled them off, propped herself on her hands, leaning forward, looking straight at her phone.
‘Say … formaggio.’
She looked up at him, laughed, and he took the photograph.
CHAPTER THREE
ITALIAN FOR BEGINNERS
I went right off the tourist route and, as I stood in a village square taking these photographs, it felt as if nothing much has changed in a very long time.
Well, apart from the cars, satellite television, the internet and mobile phones …
AND so it begins, Matteo thought, as Sarah Gratton replaced her glasses. Hiding her eyes.
‘I can manage,’ she said, as he reached out to help her down.
‘I don’t think you should risk it in your enfeebled state.’
‘I’m not in the least bit feeble …’ He put his hands on her waist and her words died on a little gasp. Nicely done. ‘You might want to hold on,’ he encouraged.
She was lovely and trying so hard. It would be a shame not to make the most of the moment.
After the briefest pause she placed her palms on his shoulders. Her touch was light, her arms fully extended to keep a ladylike distance between them and yet the contact was like a lightning conductor, focusing everything primitive, ancient, instinctive into a single point of heat low in his belly.
And he was the one struggling for breath as he said, ‘Ready?’
‘Ready,’ she said, poised, as cucumber-cool as if she were sitting on a bench in her own garden.
‘Hang on,’ he said, and she clutched at him, her fingers digging into his shoulders as he lifted her clear of the wall and she slid down his body until her feet touched the ground.
He held on to her, making sure she was steady. Then just held on as he was immersed in her scent. Not the kind sprayed out of a bottle, but something more personal. Warm skin, silky hair, the scent of a woman held in the arms of a man she desired.
For a moment it was not Sarah clinging to him for support. He was the one hanging on to her, weak with the longing to bury his face in her hair, her neck. In the creamy softness of the breasts he’d glimpsed as she’d leaned forward, bombarding his senses with everything female.
‘I’ve got it, thanks,’ she said, her hands sliding to his elbows, steadying him in return for just a moment before she stepped back to pick up her hat.
What colour were they? Her eyes. He should have noticed …
‘Sorry. I’m heavier than I look,’ she said.
She was a lot more of many things, but ‘heavier than she looked’ was nowhere near top of the list.
She glanced away, towards the house. ‘I take it we’re not going to use your brother’s shortcut?’ she said, laying her hand beside the telltale footprint on the wall. A good hand, with nails buffed to a shine. No rings. Nothing showy or obvious. Nothing of the femme fatale.
An innocent English rose taking a walk in the Italian countryside and if he hadn’t been warned, hadn’t been expecting something like this, he would have fallen for it.
‘He’s young, in a hurry,’ he said, a little too sharply, and she turned to look up at him, a tiny frown plucking at the wide space between her eyes. ‘There’s a girl waiting for him in Rome.’
‘Oh?’ Her brows rose a notch. ‘Well, he really is very beautiful.’
‘We have different fathers,’ he said, by way of explanation. ‘My mother remarried after my father was killed.’
He wasn’t telling her anything that anyone with a computer couldn’t have discovered in thirty seconds. Always assuming she didn’t already know his family history by rote.
‘I see that I must add self-deprecation to the other gifts from your nanny.’
‘Must you?’ he countered lightly.
‘It’s such a very English trait.’
‘Possibly.’
The only useful lesson his nanny had taught him was that everyone had their price. Never to trust a smiling face. Never to let anyone close. He’d forgotten it only once and he wasn’t about to forget it again.
He took her arm—the path was uneven—as he turned up the hill. She didn’t object, but then he hadn’t expected her to.
‘Age helps. And, being older than my beautiful brother, I’ve learned patience. The value of taking time to enjoy the journey.’
It was definitely time to slow things down.
He had lived like a monk for the past couple of years, concentrating on his vines, staying away from the kind of women who were drawn to celebrity. Who fed off it. Yearned for it. That had all been a game. A cat playing with a mouse. Until Katerina, he had thought he was the cat. He should have known better. Well, this time he was ready.
Almost ready. His head might understand that this was not real, but his body appeared to have other ideas.
‘You’re saying we should stop and smell the roses,’ Sarah suggested.
‘Why not? There’s no rush. Is there?’
‘I used to think not …’ She shook her head, but she was smiling.
‘What?’ he asked, obligingly picking up the cue she’d dangled so temptingly.
‘Nothing.’ He waited, sure it was not ‘nothing’. ‘I was simply wondering if you’re the kind of man who undoes the knots rather than grabbing the scissors. When you’re given a present,’ she added, in case he didn’t understand.
He understood all too well and an impatient hormonal jig urged him to go for the scissors, but he reined it in.
This was definitely a moment for the careful unpicking of knots.
‘I find that anticipation is often the greater part of the pleasure,’ he assured her. ‘Which is why we are taking the scenic route.’
‘Oh? Should I be worried? About lunch.’
Inevitably the destination was going to disappoint her, but that was for him to know and her to find out. But lunch was merely the first stop on the journey.
‘Graziella is an excellent cook. You can rest assured that expectations will be fully met, if not exceeded.’
The path wound up the hill for a hundred yards or so to a point where the countryside was spread out in all directions below them. The village, vineyards, his laboratory and nursery for the vines, scattered farms.
Sarah lifted her hand to shade her eyes as she looked into the far distance.
‘Are there bears in the mountains?’ she asked.
‘Bears?’ It was the last question he’d been expecting. ‘There are a few brown bears, mostly in the national park. And wolves are on the increase. What makes you ask?’
‘I thought Lex might have been teasing me.’ She let her hand drop, looked down. ‘The trees completely hide the house from up here.’
‘It’s tucked in a dip in the landscape. The winters can be hard.’
The only vulnerable spot was the broken wall. That, and a boy who happened to be in the right place, at the right time, to open the gate. Whether by accident or design he had yet to discover.
‘Does the scenery live up to the recommendation?’ he asked.
‘Absolutely. Lex told me it was beautiful but actually it’s breathtaking.’ She looked around. ‘Where’s the river?’
‘It’s over there.’ His chin was level with her shoulder as he bent to point out to her a glint of water on the far side of the village. Breathing again the scent of her sun-warmed skin. Something faintly spicy. Vanilla. Cinnamon. Good enough to eat. ‘To the left of those trees,’ he added as she searched for it.
‘I have it,’ she said. Then, as she spotted the motorcycles of the paparazzi who’d followed the limousine from Rome, ‘Who are all those people down there on the road?’
Well, she could hardly ignore them.
‘They’re paparazzi. They followed Bella from Rome this morning.’
She turned to stare at him. ‘Your cousin is here? No wonder you were so edgy.’
‘It has been an interesting morning,’ he admitted.
‘And yet you were willing to let me take a photograph of your house?’
‘I don’t think the lens in your mobile phone would give you much of a photograph,’ he said. ‘But I’ll let you into a secret. Bella wasn’t in the car they followed.’
‘So they’re waiting down there while she’s …?’
‘Somewhere else.’
‘Good for her,’ she said, smart enough not to push it. ‘Is it okay if I take a photograph?’
‘Of the paparazzi? Or the view?’
‘Sneak pictures of the photographers?’ The idea seemed to amuse her. ‘They’d just be a smudge in the distance. I simply wanted a shot of the view. Lex will be interested to see what it looks like now.’
‘Will he?’ he said, forcing himself to curb a snag of irritation that, while he was going out of his way to make life easy for her, charm her, she kept talking about some other man.
He waited while she took her pictures then asked the name of a town, its red roofs spread over the top of a distant hill.
‘That is Arpino. Cicero was born there.’
‘The man who wrote that a room without books is like a body without a soul.’ She caught him looking at her and with a wry smile said, ‘It’s on a fridge magnet at home.’
‘Then it must be true.’ Forcing himself to look away, he said, ‘It’s an interesting place. They’ve recently excavated a well-preserved Roman pavement beneath the town square and there’s a bell tower that has to be climbed by anyone who really wants to see a view.’ Then, aware that he sounded rather like a guidebook, ‘After a shaky start, I’m attempting to make a rare visitor feel welcome.’
‘And doing an excellent job.’ Then, with a sigh, ‘Everything is so ancient here. We have old buildings, monuments at home, but in Italian history isn’t a visitor attraction, it’s embedded into the very fabric of life.’
‘We’ve been here a long time,’ he said. ‘And while you were building in wood and straw, we were constructing in stone, which is more enduring.’
‘You built in stone in Britain, too, but the Saxons were the original recyclers.’
