Читать книгу Last of the Summer Vines: Escape to Italy with this heartwarming, feel good summer read! - Romy Sommer - Страница 9

Non tutto il male vien per nuocere

(Not everything bad that happens is wasted)

I slept in later than I had in … well, at least since my uni days.

I’d been wary the night before of closing the curtains, in case they released another tornado of dust, but even with bright light creeping into the room, I only woke when it reached the bed. I must have been more exhausted than I realised. Not that I’d admit it. I didn’t want to give Cleo the chance to say, ‘I told you so’.

Broad daylight only marginally brightened the house’s gloom as I tramped downstairs to the kitchen. In daylight, the pantry appeared bigger – and barer. There were indeed biscuits, a packet of factory-made shortbread biscuits, but no bread or cereal or anything else remotely breakfasty. And only instant coffee. I groaned. I didn’t fancy facing Tommaso again on an empty stomach.

Though to give the devil his due, that beef stew he’d brought over last night had been really good. As good as Nonna’s stews used to be.

Once I’d fortified myself with coffee and biscuits, the next thing on my agenda was to phone home. Sure, it was Saturday morning so Cleo wouldn’t have anything new to tell me about work, but I needed to hear her ever-optimistic voice telling me things weren’t as bad as they seemed.

But the mobile signal was so weak I couldn’t dial out. I wandered from room to room, waving my phone in the air. Nothing. Not even on the terrace or in the deserted back yard, or along the drive, though I walked all the way to the gate. Shit. As I reached the wrought iron gates a small canary-yellow Fiat, brimming over with young men, sped past. The whistles trailing behind the little car made me suddenly and excruciatingly aware that I was still dressed in nothing more than sleep shorts and a camisole top.

So I trudged back up the drive, hesitating for a long moment at the door of Tommaso’s cottage, which nestled into the slope behind the castello. Thankfully, the place appeared empty, and when I knocked, almost afraid he would answer, there was no response.

John must have had access to the outside world. I’d phoned him a few times here at the villa, so there had to be a landline at least. The castello may not yet have joined the twenty-first century, but it was certainly part of the twentieth.

There’d been a library, hadn’t there? One of those rooms that was shrouded in dust cloths even in my distant youth. Opening doors on rooms that clearly hadn’t seen daylight in years – a billiard room that was only used for storage these days, and a morning room with faded tapestries on its walls – I ripped off dust cloths to reveal rickety chairs, rotting upholstery, paintings caked in grime. I finally reached a room lined with books and smelling as if it has died and gone to a watery grave. The library. It had damp patches in the ceiling and the patterned parquet floor was warped from water damage. Someone should have dumped the entire contents of this room in a skip a long time ago.

There, at last, was a phone jack in the wall, and a cable clinging to flaking plaster, up through the driest part of the ceiling, up to … where?

With a groan, I headed back upstairs, counting out my paces, not entirely surprised when I realised the rooms above the library were my father’s. I pushed open the door and peered into the murky darkness.

Throwing open the shutters, I raised a sash window to let in a little light and fresh air. The bed loomed large, a massive four-poster covered with the same crocheted blanket John used even when I was young. It came with the house, he’d told me once.

How was it that the guest room had new bedding, but this one, the one that was lived in, remained frozen in time?

The phone I’d been searching for sat on the bedside table, a black thing with a rotary dial that belonged in a museum. Did those things even work in this day and age?

I lifted the receiver and heard the familiar sound of a dial tone. Hallelujah!

Cleo answered on the second ring, sounding sleepy.

‘You must have had a really good date last night,’ I said brightly.

She moaned. ‘I wish!’ Down the phone, I heard her stretch. ‘I think I’m officially ready to give up dating.’

Wow, that was a first. In the dictionary, under ‘eternal optimist’ you’d find Cleo’s name. She was a glass half-full person, especially when it came to men. Or maybe that was even when it came to men. ‘It couldn’t have been that bad…’

‘Worst. Date. Ever.’ Cleo’s dating history could fill an encyclopaedia. She’d been on more first dates than anyone I’ve ever met. I quit dating after Kevin (though as Cleo so kindly pointed out, I wasn’t exactly dating much before Kevin), but even though some of the guys she dated made Kevin look like a real keeper, she refused to give up hope that her One was out there.

She moaned again. ‘He was bald. And not in that sexy Vin Diesel way. More like a 40-year-old accountant who’s losing all his hair kind of way. His ear hairs were longer than the hairs on his head. The picture on his dating profile must have been at least ten years out of date. But that wasn’t even the worst of it. I could overlook the fact that he lied about his looks. But he spent the entire meal talking about his ex.’

I winced. Dating really did get harder with every passing year. ‘I told you online dating was soul destroying. Perhaps you should come to Italy. The men here are definitely better looking.’ And charming, with one grumpy, bearded exception.

