To Rome, with Love

‘Si.’ Wearily he raised a finger and pointed inland.

Sarah followed the direction of his hand and clearly saw the sign on the roof of the hotel less than half a mile away. Satisfied that he knew where he was to meet them, she decided there was nothing to be gained, and potentially a lot to be lost, by keeping him here at the airport. Much better that he should go home and sober up. She gave him her sternest look and sent him off with a warning. ‘You realise that if you’re not on time tomorrow, there will be consequences?’

‘Si.’

With that, he was off.

‘What a chatterbox. I thought he’d never stop talking.’ Polly had been watching the scene with interest. Her Italian was very much at an elementary level, but even she had understood every word Gianluca had said, all thirteen of them. ‘I’m getting a bad feeling about our friend Gianluca. I think we’d both better work on our navigation skills.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Paul and Miles should be arriving soon. I wonder what they’ll make of Gianluca.’

‘And what are the rest of the group going to think?’ Sarah shook her head miserably. This wasn’t the start she had hoped for. Nevertheless, she decided to put a brave face on it. ‘You never know, maybe he’ll scrub up and emerge a new man at the crack of dawn tomorrow. We live in hope.’ She avoided meeting Polly’s eye and changed the subject. ‘And there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you, Pol. Could we keep the whole James, wedding thing between ourselves while we’re here in Italy? You’re the only one over here who knows about the marriage that never happened, and I’d like to keep it that way. There’s no need for anybody to know, particularly Miles or Paul, and if nobody’s asking me about James and the wedding, then maybe I stand a better chance of forgetting, or at least not thinking so much about what happened. Or didn’t.’

‘Of course, Sarah. I promise I won’t say a word. Just you try to forget all about it.’

Some hope, Sarah found herself thinking as she changed the subject to something safer. ‘Well, at least the forecast’s good.’

‘And staying good for the next few days, as far as I could see. I think it’s going to be a warm ride. Oh, oh, here we go. It’s show time, folks.’ Polly had spotted a group of three men emerging from the sliding doors and heading towards them. They had clearly recognised the yellow cycling jerseys she and Sarah were wearing. These had the name of the cancer charity and Hall’s Tours plastered all over them and were a garish, bright-yellow colour, so as to be as visible as possible to other road users, as well as reflecting the heat of the sun. Polly gave them a wave. ‘Oh, hi, hello, I’m Polly and this is Sarah. Welcome to Venice. Are you with the Hall’s ride?’

‘We sure are.’ The American accent was unmistakable. ‘Hi, Polly, I’m Chuck and these are Mike and Dan.’ He was a tall man, maybe in his late forties, with short-cropped, light-brown hair and a friendly expression on his face. She reached over and shook hands with all of them and handed out copies of the programme. The other two men were younger, both rather good-looking, one very muscular, and both clearly deferred to Chuck, so Sarah addressed her remarks to him.

‘Have you guys just arrived from the States or have you had a chance to get over the jetlag?’

Chuck grinned. ‘This ride’s going to be tough enough without starting off half dead. No, we’ve been in Europe for a few days, getting acclimatised.’

Sarah smiled back and nodded approvingly. ‘Very sensible.’

‘Only we chose to do our acclimatising in Switzerland. That whole damn country is one big mountain.’ The muscular one, Mike, groaned theatrically. ‘I’m worn out already.’

Sarah found herself smiling at him. ‘Well, you don’t need to do anything too athletic today. We’ve got a bus outside that’ll take you across to the hotel now. Polly will show you the way. You can dump your things at the hotel and then, if you like, there’s either the bus or the water bus to take you across to Venice for a bit of sightseeing. We’ll see you again for dinner this evening when you’ll have a chance to meet the other people on the ride. Meet back at the hotel at eight. The details are all on your programme.’

As Polly disappeared with the three Americans, Sarah ticked off their names on her clipboard and reflected with satisfaction that it hadn’t been so difficult to smile and be pleasant, after all. In fact, it had brought back happy memories of trips she had done in the past, before James had stamped his meddling, selfish foot on her career. She saw from the screen that the BA flight from London had now landed. The bulk of the participants in the group were travelling with Paul and Miles on that flight so she hoped Polly would get back in good time to collect them and see they got to the hotel. She glanced over her shoulder, rather hoping there might be a café close by for a quick espresso, but all she could see were tourist information and incoming travel company desks.

She took a moment to think ahead to what awaited her over the next two weeks. There were so many unknowns. As well as the weather and the quality of the hotels and restaurants along the way, a cycle ride threw up a load of further variables. There was the question of the relative fitness of the participants and whether they would all be able to ride a hundred kilometres a day. Polly would drive the minibus with the luggage and there would be room in there for a few stragglers if it came to it, but not more than a handful. Then there was the make-up of the group and how well they bonded together. She knew from experience that just one or two difficult customers could easily sour a whole trip. And, of course, there was the potentially even bigger problem of having to deal with the future bosses of the company.