It occurred to him that he should be grateful to whoever had sent her for having the wit to choose someone with intelligence as well as beauty.
The journey, wherever it took them, certainly wouldn’t be boring.
‘Shall we go?’ He took her elbow. ‘The path down through the olive grove is steep.’
‘An olive grove? Hold on …’ Now that she’d started, there was no stopping her and she made him wait while she took photographs of the olives. ‘Sorry. I’m being a total tourist.’
She was certainly giving a great impression of one. But, then again, maybe she had never seen olives growing before.
‘Don’t apologise. Like life, we tend to take our surroundings for granted. It’s refreshing to see the familiar through new eyes,’ he said, opening the gate to the garden.
‘Wow.’ Sarah had stopped on the top terrace. ‘Just … wow.’
Below them the vineyards swept away down the valley, but she wasn’t looking at that. She was looking at the kitchen garden and in a moment had abandoned him to snap close-ups of zucchini flowers, artichokes, was stooping to rub her fingers against the herbs billowing over the path. They were swarming with Nonna’s bees, but she seemed oblivious, as intoxicated by the scent as they were.
‘You are a gardener?’ he asked.
‘No. That’s my mother. She gardens, keeps hens and we’ve always had bees. What is this?’ she asked.
He lifted her long, slender fingers to his face. He didn’t need the scent to identify the plant but he was the advocate of taking time, in this case to smell not roses, but herbs.
‘It is Thymus citriodoros “Aureus”. The golden variety of lemon thyme.’
‘The Latin name. That’s impressive,’ she said, laughing.
‘But I am a Roman,’ he reminded her. ‘Between Monday and Friday, anyway.’
Her hand was soft to the touch and his reluctance to release it was not entirely an act. It might be a game, but this wasn’t the Garden of Eden and he wouldn’t go to hell for picking the fruit.
‘Of course it helps that I am a botanist.’
‘Oh.’
‘We don’t do souvenirs of Isola del Serrone,’ he said, bending to break off a piece of the herb, ‘but put this in your bag and you’ll remember us whenever you open it.’
Remember me, was the subtext. It had been a while, but he still remembered the moves.
She responded with every appearance of delight to this small gesture and he found himself wishing he could see her eyes so that he could be sure the smile reached them.
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Liz Fielding
Could stepping into the past make your future perfect? Sarah’s been dumped. Unceremoniously. Painfully. A romantic at heart and a historian by profession, Sarah has always wondered about her grandfather’s wartime romance in Italy. Who was that brave woman who cared for him during the war? Clearly this is the time to heal her wounds with the trip of a lifetime to Rome.Armed only with a photo of the house her grandfather stayed in, the village, and the name Lucia, Sarah sets out to find her…and meets the beautiful Italian count Matteo di Serrone there. Now here’s a man who could move Sarah on from her broken heart! It’s a fairy-tale romance, until Sarah realises she’s made the most rookie mistake of all: falling in love with her holiday fling…
Praise for Liz Fielding
‘Alongside the humour, this story contains a large sprinkling of emotion, synonymous with every Liz Fielding story, that will have the reader reaching for the tissues while swallowing the lump in her throat. This is one story you don’t want to miss!’
—romancereviewed.blogspot.com on
The Secret Life of Lady Gabriella
‘Fielding’s deft handling is a triumph. The characters are fabulous, the relationship between them complex and nuanced … and keep a tissue handy at the end!’
RT Book Reviews on SOS: Convenient Husband Required
‘… a magnificent setting, a feisty heroine, and a sexy hero—a definite page-turner. Who could ask for anything more?’
—Still Moments eZine on
A Wedding at Leopard Tree Lodge
About the Author
LIZ FIELDING was born with itchy feet. She made it to Zambia before her twenty-first birthday and, gathering her own special hero and a couple of children on the way, lived in Botswana, Kenya and Bahrain—with pauses for sightseeing pretty much everywhere in between. She finally came to a full stop in a tiny Welsh village cradled by misty hills, and these days mostly leaves her pen to do the travelling.
When she’s not sorting out the lives and loves of her characters, she potters in the garden, reads her favourite authors, and spends a lot of time wondering ‘What if …?’
For news of upcoming books—and to sign up for her occasional newsletter—visit Liz’s website at www.lizfielding.com
Also by Liz Fielding
The Last Woman He’d Ever Date
Mistletoe and the Lost Stiletto
SOS: Convenient Husband Required
A Wedding at Leopard Tree Lodge
Her Desert Dream
Secret Baby, Surprise Parents
Wedded in a Whirlwind
Did you know these are also available as eBooks?Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk
Flirting with Italian
Liz Fielding
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
I dedicate this book to my wonderful editor, Bryony Green,
who has held my hand, uncomplainingly, through more
than twenty books. She has saved a book gone wrong
with ‘Perhaps if you …’ We have agonised over titles,
dined in New York, celebrated an award at the Ritz and
danced the night away in Washington. It’s been great.
CHAPTER ONE
ITALIAN FOR BEGINNERS
My bag is packed, my flight booked. While my students are all flapping about in a last minute panic about coursework that needs to be handed to their new teacher in the first week of term, I’ll be getting to grips with the rush hour in Rome, first day nerves and life in a foreign language.
If they think that because I’ll be surrounded by art, culture, high fashion and endless sunshine, I’ve got the best deal, well, they may be right. At the moment I’m only concerned about where I’m going to live, how different this new school will be from Maybridge and whether my new students like me.
Watch this space …
‘I’VE got a new job, Lex. In Rome.’
‘You’re leaving Maybridge High? The “world’s most perfect job”?’
Sarah Gratton had been doing a fine job of convincing her colleagues that she couldn’t wait to get on that plane. Actually, that part was true, but it was more escape than adventure and she should have known that her great-grandfather would see right through a smile that was making her face ache.
He might be rising ninety but he walked into town each morning to pick up his newspaper, and his brain was still sharp enough to do The Times crossword in ten minutes flat.
‘Tom was so popular, the kids loved him.’ Her thumb automatically moved to fiddle with the ring that was no longer there. ‘I feel as if everyone blames me for him leaving.’
‘He’s the one who cheated, Sarah. If you give up the job you love, you lose twice.’
‘He didn’t cheat.’
Didn’t cheat. Didn’t lie. Didn’t pretend. He was incapable of that. He’d told her that he still loved her, but that he’d fallen in love with someone else.
He’d told her at the beginning of the half term holiday, giving her a whole week before she had to walk into the staff room. Face everyone.
What he hadn’t told her was that he’d resigned, taken a job she knew he’d hate at the sports centre in Melchester.
Until then it hadn’t been real.
She’d heard the words but hadn’t been able to take them in. Had convinced herself that when she turned up in the staffroom on Monday morning everything would be as it should be. Back to normal.
But he hadn’t been there.
He’d had time to think it through, to accept that working together in the goldfish bowl of school would be impossible. He was the one who’d sacrificed the job that was his life. That was how much he loved her.
How much he was in love with someone else.
She’d worked really hard to be worthy of that sacrifice. To think of her students when all she wanted to do was to curl up in a corner and bawl her eyes out.
She’d cleaned every trace of him out of her flat so that she wouldn’t keep tripping over the memories. Put away photographs. Stopped going to the places where they’d hung out with their friends.
But she couldn’t scrub him out of school.
He was an invisible presence in the photographs of the teams he’d coached to glory. In the whiff of steaming boys, the clatter of their boots as they came in from the cricket field. In the sound of a whistle on the sports field that had once linked her to him like an invisible thread, but now went through her like a knife.
‘Besides,’ she said, ‘I’m not losing, I’m catching up on my life. You were the one who was so keen on me taking a gap year, having fun, doing the travel thing before I settled down.’
‘You’re not eighteen now,’ her great-grandfather pointed out. ‘And you’re not taking a year off to see the world or have fun.’
‘I’d feel like a matron amongst the backpackers. This way I get the best of both worlds. Great job. Great location. I only hope I live up to the terrific reference the Head gave me.’
He dismissed her doubts with a wave of his hand. ‘Won’t the language be a problem?’
‘It’s an international school. Children of diplomats, UN officials, foreigners living in Rome,’ she explained.
Eight hundred miles away from everyone who knew her as half of a couple.
It had been Tom-and-Sarah from the first day she’d started at Maybridge High when, shaking with nerves, she’d managed to throw a cup of coffee over the blond giant who was head of the sports department. Instead of calling her the idiot she clearly was, he’d smiled, and in the gaze of his clear blue eyes the world had steadied.
