Last of the Summer Vines: Escape to Italy with this heartwarming, feel good summer read!

I breathed in deeply, tasted the rosemary, lavender, and dark earth.

How long had it been since I’d done nothing but sit idly in a patch of sun? When last had a day stretched out before me, with no To Do list, a day where I didn’t have to be responsible to anyone? Not since I was a teen, for sure. Maybe I really did need this holiday.

My eyes fluttered closed, and I let out a long sigh. The sun’s glare battered against my eyelids.

The distant tractor sound choked and cut off, and I frowned at the rude interruption of my reverie, reminding me this wasn’t a holiday, and that I was still here, in a decrepit castello in need of some serious TLC. But at least I had dough rising in the kitchen. As long as there is dough, there is hope, Nonna used to say.

Back in the warm kitchen, the dough had risen faster than it would have in the cooler English climate. I rolled it out, lined Nonna’s sturdy muffin pan with it, then added baking paper and baking beans, before setting the pan in the oven to bake.

While the pastry cases baked, I whisked up the creamed cheese, adding butter and caster sugar, and beat the mix until it was light and fluffy. Then I added yet more eggs (I’d need to buy a whole lot more of those soon), ground the almonds and folded them into the mix, and finally added a touch of lemon zest – also locally sourced, right off the lemon tree in the back yard. I’d never baked with ingredients I’d actually picked myself before.

The kitchen filled with the warm, satisfying aroma of baking pastry, and I hummed as I worked. When the pastry cases were done, I removed the beans and paper from the tart pans, spread a thick layer of raspberry jam over the pastry crusts, spooned in the sweet filling, then slid the tarts back into the oven.

I was raiding the overflowing patch in the herb garden for fresh strawberries to use as garnish, when a car turned into the castello’s long drive. I shielded my eyes against the sun, and my heart did a silly little skip as I recognised the silver sports car.

Luca wasn’t alone, though. He’d brought the real estate agent to value the house.

The realtor was a woman – a curvy woman with lustrous dark hair swept up in a loose tumble of curls, and wearing a figure-hugging dress in fire engine red, and heels I wouldn’t be able to walk in.

Beside the realtor, with floury hands stained pink with sticky strawberry juice, and dressed in the ridiculous floral apron I’d found in an upstairs closet, I felt woefully plain.

The estate agent wandered from room to room, tut-tutting, and making copious notes on her clipboard. I trailed after them but, since they spoke mostly in Italian, I was only able to understand every other word. And Luca was no fun today. He was all business – no sidelong smiles, no casual touches, no flirting. I was pleased when the mobile in my apron pocket buzzed to warn me the tarts were done, giving me an excuse to escape back to the kitchen.

Alone, I admitted my disappointment. What the hell are you thinking?No holiday romances, remember? This is for the best.

Except it didn’t feel like it was for the best. This was why I hated dating. That up and down, ‘Does he like me? Doesn’t he like me?’ nonsense. My friends might have thought Kevin was dull, but at least I’d never had any doubt about his interest in me. Right up until I realised I wasn’t the only one he’d been interested in.

Half an hour later, when the tarts were cooling on the kitchen table, Luca and the statuesque estate agent traipsed back into the kitchen. She handed me a list that was several pages long. ‘You fix these, then we take pictures and put the house on our website. But the way the castello is now, no di certo! No chance! There are already too many rundown farmhouses on the market.’

I glanced at the list, and my mouth fell open. Some seemed easy enough: fix the front door, re-paint the interiors, clear the clutter, but the rest…! Plumbing, wiring, plastering, the access road to be re-tarred – I might as well re-build the castello from the ground up to make it sellable. Maybe a fire would have been a blessing. I would certainly need a contractor to tick off at least half the items on this list.

I walked them out to the car, the list still clutched in my floury, sticky hand. For one brief moment as we said goodbye, with the estate agent already seated in the car, I caught a glimpse of the Luca who’d taken me to lunch and charmed me with his attention.

‘You need help hiring a contractor?’ he asked. The mischievous spark was back in his eyes, but it didn’t have its intended effect. What was it with all these men treating me like a delicate flower? I needed Luca’s help even less than I’d needed Tommaso’s.

‘I’ll be fine.’ Making a few phone calls and getting quotes was hardly up there with brain surgery. Or with structuring private equity deals.

A day later, I no longer felt quite so confident. I cradled the old rotary phone in my lap and resisted the urge to smack it violently against the bedpost. How was it possible there wasn’t a single building contractor in the whole of Siena province willing to look at the house before Christmas?

I was in the kitchen, pounding out my stress on a fresh ball of bread dough, this time for my own consumption, when Daniele arrived in the farm’s battered pick-up truck to fetch the daily delivery for the trattoria. He carried in a basket of brown eggs and set them on the counter beside the kitchen sink. ‘What’s got into you?’

‘Nothing.’

He chuckled. ‘When a woman says “nothing” it definitely means “something”.’ He leaned against the doorjamb. He wore work-stained cargo pants, scuffed boots, and a checked shirt, and looked as if he’d just stepped off a tractor. I’d never before thought a farmer could be sexy, but I was rapidly changing my mind. If I were ten years younger, I’d be salivating about now. Instead, I simply felt old beyond my years beside his youth and vitality.