‘I wish. But I haven’t accrued several years’ worth of leave like you have. Hang on a moment – are you referring to someone in particular? Have you met someone?’

‘My lawyer looks like he stepped out of GQ.’ I perched on the edge of the bed. ‘All slick, sexy and metrosexual. It’s just as well there’s eye candy, since the news isn’t good.’

‘What happened?’ Cleo was wide awake now. She listened as I filled her in, groaning in all the right places, laughing when I told her about hitting Tommaso over the head.

‘Don’t laugh, it wasn’t funny. I might have killed him!’

‘On the plus side, if you’d killed him, you would inherit everything, wouldn’t you?’

‘Yeah, but I might also have been calling you from jail this morning.’

‘That’s okay. You have your sexy lawyer to get you free. And then you and he could live happily ever after in your castle and make GQ-worthy babies.’

I glanced around my father’s shabby bedroom. There was the door to the en-suite. How many times had the bathroom flooded to cause all that damage downstairs in the library? ‘It’s not much of a castle, and this inheritance may be more trouble than it’s worth.’

‘Nonsense. Half a vineyard is better than nothing.’ And there was that injection of optimism I’d been looking for.

Cleo yawned. ‘Besides, I’ve never known you to back down from a challenge. You’re the most level-headed analyst I’ve ever met. If there’s an advantage to be found in this situation, you’ll find it.’

Yes, but that was before I’d over-estimated the repayment capabilities of one of the firm’s most valuable clients and risked their biggest investment to date. I rubbed my face, glad Cleo couldn’t see me now. When it came to work, I never showed weakness, not even to my BFF.

‘You are not going to get back on a plane without a big fat cheque in your back pocket. You hear me?’ she said, on another yawn.

‘I hear you.’ I sighed. ‘Besides, it’s not like I have anything better to do with my time. Of course, I can do this. Piece of cake.’ Though if the metaphor was going to fit my life right now, it would have to be a very heavy fruitcake. The kind where you couldn’t quite identify all the bits baked into it.

‘I am not selling.’ Tommaso leaned across the little boardroom table in Luca’s office, his arms crossed over his chest, his face set in a scowl. ‘Your father left this vineyard to me because he wanted me to run it, not so it could be sold to strangers.’

I bristled. He was being unnecessarily stubborn, since Luca had already explained that it was inevitable the courts would split the inheritance 50/50 between us – eventually. ‘There are other farms you could buy once we sell and split the proceeds. Why does it have to be this one?’

Tommaso’s eyes turned flinty. ‘How can you even ask me that?’

I shrugged. What did he expect of me? I had no ties to this land. Even my father had no ties here. He was just another foreigner who’d decided to buy a farm in Tuscany, like a less glamorous Sting. ‘Then buy me out if you want to keep it so badly.’

Tommaso’s scowl deepened. What had happened to that light-hearted boy I remembered, to turn him into this sullen, surly man who’d barely said a word to me the entire drive here? His pig-headedness hadn’t abated any but what had been mildly irritating in a playmate was downright annoying in a man I needed to reach a compromise with.

‘I can’t afford to buy you out right now. All my capital is tied up in the business.’

‘Then you don’t have a choice. If this goes to court, you’re still going to have to sell to pay me out my share.’ Not that I wanted to drag this out in court any more than he did, but Tommaso didn’t need to know that.

We glared at each other across the boardroom table.

‘You need to be reasonable,’ Luca pleaded, spreading his hands wide to encompass us both. He turned to Tommaso. ‘She’s right. If you can’t afford to buy her out, the courts will inevitably force a sale.’

‘It’ll take months, if not years, for the court to hear this case, and that’s all the time I need. Once the next bottling goes to market, I’ll be in a better position to buy Ms Wells out.’

I leaned forward, arms on the table. ‘Great. When’s the next bottling?’

‘After the harvest.’

I might not know much about wine farming, but I knew enough. ‘But that’s months away!’

‘You can sell whatever is of value in the castello. Consider it a down payment against your share of the property.’ Tommaso shrugged, as if to say, ‘take it or leave it’.

I glared at him, and he glared right back, unflinching, his cold gaze challenging. ‘That’s my final offer. If you don’t like it, we let the courts decide.’

He’d clearly forgotten that I never backed down from a challenge. I wasn’t going to start now. ‘You could raise a loan to buy me out.’

Tommaso’s eyes narrowed. ‘Before you make any more suggestions, perhaps you should actually learn something about this business you so badly want to dispose of. The property is mortgaged to the hilt. It’s coming around, but these things don’t happen overnight. The next bottling was supposed to make a substantial dent in our debts, but with John’s death…’ He shrugged. ‘Once our next bottling goes on sale, we’ll be in a much better financial position, but you can’t hurry wine.’

