by Diana Fraser
An Accidental Christmas
Italian Romance, Book 4
Diana Fraser
Contents
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Epilogue
Afterword
Also by Diana Fraser
An Accidental Christmas
by Diana Fraser
© 2017 Diana Fraser
—Italian Romance—
Perfect
Her Retreat
Trusting Him
An Accidental Christmas
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Authors note: The traditions and setting for An Accidental Christmas were inspired by the real town of Abbadia san Salvatore, but the town and people in this book, are purely a product of my own invention.
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
Dedication
To Mum and Dad, with much love always.
Chapter 1
Ursula watched the sleek Ferrari, its front grill festooned with flowers and ribbons, drive away from the Montecorvio Rovella estate. There was a backward glance from both Alessandro and Emily, a wave, and then they were gone.
She sighed. Emily’s eyes had held hers momentarily before Alessandro had commanded her attention. They’d radiated happiness that only briefly dimmed when they’d caught Ursula’s gaze. Sympathy. She hated it.
“Now they are a couple in love.”
The woman speaking was hushed by her friend and turned round puzzled until she caught sight of Ursula. Ursula recognized her as Simone, an old friend of Alessandro’s whom she knew only slightly. Simone fell into step beside Ursula, as they walked over to the cars.
“So, are you returning to Sweden for Christmas?” Simone asked.
Ursula had been, but suddenly she couldn’t face it. Her father, stepmother and her teenage half-sisters wouldn’t miss her. They didn’t need her to complete their family at Christmas. Her married friends had extended kind invitations for Ursula to join them, but they all had their own families. They’d all be looking at her wondering why the girl they’d known at boarding school as “the girl likeliest to succeed,” was alone at Christmas.
She smiled—the smile that could always be counted on to disguise her real thoughts and emotions. “No. I thought I might stay in Italy.”
“Christmas with friends. Sounds good. Christmas with family is so often fraught with issues.”
Ursula nodded, unwilling to tell her that Christmas without family or friends was what she was seeking. “It makes a change.”
“Whereabouts are you going?”
Ursula thought quickly. “North.” She hoped the vague destination would suffice. She’d hoped wrong.
“The coast?”
“No.” Just the idea of retracing the holidays she’d had with Alessandro along Italy’s coast tightened the knot in her gut. “No,” she repeated more firmly. “The mountains.”
“Ah, good idea. You should stop off in Abbadia San Alexis on your way. It has amazing medieval buildings. And the frescoes—Emily would love them.” Simone stopped speaking abruptly, suddenly realizing what she’d said.
Ursula smiled. “It’s okay, you know. Emily and I are good friends. Alessandro and I broke up long before Emily came along.”
Simone’s relief was palpable. “Oh, yeah, I realize that. Anyhow, you should stop off in Abbadia if you’ve time.”
Ursula smiled again as she tried to hide the vast expanse of emptiness that had been resting deep inside, buried until now. It had taken the wedding of two of her closest friends to uncover it. “Sure. Well, I’d best be off.”
She said her goodbyes, and walked over to her rental car.
No-one was looking at her now, and she could allow the void which had been revealed at seeing Alessandro so in love with someone else, to find its place in the dead center of her heart. She didn’t have to pretend anymore. She was happy for Alessandro. She was. They weren’t just words to reassure everyone. But it had been Alessandro who’d called off their relationship; it had been Alessandro who hadn’t loved her enough, and it had been her who’d been left wondering why.
She couldn’t help it. She hadn’t been enough for him, she hadn’t been enough for her previous boyfriend who’d finished their relationship with a text and she doubted she’d be enough for anyone. Despite what all the school yearbooks stated, despite all the advances from people who shouldn’t be flirting with her, despite how busy she kept herself, there was an emptiness in the place where her heart should have been.
It had died a little with each rejection. Beginning with when she’d been sent to live with her grandparents as a child after her parent’s divorce, continuing with when she’d been packed off to an elite boarding school at eleven years of age, and sealed with the rejections of men who’d been unable, or unwilling, to see beyond the exterior she’d created to hide behind.
She needed to leave her world, just for a while. She needed to come to terms with the fact that she didn’t believe that emptiness would ever be filled.
She’d head north, as she’d told Simone. She suddenly remembered her friend Ruby would be in Florence for New Year. She’d find someplace to hide out for Christmas and then she’d go to Florence. Now, where was the place Simone had mentioned? She couldn’t remember, but it didn’t matter. She’d just drive.
* * *
The traffic was barely moving along the coastal highway. The rain, which had begun as soon as Ursula had left Naples, had turned to sleet, and red tail lights pierced the gloom as far as she could see. She checked her dashboard; the temperature had plummeted. Some holiday. At least she’d managed to contact Ruby and arrange to meet in early January. It was only just over a week away. She’d find something between now and then if she ever got out of this traffic jam, that was.