She’d offered to wash his kit. He’d said he’d settle for a pint, and her world had remained steady until a new supply teacher had arrived one dark morning in January when half the staff were laid low with flu.
It had been like watching an approaching car crash that she was powerless to stop. The sudden silence as a new face had appeared in the staffroom. Tom, the first to step forward to welcome her—always, always so kind with new people. The contact had lasted no more than a second or two but time had seemed to stand still as their eyes met and, as Sarah looked on, she’d felt the scorching heat of the spark that leapt between Tom and Louise, and her world had shifted off its axis.
‘I’ll soon get to know people,’ she said. ‘Teaching isn’t a job you can do in isolation. And I’ll be in Rome,’ she stressed. ‘One of the most glamorous cities in the world.’
In one bound she’d freed herself from being the most pitied woman in the staffroom and become the most envied.
Not that she’d escaped entirely. She’d done her best to resist the Head’s suggestion that she write a blog about her experiences.
‘I know it’s been a tough few months, but things will look different after a break. I expect you back next year,’ he’d told her.
‘You don’t need me, Headmaster, you need Tom. Call him.’
‘And have everyone think I’ve got you out of the way so that I can bring him back? How would that look?’ he’d asked.
Dodgy, obviously, she thought, as the penny had dropped. That was why he wanted her to write the blog. So that it would look as if she was still part of the school.
Glowing references had, it seemed, to be paid for. And it wasn’t as if anyone would read it. The staff would be too busy and, as for the kids, well, why would they bother?
Sarah started as Lex took her hand.
‘It’s not far,’ she told him. ‘I’ll be home for visits so often you’ll be sick of me. Half term. The holidays.’
‘What for? To see an old man?’ His gesture was dismissive. ‘Don’t waste your time or your money. Enjoy Italy while you have the chance.’
‘I’ll have plenty of time to see everything.’ And she could travel with the money she’d been saving for her wedding, for the big dress. Her share of the deposit they had been saving for a house. One with a garden for the children they would have had one day.
‘There’s never enough time,’ he warned her. ‘Your life goes by in a flash. Enjoy every minute of it.’
‘Of course,’ she said, on automatic.
‘No, I mean really enjoy it.’ He regarded her with that thoughtful gaze that his patients would have recognised when he had still been in practice. The one that saw through the ‘headaches’ to the real problem. ‘I prescribe an affair,’ he said. ‘No falling in love, breaking your heart stuff, mind. Nothing serious,’ he warned. ‘A just-for-fun romance with some dark-eyed Italian. A memory to make you smile rather than weep. To keep you warm at night when you’re old.’
‘Lex! You are outrageous.’
He grinned. ‘Trust me. I’m a doctor.’
She laughed. ‘Outrageous and wonderful and I love you.’ They’d always been close. Her parents loved her, did all the parent stuff brilliantly. Her grandparents had spoiled her. But Lex was the one who never had anything better to do than tell her stories and, as he leaned back in his chair, his eyes on some unseen horizon, she knew exactly what he was going to say next.
‘Did I ever tell you about the time I was in Italy during the war?’
‘Once or twice.’ It had been a favourite story when she was a little girl.
How his plane had developed engine trouble and he’d had to bail out. How he’d nearly died of the cold.
It was a story that had grown with the years. With the telling. Embellished, embroidered. She’d never known her great-grandmother, but her grandmother had always claimed that he never spoiled a good story by telling the truth. Her mother had simply rolled her eyes.
‘Tell me again,’ Sarah urged him. ‘Tell me how you were saved by a beautiful Italian girl who found you half-dead in the snow. How she nursed you, hid you for months until the Allies arrived.’
‘You know it by heart.’
Maybe she did, but that was the point of a comfort story. Its familiarity.
‘Gran always said you made up most of it. That the lovely Lucia was really some tough old bird who hid you in her cow shed for a week,’ she said, knowing exactly how to get him going. And off her case.
‘Your grandmother knows nothing.’ Nearly ninety but still with a wicked twinkle in his eye. ‘The house had been grand before the Fascists reduced it to rubble. And Lucia was …’ He stopped. ‘Pass me my box and I’ll show you.’
‘Show me?’
There was always some new little twist to the story, some detail to be added: a new danger, a risk taken for food or warmth, a small pleasure to be found amongst the hardship. But this was totally unexpected.
‘The box,’ he repeated.
She’d seen the contents of the old tartan biscuit box a hundred times. There had never been a photograph of Lucia and, as she handed it to him, she half expected it to be a joke of some kind. But there was none of the usual teasing and when he opened the lid, instead of going through it—a memory recalled with each medal, photograph, memento collected during a long life, well-lived—he tipped it up, emptying everything on to the table beside him.
It was a small table and papers, coins, trinkets spilled over onto the floor. Sarah knelt to gather them up. Smoothed out the corner of the small sepia photograph of her great-grandma that he had carried with him through the war.
‘Leave those,’ he said. ‘Your nails are longer than mine. See if you can get this out.’
The base of the box was lined with a piece of black card, scuffed by years of wear. Now, as she eased it out, she discovered that it concealed a photograph.
He gave an awkward little shrug.
‘Not something to leave lying around where it would upset your great-grandmother.’
Upset?
It was an old grainy black-and-white photograph of a slender young woman with dark hair, dark eyes, dark brows, a full, sensuous mouth.
Scratched, carefully stuck together where it had obviously been torn into pieces—presumably by a very upset great-grandma—spotted with age, her face leapt out of the past.
‘She was lovely,’ she said, turning to catch a look of such tenderness in his eyes that she felt a lump rise to her throat. ‘I can’t begin to imagine how hard it must have been.’
It made her emotional hiccup seem pretty feeble in comparison.
‘Be glad of that,’ he told her, then seemed to drift for a moment, no doubt recalling the hardships. Or maybe it was Lucia’s beauty that he remembered.
She was sitting on a crumbling stone wall, her dark hair gleaming in the sun. Behind her were the remains of a house that might well have once been grand, but was now largely rubble.
It had not, after all, been a fairy tale but real and desperate. This woman had risked her life to save a stranger, shown courage it was hard to imagine.
Her full mouth was smiling and her dark almond-shaped eyes betrayed everything she felt for the man taking the photograph. Was this a secret memory that kept him warm at night?
‘I should have gone back,’ he said, rousing himself. ‘When it was all over. But I had a wife, a son at home …’ His voice trailed away.
Sarah covered his hand with her own. ‘It was wartime, Lex.’ He might have been discovered at any moment. Shot. Lucia, too.
‘Don’t waste your time …’
‘She risked her life to save me, but when the Allies reached Rome there was no time for anything. Hardly time to say goodbye before I was shipped out. Returned to a wife who had long since given me up for dead.’
‘Did you ever try to get in touch?’ she asked. ‘After the war?’
‘I wrote. Sent some money. Asked her to let me know if she needed anything. There was no reply and in the end I thought it best to let it go, thinking that letters, money from an English airman might cause her problems. Embarrassment …’ He shook his head. ‘Your grandmother was on the way by then, I was working night and day to catch up with my studies.’ He shrugged. ‘We got on with things.’
Lived with the rushed wartime marriage, vows made when his life was counted in hours rather than years.
‘It was a good life,’ he said, as if reading her thoughts.
‘I know.’ She’d turned the photograph over and read out, ‘“June nineteen forty-four. Isola del Serrone”. Is that the village she lived in? I wonder if she’s still alive?’
‘She’d be in her eighties,’ he said doubtfully.
‘A stripling lass compared to you.’ And with those bones, those eyes, she’d still be beautiful. ‘You should try to find her.’
‘No …’
‘It shouldn’t be that difficult.’ She reached for his laptop and searched the internet for the name of the village. ‘Let’s see. An actress was born there. And a racing driver …’ She glanced up. ‘How small was this village?’
She had clicked on the link to the racing driver and found herself looking at a photograph of a man in overalls, a crash helmet under his arm.
‘Oh, how awful!’ she exclaimed.
‘What?’
‘The racing driver was killed in a practice session in nineteen eighty-three, leaving a wife and young son.’ She skimmed through the caption. ‘But they lived in Turin. This looks more like it,’ she said, clicking on another link. ‘A vineyard. It’s a local co-operative producing prize-winning wine …’
‘Leave it, Sarah.’ She looked up. ‘Some things are better left in the past.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Lucia will have had a family. No one wants old skeletons to come rattling out of the cupboard.’
