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CHAPTER TWO

IT WAS gone lunchtime by the time she arrived back at the apartment. As she stepped in through the door she then stood for a moment just looking around her in frowning puzzlement. The place had been quite tidy when she’d left here this morning but it didn’t look like that now. The cushions on the sofa were crushed and tumbled. There were two half-drunk coffee-cups sitting on the low table and an empty bottle of wine with two glasses lying on their sides on the floor. She could see through the open door to Sonya’s bedroom that it looked pretty much in the same tumbled state.

She was still frowning at the mess when her cellphone beeped and, placing her shopping bags on the floor, she fished out her phone to discover the caller was Bianca, the office manager of the tour group she and Sonya worked for.

She was looking for Sonya. ‘She didn’t turn up to work today,’ Bianca announced. ‘Have you any idea where she is? She isn’t answering her mobile or the phone at your flat.’

Looking around at the evidence, Francesca could only assume that Sonya had been entertaining an unexpected visitor, though her loyalty to Sonya was not going to let her tell Bianca that.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but I left the flat before Sonya was up this morning so I’ve no idea where she is,’ which wasn’t a lie. ‘Didn’t she call in to warn you she wasn’t going to make it?’

‘No.’ The manager’s voice was tight. ‘And she’s left me a guide short. It really isn’t on, Francesca. This is the third time in two weeks she’s let me down like this.’

It was? Francesca’s eyes widened at this surprise piece of information. She hadn’t been aware that Sonya had been skipping off work. ‘I know she’s been suffering with a troublesome wisdom tooth lately,’ which was true. Sonya complained about it a lot but was terror-struck at the mere mention of the word dentist. ‘Maybe she couldn’t stand the pain any more and went to get treatment.’

‘And pigs might fly,’ Bianca snapped. ‘It’s this man she has been seeing.’

Man? ‘What man?’ As far as she was aware, Sonya wasn’t seeing anyone special at the moment.

‘Don’t pull the innocent, Francesca,’ Bianca scolded. ‘You know all about the married man she’s lost her head over. If she’s any sense she will drop him before this company drops her. I can’t have my guides not turning up when they should. It makes an absolute mess of my…’

Francesca stopped listening, so stunned by the turn of this conversation that she had to sit down. She’d known Sonya since they’d been at university together and—OK, she acknowledged, so she was a bit of a rebel and tended to let her heart rule her head. But she confided most things to Francesca and she did not recall her saying a thing about a new man.

A married man?

Bianca had to be mistaken, she decided, only to look at the evidence laid out in front of her eyes that told her Sonya was up to something clandestine if she was resorting to skipping work so she could entertain her man here, where there was little chance of them being seen together.

‘I’ll come in and cover for her if you need me.’ She cut across whatever it was Bianca was saying. She glanced at her watch. ‘I still have time to get there if it will help you out.’

‘Are you sure you don’t mind? You were supposed to be shopping for your dress today. It doesn’t seem fair that you should—’

‘The dress is bought,’ Francesca assured, glancing across the room to where she’d placed the elegant dress box that she’d ridden back here safely trapped between her legs. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can make it.’

‘You truly are an angel, Francesca,’ Bianca said in relief. ‘Unlike your wretched friend!’

The phone call ended. Francesca continued to sit there wondering what the heck had got into today. It had begun so well. She’d been happy—everything had been perfect!

Then Carlo Carlucci had happened, she recalled with a small shiver. Since her run-in with him nothing had gone right. She’d had phone calls that irritated, ill winds blowing chills across her skin and a tiring trudge through Rome’s finest fashion boutiques, looking for a dress she still wasn’t sure about even though she’d bought it. Now Sonya had gone missing and it was just beginning to dawn on her that, true to her flatmate’s nature, she had rung her this morning to ask if she would cover for her at work. Only she’d then chickened out when they’d got into an argument over Angelo.

And now she had discovered that Sonya had been lying to her! Or keeping secrets was probably a fairer way of putting it.

But she didn’t want to be fair. She didn’t want to be an angel or have her best friend sniping at Angelo and then likening her to her mother because she happened to lose her patience.

