From Rome with Love: Escape the winter blues with the perfect feel-good romance!

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HarperCollinsPublishers

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First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2017

Copyright © Jules Wake 2017

Cover design by Holly Macdonald, HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

Cover images © Shutterstock.com

Jules Wake asserts the moral right

to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is

available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are

the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to

actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is

entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International

and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

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No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted,

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hereinafter invented, without the express

written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © January 2017 ISBN: 9780008221942

Version 2017-01-04

For Tina Mundy,

who understands the important things in life.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Also by Jules Wake

About the Author

About HarperImpulse

About the Publisher

‘Nan, what are you doing?’

Lisa stepped over a pile of tablecloths and linens covering the living-room floor of her Nan’s tiny lounge. She lived a couple of streets away and Lisa popped around most days after work for a cup of tea – not that Nan ever seemed particularly grateful, although she was quick to complain if Lisa missed a day.

‘What do you think I’m doing? Inviting the Queen to tea?’ She bustled by, a miniature dynamo rustling a large black dustbin bag in her hand. At four-foot nothing, with a face concertinaed by time, she looked as if she’d shrunk, leaving her skin two sizes too big. ‘I’m having a sort-out.’

‘Again.’ Lisa shook her head in dismay, looking at the piles of mismatched napkins, lace doilies and faded pillowcases, most of which she’d never seen before.

‘When am I ever going to use this lot? Load of old rubbish, cluttering up the place, attracting a shedload of moths. There’s a hole in my cardigan.’ Nan didn’t say the words but Lisa knew the thinking behind the latest clear-out. ‘I’m not getting any younger.’

‘Nan, there’s years left in you.’ Her grandmother was an indomitable force of nature. Pushing eighty-five and as sharp as they came. She had all her marbles, and then some.

‘That’s as maybe, but I don’t need all this tat.’ Her mouth wrinkled, prune-like, in derision. ‘It’ll save you the job when I’m dead and gone.’

‘I hate it when you say things like that.’

‘Don’t be daft. Now give us a hand with that box over there.’

‘You never brought that down from the loft on your own?’ asked Lisa incredulously.

‘Course I did. Who else? You think Superman popped by?’ Her nan shook her head in amused disgust.

‘Where do you want it?’

‘I don’t want it. I’m chucking it out. There’s a load of your granddad’s books in there. No good to anyone. But if you want them, help yourself.’

Lisa picked up the ancient cardboard box, resting her chin on the top to keep the uppermost layer of books from slithering precariously on to the floor as she moved it towards the dining table. As she was about to put it down, the bottom gave way and a flood of hard-backed books cascaded to the floor, brittle paper flapping as some of the books collapsed, the pages fluttering out like pigeons released and the hard corners knocking her shins as they landed.

‘Now look what you’ve done,’ Nan tsked, sucking on her teeth.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll pick everything up. Don’t want you putting your back out, do we?’

‘There’s nowt wrong with my back, Missy,’ retorted Nan, as usual refusing to admit to any weakness or acknowledge her creaking joints. ‘But I’ll put the kettle on while you tidy up.’ She shuffled off to the kitchen, leaving Lisa piling the books on the table. Most of them were ancient, the print so tiny and close together that they were difficult to read and the paper was yellowed and speckled with mildew. None of the titles or authors were any she’d heard of and in this state she couldn’t imagine anyone would want them.

As she bent to pick up the last two books, they see-sawed in her hand, separated by a bulky brown envelope that had been sandwiched between them. Although her mother had died when she was seven, Lisa recognised her distinctive rounded handwriting on the front of the envelope immediately. For Vittorio. The words had faded, the final o almost invisible, but they were underlined with two vivid dark slashes, which Lisa instinctively felt turned them into an instruction.

She frowned and toyed with the envelope, feeling the weight of it in her hand. The name ‘Vittorio’ conjured up confusing elusive memories that danced away whenever she tried to catch them.

Why did Nan have it? Vittorio, her father – not that he deserved that title – had upped and left a few years before her mother had died. Was this envelope a deathbed request? Lisa didn’t remember much about her mother, except that she’d been ill a lot. At the age of seven it was probably kinder not to explain the life-sucking treatments that left her mother wan and listless in a fight against cancer.

Sometimes she remembered, or maybe misremembered, things about her father. Being carried on his shoulders, pushed high on a swing, riding a carousel pony and him running alongside the merry-go-round, waving all the way, but they didn’t tally with what Nan had to say about him. She winced, her back teeth protesting at the sudden tensing of her jaw. What sort of father abandoned a daughter and didn’t come back for her even after her mother had died? Well, that was his loss. Thank goodness she’d had Nan.

