Master of Bella Terra

by Christina Hollis

  Hours later, she wished she had returned to the Bella Terra valley anyway. Sleep was impossible. Inspecting the ruins of her home by torchlight would have been a better use of her time than tossing and turning in bed. She got up while it was still barely light, and went out for a short walk around town. It was supposed to clear her head, but her mind was too full for that. She thought about the home she had lost, and how much more terrible it could so easily have been. Stefano might have been killed. When it came to matters of life and death, possessions didn’t matter. They could be replaced. People couldn’t. When he left her on Silver Island, Stefano had torn a hole in her heart. While he was still alive, there was a chance it might be repaired. If he had died in the fire, he would have been lost to her forever.

  At least today she still had hope, where there might have only been tragedy.

  Kira was a perfectionist, but when it came to Stefano’s town house her standards reached new heights. She went into overdrive. When she wasn’t busy with her contract to beautify the house, its roof and courtyard, she sat in her borrowed suite and co-ordinated the rebuilding of her own home. It was so painful to be confronted by the ashes of her happy life, but she refused to be beaten. Her vow to recreate her home was written in smoke-blackened stones. She poured all her anger and disappointment into her project to rebuild it. Each day she concentrated on her work at Stefano’s town house, determined to fulfil her contract impeccably. Each evening, she drove to La Ritirata and worked on until it was too dark to see. She did all the odd jobs that might otherwise eat into the builders’ time: making phone calls, sweeping up and washing down. Everything had to run according to her plan. Nothing must go wrong. She wanted her house to stand as a monument to her iron will.

  Her commitment to both jobs never wavered. Her self-control often did. She was so glad that this was something she could do alone. For anyone else to see her anguish would have been unbearable. Each time she walked out onto Stefano’s new roof garden, she kept expecting him to appear. He never did. As she walked through the cool, beautifully designed rooms of his suite, she knew that other women would have the benefit of the emperor-size bed and the shower that was big enough for two. She had lost him. Her bridges were burned, along with her house.

  She had turned out to be the architect of her own unhappiness, and that was the most painful thing of all.

  Kira’s punishing schedule began to take its toll. There were times when she could barely drag herself from one project to the other. Her body was numb with exhaustion. She kept her mind blank with the anaesthetic of work. If she let it wander for a moment, it homed straight in on Stefano.

  Rebuilding La Ritirata would take a long time, and more money than she could bear to think about. Her beloved garden was wrecked. It sagged beneath the weight of disaster. Nothing had escaped. Plants had been scorched, crushed beneath falling masonry or trampled and drowned by the emergency services or the builders.

  Her house could be replaced, but its heart and soul would take a lot longer to repair. Wandering around the site, Kira couldn’t help wondering if it would feel as soulless as all Stefano’s properties did. There would be no love in it. She had none left to give. The rebuilt La Ritirata would rattle with emptiness, and smell of nothing but new paint and plaster. They were nice smells, but as impersonal as a hospital. The place would be eerily silent, too. Kira had grown to love the little creaks and moans her old house made. All its imperfections would vanish, like the original building. None of the new windows would jam, and the front door would open first time, every time. The usual pantomime of wiggling the key and bumping her shoulder against one particular spot would be a thing of the past. This new house should be ideal in every way, but somehow she knew it never would be. Something would always be missing.

  All she had ever craved was a quiet life, far away from strangers, in her old house with its funny little ways. Now she had lost everything. Looking out across the valley at the Bella Terra villa, all Kira saw now was the wrong sort of isolation. She wanted to carry on being alone—alone, together with Stefano.

  It was the end of her wonderful dream. She had lost her home, and the only man she would ever love or need or want. Stefano had been on to something. She should have accepted his offer to buy the ruins of La Ritirata. Her contracted jobs were well on the way to being finished—they didn’t need her any longer. There was nothing in the Bella Terra valley for her now. Sadly, regretfully, she pulled out her mobile phone.

  He had been right all along. All she had to do was tell him.

  It was ironic. Stefano’s problem was that he could never be satisfied with what he had. Kira’s problem was the exact opposite. She loved what she knew, and never wanted it to change.

  Her message to him was a simple one: You’ve won. I don’t want to replace my home here after all. You can have it.

  It had been hard enough to begin. Finishing it took forever. Every ending she added felt desperate, so finally she put the single word Kira and pressed Send.

  She had a long wait. Her time in Florence, which should have been spent packing, kept being interrupted by checking her email in-box. Each time she opened it and there was no reply from Stefano, it felt like another rejection. She usually spent her time avoiding office work and the computer. Today was different. Finally, eyes dry and gritty from staring at a screen that refused to come up with the only name she wanted to see, she flung herself away from the desk with a cry of desperation. Blindly, she dashed up onto the brand new roof garden she had designed and built for him.