‘You’re not an old skeleton …’ Then, seeing that he really meant it, added, ‘Sorry. I’m being bossy. It goes with the job.’ But as he made a move to return the picture to the bottom of the box, she said, ‘Don’t shut her away.’
‘This is in no fit state to put in a frame,’ he protested.
‘I know someone who can scan it, clean it up so that it looks like new. We all need memories to keep us warm at night. You said it,’ she pointed out.
‘So I did. And I’ll let you take it, clean it up, if you’ll promise to take the medicine I’ve prescribed.’
‘The Italian lover?’
‘Night and morning until all symptoms of heartache are completely gone,’ he said with a smile.
ITALIAN FOR BEGINNERS
Oh, good grief. Where to start? Who was she talking to? Her students? Colleagues? Parents?
Herself …
I can see you all, sitting on the wall before assembly, grumbling about having to read Miss Gratton’s blog on top of all that revising you have to do.
You are revising? Do it right once and History will be just that. History. Unless you’re living in Rome, where you’re surrounded by it. No! Don’t switch off!
I know you think that this blog is going to be all about ancient Romans, old ruins and churches. Boring.
That if you leave a comment I’ll be marking it out of ten. Or worse, that if you don’tleave a comment telling me how much you’re missing me I’ll give you cyber detention.
Who was she kidding? No fifteen-year-old was going to waste time reading this. She was just going through the motions. A week or two and she could forget it. Not that the blog was helping. It was hard not to think about Tom back in the staffroom, his smile as he looked up and saw her …
She sighed, reread what she’d written so far.
…cyber detention.
You can relax. I’ll take it as read.
Before we get to the boring stuff …
Boring was good. The sooner they switched off the better.
… boring stuff, however, I thought you’d like to see where I live.
The street is very narrow, cobbled and so steep that it has a step every couple of metres. It’s inaccessible to cars, although that doesn’t stop boys on Vespas—a danger to life and limb—using it as a shortcut.
I live on the top floor of the yellow house on the left. No need for a workoutin the gym. The hill and the stairs will keep me fit.
It had been raining when she’d arrived and she’d been soaked through by the time she’d hauled her luggage up from the street. It hadn’t occurred to her to carry a raincoat; she was going to Rome, city of eternal sunshine. Ha!
And she was out of shape. The stairs might kill her …
I have a tiny terrace. The geranium is a gift from my new students (you might want to make a note of that), who are all extremely tidy …
More than tidy. Well groomed, fashion-conscious, even the boys—especially the boys—with their designer-label wardrobes.
… well behaved and produce their homework on time.
A comment guaranteed to have her students switching off en masse.
This is the view.
A fabulous panorama of the city. Domes, red tiled roofs and the Victor Emmanuelle Memorial like a vast wedding cake at its heart. It was a view made to share while you drank an early morning cup of coffee, or a glass of wine in the evening, with the city lights spread out below you.
Hard not to imagine sharing it with Tom, although he hated travelling. Getting him on the cross Channel ferry for a weekend in France had been hard work.
It was a little soon to have made any progress in the ‘Italian lover’ department so, for the moment, she and her mug of cocoa had it all to themselves.
You’re right, there are loads of churches. The dome in the distance on the left is St Peter’s, by the way. In case you’re interested. And this is the Mercato Esquilino, the local market where I shop for food.
There’s a lot of stuff that you won’t find in Maybridge market. These zucchini flowers—courgettes to you—for instance. I bought some and put them in a bowl because the yellow is so cheery …
She deleted cheery. She did not want anyone to think she needed cheering up.
… so gorgeous, but the locals eat them stuffed with a dab of soft cheese and deep-fried in a feather-light batter.
And, for the girls, especially the ones in the staffroom, this is Pietro, who sells the most sublime dolcelatte and mortadella.
The food here is fabulous and I am going to need every one of those four flights of stairs if I’m not to burst out of my new clothes.
Oh, yes. The clothes.
And suddenly she was enjoying herself.
She’d been met at the airport by Pippa, the school secretary, a young Englishwoman living in Rome with her Italian boyfriend. It was Pippa who had found her the apartment on the top floor of a crumbling old house. Apparently it belonged to the boyfriend’s family. Sarah’s first reaction on seeing it had been, ‘What?’
It was a world away from her modern flat in Maybridge but, having been in Rome for a couple of weeks, she realised how lucky she was to get something so central. And she’d quickly fallen in love with its odd-shaped rooms, high ceilings and view.
Pippa had introduced her to the transport system, shown her around and, having taken one look at her wardrobe, warned her that the cheap and cheerful tops, skirts and trousers that had been ‘teacher uniform’ at Maybridge High would not cut the mustard in Rome. Here, quality, rather than quantity, mattered.
New job. New life. New clothes seemed the obvious extension and Pippa had happily introduced her to cut-price, Italian style. Discount designer outlets that specialised in Armani, Versace, Valentino. Fabulous fabrics and exquisite tailoring that looked all the better for the weight that had dropped off her in the past few months. And, of course, a pair of genuine designer sunglasses.
Her knock-offs from Maybridge market wouldn’t fool anyone here, especially not her students, who wore cashmere sweaters and designer label everything with catwalk style.
Italians are incredibly elegant, even in the classroom, and my first task was a complete revamp of my working wardrobe. It was tough, but I know you’ll appreciate my sacrifice.
Spending so much on clothes had come as a bit of a shock to the system but her savings account was no longer burdened with the price of her dream wedding dress. And handing over her credit card to pay for her spending spree had slammed the door on any lingering hope that Tom might come back. Or that her sacrifice in giving up her job so that he could return to Maybridge High would bring him to his senses.
It was too late for him to be having regrets.
There is also a rule that no one should come to Italy without buying at least one pair of shoes. I bought these. And these. And these.
She stretched out her foot to admire the sandal she was wearing. Well, she wasn’t on holiday. One pair was never going to be enough and, just to make the point, she picked up her phone and took a photograph of it.
As you can see, there is a lot more to Rome than a load of old ruins, but since you’re expecting churches and I wouldn’t want to disappoint you, this is Santa Maria del Popolo. You’ll probably recognise it from one of the gorier bits in the film Angels & Demons.
Rome, boring? I think not.
The blog was probably not quite what the Head had in mind, Sarah thought, smiling to herself. With luck he’d remove the link from the school website sooner rather than later. Then, as she loaded up the pictures, she wondered if Tom would bother to read it. Whether Louise could resist taking a look.
Those shoes would provoke envy in the heart of any woman. Especially one whose ankles were swelling …
Several of her ex-colleagues had made a point of texting Sarah to let her know that Louise was pregnant, but not before Tom had told her himself. Wanting her to know before she heard it from anyone else. As if it would hurt any less.
She gave herself a mental bad-girl slap as she clicked ‘post’, but there were limits to her nobility.
Finally, she checked her email. There was one from her mother, attaching a photograph of her dad being presented with an award from work for twenty-five years service. Another from Lex, who wanted to know how she was progressing in her search for a dark-eyed Italian lover.
Short answer; she’d had no time.
Faced with a slightly different syllabus to the one she’d been teaching, getting to know her students and finding her way around a strange city, she didn’t have a spare moment. She’d even taken a rain check on Pippa’s offer to go clubbing with her and her boyfriend, and she replied to Lex, telling him so.
Or perhaps she was just being cowardly. Getting back into dating was hard. She couldn’t imagine being with someone else. Kissing, touching, being touched by anyone else.
There were a couple of emails from colleagues at Maybridge High, asking how she was coping. One wanting to know when she could come and stay. The other wanting to know when she’d be home for the weekend.
She wrote cheery replies saying, ‘any time’ to the first, ‘no idea’ to the second, telling them both about the shopping, sightseeing and her new colleagues, several of whom had invited her to spend her weekends with their families.
It was kind of them but the last thing she wanted was for her social life to revolve around work.
Been there. Done that. Using the T-shirt as a duster.
It wasn’t as if there was any shortage of things to see and do.
Her degree might be in History but the Romans, beyond Julius Caesar, Hadrian’s Wall and Antony and Cleopatra, were pretty much a blank page and her spare time had been spent being a total tourist, sucking up the sights, taking pictures.
But Lucia had been on her mind a lot and on Saturday she was going to visit the village of Isola del Serrone.
Sarah had no intention of revealing her identity. She just wanted to know what had happened to Lucia. If she had a good life. And, if she was still alive, that she was well cared for. Her family owed her that.
CHAPTER TWO
ITALIAN FOR BEGINNERS
This weekend, dear readers, I abandoned culture, history, the familiarity of the city and took a train ride out into the Italian countryside.
