by Lucy Gordon
He was popular with his employees because he paid them generously, trusted them and let them get on with their jobs. For the last lap of the journey they waved and yelled to him, glad to see him back.
The Calvani lands were extensive. For the last few miles he was looking at his own fields, and even his own village. Morenza, a tiny community of medieval buildings, stood on Calvani land, at the foot of the incline that led up to Leo’s house. Its high street curved around the church, and a small duck pond, before leading out of the village and up through vines planted on the slope to catch the sun.
There at the top was the farmhouse, also medieval, made of stone, with a magnificent view down the valley. He entered it with a sigh of satisfaction, dropping his bags onto the floor and looking around him at the familiar things he loved.
There was Gina, with his favourite dish, already prepared and ready to serve. His favourite wine was at exactly the right temperature. His favourite dogs swarmed around his feet.
He ate a huge meal, kissed Gina on the cheek in thanks, and went to the room he used as a study, and from which he ran his estate. A couple of hours with Enrico, the assistant who supervised the paperwork during his absence, showed him that Enrico could manage this side of things perfectly well without him. He asked no more. The next day he would go over the land with men as close to the earth as himself.
He spent the next couple of hours on the telephone to his family, catching up on the news. Finally he went out and stood with a glass of wine, gazing down to the village, where the lights were coming on. He stood for a long time, listening to the breeze in the trees and the sound of bells echoing across the valley, and thought that he had never known such peace and beauty. And yet…
It was the perfect homecoming to the perfect place. But suddenly he felt alone as he had never done in his life before.
He went to bed and tried to sleep, but it was useless, and he got up and went downstairs to the study. In Texas it was early morning. It was Barton who answered.
‘Selena isn’t still there by any chance?’ he asked hopefully.
‘No, she left straight after you did. Just drove back here, collected Jeepers, and headed off. Didn’t she do great? Jeepers was just the horse she needed. She’s going to be a star with that animal.’
‘Great. Great.’ Leo tried to sound cheerful, but for a reason he didn’t want to explore he wasn’t pleased to hear of her success a world away. ‘Has she called you at all?’
‘Called yesterday to ask after Elliot. I told her he was doing fine.’
‘Did she ask after me?’ He’d promised himself not to ask that, but it came out anyway.
‘No, she never mentioned you. But I’m sure if you called her-’
Why the devil should I call her if she doesn’t care enough about me to ask? he thought.
‘Barton, I can’t call her. I got mugged and lost the paper with her mobile phone number. Can you let me have it?’
‘I would if I had it myself. I wouldn’t know how to contact her.’
‘Next time she calls, will you explain and get her to call me?’
‘Sure thing.’
‘Did she tell you where she was going?’
‘Reno-I think.’
‘I’ll leave a message for her there.’
He tried to concentrate on his coming visit to Venice, for the wedding of his younger half-brother, Guido, to his English fiancée, Dulcie. There would be another wedding the day before, when his uncle, Count Francesco Calvani, would marry Liza, his one-time housekeeper and the love of his life. That ceremony would be small and private.
He’d been looking forward to a cheerful family occasion, but now, suddenly, he didn’t have the heart for weddings.
Where was she? Why didn’t she contact him? Had she forgotten their night together so easily?
He sent emails to the rodeo web site at Reno, detailing his movements over the coming days, giving the phone number of his uncle’s home in Venice and his own mobile. For good measure he reminded her of his home number.
To the last minute he clung to the hope that she would telephone him. But the phone remained silent, and at last he left for Venice.
Leo had never been a man to brood. It was rare for a woman to pass out of his life against his will, but if it happened he’d always been positive. The world was full of laughing ladies, as easygoing as himself, with whom he could pass the time. Suddenly, that thought brought him no cheer.
He took the train from Florence to Venice, where there was a family motor boat waiting to convey him to the Palazzo Calvani on the Grand Canal. He arrived to find the family at supper. He kissed Liza, then his uncle, then Dulcie, Harriet, and Lucia, Marco’s mother. Guido was there too, and his cousin Marco. When he’d thumped them and been thumped back, the greetings were complete.
