by Romy Sommer
‘Pici is a strongly flavoured pasta.’ He offered me a spoonful of sauce to taste. ‘So it needs a strong sauce.’
I’d never tried truffles before. The taste was complex and earthy, and I licked my lips to savour every drop of the sauce.
When he removed the finished sauce from the heat, we cut the dough ball into sections, then rolled each section on a floured board using a long thin rolling pin, into long round strips a couple of feet long. This was the complicated part, getting the thickness of each string of pasta just right. Luca moved behind me, his arms on either side of me, his chest pressed against my back as he showed me how to roll the dough to get the right thickness. Too thin, and the string would break. Too thick, and the pici would remain doughy.
Having his body pressed up against mine should have done all sorts of strange things to my insides. But all I could think of was the time Tommaso showed me how to trim the vines. We’d stood in this same position, and my heart had thumped a good deal harder than it was doing right now. But I didn’t want to think about Tommaso today.
Luca’s hands were deft and slender, a complete contrast to Tommaso’s less refined, more workmanlike hands. I brushed that thought away too.
Go away! I don’t want to think about you! And I most certainly did not want to think about his hands, the way they seemed capable of anything, or of his strong arms.
I felt like Goldilocks again, with Baby Bear’s temptingly perfect porridge right in front of me – or rather pressed up against my back. And all I could think of was Papa Bear’s porridge. Too hot, too lumpy, and not right for me at all.
When Luca shifted away to reach for more flour, I drank a very deep sip of the wine, and forcefully banished these thoughts. I was here with Luca. It was Luca who made me feel warm and special and beautiful, Luca who had shown an interest in me, and who was never too busy when I called. Not a certain grumpy, grey-eyed man who’d barely spoken to me since Florian’s phone call.
So I threw myself into rolling out the pasta with my bare hands, concentrating on the feel of the dough between my fingers, on making my strings even and consistent.
‘Unlike other pastas, you don’t want too much flour,’ Luca said. ‘It should still be a little moist, a little sticky, to make it roll easier, and the surface of the pici should be rough, to make it stick better to the sauce.’
When we were done, we were both covered in flour, and laughing.
‘It’s so unfair that you can be covered in flour and still look so good,’ I giggled, all too aware that I’d managed to get flour in my hair and on my silk blouse.
In fact, Luca managed to look even sexier than usual, with his thick dark hair tousled, and his eyes alight with laughter. He brushed his floury fingers across my cheek. ‘You should look in a mirror.’
I expected a shiver, at least. But nothing came. No flutter in my stomach, no expectant thrill at where this evening might be headed. I was enjoying myself, sure, but I wasn’t turned on. What the hell was wrong with me? Maybe Kevin was right, and I was frigid. But then I remembered the feel of Tommaso’s arms as he’d carried me out of the smoke-filled castello kitchen, and frigid was absolutely the last word that could be used to describe how I’d felt.
We boiled the finished pici in salted water, then Luca drained the pasta, mixed it with fine gratings of pecorino cheese, and poured in the sauce.
We ate at a little wooden table on the terrace, watching the comings and goings on the next street down the slope. The pasta was thicker than spaghetti, substantial and chewy, and just perfect.
‘I heard you had vandals at the cellar?’ Luca said, after he’d cleared away our plates, and we sat with our wine glasses, watching the town’s lights come up and the darkness settle. My wine had warmed in my glass, and the afternotes turned bitter, but I was in no hurry to empty the glass.
‘Did you lose very much wine?’
‘Tommaso estimates we lost around eight thousand bottles of the next Angelica.’
Luca whistled. ‘Porca miseria! It seems that nowhere is safe anymore.’ He seemed genuinely concerned, banishing any lingering fears I’d had that somehow the vandalism had been linked to the loan agreement I’d signed with his father.
‘It won’t affect your ability to make the loan repayments?’ he asked.
I shrugged. I was learning to shrug like an Italian. This one said ‘what’s the use in complaining?’ With the sale of the castello imminent, the winery’s cash flow worries would soon be a thing of the past, but… ‘Short of flood, fire, or act of God, Tommaso will make the repayments.’.