It’s a bit unnerving, buying a ticket in a foreign language. I’m working on my Italian and I can ask the right questions. ‘Un’andata e ritorno, per favore …’
Unfortunately, I don’t understand the answers. It’s like listening to a radio that’s slipped off the station. My ear isn’t tuned in to the sounds, the inflections of the language. I have to listen ten times as hard and even then I’m only catching one word in five.
Somehow, though, I caught the right train and made it safely to my destination.
MATTEO DI SERRONE was furious. Isabella di Serrrone might be the darling of the Italian cinema, but right at that moment she was no favourite of his.
He’d planned an early escape from Rome, but had instead become embroiled in his cousin’s latest indiscretions when she’d arrived on his doorstep with an army of paparazzi in her wake.
She knew how he loathed the media. They’d all but destroyed his mother and they would do the same to her if she gave them half a chance.
Now, instead of a quiet early morning drive to Isola del Serrone, a day in the vineyards checking that everything was ready for the harvest, he was in her limousine, playing Pied Piper to her escort, with his sulky teenage brother for company.
‘Cheer up, Stephano. You, at least, are getting something out of this,’ Matteo said.
‘Stop acting the hard man. You know you’d do anything for Bella,’ came the swift reply.
He glanced at the boy. Made-up, in wig and dark glasses, with his cousin’s coat thrown around his shoulders, he was pretty enough to be mistaken for her. Pretty enough to have fooled the following pack of photographers.
‘Not quite anything,’ Matteo said and, as he grinned, the tension leached out of him. ‘I promise you that, not even for Bella, would I be prepared to wear lipstick.’
The mountains towered, clear and sharp, rising dramatically from the valley floor. Sarah looked up at them, peaceful, unthreatening in the sunlight, and tried to imagine them in the middle of winter. Covered in snow. The haunt of wolves and bears.
Unless, of course, Lex had made it up about the wolves and bears. Which was entirely possible.
Early in October, the sun was still strong enough for her to be glad of the straw hat she wore to keep it off her face. She paused by the bridge to look down at the river, trickling over stones, very low after the long hot summer. Took her time as she walked up the hill towards the village, looking around her for a glimpse of a familiar wall. The ruins of a once grand house.
Steps led up to a piazza, golden in the sunlight, shaded with trees. There were small shops, a café where the aproned proprietor was setting out tables and a church that seemed far too large for such a small place.
It was pretty enough to be a film set and she stood in the centre of the square, turning in a slow circle, taking photographs with her phone, making sure that she missed nothing.
As she came to a standstill she realised that she was being stared at by the man wearing the apron.
‘Buon giorno,’ she called.
He stared at her for a moment, then nodded briefly before retreating inside.
She shrugged. Not exactly an arms-wide welcome and, instead of crossing the square to have a coffee, ask him about the village, she walked towards the church. It was possible that the priest would be her best bet. She’d scanned a copy of Lucia’s photograph onto her netbook before framing one for Lex, but she didn’t have it with her. She wasn’t planning on flashing it around. But she could at least describe the house.
It was dark inside after the glare of the sun, but she could see that several people were waiting in the pews by the confessional boxes. Clearly the priest was going to be busy for a while.
It was a pretty church, beautifully painted, with a number of memorial plaques on the walls. Maybe one of them would bear the name Lucia? It would be a starting place.
As she looked around, a woman arranging flowers in a niche by a statue of the Madonna stared at her over the glasses perched on the end of her nose. Clearly the village wasn’t used to strangers and, feeling like an intruder, she decided to come back later when the church was quiet. Once outside, she followed a path that continued up the hill.
High ground.
That was what she needed. Somewhere she could look down on the village, see everything.
She continued upwards, passed houses tucked away behind high walls that offered only the occasional glimpse of a tiny courtyard, a pot of bright flowers, through wrought-iron gates. Above her there were trees, the promise of open vistas and she pressed on until she found the way unexpectedly blocked by a wall that looked a lot newer than the path.
There was a gate set into it but, as she reached for the handle, assuming that it was to keep goats from wandering into the village, it was flung open by a young man with a coat bundled under his arm.
It was hard to say which of them was most startled but he recovered first and, with a slightly theatrical bow, said, ‘Il mio piacese, signora!’
‘No problem …’ Then, as he held the gate wide for her. ‘Thank you.’ No … ‘Grazie.’
‘My pleasure, signora Inglese. Have a good day,’ he said, grinning broadly, clearly delighted with life.
She watched him bound down the steps. By the time he’d reached the square he was talking twenty to the dozen into his phone.
Smiling at such youthful energy, she looked around her. There was nothing beyond the wall except a rough path which led upwards through thick, scrubby woods to the top of the hill. With luck, there would be a clearing at the top, a viewpoint from which she could survey the surrounding countryside.
She closed the gate and carried on, catching the occasional glimpse of a vast vineyard sloping away into the distance on her right. Then, as she neared the top of the hill, the thicket thinned out and her heart stopped.
Ahead of her, the path edged towards a tumbledown stretch of wall. Part of it had fallen away so long ago that weeds had colonised it, growing out of cracks in the stone.
Patches of dry yellow lichens spread themselves out in the sun where Lucia had sat, smiling one last time for a man who was going away. Who she must have known she’d never see again.
Only a dusty footprint suggested that anyone had been this way since.
She took a step nearer. Reached out to lay her hand on the warm stone.
Here. Lucia had sat here. And as she looked up she saw a house. The house. No longer a grey, blurry ruin in an old photograph, but restored and far larger, grander than she’d realised.
It wasn’t the front, but the side view of the house and what had been rubble in her picture was now a square tower, the stucco a soft, faded umber in the strong sunlight.
There were vines, heavy with fruit, trailing over a large pergola at the rear. A rustic table set beneath it where generations of a family could eat beneath its shade.
The garden was full of colour. And above the distant sound of a tractor, the humming of insects in the midday heat, she could hear water running.
The spring that had been their only water supply all through that harsh winter.
Her hands were shaking as she used her phone to take a photograph of the restored scene. Only the wall—Lucia’s wall—had not been rebuilt. But why would it be? There was no one up here to keep out. On the contrary, it appeared to be a shortcut into the village and she glanced back down the path, wondering who the rather beautiful young man could have been. Family? A friend. Or an illicit lover, maybe, from the smear of lipstick on his lower lip, making his escape via the back way.
She took off her hat, fanned herself with it, turned again to look at the house. Wondering who lived there. Could it be the same family who’d owned the house when it had sheltered Lex?
Unlikely.
According to the website she’d found, the Isola del Serrone vineyard had long ago become a co-operative run by the villagers.
And the glimpse of a swimming pool suggested that the house had been bought by some wealthy businessman who used it as a weekend retreat from Rome.
Whatever, there were no answers here. Only the wall was as it had been and on a sudden whim she turned, put her hat down and hitched herself up, spreading her arms wide to support herself as Lucia had done. Closing her eyes, imagining how she’d felt, the sun warm on her face, danger passed. A last moment of happiness before Lex was repatriated, sent back to his rejoicing family, and she was left alone.
‘Well, don’t you look comfortable?’
Sarah started, blinked. The man standing on the path had appeared from nowhere. His face was in shadow, his eyes masked by dark glasses so that she couldn’t read his expression but, while his tone was neutral, it was not friendly.
‘Am I trespassing?’ she asked, doing her best to remain calm despite the frisson of nerves that riffled through her. He didn’t look dangerous, but she was on her own. No one knew where she was.
‘This is private land, signora.’
‘But there’s a footpath—’
‘There is also a gate. Hint enough, I’d have thought.’
‘Yes, but …’
‘It was locked.’
‘Someone held it open for me. A young man in a hurry.’ Then, ‘Hold on.’ He was speaking in English. Sexily accented as only an Italian could do it, but English nonetheless. ‘How did you know?’
‘That you were here?’
‘That I’m English.’
‘Actually,’ he said, mocking her, ‘the young man, having made his escape, spared a moment of his precious time to warn me that I had an intruder.’
‘Warn you?’ She remembered him reaching for his mobile phone as he’d walked away, how she’d imagined him talking to some girl … ‘What on earth did he think I was going to do?’ she demanded. ‘Shin up the drainpipe and pinch the family silver?’
Torn between annoyance and amusement, she had hoped he’d realise how ridiculous he was being. Maybe laugh. She couldn’t see his eyes, but his generous mouth seemed made for laughter.
He did neither.
She’d left her bag at the foot of the wall and, without so much as a by-your-leave, he picked it up and began to go through it.
