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

‘You can sell whatever is of value in the castello. Consider it a down payment against your share of the property.’ Tommaso shrugged, as if to say, ‘take it or leave it’.

I glared at him, and he glared right back, unflinching, his cold gaze challenging. ‘That’s my final offer. If you don’t like it, we let the courts decide.’

He’d clearly forgotten that I never backed down from a challenge. I wasn’t going to start now. ‘You could raise a loan to buy me out.’

Tommaso’s eyes narrowed. ‘Before you make any more suggestions, perhaps you should actually learn something about this business you so badly want to dispose of. The property is mortgaged to the hilt. It’s coming around, but these things don’t happen overnight. The next bottling was supposed to make a substantial dent in our debts, but with John’s death…’ He shrugged. ‘Once our next bottling goes on sale, we’ll be in a much better financial position, but you can’t hurry wine.’

My hackles rose, but I refused to rise to the bait. I was known for being cool and level-headed. Not that I felt particularly cool right now. Really – whose fault was it that I knew nothing of the wine business? And it certainly wasn’t my fault that John chose to make his housekeeper’s grandson his partner and heir instead of me. If John had ever asked me to join him in the business … would I have accepted? I nibbled my lower lip. Who knew what my younger self would have done? There’d been a time I’d have done anything for John’s love and approval. But he was gone. Whatever I’d hoped to get from him, those dreams were ashes now.

‘You could split the property?’ Luca suggested. ‘Tommaso could keep the winery, and Sarah could sell the castello.’

Tommaso smiled, leaning back in his chair, arms still crossed over his chest. It wasn’t a pleasant smile. ‘That works for me.’

Of course it would work for him. He probably couldn’t wait to unload that millstone from around his neck. And what was I going to do with a building in desperate need of repair? It didn’t take a genius to work out that the value of the property was in the land and the crop, not a ramshackle farmhouse with noble pretensions. Who would pay decent money for a rundown castello with no land? And what little I’d make would no doubt be swallowed up by my inherited share of the debt.

I shook my head slowly, and Tommaso threw his hands in the air in an angry, despairing gesture that was entirely Italian. ‘Then we are at an impasse. I will not sell the vineyard that meant everything to your father, even if you would, and I cannot buy you out until after the harvest. Go back home, and we can talk again when the harvest is in. Or we go to court.’

Go back home. I thought of my pride and joy, that terrace house in a crescent lined with cherry trees in Wanstead, thought of sitting there alone all day while my housemates went off to work. I thought of the four months that stretched out before me like a life sentence.

The thought occurred so blindingly quickly, and with such force, it almost took my breath away. I rested my elbows on the table. ‘When is the harvest?’

Tommaso’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘Usually September, weather dependent. Why?’

Four months away, and about the time I would be able to return to work.

Take up a hobby, Cleo had suggested. Renovating a broken-down house in Tuscany was a hobby, right? And she’d said I shouldn’t come home until I had a big fat cheque in my pocket. But that didn’t have to be today.

‘I’ll stay.’

‘You’ll what?’ Tommaso leaned forward, his expression incredulous. Luca, on the other hand, looked pleased. I was glad someone was.

‘You told Luca I could treat the castello as my own until this is settled. So I’ll stay until the harvest, and I’ll fix up the castello. If I can sell the house at a decent price before your next bottling, we’ll call it even. And if I don’t—’ I gave a shrug that was nowhere near as expressive as Tommaso’s. ‘Then you buy me out after the bottling.’

Either way, he’d get to keep his precious vines, and we wouldn’t have to drag this out in court. And the cherry on top: I’d have something to keep me occupied during my enforced exile from the office.

But Tommaso didn’t look happy. ‘Don’t you have a job to get back to?’

Breathe in. Count to three. Relax. ‘I have a lot of holiday leave due.’

He huffed out a sigh. ‘Go or stay, it makes no difference to me. The castello is unoccupied, and as long as I get to work the vineyard, you can do what you like.’

Luca beamed. ‘That’s settled then. I will draw up papers in which you agree to be equal partners until such time as either the castello sells, or Tommaso can buy you out.’

Tommaso still didn’t look much happier, but he nodded.

Luca walked us to the door, shook hands with Tommaso, and leaned in to kiss me on both cheeks, his hands resting lightly on my upper arms. ‘Ogni cosa ha la sua ragione. Everything has a reason. I am glad you are not going so soon.’