As he ate he tried to seem his normal self, and maybe he fooled his male relatives. But the women had sharper eyes, and when the meal was over Dulcie and Harriet corralled him onto the sofa like a pair of eager sheep dogs herding a lion, and settled one each side of him.
‘You’ve found her at last,’ Harriet said.
‘Her?’ he asked uneasily.
‘You know what I mean. Her! The one. She’s got you roped and tied.’
‘What’s her name?’ Dulcie demanded.
He gave up stalling. He wasn’t kidding them. ‘She’s called Selena,’ he admitted. I met her in Texas. We were both in the rodeo.’ He fell silent.
‘And?’ they asked eagerly. ‘And?’
‘She fell off. So did I.’
‘So you had something in common,’ Dulcie said, nodding.
‘A marriage of true minds,’ Harriet agreed.
‘I shouldn’t think minds had much to do with it,’ Dulcie suggested.
‘Nothing at all,’ Leo said, remembering Selena’s sweetness, the tensile strength in her slim body, like spun steel, yet feeling so delicate in his hands. For a moment her hot breath seemed to whisper against his skin, inciting him to ever greater passion and tenderness.
‘It was wonderful,’ he said abruptly.
‘You should have brought her here to meet us,’ Harriet told him.
‘That’s just the trouble, I don’t know where to find her.’
‘But didn’t you exchange names and addresses?’ Dulcie asked.
‘She doesn’t have an address. She drives around the rodeos and lives wherever she is. I had her mobile phone number, but-well, if you must know someone stole my wallet, with the paper. I’ve tried to track her down over the internet, but for some reason I always seem to miss her. I might never see her again.’
The two young women made sympathetic noises, but Leo suspected they secretly found it rather funny. Perhaps it was. Leo Calvani, stallion and free spirit, off his feed because one young woman, with a prickly temper and no figure to speak of, had vanished. Hilarious.
After a while he joined the other men, but even their company couldn’t soothe him. Two blissful bridegrooms and a fiancé weren’t what he needed in his present disconsolate mood.
Gradually the party broke up. Guido and Dulcie disappeared together to enjoy the sweet nothings of a soon-to-be married couple. Marco and Harriet went off to stroll the streets of Venice. Leo went out into the garden, where he found his Aunt Lucia sitting peacefully, gazing up at the stars.
‘I suppose Marco and Harriet will be setting the date at any moment,’ Leo said, sitting down with her.
‘I do hope so,’ Lucia said eagerly. ‘I know they’ve gone off together now, so maybe they’ll come back with it all settled.’
‘You’re very keen on this marriage, aren’t you?’ he asked curiously. ‘Even though-well, it’s not exactly a love match, is it?’
‘You mean I arranged it? Yes, I did, I don’t deny it.’
‘Wouldn’t it have been safer to let him pick his own bride?’
‘I’m afraid I’d have waited for ever for that. Marco must have somebody, or he’ll end his days alone, and that would
be terrible.’
‘There are worse things than being alone, Aunt.’
‘No, my dear boy, there aren’t.’
He couldn’t answer. For the first time in his life he felt it was true.
‘I think you’re just discovering that, aren’t you?’ she urged gently.
He shrugged. ‘It’s just a mood. I was away too long. Now I’m back there’s a mountain of work to do…’ His voice ran down.
‘What is she like?’
He told his story again, this time taking longer to describe Selena. For once the words came easily to him and he managed to speak of the sweetness beneath the thorny shell, the way he’d discovered it slowly, and how it had captivated him.
‘You love her very much, don’t you?’ Lucia said.
‘No, I don’t think I exactly-’ he hastened to defend himself. ‘It’s just that I can’t help worrying about her. She has nobody to look after her. She never has had anybody. Just people making use of her. The only family she has is Elliot. That’s why it’s breaking her heart knowing that his useful days are over. Apart from him, she’s alone.’