‘Hey!’ she protested as he took out her phone. The nerve of the man! ‘Didn’t your mother tell you that you must never, ever, under any circumstances look in a lady’s handbag?’
‘First we have to establish that you are a lady,’ he replied, glancing up from his perusal of her messages, regarding her for a moment as if he was considering whether to search her, too.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ she warned.
Maybe the silky scoop-necked designer T-shirt she’d teamed with cropped Maybridge market jeans convinced him that there wasn’t room to hide as much as a teaspoon about her person. Or maybe he was saving that pleasure for later.
It was a thought that should have made her feel a lot more nervous than it did.
Whatever the reason, he returned his attention to her phone, going through her messages, then her emails. Pausing at one, he looked over the top of his glasses at her with a pair of ink-dark eyes.
‘Have you found him yet, Sarah Gratton?’
For a moment she was mesmerized by the way he said her name. The vowels long and slow, like thick cream being poured from a jug. The man exuded sensuality. Every movement, every syllable seemed to stroke her …
‘Him?’ she repeated, before she began to purr. No … That wasn’t right. She was looking for Lucia …
‘The “dark-eyed Italian lover”?’ he prompted.
Oh, great. He’d found Lex’s email. But no one who taught a mixed class of teenagers could afford to betray the slightest sign of embarrassment. The first hint of a blush and you were toast.
You had to look them in the eye, stand your ground, come back with a swift riposte that would make the class laugh with you, not at you.
‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Are you interested in the job?’
It would have been spot on if it had come out sharp and snappy as intended, but something had gone seriously wrong between her brain and her mouth. Between concept and delivery.
It was his eyes. Dark as night but with the crackle of lightning in their depths …
Under that gaze, sharp had lost its edge, snap had turned to a soft, gooey fudge and, apparently taking it as an invitation, he reached out, slid his fingers through her hair, cradling her head in the palm of his hand. There was a seemingly endless pause while she frantically tried to redial her brain. Send out a call for the cavalry.
Her brain was apparently engaged, busy dealing with a bombardment of signals. The sun hot on her arms, her throat, her breasts. The sensuous sweep of the mouth hovering above her own. The scent of warm skin, leather …
The world seemed to have slowed down and it took forever for his lips to reach hers. Somewhere, deep inside her brain the word no was teetering on the brink. All she had to do was move her lips, say it, but her butter-soft mouth seemed to belong to someone else.
When it parted, it was not to protest and as his mouth found hers a tingle of something like recognition raced like wildfire through her blood, blotting out reason. Her body, with nothing to guide it, softened, melted against him, murmured, ‘Yes …’
It wasn’t enough and she clutched at his shoulders, fingers digging into hard flesh as she began to fall back, leaving gravity to take them down into the soft thick grass on the shady side of the wall.
For a moment she could feel it, was breathing in the green, sweet scent of grass, herbs crushed beneath them. The weight of his body, the sweep of his hand beneath the silk, lighting up her skin as it moved over her ribs. Her nipple, achingly hard in anticipation of his touch.
There was a sickening jolt, like that moment when you were on the point of falling asleep and something dragged you back.
‘Lucia …’
‘What did you say?’ he asked.
Sarah opened her eyes. She was still sitting on the wall, not clinging to this stranger but being supported by him, as if he thought that she was about to fall.
‘Are you all right?’ His voice seemed to be coming from under water.
‘What? Yes …’
She was back from wherever she’d been, whoever she’d been—because she wasn’t the kind of woman who invited total strangers to kiss her.
‘This was where they said goodbye …’ she whispered.
Lex had taken her photograph and kissed her and they’d made love there in the soft thick grass of early summer one last time before he’d taken the path down into the village. Flown away.
She turned and looked behind her to where her hat was lying in the grass. Not the sweet and green grass of early summer—
‘Sarah!’ the man said, rather more urgently.
‘It’s dry,’ she said. And a little shiver ran through her. ‘The grass.’
‘It’s autumn.’
‘Autumn?’ She shook her head, forced herself to concentrate.
‘Are you all right?’ he repeated, eyes narrowed.
‘Yes.’ Pull yourself together … ‘Yes, of course I am.’
He touched a thumb to her cheek, his hand cradling her face as he wiped away a tear. ‘Then why the tears?’
Tears? She swiped her palm across her cheek. ‘Hay fever,’ she said, grabbing for the first answer that came into her head.
‘In autumn?’
Had he actually kissed her?
Her lips still tingled with a lingering taste of the perfect kiss but had it been a fleeting fantasy? A phantom conjured up by the place, by old memories, by her own loss?
She blinked, saw a tiny smear of lipstick on the corner of his mouth. Of course he’d kissed her. She’d practically begged him to. What on earth had possessed her?
There were no answers, but her brain finally picked up, answered her call for help. Speak. Move. Get out of here …
‘I’m allergic to chrysanthemums,’ she said, sliding down from the wall, forcing him to step back. ‘It’s hereditary.’ Her knees buckled slightly as she hit the ground, her legs unexpectedly shaky beneath her and he caught her elbow to steady her. ‘Great interview, by the way.’ She took a breath, reached for her bag. She really needed to get out of here, but he was blocking her way. And he still had her phone. ‘Leave your number with my secretary and I’ll let you know.’
She’d made a stab for crispness but her voice could have done with longer in the salad drawer.
He continued to look at her for a moment, as if half expecting her to crumple at his feet.
She lifted a brow. The one guaranteed to bring a sassy fifth year into line.
Apparently reassured that she wasn’t about to collapse, he said, ‘Don’t wait too long. I’m not short of offers.’ But his voice, too, had lost its edge and the accent seemed more pronounced, as if he was having a chocolate fudge moment of his own.
‘My phone.’ She held out her hand, praying that it wouldn’t shake. ‘If you please.’
‘When I’m done.’ Then, ignoring her huff of outrage, he turned away, propped his elbows on the wall beside her and began to flip through her photographs.
They were mostly typical tourist shots. A few pictures of the school, her apartment. The kind of things she’d taken to send home or for her blog.
‘You’ve come from Rome?’ he asked.
She didn’t bother to answer, instead leaned back against the wall to give her wobbly knees a break. Vowed to have more than an espresso and pastry for breakfast in future.
‘You’ve been busy sightseeing.’
He glanced at her when she didn’t bother to answer.
‘I’m new in town. I’ll soon run out of things to photograph.’
‘Don’t count on it.’ Then, as he continued, found the photographs she’d taken of the wall, the house, ‘What’s your interest in my house? It’s not an ancient monument.’
It was his house?
He didn’t fit the image she had of a middle-aged businessman setting himself up in a weekend retreat. At all.
‘It’s a lovely house. A lovely view. Have I done something wrong?’ As he glanced at her, the sleeve of his shirt brushed against her bare arm and the soft linen raised goosebumps on her flesh. ‘I thought taking photographs from a public footpath was okay.’
‘And I thought I’d made it clear that this isn’t a public footpath. It’s part of the Serrone estate.’
‘You need a sign,’ she advised him. ‘“Trespassers will be Prosecuted” is usual. Not that I’d have understood it. Maybe a “No Entry” symbol, the kind they use on roads would be better, or a picture of a slavering dog.’ She should stop babbling right now. ‘Give it to me. I’ll delete them.’
‘No need. I’ll do it for you.’ Beep, beep, beep. He still didn’t return the phone. ‘We don’t get many visitors to Isola del Serrone. Especially not from England.’
‘No? I can’t say I’m surprised.’ It was quite possible that she was the first English person to visit the village since her great-grandfather left. ‘Maybe you’d do better if you were a little more welcoming.’
His eyes were now safely hidden behind those dark lenses, but the corner of his mouth tucked up in what might, at a stretch, have been a smile.
‘How much more friendly do you want?’
And she discovered that, classroom hardened as she was, she could still, given sufficient provocation, blush.
‘I’m good, thanks.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s your call.’ Then, clearly unconvinced by her ‘walk in the country’ story, ‘We’re not on the tourist map.’
‘That’s okay. I’m not a tourist.’
‘No?’ He didn’t sound entirely surprised. Which was surprising. Italy was, after all, chock-full of tourists and some of them must occasionally wander off the beaten track. Take photographs of views that hadn’t made it into the guidebooks. ‘So what are you really doing here?’ he asked.
