Flirting with Italian
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 racing driver?, 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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