He was looking at the three things Binotto’s wanted; what the whole horrible battle was about. Tenuta Domenicali. The view. And access. How he wished they didn’t want the latter two.

He dropped his head and turned away.

A couple of hundred years ago some ancestor had seen this plateau as a perfect site for a beautiful stone house – Piero’s home, Il Rifugio. At a respectful distance had been the vineyard manager’s accommodation and workers’ cottages, now known as Bella Vista and owned by Lucia and Durante. The boundary between Il Rifugio and Bella Vista was marked by a row of cypresses like artists’ brushes upended in the landscape. A path had been trodden through the trees and scrub that provided dappled shade and he turned and made his way along it now, past the gazebo he’d built so lovingly.

On the other side of the cypresses Lucia and Durante had coaxed the land into terraces of lavender and rosemary. A mighty wisteria swirled along one side of the house and a small olive grove baked in the afternoon sun. The old workers’ accommodation had been transformed by Durante into holiday cottages. Villino Il Pino and Villino La Quercia had two bedrooms and Villino Il Tasso one. With no pool and being a couple of miles out of town, their guests were mainly adults seeking a quiet haven.

As said guests were generally directed to park their vehicles the other side of the Bella Vista gazebo – Piero had made that, too – it gave him pause to see a dusty red car parked directly outside the house. Lucia’s sister-in-law Fiorella who helped with the cleaning drove a red car, but Fiorella would never have left it with its nose inserted into Lucia’s lovely lavender hedge.

A woman stood beside the car. Her dark hair was captured in an elegant updo and a smart red and black dress swirled down to her knees. His mind instantly leaped to the possibility she was from the Binotto empire. Had it been a two-pronged attack? While Gubbiotti had been pressuring the Domenicalis this woman had come to pester Lucia and Durante? She turned and regarded him from behind black sunglasses.

That he felt an immediate tug of attraction as he noted the curves above and below a neat waist only abraded his ruffled temper. He called out in Italian, ‘If you’re from the Binotto Group I’m going to be upset. And can’t you park without crushing Signora Costa’s garden?’ He gestured at the lavender which was responding to its maltreatment by issuing its delicious spicy scent.

A blonde woman jumped from the other side of the car, more casually dressed in shorts cut high enough to grab second looks from any heterosexual man. She glanced at the dark woman and demanded, ‘What’s up?’