His hands caressed my arms, a touch that could have been casual and meant nothing, or not casual at all. My skin tingled all the way down to my toes at the unaccustomed touch.

Tommaso, halfway down the narrow corridor, paused to look back at us, his face set in that perpetual scowl again. ‘I have errands to run. I’ll meet you at the car in a couple of hours.’

Without waiting for my response, he turned and walked away.

‘I have errands too!’ I called after him. He waved a hand in the air, without even looking back.

I frowned after him, until a light touch on my arm brought me back to the much more pleasant present. ‘Your father’s death was a big shock to Tommaso. He’ll come around.’

My frown turned to a smile. ‘That’s sweet of you, but you don’t need to make excuses for him.’

Luca’s dimple flashed. ‘That is more like it. You have a beautiful smile.’ He brushed my cheek with his fingers, tucking a stray wisp of hair back behind my ear, and I shivered. There was no mistaking that touch for casual – not when it was accompanied by such a burning look in his eyes. Definitely not gay then. Just too good to be true.

No man had looked at me like that in years, and that included Kevin. My ex had many good qualities, but passion was not among them. Luca’s expression made me feel oddly floaty and dizzy. Cleo would have a field day if she could see me now.

‘Since you have time now, perhaps I could show you around our little town?’ Luca offered me his arm, and I looped mine through it, smiling up at him.

‘If your tour includes something to eat, I’m in!’

Chapter 4 (#ub473b70d-7760-58f7-a67a-a852e57f29ea)

Mangia bene, ridi spesso, ama molto

(Eat well, laugh often, love much)

Luca’s office was in the wide road that circled around the old part of town, but behind it lay a maze of twisting, narrow streets that rose to the town centre on the crown of the hill. As we climbed uphill, Luca’s hand lingered against my lower back to guide me, infusing my body with unaccustomed warmth. Hello, Dorothy. We’re not in Kansas anymore.

My gaze was everywhere, absorbing the myriad details that reminded me that I was indeed in a foreign land – the ornate door knockers, the flower boxes at the windows, the Madonnina shrines high up on the walls of the old houses.

‘I doubt Montalcino has changed much since you were last here,’ Luca observed.

Since the town hadn’t changed much in five hundred years, that was pretty much guaranteed, but still I shook my head. ‘I don’t remember much of the town. I was only a girl last time I was here, and John didn’t leave the farm very often. I remember Elisa bringing me to the market, though.’

Luca showed me the Palazzo Pieri, the civic museum, the Chiesa di Sant’Agostino with its high rose window, and then we circled around to the Piazza Garibaldi, which was not much wider than a street, and nothing at all like the big piazzas of Rome I remembered from a long ago trip, back in the days when I’d still taken holidays. At one end of the piazza lay the austere, smaller church of Sant’Egidio, and on the other the tall, slender clock tower of the palazzo.

The subtle touch of Luca’s hand on my back, neither intrusive nor casual, sent waves of warmth through me as we wandered the narrow, cobbled streets. It had been a very long time since a man had touched me like this, with such care and attention. So long, I couldn’t even remember. Kevin hadn’t been touchy-feely, and even in those rare moments when we’d been intimate, his touch had never thrilled me as Luca’s now did.

The piazza was busy with tourists and shoppers, with laughing, talking people, and with music.

‘But watch,’ Luca whispered. ‘Here more than anywhere in the town you can see that there are two Montalcinos. There’s the tourist hotspot that outsiders see, and then there’s our little village, where everyone knows everyone else.’

He was right. While the tourists and locals walked side by side in the same streets, it was as if they existed in two separate worlds, brushing against each other, but not merging. Neither local nor tourist, where did I belong?

He led me to a restaurant on the square, where he was welcomed effusively by the staff who clearly knew him well, and we were seated at a prime table on the pavement, sheltered by a white awning and a hedge of potted shrubs. Luca ordered a bottle of local wine, the Brunello di Montalcino, for me to try, and we both ordered the house specials.

‘You are sure you don’t want to keep the vineyard?’ Luca asked, as the restaurant’s owner himself poured our wine. ‘Even when you go back to London you could be a partner in the winery, if you wanted.’

I shook my head. ‘Absolutely sure. What would I do with half a vineyard?’

‘You do not want to be a part of your father’s vineyard?’