As she turned the envelope in her hand, the moral question of what right she had to open it became moot as the old gum on the seal yawned open. Two photographs slipped out, or perhaps she’d helped them with an illicit shake. A handsome man in sunglasses laughed up at her, his arm around Lisa’s mother, who was heavily pregnant. Lisa studied the picture, a sudden lump blocking her throat. She had so few photos of her mother, because many of them had been lost when the bathroom in Nan’s house flooded and the ceiling collapsed in the lounge. Few of the photos had been salvageable and Nan being Nan had chucked them all out. She didn’t do sentiment.

And Lisa had no photos of her father at all. She turned it over, looking for confirmation. There it was, Me and Vittorio, Rome. She studied the picture, but it wasn’t a great shot and with the sunglasses and his face in shadow it was difficult to get much of a feel for what he looked like. Her lip curled. She knew what he was like. Irresponsible. Selfish. Heartless.

In the second picture, blurred and out of focus, the same man was pictured on his own outside a building, which she guessed was somewhere in Italy. She turned it over.

Vittorio & the family home. 32 Via del Mattonato, Rome, 001

‘What have you got there?’

Lisa started and almost shoved the envelope behind her back.

‘I found this and the envelope.’

Nan peered at the picture.

‘Is this …’ Lisa stopped. Nan had always refused to talk about him, but maybe this time she would.

She huffed. ‘Yes, that’s your father. Buggered off and left your poor mum holding the baby. Not that he was missed. We did just fine without him.’

Lisa stared curiously at the picture. It was the first time she’d seen her father. She didn’t want to be curious about him. She wanted to be indifferent, the way that he’d been indifferent to her, throughout those years when her six-year-old, eight-year-old, eleven-year-old self secretly believed that one day he would turn up and be her daddy.

‘Loved the ladies, that one. A roaming Roman.’ Nan sniffed.

‘He was from Rome?’

‘Of course he was from Rome. He was Roman.’

‘And he’s much taller than I thought he’d be.’ She deliberately kept her voice cool.

‘Not all jockeys are midgets. He was very skinny, like your mother. A pair of matchsticks they were.’

Lisa’s mother had worked at a local racing stables for the owner, Sir Robert Harding, managing all the admin in the office relating to entering the horses in races, charging the owners stable fees and paying the jockeys, which was where she’d met Vittorio Vettese, one of the stable’s full-time jockeys.

Going up to the stables had been a rare treat that Lisa had loved, although she wasn’t allowed to very often. Sir Robert’s wife had had an accident that had left her in a wheelchair and unable to have children. Lisa’s visits tended to be timed for when Lady Mary was away.

‘That’s where you get those knobbly knees from.’ Nan gave another one of her characteristic disdainful sniffs. She had them down to a fine art, conveying a mix of taciturn disapproval and regal superiority.

Lisa glanced down at her legs with a smile at Nan’s typical bluntness.

‘What’s this, then?’ Lisa pulled out a small jewellery box and Nan’s mouth pursed mollusc-tight, her lips pressed together in a vacuum-like seal.

The black box sat in her palm with all the allure of Pandora’s and gave Lisa a misty sense of premonition. Once opened, there was no going back.

Lisa looked at Nan, her thin, stooped frame radiating tension, but she didn’t say anything.

As her fingers brushed the lid of the box, out of the corner of her eye she saw her grandmother flinch, but it didn’t stop her from prising the lid upwards. It reached that point of no return and popped open.

‘Oh!’

The folds of skin on Nan’s throat quivered.

With the tip of her finger Lisa touched the ring of tiny pearls, interspersed with equally small rubies encircling a pea-sized diamond, well petit pois, perhaps, but still significant.

‘Wow, that’s pretty.’ And valuable, in her humble and not very informed opinion. At the very least, old. The rich navy velvet inside the box had faded around the edges and the elegant script on the inside satin of the lid spoke of a bygone age.

Nan sniffed again. ‘Hmm, belonged to his grandmother, apparently.’

‘What, my father’s?’

‘Yes. He gave it to your mother.’ She spat the words out with the unwillingness of a miser parting with pennies. ‘When they got engaged.’

‘So it was …’ Confused, Lisa tried to gauge her Nan’s expression, but the gimlet eyes were giving nothing away, ‘Mum’s engagement ring.’

‘I suppose.’