I don’t know why I didn’t want to tell Luca about Florian’s offer. I’ll tell him when the offer to purchase has been signed, sealed and delivered, I rationalised.
‘Well, perhaps my estate agent friend will be able to sell the castello for you, and that will offset the damage done by the vandals,’ Luca suggested. ‘Have you heard from her again?’
I nodded. ‘She came to have another look at the property a few weeks ago and take some pictures, but she doesn’t yet feel enough improvements have been made to attract a decent price.’
And that had been before the big storm. But Florian’s offer, emailed through this morning, was more than decent. Hopefully, I would never even need to list the house with an agent.
Luca twirled his empty wine glass so that it caught the light. ‘Perhaps I can help you with that too,’ he said. ‘I have a friend from university who restores frescoes. I could ask her to come up here one weekend to work on your frescoes. Maybe she will offer you a good price.’
‘Thank you. That would be wonderful.’ Florian and Yusuf sounded like the kind of people who would appreciate a beautifully restored piece of art in their new home.
‘Fiorella lives in Rome, though, so she will need a place to stay.’
‘We have plenty of rooms.’ And soon they might even be roofed again.
‘I will call her tomorrow, then.’ Luca smiled, reaching out to re-fill my glass.
I held my hand across the top of my glass. ‘I have to drive home!’
‘Or you could stay the night?’ His voice was husky. On a scale of one to sexy, it was at least a twelve. But the temptation to stay was no longer as strong as it had been in Porto Ercole. Without the fresh sea air, the romantic piano music, and the intoxicating Syrah, the chemistry no longer buzzed in my veins, making it easier to say ‘no, thank you.’ Proof positive that chemistry couldn’t be relied upon.
I shook my head. ‘I really need to get going. I need to be up early to bake for the trattoria.’ I’d left Tommaso a note, and the leftover risotto to heat up in the microwave, but I didn’t fancy sneaking into his house in the early hours like a naughty teenager. Not that I’d ever sneaked home in the early hours as a teenager. That had been Geraldine’s MO.
Luca sighed dramatically. ‘You break my heart, bella. But for you, I will wait a thousand years.’
Yeah, right.
He walked me to the truck, and held the door open, but before I could slide into the driver’s seat, he pulled me into his arms and kissed me.
He was a really good kisser, and my body responded. But my mind didn’t follow where my body led. Instead, it went some place I really didn’t want it to go. I pulled away. ‘Buona notte, Luca.’
Chapter 22
Il cioccolato è sempre la risposta non importa quale sia la domanda
(Chocolate is the answer, no matter what the question)
Returning from our market day jaunt one Friday afternoon, Beatrice and I discovered a party taking place on the terrace. The final roof tiles had been replaced, and Ettore, his friends, and Tommaso had cracked open a bottle of prosecco from Veneto. Though the repaired roof only meant we were back at the starting point, I took the glass Tommaso handed me and raised it in salute to my assembled team. ‘Grazie mille! And here’s to getting all the rest of the work done before the Germans arrive!’
The others raised their glasses and joined the toast. Mozart’s Magic Fl
ute played in the background as we settled around the new patio table to share a feast of crisps with olives and melanzane dip.
‘Could you imagine doing this back in England?’ Tommaso asked in an undertone, as he opened a second bottle of bubbly.
I had done this dozens of times in the office in London. I couldn’t count how many times we’d celebrated a completed project or a new client with champagne – expensive French champagne rather than prosecco, admittedly. But Tommaso was right. A bunch of people in grey suits assembled in the glassed-in breakroom, all in a hurry to be somewhere else, had nothing on this moment.
I looked around the terrace, at my tattooed, bald-headed handyman, at Beatrice laughing at a joke from one of his equally heavily tattooed friends, and I laughed.
‘Admit it,’ Tommaso said, his voice soft. ‘You’re going to miss this.’
What did he want me to say? That I wanted to stay? There was nothing for me here. No future, not even a home once Florian and Yusuf arrived to take possession of the castello. Everything I had was waiting for me in London – my house, my job, my office, my friends, people who wanted me, unlike Tommaso who’d made it clear from day one he wished I’d never come.