She peered at the unfamiliar gear stick, and crunched the car into gear as the line of traffic edged forward. She looked up just as the brake lights of the vehicle in front flared. She slammed on the brakes and sat, motor running, listening to yet another irritating Christmas song on the radio. Of course. What did she expect when she tried to drive through the rush hour at the beginning of the Christmas holiday season? The one time she decides to do something impromptu, and it backfires.
The traffic crawled briefly before stopping again. Ursula banged her fists impotently on the steering wheel. She couldn’t do this. It was making her crazy. All she wanted to do was put her foot hard on the accelerator and drive away from everything that was haunting her.
She gripped the wheel. She had to get off the main road. Anywhere. As a small road approached on the right, she signaled and turned into it. She didn’t even know where it was going. It was enough for her that it was leading away from Rome. She’d just wanted to drive, to follow her nose and stop only at nightfall where she could be away from everyone. Only her, in some anonymous, nameless hotel. There, she’d wait for Christmas to be over.
* * *
Lost in her thoughts as she negotiated the winding mountain road, away from all the traffic now, Ursula was hardly a
ware of the change in the light. The sleet had turned into airy snowflakes which drifted slowly down from an iron-gray sky. It wasn’t until she continued onwards, up through thickening trees—their branches already weighed down by snow—that the snow began to accumulate on the windscreen and Ursula realized this was more than just a passing snow shower. She peered out at the white world around her and smiled to herself as she absorbed its sheer beauty.
At a bend in the road, she pulled over into a siding, thick with newly fallen snow. She switched the engine off, and stepped out into a world of white. There was no sound, just the soft brush of giant snowflakes as they drifted down onto her upturned face. She laughed, unable to resist sticking out her tongue and tasting them, as she’d done as a child. The whiteness of the wooded valley, with its steep sides to which the road clung, was alleviated only by dark streaks on the sheltered side of the tree trunks, downwind from the snow. They looked as if they’d been touched by the brush of an artist.
Above the steep side of the mountain, with its forest of white-cloaked chestnut trees plunging down into the valley below, the view faded out into a snow-filled sky. It was an unspoiled landscape and a strangely calming one. She was glad she’d come, even if she was lost. She shivered, pulled her coat more tightly around her and stamped her feet which were beginning to numb with cold. Time to go. Climbing back into the car, she turned on the ignition but, instead of an engine roaring into life, there was only an ominous whirring sound that sent a sickening chill into her stomach.
She got out, opened up the bonnet and gave it a cursory look. Why, she didn’t know because she had no idea what she was looking for. She let it fall with a clang and looked around. The snow was settling deeper now, and no recent tracks disturbed its pristine beauty. For the first time, she felt a stab of concern. She tried her cell phone again. There was no reception. If only she’d paid more attention to the road signs giving a destination, or a historic site, anything that could have given her some sense of where she was in this landscape devoid of people or houses. But she hadn’t. She looked uphill to where the road disappeared around a corner, into a wall of white. It had to lead somewhere. She decided she’d walk for half an hour and, if there were no signs of life, she’d return to the car.
She grabbed her bags, locked the car and began walking, trundling the case behind her on the snowy road. Half an hour passed, and her light coat was wet through. Her boots were starting to chafe her feet, and not one car had gone by. The snow began to fall more heavily. She dragged the case behind her on the snowy road. Her Gucci handbag was soaked, she thought glumly. The suede would never recover.
Then she heard something. A rumbling. She stopped and turned around, but couldn’t see anything through the thickly falling snow. She shivered, whether through fear or cold she couldn’t have said. She rarely felt vulnerable, but she did now.
A puff of exhaust rose from around the bend, and a tractor emerged, its headlamps blinding in the snow, pulling behind it a trailer load of wood. It wasn’t until it drew up beside her that she saw the outline of a solitary man in the driver’s seat, seemingly oblivious to the cold and wet. She couldn’t see anything of him beneath the broad hat, and the turned-up collar of his thick coat.
“Caio!” he called.
“Caio!” she responded.
“Is that your car, a couple of miles back there?”
“Yes, it won’t start.”
“Climb up. I’ll take you to where you’ll get cellphone coverage. I can’t turn around on this road, but I’ll come back later and tow the car to town.”
“Thank you so much! I was beginning to think I’d have to spend the night in the car.”
“You might have had to if I hadn’t been late collecting wood.” He extended his hand, she gripped it and he pulled her up beside him. Face to face, she could see his eyes were as warm as the hand which enveloped hers. There wasn’t much room and, when she sat down, his leg pressed against hers. “You’re cold. You’d better get under this.” He dragged a blanket—an old dog blanket that had seen better days by the smell of things—from behind them. She covered herself gingerly, still shivering despite its scratchy protection. “My name is Demetrio Pecora.”
