A Mother for His Daughter

He watched his daughter carefully for her reaction. Mila looked at him for a few moments as she weighed up the information and he prepared himself for the crying fit that would surely come. She surprised him mightily when she bounced up and down and clapped with all her might.

‘Yay! She can meet Pino,’ Mila said.

‘Your great-grandmother’s name is Pino?’ Gracie asked, with a twinkle in her eye.

‘No!’ Mila said with one hand splayed across her mouth in shock. ‘My great-grandmother’s name is Gran-nonna. Pino is my horse.’

‘Ooh. I see. Well, then, I look forward to meeting both your great-grandmother and your horse. Equally.’

Giovanni arrived back at the table with a tray of fresh pasta and she was surprised at how hungry she was. Famished. But she had been living on pizza and cappuccinos for weeks.

By the time she had finished her generous portion, Luca was barely halfway through his.

‘You like pasta, I see,’ he said, watching her over his fork.

‘You can tell?’

‘Aren’t there any Italian restaurants in Australia?’

‘Tons. Especially in Melbourne. Many even make great pasta but you have to search to find one that makes the pasta fresh and cooks it al dente. The food here is unbelievable!’ she finished, hoping that would go some way to make up for her ravenous behaviour.

‘Good unbelievable, by the looks of your plate. It is so clean you could serve food from it.’

Feeling sassy, Gracie poked out her tongue.

Mila gasped in shock. ‘Papa! Did you see what she did?’

Gracie covered her wayward mouth with her napkin.

‘I did see,’ Luca said, watching Gracie from the corner of his eye.

Great, she thought. Excellent start. Now he’s going to know I wasn’t kidding when I said I had no idea how to teach a kid anything except how to mess about.

Though she had tried to talk Luca out of the arrangement, it genuinely appealed. The chance to stay in Italy alone would have made her day. The chance to do so in a proper house, with proper food, with a bathroom not shared by twenty others and with twenty-four-hour access to a telephone, was beyond her wildest dreams. She just hoped she hadn’t blown it with her big mouth and her bad manners.

‘What should we do to punish her?’ Luca asked Mila, and Gracie held her breath.

‘No dessert for Gracie,’ Mila suggested without delay.

‘Sounds fair to me,’ Luca said, and Gracie felt great relief, until Giovanni came out with three plates of dessert and her mouth watered in appreciation of the mounds of multicoloured gelato.

‘How about I only have one flavour?’ Gracie suggested. ‘Then you could eat the rest of mine.’

Mila’s mouth twisted sideways as she considered the fact that she could come out even further ahead in this new scenario. ‘I think that’s fair,’ she said, nodding sagely. ‘As long as you only eat the lemon flavour.’

‘Done.’

Mila looked to her father for backing and Gracie did the same. She expected to find him watching Mila with that same rapt amazement that came over him whenever she spoke, but even though he still held his little girl on his lap, his gaze was all on Gracie.

When the guy chose to bestow his attention upon her, he didn’t disappoint. Even with a youngster squirming on his lap, he had the ability to make Gracie feel as though she was the only one who held his immediate interest.

Under Luca’s encouraging gaze she felt vulnerable, quiet, soft. He had met her at her very worst—her eyes darkened by tired smudges, her hair a mess of ungroomed curls, her spirits downtrodden—and yet he made her feel safe and protected and liked despite it all. So liked she had even eaten a whole bowl of pasta in front of him in two minutes flat!

As though he knew where her thoughts travelled, his perfect sculptured mouth kicked up at the corners and his dark eyes glimmered against his smooth olive skin. Her heart gave a little lurch sideways and she smiled back before delving into her lemon gelato.

Only once Mila had finished both desserts did Luca call for his driver. Gracie felt profoundly sad that their delightful meal was over so soon.

‘I asked him to meet us at your hostel. I thought we could walk off our lunch first.’

And then Gracie remembered that this meal was just the beginning. She was staying in Italy and could keep looking for her father. The thought took hold. Warming her. Infusing her with hope. Because in finding her father, she had placed a massive amount of hope in finding herself. Only now she had some willing help. She shoved her hands in her pockets to stop herself from reaching out and giving Luca a great big hug.

They said their goodbyes to the effusive Giovanni, and each of the grown-ups took one of Mila’s hands. Their pace was slow as they ambled through the winding back streets of Rome. Mila sang and giggled and pointed at interesting things with an outstretched foot, as she was unwilling to let go of either hand.

All evidence of the spring shower had evaporated and the sun seemed to shine more brightly than it had during the rest of her stay. The tourists milling about did not get in her way as she walked by, they seemed excited, enthralled, bewitched.

As Gracie’s gaze swept to her right, she took the opportunity to have a good look at the man at her side, the stranger in whom she had placed the remnants of her hope. He could be a psycho killer luring her off to his secluded villa. To torture her before his daughter, his grandmother and horse named Pino? She didn’t think so.

‘What are you smiling at?’ Luca asked.

Gracie looked away, disgusted with herself for having been caught staring. ‘Nothing I would dare repeat for fear of being thought a numbskull,’ she said.

‘Che cosa è un…numbskull?’ Mila asked.

‘Someone who smiles for no good reason at all,’ Gracie said.

Once they reached the hostel, Luca and Mila waited outside while Gracie said her goodbyes to Enzo and packed her minimal belongings. Once downstairs she was surprised to see a beautiful black car awaiting her, what with the multitude of tiny dented cars and daredevil motor scooters that trawled the streets of Rome with frightening pace and oblivious to road rules.

The window rolled down and Mila popped out her head. ‘Venuto, Gracie! It’s time to go home!’

Home, Gracie thought, taking one last look around the warm stuccoed buildings and cobbled stone streets that championed the history and beauty of Rome, her home for the past few weeks, and she realised that she did not really know what the word home meant any more.

Before leaving Melbourne, she had quit her job and sublet her apartment. She was a woman without a home. A woman without a country. A woman without full-blood kin. A woman with her future laid out before her like the paved road below the car, and with her past twinkling back at her like a star just beyond reach of her fingertips. And all she could do to join the two was to take this sudden divergence in her journey.

She took in a deep breath and hopped in the car. They took off, Luca, Mila and she in the back, a driver hidden behind a dark petition. Gracie watched city roads turn into country roads as Rome gave way to the green, undulating Tuscan landscape, with its scattered farmhouses and hilltop villages, and for the first time in a long time she felt as if it could all really happen to her. All she could do was go with the flow and wait and see.

CHAPTER THREE

IT WAS early evening when they reached Luca’s Tuscan villa, and it was like something out of a postcard. A long driveway lined with tall, tapered cedars wound up a gently surging hillside covered on the front side by a small private vineyard. At the top of the hill, a sprawling two-storeyed stuccoed farmhouse with an orange tiled roof and an adjacent matching cottage glowed a deep yellow as it soaked in the warmth and light of the setting sun.

‘You like?’ Luca asked.

‘How could I not?’ Gracie said on a sigh.

‘It’s isolated,’ he said, and Gracie thought she heard a tinge of…something in his voice.

She pulled her head in from the window and faced him but his gaze remained on the house. ‘Rubbish,’ she scoffed, and he spun to face her, just as she had intended. ‘You know nothing about being isolated. To get here from Melbourne I had to take two separate planes, and was in the air for a total of twenty-four hours. A two-hour drive from Rome is nothing, buddy.’

She had desired to see him relax and she succeeded, though she could have done without the tummy turn that came from one dose of those crinkling eyes.