But I just shrugged and smiled. ‘There’s a lot I’m going to miss.’
I would miss the sunshine, my new friends, the garden, the fabulous food … even the castello, though I certainly wasn’t going to miss the cobwebs, the slow-filling bath, or the back-aching labour.
‘C’è nessuno?’ a woman’s voice called suddenly through the house. Anyone home?
I started. I’d been so absorbed in my thoughts I hadn’t even noticed a car approach up the drive. Tommaso and I exchanged a look, then we both rose and headed for the front door.
The woman hovering in the open doorway was dressed like a tourist, in jeans, a peach-pink T-shirt, and sneakers. But the car parked outside the front doors was no casual tourist vehicle. It was a sporty midnight-blue BMW.
‘I am Fiorella,’ she said, looking between us. ‘Luca said you would be expecting me?’
I hurried forward. ‘Oh, of course! You’re the fresco restoration expert. Please come in.’
With a small, serious smile and a nod, she turned away. ‘I must fetch my tools from the car.’
Tommaso picked his jaw up off the floor. ‘Let me help you.’
The young woman turned another smile on him. ‘Grazie.’
She was the kind of woman I’d have loved to hate on sight. She had that innate Italian chicness, a trim figure with perfect curves, heart-shaped face, and a tumble of stylishly ombred curls, honey-blonde above and rose gold below. But she was younger than I’d expected, with big doe eyes and a tentative smile that screamed ‘girl next door’. So when Tommaso hurried after her to her car, like a kid after candy, all I could do was roll my eyes.
He removed Fiorella’s toolbox and bag from the back seat of her car and chatted to her as he carried them into the house, winning another shy smile.
I led the way to the dining room, where Fiorella unpacked a selection of tools onto a cloth on the dining table, before turning to inspect the mural. The fresco filled half the wall, from the panelled wainscoting up to the ceiling. The scene was an idyllic landscape, showing an eighteenth-century view of Castel Sant’Angelo bathed in sunlight. On all sides, the castello was surrounded by vineyard, where workers industriously harvested the grapes from the last of the summer vines.
‘Magnificent!’ Fiorella said. ‘A very festive painting.’
To my eyes it seemed sad, so faded in places that the images were hard to make out, but maybe Fiorella’s training enabled her to see potential I couldn’t.
She inspected the painting through a specialised magnifying glass, bending and stretching for a better view. Tommaso’s gaze was glued to her denim-clad butt. My jaw clenched. What was it with him and younger women?
‘How old are you?’ I couldn’t help asking.
Fiorella smiled, amused. ‘I get that a lot. I’m older than I look, and I know what I’m doing.’ And studying the painting, she did look more confident and assured, losing a little of that youthful, shy look.
Having noticed our absence, the rest of the party now clustered into the dining room, and I made the round of introductions. Fiorella’s appeal clearly wasn’t limited to Tommaso. The other men’s gazes took on the same slightly dazzled look.
Maybe it was the ‘damsel in distress’ thing she had going for her?
Who was I kidding? She was simply gorgeous.
‘We were having a small celebration on the terrace,’ Tommaso said. ‘Would you care to join us?’
‘No, thank you.’ Without even taking her eyes off the painting, Fiorella shook her head. The movement set her curls dancing.
Okay, now I really wanted to be jealous of her. If I let my hair loose, it hung straight and flat. Back in my vainer years, I’d spent hours with a curling brush to get that kind of bounce. Usually it had lasted only until I left the building, and the fine mizzling London rain turned it all flat again.
‘Could I offer you a glass of prosecco then?’ Tommaso offered.
Fiorella shook her head again. ‘No, thanks. Just a glass of water.’
Way more eager to please than I’d ever seen him, Tommaso dashed off to the kitchen. Beatrice rolled her eyes, where only I could see, and we shared a bemused smile.
