Summer At Villa Rosa Collection. Kate Hardy
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accounted for the years. But the months and days?
They were so close in the little car. His arm brushed against her when he changed gear and above the smell of hot metal, oil, there was a combination of warm cotton, the scent of Cleve’s skin, the shampoo he always used, familiar as her own.
She stole a glance at him but his face was unreadable, his jaw set as they pulled up in front of the garage.
‘Will you be all right on your own for a while?’ he asked. ‘I could do with a run.’
‘Good plan. I might take a swim.’ He looked as if he was going to say something. ‘I’ll be careful,’ she assured him, before he started. ‘Swimming is great exercise for pregnant women,’ she said. ‘No stress—’
‘It’s not that. I was just wondering if you’d brought a costume with you. Just in case Matt decides to drop by with your handbag.’
‘I didn’t think you’d noticed.’
‘You went back for it but for some reason changed your mind.’
She pulled a face. ‘His mother was giving him a bit of an earwigging for talking too much so I chose discretion and made a strategic retreat. I’m pretty sure that he’ll wait for one of us to go and pick it up.’
‘I’ll collect it later,’ he said, taking the bag containing his suit and the rest of the clothes he’d bought and disappearing upstairs.
Miranda went through to Sofia’s room and opened up the wardrobe.
It had a faintly musty smell but the clothes had been placed in individual garment bags and had escaped the depredations of moths and mice.
She unzipped a couple but, although all designer with luminous names, they were day clothes, not the jewel-coloured gowns she and her sisters had had such fun dressing up in.
Not that she was looking for a jewel. She’d remembered a pretty silk kimono-style dress, cream with small green and yellow motifs, that hadn’t been nearly exotic enough for her teenage self. It was simple, dressy enough for a low-key wedding and would look stylish in a photograph.
She went upstairs, into the rooms she hadn’t begun to touch, hoping that the trunks hadn’t been put up in the attic.
She found two stored in a box room but caught sight of the sea glittering below, pale aqua, deepening to turquoise and then, in the gap between the cliffs, a glimpse of deep inky blue.
The afternoon was passing and while the trunk would keep, her swim would not.
She looked at the ring so recently placed on her finger by Cleve, blushing a little at the way she’d taken advantage of the moment and kissed him. Smiling a lot at the way he’d seized the moment and run with it. The fact that it appeared to have left him as shaken as she had been.
Just like the first time. Six years, eight months and seven days ago.
She shook her head, slipped off the ring, then realised that the box was in her handbag. There were china trinket dishes on the dressing table but, unwilling to leave it lying there with the house open, she opened the hinged box beneath the dressing table mirror. It was empty but for a large key.
She picked it up, turned it over, looked around, wondering what it would open. Nothing in this room.
It couldn’t be important or it would have been with the other keys and she dropped it back into the box, carefully placed her ring beside it and then changed into her costume.
She paused for a moment by a full-length mirror, smoothing her hand over her still-flat belly. Holding it there for a moment. Then she grabbed a towel and headed down to the beach.
* * *
Cleve took an overgrown path that led up the hill. He hadn’t run for a couple of days and he pushed himself hard, pausing at the top to look down on the castle and the city of San Rocco with its many spires, the houses painted in faded blues, pink, greens giving it a fairy-tale quality.
But this was no fairy tale. Miranda might have changed her mind about marrying him and she’d sworn her statement without a hitch, but he’d had to push her to accept his ring. He could have cheerfully throttled the manager for interrupting them when he was about to claim a kiss. But then, unexpectedly, sweetly, she’d kissed him and it had felt like a promise.
He could still feel the softness of her lips, her melting response as, weak with longing, lost to where they were, he’d taken it up a notch. It had been as if he were kissing Miranda for the very first time, with all the possibilities stretching out before them. With none of the mistakes or baggage that clung to him.
If they were to have that he would have to tell her everything. She had the right to know the truth, the right to change her mind. He owed her that.
Only then could it be a brand-new beginning.
* * *
Andie heard Cleve cross the beach, the splash as he plunged into the sea. She turned, raised her dark glasses to watch him carving a path through the water as he headed for the gap that led out into the sea. Held her breath.
They’d always been warned not to go beyond the entrance to the hidden cove because of the fierce currents and she stood up, about to call and warn him. But he’d stopped and was treading water and as he turned to head back she ducked down, not wanting him to see her fussing.
When he joined her in the hot pool a few minutes later she was lying back, letting the heat seep into her bones.
He was wearing swim shorts, his body beaded with sea water, the dark hair on his chest and legs clinging to his skin and she was glad she was wearing her sunglasses so that her eyes weren’t giving her away.
‘Good run?’ she asked.
‘Yes. I went up the hill. You get a good view of San Rocco and the castle from up there. I didn’t realise it was so close.’
‘The road winds around the island, but you can walk to San Rocco in about an hour from here. Less to the castle.’
‘A well-trodden path, no doubt.’
She smiled. ‘Once upon a time there was a king who loved a beautiful lady...’
‘A married king,’ he pointed out, lowering himself into the pool, taking the same ‘seat’ he’d used when he’d caught her skinny dipping.
‘It’s a somewhat tarnished fairy tale,’ she agreed.
‘It’s not any kind of a fairy tale.’
‘No.’
Sofia had been glamorous, witty, full of life at the parties she’d thrown but, looking back with the eyes of an adult, Andie didn’t think she’d been entirely happy. And there had been another woman, one who’d probably had little choice in who she married, waiting at the castle for her husband to return. Two lonely women...
‘Marriage is not a fairy tale,’ she said. ‘It’s something that takes effort, commitment, heart enough to see you through the rough patches.’ She was going to need all of that, but she had a great example. ‘My parents had a tough start.’ They’d had to give up their dreams and buckle down to save Marlowe Aviation when her grandfather had died. ‘They are the real deal.’
‘How’s your father doing?’ he asked.
‘Good. They’re having a great time in India. I’ll miss the weekly video chat with them tomorrow.’
‘Where are they?’
‘There is no itinerary. They’ve left schedules, diaries, appointments behind and they’re pleasing themselves.’
He nodded, said nothing for a while but it wasn’t the quiet comfortable silence that they’d shared over lunch the day before. He was looking in the depths of the pool where the hot spring bubbled up and he should be relaxed after his run, his swim, but there was a tension