‘Oh.’ Betrayal and hurt splintered at the same time, making her vision a touch blurry. She had no idea what to say. Why hadn’t her grandmother given her the ring? Hadn’t her mother wanted her to have it?

‘Don’t look at me like that,’ snapped Nan. ‘She wanted it to go back to Vittorio. Said it was a family heirloom and should be returned. She didn’t feel right keeping it.’

Ah, so that explained Nan’s strange reticence. ‘Why didn’t you do it, then?’

Nan shrugged. ‘Never got round to it.’

Lisa couldn’t hide the spark of surprise or the quick instinctive censure she felt at Nan’s admission.

‘Don’t look at me like that, Missy. It wasn’t like I had time on my hands. I had you to look after, a job and a house to sort out. There was a lot to do. And then, well, life goes on and I forgot all about it.’

Guilt took the edge off Lisa’s disapproval. It can’t have been easy for Nan after the death of her only child suddenly having to become stand-in mother to a young, bereaved girl.

Lisa looked at the ring as her grandmother let out an exaggerated sigh. ‘And who knows where he is now? It’s not like he left a forwarding address.’

‘But we shouldn’t keep it, not … not if Mum wanted it to go back to him.’ Saying the words out loud caused a painful pang. Why hadn’t Mum wanted her to have the ring?

‘Well, you’re more than welcome to try and find the bugger if you want. I’ll leave it up to you, but you might as well have it. No good to me.

‘Now are you going to take me to Morrisons or not?’

Lisa snapped the ring box closed, putting it and the photos back into the envelope. She knew from the set of her Nan’s jaw that the discussion was over. She had no idea what she was going to do with them but she tucked the envelope into her handbag.

‘I haven’t got all day, you know.’

Lisa bit back a smile at the irony of the words. Nan filled her days crocheting squares for blankets for Africa, tending her dahlias, doing the Daily Mirror crossword with almost religious fervour, and gossiping and drinking endless cups of tea with her best friend next door, Laura. A trip to Morrisons inevitably took twice as long as it should because she, oblivious to other shoppers trying to reach around her to pick things off the shelves, insisted on checking every price, tapping away on her calculator, to ensure that she was getting her money’s worth.

‘You can have any of those tablecloths if you want them, otherwise they can go down to the charity shop. You can drop them off for me. And there’s a box of biscuits I found you can have. Left over from one of Sir Robert’s Christmas hampers. God knows why he keeps turning up.’

Lisa suspected that with a house-bound wife, fading rapidly in recent months, he was probably rather lonely. He was always quick to accept a cup of tea on his annual visit.

Nan waved the pack of shortbread biscuits at her. ‘I can’t tell him I give half the stuff away. Too fancy by half.’

Nan didn’t do fancy when it came to food. Meat and two veg had been her and Lisa’s staple diet for ever.

‘Your mother’s been gone these past twenty years. Sir Robert’s been carrying paternalism too far, in my mind.’

Lisa had always thought the hampers were rather generous, although she was equally relieved that Nan didn’t expect either of them to eat some of the weird and wonderful contents.

‘Thanks. Are they in date?’ Lisa peered at the tiny ‘best before’ information. ‘Those chocolates you gave me last time were two years past their date.’

‘Nonsense. That doesn’t mean anything.’

Lisa gave an inward shudder. She regularly sorted through Nan’s fridge on the quiet. Eating here was a bit like playing ‘past-the-sell-by-date Russian roulette’.

She waited as Nan pulled on her outsized mohair coat, which made her look like a baby woolly mammoth and was probably from about the same period in history.

‘Don’t forget to put them boxes in your car.’

By the time they left, heading towards the superstore on the edge of town, Lisa’s car looked like a jumble sale on wheels and the envelope in her bag weighed heavily on her mind.

Chapter 2

It had been a simple plan. Clean and effective. In and out. Finish work, drive to the pub, pick Siena up after her shift, not even have to go into the pub, then drive her home, girls’ night in, a few glasses of Prosecco and crash in the spare room.

Lisa kicked the flabby tyre of her loyal but flagging-a-bit-these-days Mini.

‘Ouch.’ Not so flabby after all.

Not wanting to abandon her car on one of the country lanes, it had limped the last quarter of the mile here. Now safe in the pub car park, she didn’t feel quite so helpless.

‘Need a hand?’ asked a languid voice from behind her.

Lisa closed her eyes and curled her fingers tight into her palms, registering the bite of her fingernails. He wasn’t supposed to be here at this time. On Tuesdays, he didn’t manage the pub until 7.30. She’d planned it so that she wouldn’t have to see him.

