Читать книгу Summer At Villa Rosa Collection - Kate Hardy, Jessica Gilmore - Страница 11

CHAPTER TWO

EXHAUSTED, A LITTLE SHAKY from a rough ferry crossing, Andie handed her passport to the border control officer.

‘Buongiorno, signora.’ He glanced at the back page of her passport and then gave her the kind of searching look a Roman traveller landing in the ancient port of Sant’Angelo two thousand years ago would have recognised. The kind of look that would bring even the most innocent traveller out in a guilty sweat. ‘What is the purpose of your visit to L’Isola dei Fiori?’

‘I’m running away,’ she muttered.

From her job, her life, from the man she’d been in love with since the life-changing moment when he’d applauded her touchdown in a treacherous crosswind.

Hiding the secret she was carrying.

‘Scusi?’

She swallowed down the lump in her throat. ‘I’m on holiday.’

He did not look convinced. She didn’t blame him but the clammy sweat sticking her shirt to her back had nothing to do with guilt.

‘You are travelling alone?’ he asked.

That rather depended on your definition of alone...

She nodded. ‘Yes, I’m on my own.’

‘And where are you staying?’

‘At Baia di Rose. The Villa Rosa.’ His brow rose almost imperceptibly. ‘My sister inherited it from her godmother. Sofia Romana,’ she added, in the face of his scepticism.

The man’s eyebrows momentarily lost touch with gravity. Clearly the mistress of the late King Ludano would not be everyone’s choice as godmother but Sofia had started school on the same day as their grandmother. Their friendship had endured through a long lifetime and by the time their fourth daughter had arrived her parents had probably been running out of godmother options.

He cleared his throat, returned to her passport, flipping through the pages. ‘You travel a great deal?’

‘Yes.’ She was in and out of airports all over Europe and the Middle East on a daily basis. ‘I’m a commercial pilot.’

‘I see.’ He gave her another of those long, thoughtful looks but it wasn’t his obvious suspicion that was making her feel faint, cling like a lifeline to the edge of the desk that separated them. ‘You look unwell, signora Marlowe.’

‘I’m not feeling that great,’ she admitted. Her skin was pale and clammy and her hair, blown out of the scarf she used to tie it back on the blustery deck of the ferry, was sticking to her cheeks and neck.

She knew exactly what he was thinking and in his place she’d probably think the same.

‘I have to ask you if you are carrying—’

‘A baby.’

She blurted out the word. It was the first time she’d said it out loud. She’d told her sister that she was tired, needed a break, and Posy, unable to get away herself, had been so happy that someone would visit the villa, make sure everything was okay, that she hadn’t asked her why she wasn’t going to some resort where she could lie back and be waited on.

The first person in the world to know that she was going to have a baby was a border control officer who was about to ask her if she was carrying an illegal substance... ‘I’m carrying a baby,’ she said, her hand instinctively rising to her waist in an age-old protective gesture as she backed away from the desk. ‘And I’m about to be sick.’

The ferry crossing from Italy had been choppy. The sandwich she’d forced herself to eat had gone overboard within minutes of leaving the harbour but her stomach seemed capable of creating a great deal out of nothing. It had been years since her last visit to the island but the Porto had not changed and she made it to the toilet before she disgraced herself.

Once the spasms had passed she splashed her face with cold water, retied her hair, took a breath and opened the door to find the officer waiting with her passport, wheelie and a sympathetic smile.

‘Complimenti, signora.’ She hardly knew how to respond and he nodded as if he understood that she was feeling grim and might just be having mixed feelings about her happy condition. As if that were the only problem... ‘My wife suffered with the vomito in the early days but it will soon pass,’ he said. ‘Relax, put your feet up in the sun and you will soon feel better. Is anyone meeting you?’

‘I was going to grab a taxi.’

He nodded, escorted her to the rank, spoke sharply to the driver who leapt out to take her bag.

‘I have told him to take it slowly, signora.’

Out of the noisy terminal building, standing in the fresh air, the afternoon sunshine warning her face, she managed a smile. ‘Did he hear you?’

His shrug and wry smile suggested that his words might well have fallen on deaf ears.

‘Could you ask him to stop at a shop...il supermercato? I need to pick up some things.’

He exchanged a few words with the driver. ‘He will take you and wait.’

‘Grazie.’

‘Prego. Bon fortuna, signora. Enjoy your holiday.’

Andie lay back against the cool leather of the seat as the driver drew carefully away from the taxi rank, out of the port and after a few minutes pulled into the car park in front of a small supermarket.

Her sense of smell, heightened by pregnancy, had her hurrying past the deli counter. She quickly filled her basket with some basic essentials and returned to the car.

* * *

‘Baia di Rose?’ the driver asked.

‘Sì. Lentamente,’ she added, using the word that the border official had used and Sofia had called after them as they’d raced down the path to the beach. Slowly...