Until now he’d been in the shadows, a voice, a pair of dark eyes, a mouth so tender that his kiss could bring a tear to her eyes …
Now that she was back on the path, out of the sun’s dazzle, she could see his face. It was hard to judge his age but his jet-black hair curled tightly in a thick mat against his scalp, his skin was golden, his cheekbones chiselled and his nose was so damn Roman that it should have been on a statue.
He was good to look at, but there was something about his manner, the arrogant way he’d kissed her, had gone through her emails, making quite unnecessary comments that—the blush notwithstanding—brought out what her mother would, in her teenage years, have described as ‘a touch of the awkwards’.
It would have been easy enough to tell him exactly what she was doing but Lucia’s secret was not hers to share. And, anyway, it was none of his business.
‘You have me at a disadvantage,’ she said.
That raised the shadow of a smile. ‘Undoubtedly.’
She was right about his mouth. Definitely made for it …
‘Having read my messages,’ she said, making an effort to concentrate on reality, ‘you know my name. I don’t know yours.’
‘No?’ He responded with a slight bow. ‘Mi spiace, Signora Sarah Gratton. Io sono Matteo di Serrone.’
‘Di Serrone?’ About to say, Like the racingdriver?, she realised that would betray a deeper interest in the area than mere sightseeing and, back-pedalling madly, she said, ‘You’re a local boy, then.’
‘I was born in the north of Italy, but my family are from this village.’
Turin was in the north. Was he the young son, orphaned when his father was killed on the racetrack? He had to be about the right age.
‘You have my name. Perhaps you will be good enough to answer my question?’ he said.
‘Of course. Someone I know visited the village a while ago and he was so full of it, the hospitality of the people,’ she added, heavily stressing ‘hospitality’, ‘that I wanted to see it for myself.’ It was as much as she was prepared to tell a perfect stranger. Almost a stranger. Not perfect … ‘Has anyone ever told you that your English is amazing?’
‘He must have been impressed,’ he said. Then, the smile deepening to something that could very easily make a woman’s heart beat faster, with or without the added kiss, ‘Has anyone ever told you that you can change the subject faster than the English weather?’
‘No, really,’ she assured him, doing her best to focus on the view instead of the way her heart was in sync with the pulse beating in his neck. It was a little fast, suggesting that he was not as calm as he would have her believe. ‘It’s not only the idiomatic speech. You’ve got both irony and sarcasm nailed and that’s tough.’
‘I had an English nanny until I was six. She was strong on all three.’
‘That would explain it. What happened when you were six?’ she asked, but rather afraid she knew.
‘She left, and I came home.’
‘Oh.’ Not what she’d expected.
He raised his eyebrows a fraction, inviting her to elaborate on that ‘Oh’, but, while his voice had been even, his lack of expression suggested that his nanny’s departure had not been a happy one. No doubt it had left a painful gap in the life of a small boy. Better not to go there …
She shook her head. ‘Nothing. She did a good job of teaching you English, that’s all. Considering how young you were.’
‘She was well rewarded for her dedication.’
Definitely something—and his ‘I came home’ was now suggesting, to her overactive imagination, that daddy had an affair with the nanny and mummy packed her bag. She really had to stop reading rubbish gossip magazines in the hairdressers.
‘I took a post-graduate degree at Cambridge,’ he offered, as if he, too, would rather change the subject. ‘That was a useful refresher course.’
‘I imagine it would be.’ She’d bet there were any number of girls queueing up to give him English lessons. She sighed. ‘I envy your ability to speak two languages so fluently. I’m doing my best to learn Italian, but without much success. I’m still struggling to order a sandwich.’
‘Then allow me to save you the bother,’ he said.
‘Of ordering a sandwich?’
‘I’d recommend something more substantial. You almost fainted, I think, and I’m not vain enough to believe it had anything to do with the fact that I kissed you.’
She’d almost done something, what or why she couldn’t have said, but he was definitely underestimating himself.
‘I skimped on breakfast,’ she admitted.
‘Always a mistake.’
‘Absolutely.’
‘And my rudeness could not have helped.’ He looked down at the phone he was still holding. ‘My cousin is an actress and we have problems with the press. Photographers.’
‘I’m sorry. I had no idea.’
‘No?’ He shrugged. ‘Well, Bella hasn’t yet made the leap to Hollywood so your ignorance is forgivable. Perhaps you’ll allow me to restore your faith in our hospitality by joining me for lunch.’
As he spoke, a woman appeared on the terrace below them and began to lay the table beneath the pergola. Without waiting for her answer, Matteo called down to her in Italian so rapid that she didn’t manage to catch a single word.
The woman waved to show that she’d heard and he said, ‘Graziella is expecting you. You cannot disappoint her.’
She could. She should.
Every atom of sense was telling her that if this was a movie she’d have been yelling at the stupid woman, dithering between going and staying, to beat it.
But she’d come to see the house and she’d never get another chance like this. It wasn’t as if she’d be alone with him.
‘I would hate to disappoint Graziella,’ she said.
‘And if you want to take another photograph,’ he said, ‘please go ahead.’
‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’ A gesture assured her that he said nothing that he didn’t mean. ‘Well, to be honest, I was wishing that there was someone to take a photograph of me when you turned up.’
‘Were you? To prove to your friend that you were here?’
He was frowning, as if he couldn’t understand why she would want to take one in this particular spot.
‘Yes. No …’ She put her hands on the wall, using her heel against the rough stonework to boost herself up before he could help. ‘Why wouldn’t he believe me?’
‘I don’t know. But maybe, in future, you should be more careful what you wish for.’
‘I don’t know. This isn’t going so badly.’ She’d wished and Matteo di Serrone had turned up right on cue.
It hadn’t started out well, but things were looking up.
Ignoring her somewhat provocative response, he said, ‘Do you want to take off your dark glasses?’
‘Oh, right.’
She pulled them off, propped herself on her hands, leaning forward, looking straight at her phone.
‘Say … formaggio.’
She looked up at him, laughed, and he took the photograph.
CHAPTER THREE
ITALIAN FOR BEGINNERS
I went right off the tourist route and, as I stood in a village square taking these photographs, it felt as if nothing much has changed in a very long time.
Well, apart from the cars, satellite television, the internet and mobile phones …
AND so it begins, Matteo thought, as Sarah Gratton replaced her glasses. Hiding her eyes.
‘I can manage,’ she said, as he reached out to help her down.
‘I don’t think you should risk it in your enfeebled state.’
‘I’m not in the least bit feeble …’ He put his hands on her waist and her words died on a little gasp. Nicely done. ‘You might want to hold on,’ he encouraged.
She was lovely and trying so hard. It would be a shame not to make the most of the moment.
After the briefest pause she placed her palms on his shoulders. Her touch was light, her arms fully extended to keep a ladylike distance between them and yet the contact was like a lightning conductor, focusing everything primitive, ancient, instinctive into a single point of heat low in his belly.
And he was the one struggling for breath as he said, ‘Ready?’
‘Ready,’ she said, poised, as cucumber-cool as if she were sitting on a bench in her own garden.
‘Hang on,’ he said, and she clutched at him, her fingers digging into his shoulders as he lifted her clear of the wall and she slid down his body until her feet touched the ground.
He held on to her, making sure she was steady. Then just held on as he was immersed in her scent. Not the kind sprayed out of a bottle, but something more personal. Warm skin, silky hair, the scent of a woman held in the arms of a man she desired.
For a moment it was not Sarah clinging to him for support. He was the one hanging on to her, weak with the longing to bury his face in her hair, her neck. In the creamy softness of the breasts he’d glimpsed as she’d leaned forward, bombarding his senses with everything female.
‘I’ve got it, thanks,’ she said, her hands sliding to his elbows, steadying him in return for just a moment before she stepped back to pick up her hat.
What colour were they? Her eyes. He should have noticed …
‘Sorry. I’m heavier than I look,’ she said.
She was a lot more of many things, but ‘heavier than she looked’ was nowhere near top of the list.
She glanced away, towards the house. ‘I take it we’re not going to use your brother’s shortcut?’ she said, laying her hand beside the telltale footprint on the wall. A good hand, with nails buffed to a shine. No rings. Nothing showy or obvious. Nothing of the femme fatale.
An innocent English rose taking a walk in the Italian countryside and if he hadn’t been warned, hadn’t been expecting something like this, he would have fallen for it.
‘He’s young, in a hurry,’ he said, a little too sharply, and she turned to look up at him, a tiny frown plucking at the wide space between her eyes. ‘There’s a girl waiting for him in Rome.’
‘Oh?’ Her brows rose a notch. ‘Well, he really is very beautiful.’