Quite how she resisted the overwhelming urge to gnash her teeth or growl out loud, she didn’t know. Ninety-nine point nine, nine per cent of her would have loved to tell him to get stuffed, but unfortunately there was a stupid niggly, and practical, nought point one per cent that admitted she probably did need help. While she was prepared to have a go at most things, and had got as far as taking out the flimsy-looking jack, which didn’t look as if it were capable of lifting a shoe box let alone a car, those slimy black bolts on the wheel looked completely beyond her.

She gave Will’s tall, slim frame a quick glance. Big mistake. It reminded her that his slender build belied a sinewy muscled strength and, under his clothes, the tautest, toned stomach she’d ever seen. The man had abs. Words died in her throat and she stood there, looking like a complete idiot.

‘Is that a, “Yes, gosh, Will, thanks that would be super”, I hear? Or a “Sod off, I’ve got this?”’ His fake falsetto reminded her exactly why she invested so much effort in avoiding him and his supersized ego and vastly inflated superiority complex.

He’d already approached the rear of her Mini. ‘Christ, how old is this thing? You still have a spare?’

With a determined grimace, she ignored him and dropped down by the wheel to manoeuvre the jack underneath the car, inserting the winding handle, as if she had the first clue what she was doing, saying with outward cheer, ‘No problem, I’ve got this. I can always call the AA if it’s too much trouble.’

As he hoisted the spare out, he muttered something under his breath which sounded distinctly like ‘you’re always too much trouble’.

Without saying anything else, he nudged her out of the way.

‘Thanks,’ she muttered as he set to work, kneeling on the tarmac, its surface wet from a recent shower, his head down as he started cranking up the car. It had been one of those days where the weather couldn’t make up its mind.

‘You here to see Siena?’

‘Yes,’ she answered shortly, glaring down at the stubby blonde ponytail brushing the back of his neck. Grown men shouldn’t have surfer-boy hair and it shouldn’t be sexy. He wasn’t sexy. Or even likeable. But a memory surfaced of that long hair brushing her skin when loose, bringing with it a quick flutter of awareness. The long hair helped create a casual look, when Will was anything but casual, except for his dealings with women.

She shifted her weight from foot to foot and pushed her hands into her pockets. The flutter turned into full-scale butterflies and she froze, praying that none of this was obvious. The butterflies could just sodding well back off and behave. She. Did. Not. Have. Feelings for Will.

With studied nonchalance, she looked around at the rolling green hills surrounding the village nestled in the valley, its line of houses following the ribbon of a stream that flowed down to the River Ouzel. She sighed, the sight soothing her. The pub, despite its ownership, was one of her favourite places. Perched on the edge of the wide green, the sturdy brick-and-timber construction had been in situ for several hundred years, standing guard over the inhabitants with imposing presence.

‘You can go in, if you like.’ Will had raised the car up. ‘Siena’s nearly finished her shift.’

Despite being here to see Siena, it didn’t seem right to abandon Will in the damp car park when he was doing her a favour, even though he was the last person on the planet that she wanted to spend any time with.

‘Do you need any help?’ she asked, with a barely concealed sigh. It was difficult to overcome a lifetime’s training of good manners.

He gave her an amused look.

Then again …

She turned her back on him and surveyed the quiet car park. In less than an hour, the pub would be buzzing. Whatever other faults he had, and there were a gazillion, Will certainly knew how to run a successful business. People came from miles around to eat here.

‘I hear you’re opening a new restaurant. That’ll be nice.’

With one raised eyebrow, he managed to make her regret opening her mouth.

‘I’m just making small talk. It feels a bit bad to abandon you when you’re being all chivalrous and fixing my car for me.’ She shivered, conscious of a light bite to the air. Summer was taking its time to arrive this year.

‘I’ve been waiting for the right location.’

‘Location, location, location,’ she said, not that she had any idea about suitable locations. The street where her tiny terraced house was located in the nearby town wasn’t about to make it onto any television programmes in the des res stakes.

‘It’s important, but I finally found the sweetest spot. The old post-office building on the High Street.’

‘Really? It looks a bit grot.’

‘It won’t by the time I’ve finished.’ Will’s quiet, confident declaration was no idle boast. When they’d lived in the village as teenagers, the pub had been the haunt of elderly men who nursed one pint over endless dominoes marathons. He’d transformed this place.

‘Hmm.’ She didn’t have the imagination for that sort of thing. ‘What sort of food are you going to do?’