‘According to you she has quite a left hook.’
‘Oh, she can take care of herself that way. But she’s alone inside. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone as completely alone. She thinks she doesn’t mind. She thinks she’s happier that way.’
‘Maybe she is. You’ve just said there are worse things.’
‘I was wrong. When I think of her going on like that for years-fooling herself that she’s happy, just getting more isolated-’
‘It probably won’t happen. She’ll meet some nice young man and marry him. In a few years you’ll bump into her again and she’ll have a couple of children and another on the way.’
Leo grinned. ‘You’re a clever woman, Aunt. You know I don’t want that.’
‘I wonder what you do really want.’
‘Whatever it is, I don’t think I’ll get it.’
The lights were going out along the Grand Canal. Behind them the great palace was closing down for the night. Leo rose and helped Lucia to her feet.
‘Thank you for listening,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid Dulcie and Harriet thought me a bit of a clown.’
‘Well, your life has been rather full of brief entanglements,’ Lucia said, patting his hand. ‘But if Selena is the right woman, you’ll find her again. Although I think she’s quite mad if she doesn’t come to find you.’
‘Maybe she doesn’t want to find me,’ Leo said gloomily. ‘And even if she did, what good would it do me? She doesn’t care for an ordinary life, in one place with a husband and kids.’
‘I didn’t know your thoughts had got that far.’
‘They haven’t,’ he said quickly. ‘I was talking generally.’
‘Oh, I see.’
‘She likes the open road, moving from place to place, never knowing what tomorrow may bring. So I probably couldn’t make her happy anyway.’
‘Enough of that kind of talk. If your love is fated to be, it will be. Now, tomorrow’s a wedding. We’re all going to enjoy ourselves.’ It was late when Selena came to a halt in the yard of the Four-Ten. Barton was waiting for her.
‘Heard you really did well in Reno.’
‘I’ll be a millionaire yet,’ she said. ‘Barton, is something wrong?’
‘I’ve heard from Leo.’
‘Oh, really?’
‘Don’t you pretend you don’t care. My guess is you’re in as big a state as he is.’
‘Why should he be in a state?’
‘Because he lost your phone number. He’s been going crazy, calling here, leaving messages for you to call him back.’
‘But I didn’t know-’
‘No, I had to be away for a while, so I left word that if you called you were to be told all about it. Unfortunately the person I left word with was Paulie. Now, I don’t know if he’s just plum forgetful, or if there’s more to it-’ he looked at her face. ‘Would this have anything to do with that time Paulie “stepped on a pitchfork”?’
‘Well, I didn’t want to tell you, when you’ve been so good to me-’
‘If it helps any I’ve often wanted to sock him myself.’
‘He just got a bit fresh, and I-well-’
‘It was you? Not Leo?’
‘In a pig’s ear it was Leo. He came in when the fighting was over. But maybe I went too far.’
‘Shouldn’t think you did,’ Barton said with relish. ‘But you were quite right not to tell his mother. She overreacts to that kind of thing. Well, well, so he got his revenge.’
‘Maybe I should call Leo now,’ but Selena sounded vague and abstracted.
‘Don’t you want to?’
‘Course I want to, but he’s so far away, and he’ll be another person in his own country.’
‘Then go and find him in his own country. Find out if it can be your country. Selena, when a man keeps calling and getting agitated like this one has, then he has things to say to a woman that he can’t say over the phone.’
‘You mean me-go to Italy?’
‘It’s not the other side of the moon. You know I’ll look after Jeepers and Elliot for you while you’re gone. You’ve got all that prize money. What’s stopping you?’
When she still didn’t answer Barton began to cluck like a chicken.
‘I am not a chicken.’
‘Not when you’re in the ring, sure. Never seen anyone braver. But that’s the easy part. The world’s a much scarier place. Maybe you should think about that.’