‘We have different fathers,’ he said, by way of explanation. ‘My mother remarried after my father was killed.’
He wasn’t telling her anything that anyone with a computer couldn’t have discovered in thirty seconds. Always assuming she didn’t already know his family history by rote.
‘I see that I must add self-deprecation to the other gifts from your nanny.’
‘Must you?’ he countered lightly.
‘It’s such a very English trait.’
‘Possibly.’
The only useful lesson his nanny had taught him was that everyone had their price. Never to trust a smiling face. Never to let anyone close. He’d forgotten it only once and he wasn’t about to forget it again.
He took her arm—the path was uneven—as he turned up the hill. She didn’t object, but then he hadn’t expected her to.
‘Age helps. And, being older than my beautiful brother, I’ve learned patience. The value of taking time to enjoy the journey.’
It was definitely time to slow things down.
He had lived like a monk for the past couple of years, concentrating on his vines, staying away from the kind of women who were drawn to celebrity. Who fed off it. Yearned for it. That had all been a game. A cat playing with a mouse. Until Katerina, he had thought he was the cat. He should have known better. Well, this time he was ready.
Almost ready. His head might understand that this was not real, but his body appeared to have other ideas.
‘You’re saying we should stop and smell the roses,’ Sarah suggested.
‘Why not? There’s no rush. Is there?’
‘I used to think not …’ She shook her head, but she was smiling.
‘What?’ he asked, obligingly picking up the cue she’d dangled so temptingly.
‘Nothing.’ He waited, sure it was not ‘nothing’. ‘I was simply wondering if you’re the kind of man who undoes the knots rather than grabbing the scissors. When you’re given a present,’ she added, in case he didn’t understand.
He understood all too well and an impatient hormonal jig urged him to go for the scissors, but he reined it in.
This was definitely a moment for the careful unpicking of knots.
‘I find that anticipation is often the greater part of the pleasure,’ he assured her. ‘Which is why we are taking the scenic route.’
‘Oh? Should I be worried? About lunch.’
Inevitably the destination was going to disappoint her, but that was for him to know and her to find out. But lunch was merely the first stop on the journey.
‘Graziella is an excellent cook. You can rest assured that expectations will be fully met, if not exceeded.’
The path wound up the hill for a hundred yards or so to a point where the countryside was spread out in all directions below them. The village, vineyards, his laboratory and nursery for the vines, scattered farms.
Sarah lifted her hand to shade her eyes as she looked into the far distance.
‘Are there bears in the mountains?’ she asked.
‘Bears?’ It was the last question he’d been expecting. ‘There are a few brown bears, mostly in the national park. And wolves are on the increase. What makes you ask?’
‘I thought Lex might have been teasing me.’ She let her hand drop, looked down. ‘The trees completely hide the house from up here.’
‘It’s tucked in a dip in the landscape. The winters can be hard.’
The only vulnerable spot was the broken wall. That, and a boy who happened to be in the right place, at the right time, to open the gate. Whether by accident or design he had yet to discover.
‘Does the scenery live up to the recommendation?’ he asked.
‘Absolutely. Lex told me it was beautiful but actually it’s breathtaking.’ She looked around. ‘Where’s the river?’
‘It’s over there.’ His chin was level with her shoulder as he bent to point out to her a glint of water on the far side of the village. Breathing again the scent of her sun-warmed skin. Something faintly spicy. Vanilla. Cinnamon. Good enough to eat. ‘To the left of those trees,’ he added as she searched for it.
‘I have it,’ she said. Then, as she spotted the motorcycles of the paparazzi who’d followed the limousine from Rome, ‘Who are all those people down there on the road?’
Well, she could hardly ignore them.
‘They’re paparazzi. They followed Bella from Rome this morning.’
She turned to stare at him. ‘Your cousin is here? No wonder you were so edgy.’
‘It has been an interesting morning,’ he admitted.
‘And yet you were willing to let me take a photograph of your house?’
‘I don’t think the lens in your mobile phone would give you much of a photograph,’ he said. ‘But I’ll let you into a secret. Bella wasn’t in the car they followed.’
‘So they’re waiting down there while she’s …?’
‘Somewhere else.’
‘Good for her,’ she said, smart enough not to push it. ‘Is it okay if I take a photograph?’
‘Of the paparazzi? Or the view?’
‘Sneak pictures of the photographers?’ The idea seemed to amuse her. ‘They’d just be a smudge in the distance. I simply wanted a shot of the view. Lex will be interested to see what it looks like now.’
‘Will he?’ he said, forcing himself to curb a snag of irritation that, while he was going out of his way to make life easy for her, charm her, she kept talking about some other man.
He waited while she took her pictures then asked the name of a town, its red roofs spread over the top of a distant hill.
‘That is Arpino. Cicero was born there.’
‘The man who wrote that a room without books is like a body without a soul.’ She caught him looking at her and with a wry smile said, ‘It’s on a fridge magnet at home.’
‘Then it must be true.’ Forcing himself to look away, he said, ‘It’s an interesting place. They’ve recently excavated a well-preserved Roman pavement beneath the town square and there’s a bell tower that has to be climbed by anyone who really wants to see a view.’ Then, aware that he sounded rather like a guidebook, ‘After a shaky start, I’m attempting to make a rare visitor feel welcome.’
‘And doing an excellent job.’ Then, with a sigh, ‘Everything is so ancient here. We have old buildings, monuments at home, but in Italian history isn’t a visitor attraction, it’s embedded into the very fabric of life.’
‘We’ve been here a long time,’ he said. ‘And while you were building in wood and straw, we were constructing in stone, which is more enduring.’
‘You built in stone in Britain, too, but the Saxons were the original recyclers.’
It occurred to him that he should be grateful to whoever had sent her for having the wit to choose someone with intelligence as well as beauty.
The journey, wherever it took them, certainly wouldn’t be boring.
‘Shall we go?’ He took her elbow. ‘The path down through the olive grove is steep.’
‘An olive grove? Hold on …’ Now that she’d started, there was no stopping her and she made him wait while she took photographs of the olives. ‘Sorry. I’m being a total tourist.’
She was certainly giving a great impression of one. But, then again, maybe she had never seen olives growing before.
‘Don’t apologise. Like life, we tend to take our surroundings for granted. It’s refreshing to see the familiar through new eyes,’ he said, opening the gate to the garden.
‘Wow.’ Sarah had stopped on the top terrace. ‘Just … wow.’
Below them the vineyards swept away down the valley, but she wasn’t looking at that. She was looking at the kitchen garden and in a moment had abandoned him to snap close-ups of zucchini flowers, artichokes, was stooping to rub her fingers against the herbs billowing over the path. They were swarming with Nonna’s bees, but she seemed oblivious, as intoxicated by the scent as they were.
‘You are a gardener?’ he asked.
‘No. That’s my mother. She gardens, keeps hens and we’ve always had bees. What is this?’ she asked.
He lifted her long, slender fingers to his face. He didn’t need the scent to identify the plant but he was the advocate of taking time, in this case to smell not roses, but herbs.
‘It is Thymus citriodoros “Aureus”. The golden variety of lemon thyme.’
‘The Latin name. That’s impressive,’ she said, laughing.
‘But I am a Roman,’ he reminded her. ‘Between Monday and Friday, anyway.’
Her hand was soft to the touch and his reluctance to release it was not entirely an act. It might be a game, but this wasn’t the Garden of Eden and he wouldn’t go to hell for picking the fruit.
‘Of course it helps that I am a botanist.’
‘Oh.’
‘We don’t do souvenirs of Isola del Serrone,’ he said, bending to break off a piece of the herb, ‘but put this in your bag and you’ll remember us whenever you open it.’
Remember me, was the subtext. It had been a while, but he still remembered the moves.
She responded with every appearance of delight to this small gesture and he found himself wishing he could see her eyes so that he could be sure the smile reached them.
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Liz Fielding
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Could stepping into the past make your future perfect? Sarah’s been dumped. Unceremoniously. Painfully. A romantic at heart and a historian by profession, Sarah has always wondered about her grandfather’s wartime romance in Italy. Who was that brave woman who cared for him during the war? Clearly this is the time to heal her wounds with the trip of a lifetime to Rome.Armed only with a photo of the house her grandfather stayed in, the village, and the name Lucia, Sarah sets out to find her…and meets the beautiful Italian count Matteo di Serrone there. Now here’s a man who could move Sarah on from her broken heart! It’s a fairy-tale romance, until Sarah realises she’s made the most rookie mistake of all: falling in love with her holiday fling…