Without looking back at him she pulled away, scuffing into her flip flops as he stood frozen and astounded, and spinning on her heel and heading off towards Bella Vista. In the last light, she almost seemed to skim the tips of the grass in her flight.

Stung and confused, Piero cast about in the twilight, trying to see what had made her bolt like a nervous horse.

And then at the corner of the house he caught sight of a figure. Nicoletta. She was watching Zia leave, the corners of her lips curving with satisfaction. As if feeling the weight of his regard she switched her attention back to him. In a flash, her face crumpled and she began wiping her eyes on the backs of her hands, the very image of a wronged, tearful woman. ‘Piero?’ she called in a long-suffering voice.

‘Nicoletta!’ he groaned. He took in her midnight mane of hair tumbling loose, her top unbuttoned to reveal the swell of her breasts, the short skirt. Dressed to lure.

He thought of how he’d made the wrong decision in response to her tears before out of consideration for their joint past, staying to renew earlier, kindly explanations that they had no future together. But he’d made the right decision a year ago when he’d refused to bow to her ultimatum and he was going to make the right decision now. He broke into a jog. After Zia.

Adrenalin gave Zia’s feet wings through the dry grass and occasional thistles. She caught Piero’s groan of, ‘Nicoletta!’ as the cypress trees seemed to rush towards her.

She was angry. Furious … with herself, because she’d fallen into that kiss as if it were a vortex. Her disappointment at Nicoletta’s appearance only compounded her ire at her own gullibility.

It was time to stop acting on her attraction to Piero.

Having not heard any rustle of footsteps behind her over the noise of her own flight through the scrub, she gasped as a warm hand settled on her arm when she’d almost reached the gap in the trees that felt like her portal to safety. He didn’t halt her or spin her around but simply slid his hand down until their fingers linked and he fell in beside her. In the neater environs of Bella Vista the encroaching darkness was countered by lanterns slowly coming to life. He turned right, drawing her with him, and made for the gazebo that faced the twinkling lights in the valley below.

She could have snatched her hand back and stalked off to her apartment. Instead, she found herself seated, facing him across the table where she and Ursula had often eaten. He grasped both her hands, expression grave and sombre. ‘Don’t,’ he urged her. ‘Don’t quit at the first bump in the road. Nicoletta’s in the past. I didn’t invite her to Il Rifugio.’