More irritation struck, slicing right down her backbone and bringing her to her feet. She bent to pick up the used coffee-cups then stopped herself. Tidying up after Sonya was something her mother would do. So was tutting and sighing all over the place, as she’d been about to do.

‘Oh, damn it!’ she shouted at the tiny apartment. And she never swore!

Because her mother would have been appalled.

‘Damn it,’ she said again out of sheer black cussedness and went to put her purchases away.

Then she went still, listening to herself and not liking what she heard. Her mother was gone now and she did not want to think ill of her. She didn’t want to be sniping at her inside her head! There had been too much ill feeling in Maria Bernard’s life while she had been alive, she thought bleakly as she went to unpack and hang up her dress.

Her mother had once been the beautiful Maria Gianni—only child of Rinaldo Gianni, a man who ran his household with a rod of iron. He’d woven plans around his only daughter that had mapped out her entire future from the day she had been born. Then Maria had thwarted those plans by falling in love with a thankless English rake called Vincent Bernard, who had his eye firmly fixed on Maria’s inheritance. It had taken a month for him to make her pregnant and another month to get her father’s permission to marry her—before Rinaldo Gianni threw them out. Vincent had taken her mother to England. He’d been so sure that his father-in-law would relent and forgive once Maria produced the grandson the old man wanted so much that he was prepared to wait the whole nine months for the event to take place. A girl had not fitted either man’s criteria. Vincent Bernard had cut his losses and left Maria holding a baby girl that nobody wanted by then. A year after that Vincent had divorced her to marry his next rich fool of a wife. Divorce had been the ultimate humiliation and sin in her mother’s eyes. She’d never acknowledged that legal slip of paper ending her Roman Catholic marriage. She’d never forgiven her father for refusing to forgive her for going against his wishes. All three had never spoken again.

Rinaldo Gianni had died when Francesca was ten years old, having never acknowledged that he had a granddaughter. She’d never met him, just as she had never met her own father, who—and here was the irony—died around the same time. It wasn’t until a year after her mother’s death that she’d given in to a long-suppressed yearning to come to Rome and meet with her only surviving blood relative. And even as she’d taken that first step onto Italian soil she had still been struggling with her conscience because she’d known her mother would not approve. But it was lonely being on her own yet knowing she had a great-uncle living here who might—just might—be prepared to welcome Maria’s child.

She’d wanted nothing else from Bruno Gianni. Not his money or even his love. She hadn’t got them either, she mused with a wry little smile as she dried herself after a quick shower. Her great-uncle Bruno, she’d discovered, was a very old man living the life of a near recluse in his draughty old palazzo tucked away in the Albany Hills south of Rome. He did not receive visitors. He did not have a great-niece, she was informed by return letter when she’d made her first tentative approach. It had taken determined persistence on her part before the old man eventually gave in and reluctantly granted her an audience.

It was a strange meeting, she recalled, pausing for a moment to look back to that one and only time she’d met Bruno Gianni. He was nice. She’d liked him on sight even though he had told her straight off that if she was after his money then there was none to be had. The crumbling palazzo belonged to the bank, he’d said, and what bit of money he had left would go to the tax collector when he was dead.

But she’d been able to see her mother’s eyes in his eyes—her own hazel eyes looking curiously at her even as he’d labelled her a fortune-hunter. She recalled how badly she’d wanted to touch him but didn’t dare, how his skin wasn’t at all wrinkly despite his great age and he might live in a near ruin but his grooming had been immaculate. Quite dapper.

She smiled as she began dressing again, slipping into her uniform red dress with its flashes of bright yellow and green.

She’d told him about her life and her mother’s life in London, the schools she’d attended and her university degree. She’d told him that she was working as a tour guide in Rome and that she was sharing an apartment with a friend she’d met in university. He’d listened without attempting to put a stop on her eager flow. When she’d finally slithered to a stop, he’d nodded as if in approval then rung the bell. When the housekeeper arrived to see her out all he’d said was, ‘Enjoy the rest of your life, signorina,’ and she’d nodded, knowing by those words that he had no wish to see her again.