‘Sì, signora,’ he said, pulling out into the traffic with exaggerated caution.

It didn’t last.

He was a native of this ancient crossroads in the Mediterranean; his blood was a distillation of the Greek, Carthaginian and Roman invaders who had, over the millennia, conquered and controlled the island. His car was his chariot and the hoots of derision from other drivers as they passed him were an affront to his manhood.

She hung onto the strap as he put his foot down and flung the car around sharp bends, catching glimpses of the sea as they climbed up out of the city and headed across the island to Baia di Rose and the villa that guarded the headland.

She’d left London on a cold, grey day that spring had hardly touched. How many times had she and her sisters done that in the past when her grandmother had whisked the four of them out of England in the school holidays to give her mother a break?

She still remembered the excitement of arriving in a spring so different from the one they’d left behind. Being met in a sleek Italian car by Alberto who, with his wife, Elena, looked after the Villa Rosa, its gardens and acted as chauffeur to Sofia and who treated them as if they were little princesses. The exotic flowers, houses painted in soft pastels and faded terracotta and the turquoise sea glittering in invitation.

The house was only a few hundred yards up the hill from the village, perched on an outcrop in a swathe of land that stretched from the coast to the rugged, forested lands that led to the peak of the mountains in the heart of the island that King Ludano had declared as a national park.

Portia, her older and more worldly sister had shocked them all by suggesting the real reason was to keep his visits to his mistress from prying eyes.

Whatever his motive it had preserved this part of the island from commercial exploitation, the ribbon development of hotels along the east coast.

The last stretch to an elevated promontory was reached by a narrow, twisting road. As children, they’d competed to be the first to catch a glimpse of the pale pink Villa Rosa. With its tiered roof and French doors opening onto a garden that fell away to the sheltered cove below, it was so utterly different from home.

Inside was just as exciting. Endless rooms to explore and the excitement of being allowed to join grown-up parties in the vast drawing room with its arched ceiling painted in the pale blue, pink, mauves of an evening sky.

There were dusty attics filled with treasures to explore if you dared brave the spiders and, her favourite place of all, the cool covered veranda looking out to sea where you could curl up with a book in the heat of the afternoon.

When they were children the gates had stood wide open in welcome and as soon as the car came to a halt they’d tumbled out, rushed down to the beach, kicked off their shoes and socks and stood at the water’s edge, shrieking with excitement as the water ran over their feet.

Today the gates were closed and it was too early in the year to swim in the sea. Too late in the day to go down to the beach. She just wanted to curl up somewhere and sleep off the flight from London, the ferry trip across from the Italian mainland.

The driver asked her a question in something that wasn’t quite Italian, that she didn’t understand, but his look of concern suggested he was asking if she was in the right place. She nodded, smiled, paid him and waited while he turned and headed back down the hill.

Once he’d gone she took the weighty bunch of keys that Posy had given her from her bag, opened the small side gate and stepped into the peace and tranquillity of the villa courtyard.

On one side there was a low range of buildings that had once been stables but, for as long as she had been coming here, had been used as garages and storerooms. On the other side of the courtyard was the rear of the house with its scullery and kitchen. The door that, wet and sandy from the beach, they’d used as children.

It had been eight years since their last visit. She and Immi had been sixteen, Posy fifteen. Portia hadn’t come with them. She had been in her first year at uni and thought herself far too grown-up for a family holiday by the sea, even in a glamorous villa owned by the mistress of the island’s monarch.

Those years had not been kind to the villa.

King Ludano had died and Sofia had been left alone with only her memories to warm her in their love nest. Alone without her lover to call whenever something needed fixing.

It was an old house, there were storms in the winter and the occasional rumble from the unstable geology of the island.

The pink was faded and stained where rainwater had run from broken and blocked gutters. There were some tiles missing from the scullery roof and there was a crack in the wall where the stucco had fallen away and a weed had found a home.

Posy’s wonderful bequest from her godmother needed some seriously expensive TLC and she would have been lumbered with something of a white elephant if it weren’t for its location.

The Villa Rosa was the only property on this spectacular part of the coast. It had a private beach hidden from passing boats by rocky headlands that reached out into the sea like sheltering arms and, thanks to the island’s volcanic past, a pool fed by a hot spring where you could bathe even in the depths of winter.

As soon as she put it on the market she would be swamped with offers.

The sea sparkled invitingly in the low angle of the sun, but this early in March it would still be cold and all she wanted was hot mint tea and somewhere to sleep.

Tomorrow she would go down to the beach, feel the sand beneath her feet, let the cold water of the Mediterranean run over her toes. Then, like an old lady, she would go and lie up to her neck in a rock pool heated by the hot spring and let its warmth melt away the confused mix of feelings; the desperate hope that she would turn around, Cleve would be there and, somehow, everything would be back to normal.