Ettore and his friends, realising our impromptu party was at an end, said farewell, and soon after I heard their Vespas head out down the drive. Fiorella, meanwhile, swept the frescoed wall with an infrared tool, examining the layers of paint, so absorbed in the painting that she seemed to have forgotten she had an audience. Beatrice and I watched in respectful silence until Tommaso returned with a pitcher of water and a glass.
She turned to him. ‘There isn’t much structural damage, thankfully. There is no damp or mould, and no cracking or physical degradation. I think a little surface re-touching is all that is required to repair the discolouration of the pigments. Are there any other frescoes?’
My chest tightened, and it took me a moment to recognise the sensation. It was stress, that same anxiety I’d felt on a daily basis until I arrived here in Tuscany. It took me another moment before I understood why – Fiorella had turned to Tommaso first, in the same way countless clients had turned to the man in the room, assuming he was the boss.
I rolled out my shoulders and forced a smile. ‘Only this one, as far as we know.’
She nodded, as if apologizing for her assumption, and turned back to her scrutiny of the wall. ‘And this room has always been a dining room?’
‘As far back as I can remember. Is that important?’
‘Not really, but it is an unusual positioning. Most villas have frescoes on display in the drawing rooms, where they will be seen and admired by the greatest number of guests. This one’s position, in a room where only the inhabitants and their dinner guests would see it, suggests it was intended more as a good luck charm, to bring in a prosperous harvest, thereby ensuring that food remains on the table, rather than as a display of wealth. Is this a working vineyard?’
I nodded.
‘Yes, that would make sense then.’ Fiorella’s gaze stroked lovingly over the wall. There was both admiration and tenderness in that look. This was clearly a woman who loved her job.
Did I have that same look when I presented my proposals to a client? Or when I sat at my desk late at night, comparing figures and doing calculations? I suspected not. But when I baked…? Yes, that was certainly how baking made me feel – absorbed, as if the rest of the world receded, and my focus narrowed to this one simple act of creation.
After another few moments of rapt inspection, Fiorella stepped back from the wall, her gaze sweeping first over Tommaso, with the same appreciation she’d viewed the painting with, as if properly seeing him for the first time, before settling on me and Beatrice. ‘I can do the work for you this weekend, but first you need to decide if this is something you really want done.’<
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‘Why wouldn’t I?’ Surely restoring the artwork was a no-brainer?
She looked very serious. ‘The trick to retouching a painting is to make it as indiscernible as possible, but even the subtlest alteration detracts from the material authenticity of the artwork. However, since this is a very personalised art piece, and integral to the building, its integrity lies more in its appeal to the inhabitants than it does on its merits as a work of art. So I think we need have no qualms about undertaking a restoration.’
‘Glad to hear it,’ I muttered drily, more to myself than to anyone else. At a confused quirk of Fiorella’s eyebrow, I amended: ‘I wouldn’t want to get in trouble with any authorities for messing with a piece of art.’
She smiled, as if I’d given the right answer. ‘I would like to begin now. I need quiet and space to work. Luca said you would have a room for me to stay in?’
‘I’ll take your bags up to one of the guest bedrooms,’ Tommaso said.
With another shy smile, Fiorella turned away to tie back her hair, don a white coat and latex gloves, and without another word to us, she set to work.
Leaving her to it, Beatrice and I retreated to the safety of the kitchen. Without thinking, I set the kettle on the stove to boil.
Beatrice gazed thoughtfully in the direction of the dining room, as if she could see through the walls. ‘Now that is surprising.’
‘What is?’ I busied myself with the teapot and cups, though I really had no appetite for tea. Something stronger, though…
Beatrice smiled. ‘It’s high time Tommaso showed an interest in a woman.’
I banged the teapot down on the tray a little harder than necessary. ‘What is it with men being attracted to soft and helpless women anyway?’ Or maybe just one man?
Beatrice laughed. ‘It’s caveman instincts – that urge to protect.’
‘Then I don’t stand a chance.’ Because heaven only knew I was never going to be soft, helpless and doe-eyed – and I didn’t want to be.
I felt an inexplicable need for sugar. I cut two slices from the braided peach strudel I had in the pantry. ‘I thought Tommaso usually went for a different type of woman?’