Loving Venus (Sally-Ann Jones Sexy Romance) (5 page)

      Tonia, coming down the stairs after taking Annabella some minestrone, felt her heart contract at the sight of the young man staring so longingly into the empty salon.

     “Here,” she said, walking over to him and handing him a snowy handkerchief. “Wipe your eyes. He’s not gone, you know, Alessandro. He’s with us still. We can’t see him, that’s all.” She patted him kindly on the shoulder and said in a whisper, “Why don’t you go up and see the little heiress? She was calling out for you in her sleep just now.”

     “She
’s still asleep?”

     “No. She
’s awake and she’s had a little meal. But the
dottore
says she must rest in bed for another few days. I don’t know how I’m going to make her stay there. She’s already telling me she must get up and start work on the farm.”

     Alessandro hesitated at the foot of the stairs, his genuine concern for the patient fighting with his outrage that she now owned his birthright.

     “Go on,” Tonia urged, nodding in the direction of Annabella’s room – the one that had been his.

      He took the stairs in his usual fashion of three at a time and pushed open the door. Doctor Esposito was sitting on the bed, Annabella propped up on a pile of white pillows, her hair frothing around her like clouds at sunset, a bandage around her forehead.  She was laughing softly at something the doctor was telling her in his quaint broken English.     

      Both looked up when they heard the sound of the door and Alessandro had the distinct and decidedly uncomfortable feeling that he was disturbing an intimate moment.

      “I…I came to see if Annabella was all right,” he said, his anger rising. Until this morning, this room had been his safe harbour. Now, not a trace of his occupation remained.

     “She is as well as can be expected,” the doctor told him in a brusque, businesslike fashion, as if to dismiss him.

     “Thank you. That
’s all I needed to know,” Alessandro replied with studied dignity, closing the door on the scene with rather more force than was needed.

      On his way through the foyer, he almost knocked over Tonia, who was crossing the tiled floor with a big pile of laundry. He didn
’t even stop to apologize as he headed for his neighbour’s villa.

     “Alessandro,” Claudia cooed when he rejoined her on her terrace. “I
’ve been expecting you,
mio caro
. Won’t you have another glass of wine?”

      “Come here,” he rasped, reaching for her toned, tanned body.

      “Oh, my darling,” she giggled, “I didn’t know you cared.”

After spending the evening with Claudia, Alessandro walked reluctantly down to the cottage in which he planned to live until Annabella grew tired of her Italian holiday and decided to take herself back to where she belonged, her daddy’s huge farm on the other side of the world.

     He spent a miserable night there, having forgotten that the electricity had long ago been disconnected. His family hadn
’t been able to afford a caretaker for almost as long as he could remember, so the small house had been allowed to fall into disrepair. Without even a candle, he fell into his cold, lonely bed and fumed, thinking of Annabella in his bedroom at Casa dei Fiori, warm, cosseted by Tonia and the doctor, and well-fed.

But Annabella was not feeling particularly happy either. She’d been hurt that Alessandro had merely poked his head around her door to make a cold inquiry about her health. And she’d disappointed Tonia by only eating a few mouthfuls of the delicious soup she’d made especially for her. Doctor Esposito and Tonia both looked at her sorrowfully as she pushed the bowl away. How could she have confessed to either of them that she wanted to lose a few inches here and there so her second cousin would at least look at her? She’d never be able to compete with trim, taut and terrific Claudia if she resembled a butter-ball, would she?

     She missed her parents dreadfully, and her friends. She did love Casa dei Fiori, whatever Alessandro might think, but it wasn
’t the same without their great-grandpapa’s cheerful, noisy presence. He was always singing, she remembered. He had a wonderful voice and would sing a Tuscan folk song with as much gusto as one of the great arias written by his favourite composer, Verdi. The house once rang with cascades of notes, with the barking of his dog. It had been fragrant with the mingled scents of the cigars he smoked and the coffee he drank black and very strong.