It wasn’t going to happen and she wasn’t going to burden Cleve with this.

She’d known what she was doing when she’d chosen to see him through a crisis in the only way she knew how.

She’d seen him at his weakest, broken, weeping for all that he’d lost, and she’d left before he woke so that he wouldn’t have to face her. Struggle to find something to talk about over breakfast.

She’d known that there was only ever going to be one end to the night they’d spent together. One of them would have to walk away and it couldn’t be Cleve.

Four weeks ago she was an experienced pilot working for Goldfinch Air Services, a rapidly expanding air charter and freight company. She could have called any number of contacts and walked into another job.

Three weeks and six days ago she’d spent a night with the boss and she was about to become a cliché. Pregnant, single and grounded.

She’d told the border official that she was running away and she was, but not from a future in which there would be two of them. The baby she was carrying was a gift. She was running away from telling Cleve that she was pregnant.

He would have to know. He would want to know, but the news would devastate him.

She needed to sort out exactly what she was going to do, have a plan firmly in place, everything settled, so that when she told him the news he understood that she expected nothing. That he need do nothing...

She sorted through the keys, found one that fitted the back door. It moved a couple of inches and then stuck. Assuming that it had swollen in the winter rain, she put her shoulder to it, gave it a shove and her heart rate went through the roof as she was showered with debris.

‘Argh...’ She jumped back, brushing furiously at her hair, her shoulders, shaking herself, shaking out her hair, certain that there would be spiders...

* * *

Cleve tossed his cap onto its hook and crossed to the white board listing the flight schedule.

‘Where’s Miranda?’ he asked. ‘I don’t see her on the board.’

‘She’s taken a few weeks’ leave.’

Leave? He turned to Lucy, his office manager. ‘Since when?’

‘Yesterday afternoon. She flew down to Kent in the morning and picked up the guys from their golf tournament but she wasn’t feeling too good after lunch,’ she said, without looking up from her VDU. ‘She hasn’t been looking that great for a few days.’

‘She’s sick?’ His heart seized at the thought.

She shrugged. ‘She appears to have picked something up. The punters take exception to the pilot using the sick bags so I told her to take a few days off to get over it.’ Lucy finally sat back, looked up. ‘She hasn’t taken more than the odd day off since last summer so she decided to make it a proper break.’

‘As opposed to an improper one?’

‘Let’s hope she gets that lucky.’

He bit down hard in an effort to hold in the response that immediately leapt to his lips. ‘Why didn’t you run this by me?’

‘You’ve been in Ireland for the last three days.’

‘You’ve heard of email, text, the phone?’

‘I’ve heard you tell me not to bother you with the minor details,’ she reminded him. ‘If you want me to call and ask you to approve time off for someone who never takes a day off sick, who hasn’t had a holiday in nearly a year, then you need to start looking for a new office manager.’

‘What? No...’ Lucy might be a total grouch but he couldn’t run the office without her. ‘No, of course not, it’s just that...’ It was just that he’d finally geared up the courage to face Miranda, talk to her. ‘She’s...that is everyone...is supposed to give a month’s notice before taking time off.’

‘She could have taken a week’s sick leave,’ she pointed out, clearly not impressed with his people skills.

‘I know. I didn’t mean...’

He turned to the gallery of Goldfinch pilots on the office wall. Miranda looked back at him from her place in the top row, her calm, confident smile never failing to instil confidence in her passengers and guilt, sitting like a lump of lead in his chest, exploded.

He’d broken every rule in the book. He’d lost control, taken advantage of her kindness, behaved in a way that he would have utterly condemned in anyone else.

He’d been a wreck and Miranda’s sweet tenderness had been a healing balm, a gift that he could never repay. Her scent, the softness of her skin, her hair falling from its pins and tumbling over his skin, the life-giving sweetness of her mouth...

Every time he thought about her he was swamped with the memory of that night. Waking with her spooned against his body, the curve of her neck just inches from his lips. Fighting the temptation to rouse her with a kiss and take more of her precious warmth.

Not moving because he knew what he would see in those tender green and gold eyes.

Understanding, pity, a smile that let him off the hook and the awkwardness of a morning after that neither of them knew how to deal with.

Not moving, because the moment she woke it would be over.

He’d drifted back into the kind of sleep that had eluded him for more than a year and the next time he woke, hours later, it was to a note propped against a cold mug of tea.

I’m taking the new aircraft back to base. Take my two-seater, or the train runs hourly at seven minutes past.

See you Monday.

M.

Bright and businesslike, a forget-it-and-move-on message. He couldn’t leave it like that and he couldn’t wait for the train.