My hackles rose, but I refused to rise to the bait. I was known for being cool and level-headed. Not that I felt particularly cool right now. Really – whose fault was it that I knew nothing of the wine business? And it certainly wasn’t my fault that John chose to make his housekeeper’s grandson his partner and heir instead of me. If John had ever asked me to join him in the business … would I have accepted? I nibbled my lower lip. Who knew what my younger self would have done? There’d been a time I’d have done anything for John’s love and approval. But he was gone. Whatever I’d hoped to get from him, those dreams were ashes now.

‘You could split the property?’ Luca suggested. ‘Tommaso could keep the winery, and Sarah could sell the castello.’

Tommaso smiled, leaning back in his chair, arms still crossed over his chest. It wasn’t a pleasant smile. ‘That works for me.’

Of course it would work for him. He probably couldn’t wait to unload that millstone from around his neck. And what was I going to do with a building in desperate need of repair? It didn’t take a genius to work out that the value of the property was in the land and the crop, not a ramshackle farmhouse with noble pretensions. Who would pay decent money for a rundown castello with no land? And what little I’d make would no doubt be swallowed up by my inherited share of the debt.

I shook my head slowly, and Tommaso threw his hands in the air in an angry, despairing gesture that was entirely Italian. ‘Then we are at an impasse. I will not sell the vineyard that meant everything to your father, even if you would, and I cannot buy you out until after the harvest. Go back home, and we can talk again when the harvest is in. Or we go to court.’

Go back home. I thought of my pride and joy, that terrace house in a crescent lined with cherry trees in Wanstead, thought of sitting there alone all day while my housemates went off to work. I thought of the four months that stretched out before me like a life sentence.

The thought occurred so blindingly quickly, and with such force, it almost took my breath away. I rested my elbows on the table. ‘When is the harvest?’

Tommaso’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘Usually September, weather dependent. Why?’

Four months away, and about the time I would be able to return to work.

Take up a hobby, Cleo had suggested. Renovating a broken-down house in Tuscany was a hobby, right? And she’d said I shouldn’t come home until I had a big fat cheque in my pocket. But that didn’t have to be today.

‘I’ll stay.’

‘You’ll what?’ Tommaso leaned forward, his expression incredulous. Luca, on the other hand, looked pleased. I was glad someone was.

‘You told Luca I could treat the castello as my own until this is settled. So I’ll stay until the harvest, and I’ll fix up the castello. If I can sell the house at a decent price before your next bottling, we’ll call it even. And if I don’t—’ I gave a shrug that was nowhere near as expressive as Tommaso’s. ‘Then you buy me out after the bottling.’

Either way, he’d get to keep his precious vines, and we wouldn’t have to drag this out in court. And the cherry on top: I’d have something to keep me occupied during my enforced exile from the office.

But Tommaso didn’t look happy. ‘Don’t you have a job to get back to?’

Breathe in. Count to three. Relax. ‘I have a lot of holiday leave due.’

He huffed out a sigh. ‘Go or stay, it makes no difference to me. The castello is unoccupied, and as long as I get to work the vineyard, you can do what you like.’

Luca beamed. ‘That’s settled then. I will draw up papers in which you agree to be equal partners until such time as either the castello sells, or Tommaso can buy you out.’

Tommaso still didn’t look much happier, but he nodded.

Luca walked us to the door, shook hands with Tommaso, and leaned in to kiss me on both cheeks, his hands resting lightly on my upper arms. ‘Ogni cosa ha la sua ragione. Everything has a reason. I am glad you are not going so soon.’

His hands caressed my arms, a touch that could have been casual and meant nothing, or not casual at all. My skin tingled all the way down to my toes at the unaccustomed touch.

Tommaso, halfway down the narrow corridor, paused to look back at us, his face set in that perpetual scowl again. ‘I have errands to run. I’ll meet you at the car in a couple of hours.’

Without waiting for my response, he turned and walked away.

‘I have errands too!’ I called after him. He waved a hand in the air, without even looking back.

I frowned after him, until a light touch on my arm brought me back to the much more pleasant present. ‘Your father’s death was a big shock to Tommaso. He’ll come around.’

My frown turned to a smile. ‘That’s sweet of you, but you don’t need to make excuses for him.’

Luca’s dimple flashed. ‘That is more like it. You have a beautiful smile.’ He brushed my cheek with his fingers, tucking a stray wisp of hair back behind my ear, and I shivered. There was no mistaking that touch for casual – not when it was accompanied by such a burning look in his eyes. Definitely not gay then. Just too good to be true.

No man had looked at me like that in years, and that included Kevin. My ex had many good qualities, but passion was not among them. Luca’s expression made me feel oddly floaty and dizzy. Cleo would have a field day if she could see me now.

‘Since you have time now, perhaps I could show you around our little town?’ Luca offered me his arm, and I looped mine through it, smiling up at him.

‘If your tour includes something to eat, I’m in!’