     Every day of her visit with her parents he
’d go out on the terrace and cut armfuls of the wonderful golden perfumed roses he loved. He’d bring them into Tonia, who would fill the vases with fresh flowers every day. There were hardly any roses now. The big, climbing bush had been neglected as the old man’s health had begun to wane and it rarely bloomed.

     There were roses at home on the farm because her mama loved them too. They thrived on the sheep manure she fed them. Annabella wondered how her parents were. She
’d only been gone two days and it seemed like two months. One day had been taken up with the long flight to Italy and the other had been consumed by the train journey from Rome to the station in the village, from where she had taken the taxi. And now, here she was.

     Mama and Papa
weren’t pleased that great-grandpapa had left Casa dei Fiori to her.

     “What on
Earth was he thinking?” her father fumed.

     “You hardly know any words of Italian
,” her mother protested to her daughter.

     “If you think you can cope on the farm without me, I would like to go,” Annabella told them firmly. “He must have done it for a reason. Perhaps he thought I could be of some use. Perhaps Alessandro….”

     “Ah, yes, Alessandro,” her parents had said in unison. Her mother continued shrewdly, “He is a man now. And you are a woman. Perhaps the old man was not so stupid.”

      “After all, Alessandro is there all alone now,” her father
mused aloud. “His parents were killed in that terrible car accident when he was just a boy. I wonder if dear Tonia is still there?”

     When Annabella told her best friend, Sassy and her other pals at the pub in town where they gathered every Friday night, they were excited for her.

     “You must all come and stay, when I’ve settled in,” she begged them. “Promise you’ll come. I know the air fares are expensive, but once you get there, you can stay with me.”

     Of course they had promised, especially Sassy, who was the local GP and had begun e-mailing an Italian she
’d encountered in a chat-room. They corresponded about their common specialty, rural medicine, and were discovering they had other shared interests, too. The others in their group either worked on farms in the district or held down jobs in the town –  as teachers, bank clerks, mechanics.

     Her head aching from her disappointment at Alessandro’s reception of her, hunger and homesickness, not to mention from the knock she had received, she was unable to sleep. At some stage during the long night, she walked unsteadily onto her balcony and breathed in the clean Tuscan air. Not a light flickered in the valley, nor even in the tiny village up on the opposite hill. And Alessandro must be blissfully asleep after spending the night in Claudia’s arms, for the caretaker’s cottage was shrouded in darkness.

Y
outh and health on her side, Annabella felt better with the welcome sight of the sun’s first rays streaming into her bedroom. She knew the doctor had wanted her to remain in bed for a few more days, but this was impossible. Annabella was a woman of action.

Dressed in only the T-shirt and brief knickers she slept in, she padded barefoot down the staircase, having taken care not to wake Tonia, the house’s only other occupant, who slept in the room opposite hers. In the kitchen, she made herself some strong black coffee and, while waiting for it to brew, piled a plate full of luscious figs, grapes and peaches from Tonia’s kitchen garden.  She carried her trayful of breakfast to the table under the fig tree and sat on the table-top to enjoy her feast, content in the knowledge that it contained virtually no fat.

     Emerging from the cottage in yesterday’s rumpled clothes, having been unable to coax life into the archaic hot-water system, Alessandro looked longingly in the direction of his comfortable bedroom in Casa dei Fiori. A room in which his second cousin was probably snoring right now.

     But his eyes caught sight of a splash of white under the shady tree and he saw that Annabella was wide awake, her rounded limbs as perfect as pure ivory. She was eating something, he saw, probably a fig. Its juice would be oozing down her fingers, which she would then lick with her usual gusto.

     She saw him too, and waved. But Alessandro doubted he would be able to resist touching her if he went too close. Without returning her greeting, he walked in the direction of Villa Claudia. Here, he would be assured of a warm shower and the sort of healthy breakfast health-conscious Claudia favoured. Squaring his shoulders bravely at the thought of his neighbour’s fibre-filled, low-fat cereal and pushed open the low iron gate in the tumble-down fence that separated the two properties.    