“Ursula. Ursula Adamsson.”
He released the brake, revved the accelerator and the tractor scrunched safely over the thick snow. As they rounded a bend in the road the wind increased, sending the snow shooting horizontally across their path. Ursula shivered, and pulled the blanket higher over her head, clasping it tightly around her neck. She glanced at Demetrio, whose only response to the sudden snow storm, was a narrowing of his eyes. With his eyes hidden, and a hat pulled low over his brow, all that was visible was the side of his face—tanned, a shadow of stubble and a strong jawline.
She looked away quickly, feeling uncomfortable with this enforced intimacy with a stranger who, she now realized, had the sort of looks more usually seen on the pages of a magazine. She looked around, trying to think of a topic of conversation. “That’s a lot of firewood you have in the back.”
He glanced at her, his lips curving into a smile. Her heart quickened, and she looked away, worried for the first time in a long time that she might blush. “Si. We’re big on bonfires here at Christmas.”
“And where is ‘here?’” She kept her eyes firmly on the snowy landscape.
“Abbadia San Alexis.”
The place she’d been advised to go earlier! Of course, it was.
She groaned. It seemed fate had decided where she was going, whether she liked it or not.
“Didn’t you know where you were?”
She considered for a moment. “You know? I think I probably did.”
They turned a corner, and he looked at her again and this time he didn’t look away. “That’s a strange answer.”
“This is a strange holiday.” She grinned. “Someone suggested I visit Abbadia San Alexis, but I hadn’t thought any more about it until I turned off the highway, trying to avoid the holiday traffic. And here I am anyway.”
“And here you are. With a stranger, on a tractor, under a dog’s blanket.”
“Yes. I couldn’t have planned this if I’d tried.”
“And you normally plan your life better?”
“Absolutely. My life is always planned. Until now, until these holidays, that is. But I think I’d better go back to planning, it’s more reliable.”
“Less interesting though.”
“Yeah, there is that.” She met his grin with one of his own, and she felt a low spreading warmth in the pit of her stomach.
“One thing planning is helpful with is accommodation. You have no accommodation booked, I assume?”
“You assume right. Do you think that’ll be a problem?”
“Si. We can try the hotels, but Abbadia San Alexis is well known for its Christmas festival, and the town is usually full over the holiday period. But we’ll sort something out.”
Ursula wondered how exactly this stranger was going to sort things out for her. She should be more worried but, for some inexplicable reason, she felt reassured, happy to cast her fate into the hands of this man. At least for now.
They eventually emerged from the chestnut forest into the medieval heart of Abbadia San Alexis—the square in front of the Abbey, which was full of people. Ursula realized why there was no one on the road—they were all here.
The square’s medieval and renaissance houses of gray stone appeared untouched by time. “It’s beautiful.”
“The abbey dates from the eleventh century. It used to be an important station on the Via Francigena, a pilgrim route from northern Europe to Rome. So we’re used to people passing through. Although most people know where they’re coming to,” he teased.
“The accidental pilgrim, that’s me. Maybe God has something special lined up for me.” She grinned.
His eyes lingered on her. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised.” The teasing note in his voice had disappeared. He pulled on the handbrake. “I hav
e to drop off the wood. They need it for the bonfires, and then we’ll try the hotels.”
Ursula suddenly felt guilty. “You’ve done more than enough already. If you show me where to go, I can check out the hotels.”
“I’m sure you can. But I’d like to help.”
She began to protest. She had always been fiercely independent but, for once, she found herself nodding in agreement, persuaded by those melting brown eyes. “Okay, then. Thank you.”
The medieval square was alive with people of all ages. Some were busy building the bonfires while others milled around the street stalls, shouting encouragement to the bonfire builders.
Ursula watched as Demetrio unloaded the wood, depositing it in the center of the square. From here, others took it and began erecting a square-shaped bonfire. The big logs were placed in layers of around five meters high, and the smaller firewood was slotted in between. When the last of the logs had been unloaded, they stood back and watched as the huge bonfire began to take shape.
“How high will it be?” Ursula asked.
“Up to around 30 stacks. It has to burn until dawn.”
“Is it some kind of pilgrims’ tradition?”
“A villagers’ tradition. Every Christmas Eve we light fires. The Festival of Fiaccole Della Notte di Natale is said to have been going on for a thousand years. It’s meant to have started with the villagers who lived around the Abbey. They lit fires to warm themselves as they played out the role of the shepherds who followed the star on the night of Christ’s birth.”
“Wow. That’s very different to my hometown. The most traditional we get is buying expensive presents no one needs.”