He’d flown her little aircraft back to base, his need to see her, reassure her, overriding the PTSD he’d been experiencing since Rachel’s crash. In the darkness of that night there had been no thought of protection and he needed her to know that she was safe, but by the time he touched down no one was answering at her flat and her car was gone.

She must have anticipated the possibility of him turning up at her door, tongue-tied, not knowing what to say and chosen to put some distance between them so that she could face him in the office on Monday morning as if nothing had happened.

It was, undoubtedly, the sensible thing to do and, maybe, if he’d been there on Monday, a shared look would have been enough to get them past that first awkward moment, but on Sunday night the call had come from Cyprus. His local partner had been hurt in a car crash and he’d had to fly out to take control.

He’d told himself that he would call her; he’d picked up the phone a dozen times and then put it down again. Unable to see her face, read her body language, have a clue what she was thinking, he had no idea what to say. Men were from Mars...

His father relied on flowers to cover the word gap and he’d got as far as logging onto an online florist but stalled at the first hurdle when he was invited to choose an occasion. Birthday, anniversary, every cause for celebration you could imagine. Unsurprisingly, there wasn’t an option that would cover this particular scenario.

And what flowers?

His father had been lucky—all it took was a tired bunch of chrysanthemums from the garage forecourt to provoke an eye roll, a shake of the head and a smile from his mother.

His own experience of married life suggested that nothing less than long-stemmed red roses would do if you were grovelling. No power on earth would induce him to send them to Miranda.

She deserved more. Much more. She deserved to hear him say the words. If only he could work out what they were.

He’d arrived back from Cyprus determined to clear the air but she was in the Gulf picking up a couple of mares that were booked for a visit to stud. Then he was in France and so it had gone on. Maybe it was coincidence, but if someone had arranged their schedules to keep them apart they couldn’t have done a better job.

Miranda couldn’t change his schedule, but she could swap her own around. Clearly she needed space and he’d had to allow her that.

Until today.

He’d flown back from Ireland determined that, no matter what, he’d talk to her. He still could.

‘I’ll stop by on the way home and take her some grapes,’ he said. It was okay to be concerned about someone you’d known, worked with for years. And grapes didn’t have the dangerously emotive subtext of flowers. Red, black, white—they were just grapes.

‘You’ll have a wasted journey. She checked the times of the trains to London before she left and then called her sister to let her know what time she’d be arriving.’

‘Which sister?’

‘Portia was on the box covering the post-awards parties, she’d have flown home if it was Immi, so it must be the one with the Royal Ballet.’

‘Posy. Did she say how long she’d be away?’

‘She asked me to take her off the schedule for a month.’

‘A month!’

‘She’s worked a lot of extra days covering for other people, including you. She’s owed six weeks.’ She gestured in the direction of his office. ‘Maybe she said more in the note she left on your desk.’

A cold, sick feeling hit the pit of his stomach as he saw the sealed envelope with his name written neatly in Miranda’s handwriting.

He didn’t have to open it to know that she wasn’t coming back.

He sat down, read the brief note saying that she was taking leave owed in lieu of notice. She didn’t give a reason; she didn’t have to. Determined not to let this happen, he reached for the phone.

‘Imogen, it’s Cleve Finch.’

‘Hi, Cleve. What can I do for you? There isn’t a problem with the new aircraft?’

‘No... No, it’s fine. I just need Posy’s address.’

‘Posy?’ She sounded surprised, but there was nothing guarded in her response. Evidently Miranda hadn’t shared what had happened with her twin.

‘I’m going to be in London this evening and I wanted to drop something off for Miranda,’ he said, trotting out the excuse he’d rehearsed. ‘Obviously I’d have asked her for the address but her phone appears to be switched off. She is staying with Posy?’

‘You’re kidding. Posy has a room you couldn’t swing a cat in. Andie was just dropping in to pick up the keys before catching her flight.’

‘Flight?’ So much for his plan to take her out to dinner somewhere, talk things through. ‘Where’s she gone?’

‘To L’Isola dei Fiori. Didn’t she tell you?’

‘I’ve been in Ireland all week.’

‘Oh, I see. Well, Posy inherited an amazing old house from her godmother. It’s got a fabulous conservatory and the most glorious gardens...’ Her voice trailed off. ‘I imagine they’re all overgrown.’ There was a little sigh. ‘We used to stay there in the school holidays. It was magic.’

‘I’m sure it was wonderful, but—’

‘Sorry, I was having a moment... Posy can’t get away until late summer and she’s been worried about leaving it empty so Andie’s using her leave to give it an airing. It’s a bit off the beaten track,’ she added. ‘She might not get a signal. Is it important or will it wait until she comes back?’

‘What?’

‘Whatever you were going to drop off at Posy’s?’

‘Yes... No...’

She laughed. ‘Okay...’

‘Yes, it’s important. No, it won’t wait,’ he said, quickly.

‘In that case you’ll want her address.’