It had taken a stay in hospital to convince her that she couldn’t go on looking after her mother alone, with only a home help during the day to support her. So with some persuasion by a friendly doctor her two younger sisters had agreed to share the responsibility. But they had husbands and young families, and Grace guessed their assistance would only be temporary, so she intended to make the most of this holiday to build up her strength.
The alternative was to put her mother into a home, and she didn’t want that. Grace loved her mother dearly and it wasn’t her fault that she’d developed a crippling form of osteoarthritis only a couple of years after Grace had got her doctorate and started work at the museum. She’d managed to look after herself to begin with, but gradually, over the years, her condition had deteriorated. Now she could only get about in a wheelchair, and there’d been no way Grace could afford to provide professional care on her salary.
So, she had gone back to live at home. Grace had already begun to believe that she’d never get married anyway, so it was no great hardship. She was the perennial spinster, she thought drily, eschewing the more popular description of a bachelor girl. Euphemisms were all very well, but the fact was she’d given up believing she was ever going to meet a man who was not intimidated by either her appearance or her intellect. At a little under six feet in height, and with the kind of Junoesque figure most women would die for, Grace had always considered herself an oddity. She saw nothing attractive about her full breasts and generously curved hips and she kept her hair long and severely braided to quell the uncontrollable urge it had to tumble in a riotous tangle of silvery blonde curls about her heart-shaped face.
Of course, she hadn’t always been so cynical. When she was at college, and boys of her own age were falling over themselves to go out with her, she’d imagined that one day she’d fall in love and get married and live happily ever after. She’d been in no hurry to give up her single state, but the prospect had always been there, like a friendly beacon on the horizon.
It hadn’t happened.
She’d eventually realised that most of the men she dated wanted only one thing and that was to get her into bed. They didn’t seem either willing or capable of looking beyond the ‘dumb blonde’ image she presented to the world to the slightly shy and intelligent woman behind the sexy façade. The men who might have appealed to her were put off by her appearance. In their own way, they had judged her, too, and by the time she’d realised that the girls who found lasting relationships didn’t look like her she’d lost both her innocence and her trust.
She’d still dated from time to time, of course, but she’d changed, and she’d soon grown tired of defending her celibate state to men who still seemed to think that with her looks she must be desperate for sex. The truth was, her experiences of sex had not been particularly enjoyable, and she saw no sense in stressing herself over something she didn’t even like.
These days she was much more philosophical, she reflected comfortably, glancing down as the breeze that blew off the distant water caused the short hem of her nightshirt to flutter about her shapely thighs. She was thirty-four, with no prospect of a steady relationship in sight, and she’d finally come to the conclusion that she preferred it that way.
She sighed contentedly, feeling grateful that Julia had come to the rescue with the offer of this chance to share her apartment for two weeks. Booking a holiday at the height of the tourist season could have proved difficult, and she preferred the anonymity of private accommodation to the obvious disadvantages of a hotel. All she’d wanted was somewhere warm and sunny, with nothing to do but laze the days away.
‘I won’t be around much, I’m afraid,’ Julia had said, when Grace had phoned her from the hospital to tell her what was going on. “This is the busiest time of the year for me, but you’re welcome to stay as long as you like. Portofalco is a pretty place, and if you get bored you can always hire a car and go exploring.’
Grace had assured her that it sounded like heaven and consequently here she was, the morning after her arrival, standing on Julia’s balcony just drinking in the view. And it was quite a view, she conceded, with the Bay of Portofalco below her, and the curve of the mainland sweeping round to Viareggio and beyond.
She took a deep breath, her nose wrinkling at the mingled perfumes of the flowers that rose from the walled garden beneath the balcony. It wasn’t much of a garden, really, and it had been sadly neglected, but the tangled scents of jasmine and verbena, and the roses that clung tenaciously to the crumbling walls, were a heady delight. Somehow, even the overgrown garden had an enchanted air about it, hinting of assignations beside the lichen-studded fountain whose basin was crumbling, too.
Turning away from the view, Grace decided it was time she took a shower and got dressed. When she’d arrived the night before, she’d been too tired to do anything more than phone her mother to assure her she’d arrived safely, and strip off her clothes and tumble into bed. But it was eight o’clock in the morning now and her unpacking beckoned. Then breakfast, she thought with some anticipation, remembering that Julia had told her there was a bakery just down the street. The prospect of warm rolls and flaky pastries was appealing, and she strode across the rather overfurnished salotto into the bathroom beyond.
Fifteen minutes later, she felt considerably more energetic, and although she’d decided to put off her unpacking until later she put on a pair of cream silk shorts and a matching tank top to make her feel more like a holidaymaker. A glance in the bathroom mirror assured her that her mouth required little in the way of cosmetics, and she merely added a trace of blusher to give colour to her pale cheeks.
Her face was only too familiar to her and therefore nothing out of the ordinary, so that when she scraped back her hair into its usual braid and several rebellious loose ends curled about her temples she saw only the untidiness of it. But the old caretaker who looked after the building, and who had given her the key Julia had left for her the night before, greeted her with genuine pleasure, his rheumy old eyes glinting appreciatively as he watched her saunter off down the cobbled street.
The Villa Modena—Grace privately thought its title was rather flattering—stood halfway down a narrow street of similar dwellings. The street, the Via Cortese, wound up from the harbour, and she could see snatches of blue, blue water between vine-hung walls and over colour-washed roofs. Every now and then, an opening offered a tantalising view of the bay, with the masts of yachts moored at the jetty moving gently on the incoming tide.
She smelled the bakery before she reached it, the delicious aroma of newly baked bread making her mouth water. Which was unusual for her considering she hadn’t had much of an appetite at all since her illness, and she looked forward to enjoying a warm roll with the pot of coffee she’d left on the hotplate at the apartment.
The baker was red-cheeked and friendly, dismissing Grace’s attempts to make herself understood with a cheerful shake of his head. ‘Va bene, signorina,’ he assured her firmly. ‘I have the English, no?’ He smiled and gestured to the impressive array of bread available. ‘You tell me what you like.’
‘Grazie.’ Grace gave him an apologetic smile. ‘I’m not very good at learning languages, I’m afraid. But I’m staying for two weeks, so perhaps my Italian will improve.’
‘Prego!’ The man laughed. ‘We Itatianos will always forgive a beautiful woman, sì?’
Grace’s lips thinned a little at the familiar compliment, but she accepted his flattery good-humouredly. ‘You’re very kind,’ she said, pointing to a batch of crusty rolls. ‘I’ll have three of those, please, and two pastries. Grazie!’
She was pocketing her change before taking the bag of sweet-smelling pastries from his hand when, to her relief,