                                           CHAPTER FOUR

Stung by Alessandro’s latest snub, Annabella sniffed and fiercely dashed hot tears from her eyes. Would he ever forgive her, she wondered. Perhaps she should do as he desired and take a taxi back to the village, then a train to Rome and a plane home to Western Australia. For a few minutes, this was what she desired too, more than anything in the world. To be socialising at the local on a Friday night, making light of her Italian adventure and the surly second cousin whose personality had changed beyond recognition. To be praying for the rains that would ensure a good wheat harvest so her parents and herself could stay on the farm for another year, at least. To stay on the farm. Was that what she really wanted, she asked herself, with brutal honesty.

     The peppery taste of a fresh Tuscan fig still lingering on her tongue, the gentle Italian sunshine warming her body, the magnificent view over rolling hills and wooded valleys thrilling her imagination, she knew that what she wanted more than anything in the world was to stay right here, where her heart and soul belonged. She adored her parents and her friends, but Casa dei Fiori had always felt more like home to her than the dry, flat paddocks of her father’s farm. And it wasn’t just because her second cousin was part of the scenery. She loved the villa and its estate because it was in her blood to do so, just as it had been in the blood of her Italian ancestors for centuries. And her great-grandfather had known that as surely as if she had had the name of his property tattooed across her forehead.

    
Annabella remembered sitting under this very tree with him thirteen years before. The sun was setting over the hills and the church bells in the medieval village high up on one of the slopes were ringing out across the valleys. Alessandro had been in the nearest city, Siena, for three long days, helping his school-friend, Mario’s, family, prepare their horse for the
Palio
and his little second cousin was missing him.

   
“We’ll see him tomorrow,
cara
,” great-grandfather had assured her. “Your parents and I are going to meet him in the
Campo
in Siena for the big horse race. I have asked Tonia’s husband to polish the old Bentley specially for the occasion. You haven’t seen my pride and joy yet, have you?” He’d chuckled as he explained that he bought the car after the war and was never quite sure whether it would actually get them to their desired destination. “But, in this part of the world, it’s a joy to break down in the road. One merely luxuriates in the sunshine and relishes the scenery until help comes.”

    
He’d smiled then and lovingly enfolded her against his big, cigar-scented chest. “I don’t need to tell you that, do I,
piccola
Annabella? You love Tuscany. I can see it in the way your green eyes light up and in the way you savour everything Tonia puts on your plate. You have come alive in the few days you have been here. When you first arrived from Australia, you were pale and your hair and eyes lacked sparkle. Italy has suffused you with
joie de vivre
. You really are a de Rocco, through and through. I cannot tell you how proud I am of you and how glad I am that I finally persuaded your mother, my grand-daughter, to bring you to me. If only my estate were a little more financial – then I would make sure I saw you every summer.”

    
The old man’s eyes misted over then and Annabella protested, “But great-grandpapa, you will see me again, I promise!”

    
Alas, it wasn’t to be. Neither side of the family could afford the fares for a follow-up visit and Annabella was never to see her beloved great-grandfather again after those first glorious weeks with him. How wonderful it had been to watch the thrilling
Palio
with Alessandro and the old man!

    
The Bentley was gracious for a change, and had got them to Siena without mishap. Annabella had sat in the front, between the chauffeur, Tonia’s long-gone husband, and her great-grandfather. Her parents had stretched out in the back and they’d all enjoyed the hour-long drive into the city, past sunflower fields about to burst into yellow bloom, past green rows of vines whose grapes were becoming heavier and sweeter by the day, through avenues of cypresses and fields of silvery olive trees. Every so often the old man would point out a particularly good
fattoria
, or wine estate, where the vintage was, he said, always spectacular. High up on forested hillsides, the wide-eyed child who was Annabella caught sight of crumbling villas whose walls were kept together merely by a tangle of wild roses and wisteria. She imagined the beautiful ladies who must have lived there once, perhaps sitting outside in the sunshine on their balconies, looking out over the very scenery she was enjoying. In her mind’s eye, she could see the dashing men who came calling on them and wondered what had become of their descendants now that their lovely little
palazzi
were in ruins.