That didn’t mean she’d stopped corresponding though. She’d continued to send him little notes every week, letting him know what she was doing. When she’d met and fallen in love with Angelo, besides Sonya, Great-Uncle Bruno was the first person to know. He’d never replied to a single letter and she hadn’t a clue if he even bothered to read her silly, light, chatty notes. When she confided in Angelo about him he was shocked and disbelieving at first, then he’d laughed and called their first meeting fate because Bruno Gianni lived only a couple of miles away from his parents’ country house.

‘If your mama had been allowed to live there with you, we would have grown up together—been childhood sweethearts maybe.’

She liked that idea. It gave their love a sense of inevitability and belonging that her unforgiving grandfather could not beat.

On the few occasions she had been invited to spend the weekend at the Villa Batiste in the Frascati area of Castelli Romani she always made a point of walking the few miles to her great-uncle’s palazzo to leave a note to let him know where she was staying—just in case he might relent and asked her to visit him while she was there. It had never happened. He hadn’t even bothered to reply to the formal invitation to her betrothal party this weekend, she reminded herself.

Did that hurt? A little, she confessed. But—as Angelo said—persistence could often win in the end. ‘Maybe he will relent and come to our wedding.’

And maybe he would, she thought hopefully as she shut up the apartment and stepped back out into the sunlit street.

However disappointed she was with her great-uncle, she had never regretted coming to Rome. Her Italian was fluent, her knowledge of the city’s history something she’d drenched herself in from the time she had been able to read. She loved her job, loved her life and she loved—loved Angelo.

The ride down the Corso was a mad, bad bustle this time around. Francesca skimmed deftly between tight lines of traffic. The afternoon was a long one. The city was beginning to throb with people now the tourist season was in full flow—not that it eased by a huge amount at any time of the year. By the time she arrived back at the apartment she was so tired all she wanted to do was dive beneath the shower then put up her aching feet.

The first thing she noticed was the tidied apartment, the next was Sonya, curled up on the sofa wrapped in her bathrobe, looking very defiant.

‘Before you start, it was the toothache,’ she jumped in before Francesca could say anything. ‘It flared up after I spoke to you this morning and I just had to find a dentist to do something about it.’

‘Makes house-calls, does he?’ Francesca didn’t believe her. It took only a flick of her eyes to the empty coffee-table for Sonya to know what she meant.

‘Of course not,’ she snapped then winced, pushing a hand up to cover the side of her face. ‘God, it’s hurting more now that the anaesthetic’s worn off than it did before I let him touch it!’ she groaned.

‘Who touched it?’

‘The dentist, you sarcastic witch,’ Sonya sliced. Then she sighed when she realised she wasn’t about to get any sympathy, her gentian-blue eyes moving over Francesca’s clothes. ‘Sorry I spoilt your day off,’ she mumbled contritely.

‘You meant to do that a whole lot earlier this morning,’ she drawled.

‘Mm.’ Sonya didn’t even bother to deny it; her fingertips were now carefully testing the slight puffiness Francesca could see at her jaw.

‘You look grotty,’ she observed, yielding slightly. ‘How bad is it?’

‘Really bad.’ Tears even swam into her eyes. ‘He drilled it then dressed it with—something.’ She dismissed that something with a flick of her hand. ‘I’m to go back next week—ouch.’ She winced again. ‘I also got the full lecture on the cause and effect of neglect.’

Francesca couldn’t help but smile at the last dry comment. Sonya didn’t like lectures especially when she had no defence. ‘Did you punch him?’ she asked.

‘Not likely! He had me pinned down with all these contraptions sticking out of my mouth and was holding a drill in his hand at the time.’

‘Poor you,’ she commiserated.

‘Mm.’ Sonya was in complete sympathy with that comment. ‘Did you get your dress?’ she then thought to enquire.

‘Mm,’ Francesca mimicked. ‘Did you get your intriguing new man to hold your hand while you sat in the dentist’s chair?’

Sonya looked up then quickly away again, a definite flush mounting her delicately pale cheeks. ‘Don’t ask because I’m not going to tell you,’ she muttered.

‘So he is married,’ Francesca concluded.

‘Who told you that?’ Sonya was shocked.

‘Bianca,’ she supplied. ‘Who seems to know a whole lot more than I do about your love-life.’

That still hurt, and she turned away to walk towards her bedroom.