  For as long as she could remember, gardens had been Kira’s sanctuary. That magic did not work today. Solitude could not help her. She drifted around, unseeing. Moving from the flower boxes of pelargoniums to the terracotta pots of lemon trees and back again, she was locked inside her own thoughts. It was not a happy place to be. The only thing that could distract her was the idea Stefano might have replied to her email, and she had missed it. Within minutes of escaping from the screen, her nerve broke and she fled back inside.

  Inevitably, she discovered her message had been answered almost as soon as she abandoned her laptop. Excitement plummeted to despair as she opened Stefano’s message to find only an automatic response. He was going off-message until further notice.

  Kira put both hands on the edge of the table and pushed herself back from her computer. That made his feelings pretty clear.

  The rest of her day went to waste. She could not eat, or settle to anything for more than a few moments. As evening approached she gave up and drove to the Bella Terra valley. The place had always healed her in the past. It didn’t happen today. Gazing at the foundations of the new house, she wondered if the next person to live in it would be truly happy there.

  A chill breeze ruffled her hair. High in a nearby pine, an owl quavered its mournful cry. Cold weather would soon be on its way. One of Kira’s great pleasures had been to feed the creatures driven close to her old home in winter. When she left, she would lose that. It would be a terrible wrench. She might hate this new house, but she still loved the Bella Terra valley.

  On impulse, she decided to recreate some of the best things about her life at La Ritirata. She shook out some biscuit crumbs onto an upturned oil drum. Within seconds a robin returned to investigate. Gathering up small branches from beneath the trees, she began rebuilding the wood pile. It would be ready for burning by next winter. The memories of the sound and fragrance of crackling wood might make this soulless new house feel a little bit more homely. The new owners would enjoy that.

  She was kneeling on the ground, picking up pine cones, when a sound made her whirl around in alarm. What she saw almost stopped her heart.

  ‘Stefano!’

  Without waiting for her to say any more, he walked across what had once been her garden. She froze. As imposing as ever, his long shadow fell across her. Sitting back on her heels, Kira tried to push her tumble of coppery gold hair behind her ears.

  ‘Yes,’ he said mildly. Reaching dow
n, he brushed a fragment of dried grass from the crown of her head. She held her breath. He leaned back, carefully under control, and she breathed again,

  ‘You’ve lost weight,’ she said faintly. He laughed.

  ‘I’ve been too busy to eat. I’ve found a new purpose in life.’

  ‘That American property tempted you after all?’ She smiled, dying inside. He shook his head, but that gave her no cause to hope. Instead, she became defensive.

  ‘I’ve gone beyond the point of playing games, Stefano. Did you get my email?’

  ‘Yes. That’s why I’m here.’ He was equally forthright.

  She watched him speculatively. ‘Why hasn’t your office answered any of my messages?’

  He flipped his keys into his pocket. ‘They had nothing to tell you. They couldn’t contact me. I was on my way here.’

  ‘Why? Of all the places in your empire, why visit here?’ Kira asked, hearing her voice trembling slightly.

  He paused for a long time before he answered. The only sound was the idle clink of coins in his pocket. It cranked up the tension to a point where Kira jumped when the lonely owl called again.

  ‘I’m not visiting, Kira,’ he said at last. ‘I’m back in the valley for good.’

  She stared at him, wondering what to ask and where to start. ‘Until five minutes ago I knew exactly what I was going to do. I had everything planned. Now you’ve parachuted back into my life, and I don’t know what to think.’

  ‘So don’t think anything.’ He came towards her again with a huge, beautiful smile and she stood, legs wobbly, to meet him. ‘Just feel. All you need to know is that your problems are over, tesoro.’ He reached out for her and Kira took a hasty step back. Her body was already reacting to his presence, and she knew that if she let him take her in his arms all would be lost.

  Anger bubbled up inside her. How dare he just return so casually? ‘I don’t think so, Stefano. I have a feeling they may only just be beginning. Do you think you can flit in and out of my life on a whim? You abandoned me once, remember? How do you expect me to trust that you won’t suddenly change your mind again?’

  Stefano’s smile faded.

  ‘I want to explain.’

  ‘What is there to say? You deceived me!’

  A lightning bolt of anger galvanised his body. ‘That’s not true, Kira, and you know it! We both said we wanted to resist mixing business and pleasure. When it happened and I made a move, you could have said no. I would have respected that. We are so alike, both wary of entanglement. We knew the dangers. That meant you were never under any pressure to respond, and neither was I.’ He had started angrily, but the bitterness in his voice melted away as he added, ‘But we did, and there can never be any doubt that you are a woman who knows exactly what she wants. I wanted the same thing,’ he finished quietly. ‘And I still want it.’

  Kira bit her lip as her eyes threatened to fill with tears. His words had some truth to them. He had been cruel to her, but she had been naive. ‘I always said I would never let myself be so vulnerable again,’ she said eventually.

  ‘I know, and that was why I had to leave!’

  His words escaped in such an explosion, Kira’s head jerked up.

