Zia closed her eyes. Waiting. When the kiss didn’t come she opened her eyes again. ‘We only spoke on the phone,’ she explained. Then she brought his head closer and gave herself the sublime pleasure of kissing someone who knew exactly how to make it good. As his soft, warm lips moved over hers she realised she was beginning to trust Piero and his feelings for her. He was a good man, a true friend to Lucia and Durante, a good son even though his dad’s girlfriend was making his life a misery.

And, as his hand slipped beneath her T-shirt, hot, gentle, questing, trickling like silk over her skin, he lit her up like the Italian sun.

Chapter Twenty

That Friday evening began a week of what Zia came to think of as the new normal. The restaurant where Piero took her was in a cellar, filled with gorgeous smells and antique glass. The manager, who knew Piero well, drank a glass of wine with them, asking Zia about England and Piero about the vineyard.

On Saturday, Zia serviced Villino Il Pino on her own ready for the next guests, thinking about the family wedding Fiorella had mentioned. Would Gerardo be there? If the bride was Roberto’s niece’s daughter then she thought that made her Gerardo’s cousin once removed. It wasn’t a close relationship but probably enough in a small community. And he’d struck her as the type to be attracted to free booze. A wedding in Italy wasn’t something she’d experienced but, in Sorrento, she’d once watched a young bride and her attendants walk through the square to church and everyone had clapped the procession of beautiful young womanhood. She wondered if that would be happening down in Montelibertà today.

Then the picture faded from her mind because the new British couple arrived to occupy Villino Il Pino and asked a hundred questions about things Zia would have thought quite straightforward.

On Sunday, Piero took her with him to Emiliano’s home on the other side of Montelibertà. The house had a pool and the terrace was edged with tubs of white geraniums. Passionflowers climbed over a pergola and bees hovered lazily over the waxy blooms with filaments as purple as emperors’ robes. Emiliano’s wife, Jemma, was sunny and easy-going and the children, Cristian and Camilla, swarmed over Zio Piero like puppies. In minutes, Piero had stripped off to swimming shorts and was throwing the shrieking kids into the pool and dive-bombing in after them.

Zia laughed as he let Cristian and Camilla duck him and clamber on his shoulders, wet hair black and plastered to his head. Emiliano joined in at an equally boisterous volume and Jemma settled down with Zia to spectate while the delicious scent of barbecued meat and vegetables wafted from the nearby grill. ‘Men are always boys at heart,’ Jemma said indulgently. She shot Zia a speculative look. ‘Do you have children?’