‘I’m sorry, Francesca, but I can’t talk about him!’ she threw after her. ‘It’s—complicated,’ she added awkwardly. ‘And Bianca only knows the bit she gleaned out of me when she caught me rowing with him on the phone in the office the other day. ‘

‘So he is married?’ She turned to look at her.

Sonya looked down and stubbornly closed her mouth.

The urge to tell her what a fool she was being leapt to the edge of her tongue—then was stopped when she remembered the ‘you sound like my mother’ stab from this morning. So she changed her mind about saying anything at all and turned back to her bedroom.

‘I’m going to change,’ she said. ‘I’m meeting Angelo in a hour—’

‘No, you’re not.’

Once again she stopped and swung round. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘He rang here—a few minutes ago—to say he’s still in Milan and won’t be coming back until tomorrow.’ For some reason relaying all of that also poured hot colour into her cheeks.

Francesca’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. ‘Have you two been fighting again?’

‘No,’ Sonya denied.

‘Then why the guilty face?’

‘OK, so we fought a little bit,’ Sonya snapped. ‘Stop getting at me, Francesca! I can’t help it if—’

‘So, why didn’t he call me on my mobile to tell me this?’ Francesca cut in. She was not going to let Sonya start one of her character-assassination jobs on Angelo again. One a day of those was enough.

‘He said you weren’t answering.’

Francesca glanced at her bag then went to recover it. The moment she fished inside the uniform brown leather satchel she knew why he couldn’t reach her. In her rush that lunchtime she must have left the phone in her tote bag.

‘Idiot,’ she muttered and went into the bedroom to get it so she could return his call—only to find Sonya had followed her and was standing in the doorway, wearing the oddest expression on her face. Francesca couldn’t quite read it—anxiety, pleading? Or was it pain from the tooth?

‘Are you feeling all right, cara?’ she probed gently. ‘You look terribly flushed.’ She put a cool palm against Sonya’s cheek and was surprised just how hot she felt. ‘At the risk of being accused of mothering you, would you like me to tuck you into bed and bring you a nice hot chocolate drink?’

The tears arrived then, turning gentian-blue into midnight pools in a face that was so classically beautiful it was no wonder she’d been screen tested by a film director once. ‘Don’t be nice to me, Francesca,’ she murmured.

‘I love you,’ she smiled, moving her fingers into the straight, glossy pelt of her friend’s long, flaxen hair. ‘Why shouldn’t I be nice?’

‘Because I don’t deserve it.’ Sonya stepped away from her so she could use the sleeve of her bathrobe to wipe her eyes with. ‘I use your friendship dreadfully.’

‘Only because I let you.’

‘Yes…’ Sonya agreed and looked momentarily devastated. The phone went then, breaking the moment. Sonya went into the sitting room to answer it and a few seconds later was calling Francesca to come to the phone.

’Ciao, mi amore.’ It was Angelo, his voice sounding weary and flat. ‘You don’t answer your cellphone because you don’t want to speak to me and I cannot blame you.’

‘I didn’t have my phone with me so I couldn’t answer it, you sweet idiot,’ she chided, her eyes flickering sideways to watch Sonya disappearing into her bedroom. The moment the door shut behind her Francesca lowered her voice into soft, loving tones. ‘I’m sorry you’re stuck in Milan.’

‘So am I,’ he agreed. ‘I am about to get ready to take dinner with some business colleagues when I should be on my way to share a romantic dinner with you. Ah, misero,’ he declared feelingly.

‘Poor caro,’ she commiserated.

Angelo heaved out a sigh. ‘But enough of this.’ He firmly pulled his mood out of the doldrums. ‘Tell me about your day.’

‘Well, my plans fell to pieces much as yours did…’ She went to explain, leaving out the incident at the traffic lights and editing some of the more contentious events involving Sonya so she didn’t invite him to vent his frustrations on the one person guaranteed to earn his wrath. ‘But I did manage to find a dress for Saturday,’ she finished on a high note.

To her surprise he made no cruel remarks about Sonya’s toothache. In fact he skimmed right over the fact that she’d even been mentioned at all and asked about her dress instead. She refused to tell him and there followed a few minutes of soft teasing that was much more like the man she loved. Then he had to go and the call ended, leaving Francesca feeling loved and filled with that golden warmth that was her Angelo.