  ‘I told you too much about myself on our last night together, Kira. That’s why you must have realised I’m not to be trusted.’

  In the days they had been apart Kira had combed every magazine and newspaper, steeling herself to read about Stefano and a string of other women. There had been nothing.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Stefano,’ she challenged him at last. ‘And you can’t possibly say something like that without following it up!’

  ‘I don’t know if I can,’ he said, with difficulty. ‘You learned more about me in those final hours than I have ever revealed to anyone else. Telling you about Maria and my family lifted a weight off my mind. At first it felt good. But next morning…’ He shook his head wordlessly.

  ‘I realised I had gone too far. I had to get away.’

  Kira waited, hardly daring to breathe. It was a long time before he spoke again.

  ‘I told you the darkest secret of my life—that in order to make myself a success, I turned my back on my birth family.’

  ‘You also told me you chose honesty when you decided to leave them,’ Kira said quietly.

  He nodded, pushing a hand through his hair in a sharp, agitated gesture. ‘But at the time…the thought of you discovering I couldn’t be any more loyal than your faithless Hugh…it was too much to bear.’ He exhaled in a rush. ‘And knowing you knew my secrets, what my childhood was really like… I’ve never told anyone that since I escaped it. I kept imagining you looking at me with disgust or—far worse—pity.’ He lowered his head for a moment, the sharp planes of his face tense and pale.

  ‘Stefano,’ Kira said softly. ‘You must know your past could never make any difference to me. It made you the man you are now, the man I—’ she stopped herself and swallowed hard before continuing ‘—I know. I understand exactly how you feel. I panicked after the first time we spent the night together. I couldn’t believe how perfect it felt—there was no way I could trust it to last. I knew it would crush me when it fell, when you decided I wasn’t good enough—or met someone else…’

  ‘What changed your mind?’

  Kira sighed. ‘To be honest, I couldn’t stay away from you! I wanted to keep my distance—but I didn’t want to lose touch with you either. I think I was lost from the beginning, really. Ever since you gave me your business card, I’ve been treating it like a holy relic,’ she finished ruefully.

  ‘You wouldn’t be the first,’ he assured her.

  They stood and looked at each other—and then they laughed.

  Stefano reached out to her again, his touch gliding over her cheek. In that moment, Kira forgot all her fears. All she wanted to do was check that her body was still a perfect fit for his arms. Closing the gap between them, she looked up into his eyes. They were intense and totally focused on her face. His smile enclosed her in warm, honeyed security as his touch brushed like silk against her skin.

  ‘I—I don’t know what came over me when we made love on Silver Island, Kira. It was every bit as good—no, it was better than when we were in Florence. That was the problem. First I couldn’t get you out of my mind, and then I didn’t want to let you out of my bed. I’d never felt like that about any woman before. It was such an overwhelming experience, I had to get away. I thought I was lost. In fact, the exact opposite was true. Once we were apart I discovered you are my anchor in life, Kira. That’s why I could never resist coming back to you. You’re strong, and centred, and keep me grounded in real life. When I abandoned you on Silver Island, it was like leaving behind part of myself. It was the best part, but I knew it was safe with you because after we made love that night, something changed. I became one half of a couple. Do you realise what that means? Since then I’ve been lost without you, adrift. We are meant to be together, Kira. You make me whole. There can be no going back now—for either of us.’

  She shook her head in disbelief. She had never dared to hope that his feelings might run so close to hers. ‘That’s exactly the way I felt, after Florence,’ she told him quietly. ‘For the first time in my life, I didn’t want to be alone any more. That scared me, because it felt so different.’

  He nodded.

  ‘The moment I left you on Silver Island, I discovered you were inescapable. I was carrying you everywhere. You were inside me—in my thoughts, and deep within my heart. I went back to find you in La Ritirata, but the fire got in the way. When you found me in the hospital, I couldn’t find the words to tell you the truth—I was still scared. I drove you away again, stubborn fool that I am. When you left, I tried to convince myself it was what you wanted. That it was the right decision, and I tried again to let you go. But I was lying to myself. Kira, we need each other. Together, we can show the world what family really means. Together, we’ll be unbeatable. That’s why I ca
me to find you. Kira, my only love, am I too late?’

  He was gazing into her eyes, trying to read her thoughts. Kira feasted her eyes on him for a long time before replying, but there wasn’t a doubt in her mind. ‘Too late?’ she said finally in a soft, slow voice. ‘You can’t be, for here I am.’ Stefano’s face lit up with blazing joy as he pulled Kira against him.

  ‘And here you stay.’ He cupped her face in his hands and passionately kissed her as she melted against him. ‘With me, for ever.’

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-7929-6

  MASTER OF BELLA TERRA

  Previously published in the U.K. under the title THE ITALIAN’S BLUSHING GARDENER

  First North American Publication 2011

  Copyright © 2010 by Christina Hollis

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