By the time he was on his way back home Leo had half talked himself into thinking things were for the best. This was fate’s way of telling him that he and Selena weren’t meant to be together.
The wedding had been a strain. The sight of his brother so blissfully happy as he’d become Dulcie’s husband had made him suddenly discontented with his own lot.
Not that he was thinking of marriage for himself. The mere thought of Selena in the glimmering white satin and lace creation that Dulcie had worn put the whole matter into perspective. Selena would probably marry in a stetson and cowboy boots.
By the time he reached his own house he’d settled the matter in his mind. They’d had a great time together, but it was over, and that was as it should be. He wouldn’t think of her any more.
Gina had just finished making up his bed. She greeted him and went to collect a duster that she’d left by the window.
‘Renzo wanted to see you this afternoon,’ she started to say, ‘so that he can-I wonder who that is.’
‘Who?’ He went to stand beside her at the window that looked down on the path that led up from Morenza.
A tall slender figure, in jeans and shirt, and weighed down by a couple of bags, was walking towards the house, sometimes stopping to stare upward, her hand shading her eyes. She was too far away for Leo to see her face, but he recognised everything else, from her swaying walk to the angle of her head as she tilted it back.
‘She must be a stranger in these parts,’ Gina was saying, ‘Because-signore?’
Her employer was no longer with her. She heard his feet thundering down the stairs and the next moment he appeared below, running so fast that Gina thought he would topple headlong into the valley.
The young woman dropped her bags and began to run too, and the next moment they were locked in each other’s arms, oblivious to the rest of the world.
‘Celia,’ Gina yelled to one of the maids, ‘We’ve got a guest. Stop what you’re doing and prepare a room for her.
‘Not,’ she added, her eyes on the entwined figures, ‘that I think she’ll spend much time sleeping in it.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘T ELL me I’m not dreaming. You’re really here!’
‘I’m here, I’m here! Feel me.’ Selena was laughing and crying together.
He did his best, crushing her in a fierce grip and kissing every part of her face.
‘I’ve imagined you walking up that road so o
ften but it was always a trick of the light.’
‘Not this time. Oh, Leo, are you really glad to see me?’
Suddenly the words failed him. Was he glad to see her? All he knew was that the lump in his throat made it hard to speak.
‘You’re crying,’ she said in wonder.
‘Of course I’m not. Only wimps cry,’ he teased her with the reminder of her own words. But his eyes were wet and he didn’t dry them. He was a Latin, raised not to be ashamed of his emotions, and he had no wish to hide them with this woman.
He took her face between his hands, looking at her tenderly before laying his lips on hers in a long kiss. She answered, putting her heart into it, knowing this was why she’d come such a great distance, and nothing could have kept her away.
Something butted her from behind, then from the side, and she looked down to find herself surrounded by goats. They were coming down the hill, milling around the two of them, while a grinning goatherd made a gesture that was half greeting, half salute.
‘’Notte Franco,’ Leo said, grinning back.
It would be all over the valley now, he thought. So let them talk!
He tucked one of Selena’s bags under his arm, took the other in his hand, disentangled himself and her from curious goats, and put his free arm around her. Then, together they went up the hill to home.
‘Are your family visiting you?’ Selena asked, seeing all the faces at the windows.
‘No, they’re-’ he stopped himself from saying ‘-the servants.’ ‘Two of the girls are Gina’s nieces,’ he said. It was true. When he needed to employ somebody new he just told Gina and she produced some of her own vast family.
The faces vanished, and when they reached the door there was only Gina, smiling a welcome and explaining that the signorina’s room was being prepared, and in the meantime refreshments were on their way from the kitchen.
Gina departed, and Leo took Selena back into his arms, not kissing her this time but pulling her against him and resting his head against her hair.
‘How come she’s already preparing a room for me?’ Selena asked.
‘She saw you come up the hill, and when I-when we-well, I guess everyone knows all about us by now.’