Sonya didn’t come out of her bedroom again that evening. Francesca went in to check on her a couple of times but all she could see was the crown of her head peeping out from beneath a mound of duvet and eventually left her to sleep off the ordeal with the dentist.

By the next morning she was herself again and ready to face Bianca’s wrath head-on. They rode down the Corso side by side on similar Vespas and dressed in the same red uniforms. Their day was busy as always.

Angelo called at lunchtime to break the news that he was going to be stuck in Milan for another night. The next day was Saturday and they were supposed to be driving into the Alban Hills together but that plan had to be shelved. ‘I have arranged with my parents for you to travel with them,’ he told her.

It wasn’t a prospect that filled her with delight. She had discovered quite early on in her relationship with Angelo that his parents were not the kind of people who were ever going to welcome her with open arms. She harboured a suspicion that she was not what they’d been hoping for as a wife for their precious only son and if it wasn’t for her very loose connection to the Gianni name they would have been actively against Angelo marrying her. As it was, Mrs Batiste had grilled her once about her mother, then surprised her by confessing that she and Maria Gianni had attended the same convent school. ‘You look very like her—apart from the hair,’ she’d said, Maria’s hair having been as glossy Latin black as hair could be. ‘I’m sorry she had such a difficult life, Francesca. I hope your marrying my son will give you a happier one—for Maria’s sake—and that Bruno Gianni relents his foolish stubbornness one day for your sake. But until then I think we will not mention him again.’

And that had basically been it. The Gianni connection was smoothly sidelined, which suited Francesca because she didn’t like talking about it and was happy to keep it that way.

The journey to Frascati wasn’t too bad. Angelo’s parents’ manner towards her might be cool but it wasn’t frigid. She loved Angelo, they loved Angelo, so that was their line of communication. They were almost at their destination when Angelo’s mother voiced her annoyance that her son should have been held up in Milan this week of all weeks.

‘It is his own fault,’ her husband returned without any sympathy. ‘Angelo knows it is not good business practice to keep busy people kicking their heels while they await his late arrival.’

‘It wasn’t as if he intended to be late. He overslept and missed the flight,’ Angelo’s mama defended loyally.

He did? thought Francesca. It was the first she’d heard of it.

‘No one else missed the flight,’ the father made the succinct distinction. ‘Whatever they had been doing the night before, they still managed to get to the airport on time.’

In the back of the car Francesca shifted slightly, catching the attention of Mr Batiste via his rear-view mirror. ‘My apologies, Francesca,’ he said, ‘I was not being critical of the late hours you young people keep, only Angelo’s failure to rise from his bed when he should,’ bringing a flush of heat into her face when she realised what he was assuming.

But it wasn’t true. She hadn’t seen Angelo the night before he went to Milan. Because of the early time of his flight he’d told her he was going to get an early night.

‘We cannot afford to offend a man like Carlo Carlucci. His business is too important to us,’ Mr Batiste went on, his attention back on the road ahead so he didn’t see the way Francesca’s face went from hot to pale at the mention of Carlo Carlucci’s name. ‘Being stuck in Milan while Carlo puts him through business hoops is a better punishment than to have Carlo take his business somewhere else.’

Mrs Batiste demanded her husband’s attention then, with a comment that was spoken too low for Francesca to hear. It didn’t matter because she had stopped listening anyway. She was thinking about Carlo Carlucci and that awful morning she had met him at a set of traffic lights. He must have been on his way to meet with Angelo at the airport yet he hadn’t bothered to mention it—nor had it stopped him from making a play for her.

She shifted restlessly again, feeling the same hostile prickles attacking her skin as she replayed the ease with which he’d conducted that little scene.

What made the man tick that he felt he could do that to her, knowing what he knew? Arrogance? A supreme belief in his right to toy with another man’s woman simply because it had amused him to do so? If she’d said yes to the coffee thing, would he have just laughed in her face and driven off, having got all the kicks he’d been looking for from the interlude by successfully seducing another man’s woman? Or would he have been willing to miss his flight in favour of coffee with her at Café Milan?

