How different everything was. Two short weeks ago she had been in cold, windy London. Views like this were almost impossible to imagine. Not that everything had changed overnight. Nowhere near. But even Cesca had to admit that there was some truth to the old adage that a change was as good as a rest, and this break in the sun was giving her a perspective she’d sorely lacked for so long.
She put her feet up on the footstool, crossing her slender legs in front of her. The strange thing about visiting somewhere new was the way you formed attachments so much faster than you would in everyday life. She’d been living with the Martinellis for two weeks, and she already knew them better than she’d ever known her flatmate Susie, in spite of their five months together. Maybe that’s why holiday romances felt more potent than their back-at-home counterparts. The sun seemed to distil everything until its true meaning rose to the surface.
She’d managed to do some writing, too. Nothing to call home about, and certainly nothing that resembled more than a few jotted sentences, but they were words and they were down on paper, and the sense of accomplishment it had given Cesca was beyond description.
Baby steps. That’s what they were. But she was moving forward all the same, no matter how wobbly her legs felt. It was more than she’d managed in the past, and Cesca was grateful for that.
The sun finally disappeared behind the Grigna mountains, the sky turning a deeper, darker blue. The solar lights strung in the bushes and trees started to blink on, their tiny bulbs resembling fireflies resting within the greenery. Cesca lit a candle, nestling into the sofa as she picked up her notepad, letting the light of the flame illuminate the paper in front of her. That’s where she sat and made notes until her eyes began to droop.
Perhaps she would have fallen asleep there, letting the cooling air caress her skin, if things had turned out to be different. But instead, just as a yawn stole control of her jaw muscles, a loud blast of a horn from the main gate made her sit straight up in her chair.
What in the holy hell was that?
In spite of the evening warmth, goose pimples broke out on her skin. The darkness, so pretty when she was overlooking the lake, became more ominous as she
walked around the back of the villa, her footsteps tentative when she approached the driveway. The moonlight had stolen all colour from the landscape, turning the trees black and the driveway a curious shade of purple grey. The gravel crunched beneath the rubber soles of her flip-flops, tiny pebbles spilling over and getting beneath her toes. She wriggled them wildly until the discomfort disappeared.
A pair of headlamps suddenly blinded Cesca as she froze halfway up the path. For the first time, the seclusion of Villa Palladino seemed more of a curse than a blessing. She was achingly aware of her isolation here. No telephone, no Internet, no connectivity at all. It made her a walking target.
‘Gabi?’ a voice called from beyond the gates. ‘Is that you? I’ve been buzzing for hours, can you let me in?’
‘I’m not Gabi,’ Cesca shouted, shaking her head at the obvious. ‘And I don’t know how to override the gate. It has an automatic lock on it at night. It should be usable by morning.’
She was less than twenty yards from the gate. Beyond the shining headlamps she could make out the vague form of a car, and was that a man standing beside it? The voice was certainly masculine.
‘Well I can’t wait out here until morning. For a start I’m starving. And I’ve been travelling for God knows how many hours, I just want to go to bed. Come on, just open it, OK?’
He wanted to stay here? Cesca’s eyebrows nearly shot off her head. She had half a mind to turn around and walk back down to the villa.
‘Well you can’t just come in here without the owners’ permission,’ she shouted. ‘And they haven’t let me know anybody is coming.’
‘Where the hell are Gabi and Sandro? They can let me in.’
Cesca hesitated, unwilling to reveal she was here on her own. Why wouldn’t he take no for an answer? This man had no right to turn up in the middle of the night and demand to be let into a private home. She could feel the anger rising, replacing the anxiety he’d first caused. She wasn’t about to take any shit off this guy, whoever he was.
‘They’re not here right now, so they can’t let you in.’ There was the merest hint of a gloat in her voice. Not that she was proud of it.
His sigh was audible. ‘Then you’ll need to let me in, sweetheart. There’s an override switch behind the post. You just have to key in the code, whatever the hell it is right now, and it should let you open the gate.’
Cesca stepped back, surprised. ‘How do you know that?’
‘Because I live here.’
The wind was well and truly knocked out of her sails. She could feel the embarrassment suffuse her. ‘Mr Carlton?’ No wonder he sounded like a mixture of English and American. The New York born producer had spent enough time in London to talk like a native.
‘Bingo. Now can you please let me in before I die of thirst out here?’ His voice softened, as if he was smiling.
‘Of course!’ Cesca began to run towards the gate, mortification fuelling her speed. What on earth must he think of her? She couldn’t believe she’d left him standing outside for so long, waiting for her to let him into his own house. Though she’d never met Foster Carlton, she was well aware of his reputation in theatre circles. His short temper was legendary: he must think Cesca was a complete idiot.
She walked around the gatepost to the control box. Sandro had explained that it was there in case of emergency. Her fingers shook as she tried to tap in the code. ‘I’m just opening it now. I’m so sorry about the mix-up, Mr Carlton.’
In her distress, she managed to key the wrong code in, a shrill beep from the control box informing her of her error. Taking a deep breath to calm down her nerves, she pressed the numbers again, feeling the rubber giving way beneath her pressure. Within moments the mechanism was whirring, making the metal gates creak as they slowly opened up. Cesca looked over, seeing the form of the man just behind the iron, and as a gap slowly emerged he stepped forward, his feet sinking into the gravelled drive.
‘Mr Carlton . . . ’ Her words trailed off as he stepped into the halo of light, spilling from the headlamps. The man she’d expected – the portly, middle-aged man that had graced the pages of Variety and other entertainment magazines – was nowhere to be seen. Instead there was a man in his mid-twenties, his sculpted jaw and dark brown hair as familiar to her as a family member. A regular in her dreams, or rather her nightmares, for the past six years. And the bastard looked even better than she remembered.
‘Sam?’ Cesca felt the words leap from her tongue. She felt like spitting to get rid of their taste. ‘What are you doing here?’
He smiled at her, his face a mask of confused interest. ‘What am I doing here? This is my house. The more important question is who are you?’