Oh, don’t go there, she told herself, frowning out of the car window as something low in her abdomen began to stir.

What about Angelo? She considered, firmly fixing her attention on what should be important here. Why hadn’t he told her that he was stuck in Milan because he’d overslept and annoyed an important business client? Did he think that confessing he’d messed up would lose him his hero status with her?

A smile touched her mouth, amusement softening the frown from her face. He ought to know that nothing could do that. He was and always would be the wildly handsome superhero to her.

They arrived at their destination, driving between a colonnade of tall cypress trees towards the stunning white and gold frontage of Villa Batiste. It wasn’t a big house by Castelli Romani standards but, standing as it did on its own raised plateau, neither the house nor its amazing gardens skimped on a single detail when it came to Renaissance extravagance.

As they climbed out of the car at the bottom of wide white marbled steps, Francesca could almost feel the Batistes filling with pride of ownership and wondered wryly—not for the first time—how that pride really dealt with Angelo wanting to marry a little nobody like her. He would inherit all of this one day, which would make her its chatelaine and her children its future heirs.

The house was already under the occupation of an army of professional caterers. A quick cup of coffee after their journey was all they had time for before they were busily helping out. Mr Batiste went off to check his wine cellar. Mrs Batiste made for the kitchen. Francesca became a willing dogsbody, helping out wherever she could. By two o’clock there was nothing more for her to do that she could see. Angelo was still stuck in Milan and his parents were resting before the next wave of activity began.

On a sudden impulse, she decided to write a note to her great-uncle then go and deliver it. You never know, she told herself as she set off, she might just catch him at a weak moment.

Her walk took her along narrow, winding country lanes with blossom trees shedding petals on the ground and the golden sunlight dappling through their gently waving branches. It was a beautiful place and she took her time, taking in the hills and the rolling wine-growing countryside that gave such a classic postcard image of Italy.

Half an hour later and she was standing by a pair of rustic old gates, gazing on a house and a garden that would make Angelo’s mother shudder in dismay. There was nothing formal or neat about her great-uncle’s garden, she mused with a smile. The whole thing seemed to merge in a rambling mix of untended creepers with the old palazzo struggling to hang on to some pride as its ochre-painted face peeled and its roof sagged.

She lingered for a few minutes, just looking at it all like a child forbidden to enter. She didn’t think of opening the gate and stepping inside. She never intruded past this point when she came here because she knew it was only right that she respect her uncle’s wishes. After a little while she heaved out a sigh then took her sealed note out of her jacket pocket and fed it into the rusted metal letter slot set into one of the stone pillars that supported the gates. As she listened to it drop she had the sorry image of the note landing on top of all the others she’d posted and a sad little smile touched the corners of her mouth as she turned slowly away.

Head down, shoulders hunched inside her fitted little denim jacket that matched the jeans she was wearing, she was about to begin the walk back to Villa Batiste when a flash of bright red caught her eye. Her chin came up then all movement was stalled on a stifled gasp of surprise and undisguised dismay when she saw an all too familiar red sports car parked up on the other side of the lane with its driver leaning casually against shiny red bodywork.

Oh, no, not him, was her first gut response as they stared at each other across the few metres of tarmac.

He was dressed in dark blue denims and cloud-blue cashmere that skimmed his tapered body like a second skin. The way he had arms folded across his chest ruched up the lip of the long-sleeved, round-necked sweater, exposing the bronze button that held his jeans in place and almost—almost—offered her a glimpse of the lean flesh beneath.

On a sharp flick of shock as to where her thoughts were taking her she dragged her eyes upwards to look at his face. He was smiling—or allowing his attractive mouth to adopt a sardonic lift. His chin was slightly lowered, his eyelashes glossing those chiselled bones in his cheeks. And he was checking her out in much the same way that she was guilty of checking him out, viewing the length of her legs encased in faded denim, then the fitted denim jacket and finally her face.

’Ciao,’ he greeted softly—intimately—causing her next response to him, which was a shower of prickly resentment that raced across her skin.

‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded, not even trying to sound polite.

‘We do seem to meet in the oddest of places,’ he mused drily. ‘Do you think, cara,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘that we might be the victims of fate?’