A tall, good-looking man in a suit walked past and, much as she had been working hard to suppress the memory of him, she found herself thinking of James. He always wore a suit to work and he travelled a lot. It would be the height of irony if she were to meet him here, today, in Venice. She shook her head angrily. And if she were to meet him, how would she react? It was eight days since what should have been her wedding day, and, in the meantime, she had spent many tough hours going over in her head just what had happened and how she could maybe have prevented it. She found herself still at a loss to explain what had got into him and how she could have missed the signs. Try as she might, she couldn’t think of more than a handful of minor disagreements that could have indicated his dissatisfaction with the relationship and with her. As a rational, very organised person, it was bitterly frustrating to realise just how little she had truly known about the man with whom she had been fully prepared to spend the rest of her life.

The all-too-familiar stinging in the corners of her eyes threatened to develop into tears once more, but she was prevented from any further introspection as the sliding doors opened and her future bosses appeared. Along with them was a group of people, many of them carrying bikes in bags or boxes. At their head was Paul. He gave Sarah a cheery wave and led the others across to her as she surreptitiously wiped her eyes. They made up a group of fifteen people, nine of them men. At first sight, everybody looked pretty fit and Sarah drew heart from this. Maybe Polly’s minibus wouldn’t get too crowded, after all. Bringing up the rear of the group was Miles and she took a good look at him for the first time since his brief appearance in her office earlier that week. He looked leaner than she remembered and there was not even a hint of the sedentary businessman’s paunch she had noted a few years ago. However, her fears were reawakened when she saw that, although all the other members of the group were smiling cheerfully, his face looked serious, maybe even surly. She sighed to herself and hoped he would cheer up as the trip went on. She went across to greet them all, noting with relief, out of the corner of her eye, the reappearance of Polly from the bus.

‘Hi, everybody.’ Sarah put on her brightest smile and introduced herself, realising as she did so that this smile was now going to have to be plastered across her face permanently for the next two weeks. Considering how little smiling she had been doing recently, she had a feeling her face muscles were in for a real workout. ‘Welcome to Venice. I’m Sarah and I’m going to be riding with you. This is Polly, who’ll be with us all the way as well.’ They both passed among the group, shaking hands, exchanging greetings and handing out programmes. As she went round, Sarah ticked off names on her list. When she reached Miles, she stuck out her hand and managed to broaden her smile even wider.

‘Hi, Miles, I’m very glad to see you again.’

To her surprise, he managed to smile back at her and it was as if a wave had washed over his face, changing his appearance from grim to almost cheerful, and taking ten years off him in the process. As she shook hands, she took a closer look at him. Although she had always assumed he was well into his forties, with a smile on his face he looked a good bit younger.

‘Sarah, hi, good to see you again.’ His grip was firm and, for the first time, she saw his eyes close up. Although dark-ringed and surrounded by care lines, they were an amazing deep royal blue and strangely hypnotic. She felt a quite unexpected surge of physical attraction, which disappeared in an instant as the memory of the other man in her life with amazing blue eyes made its unwelcome return. It must have shown on her face as Miles’s smile vanished as suddenly as it had come. Sarah hastily turned her attention to the others and supervised them as they loaded their luggage onto trolleys and headed out to the bus. It was only when they had all disappeared with Polly that Sarah had a few moments to analyse her first impressions.

Paul was undeniably handsome and he knew it. Miles wasn’t as gloomy as she had feared, although she hadn’t missed the lines on his careworn face. Hopefully, he would manage to relax as the trip unfolded, if relaxation was a word to be used by people about to cycle a thousand kilometres. The other members of the group all looked as if they were up for it, and one of the women in particular was very pretty indeed. From previous experience, Sarah wondered how that might affect the dynamics of the group, particularly if Paul was still in predatory mode. She determined to keep a close eye on him. It would reflect badly on Hall’s Tours if the son of the proprietor were to start playing fast and loose with the customers.

‘Hello, are you part of the cycle ride?’ She raised her eyes from her clipboard and found herself confronted by a very tall blond man, probably her age, with the lightest blue eyes she had ever seen. Where Miles had cobalt-blue eyes, these were like the blue of an iceberg in the sun. His eyes and mouth were smiling and she had no difficulty in giving him a big smile in return. From his accent, he was Scandinavian, and there was only one of these on her list. He had to be Lars from Sweden.

‘Hi, you must be Lars.’ She saw him nod. ‘Welcome to Venice, Lars. Did you have a good flight?’

His smile was infectious and she was still chatting happily to him when Polly returned from dropping the others off. When Lars disappeared with Polly, Sarah felt quite sorry. Talking to him had been remarkably easy and this had really cheered her. Maybe two weeks of being nice wasn’t going to be too hard, after all.

By two o’clock, almost all the participants had turned up and nobody had lost any luggage or suffered a significant delay. The last to arrive were three women whose flight from Cardiff had arrived over an hour ago. Sarah was just beginning to get worried when the automatic doors swished open and the girls appeared, pushing a trolley full of bags. They all looked flustered, the redhead in the middle particularly so. She spotted Sarah’s yellow shirt and the clipboard and came rushing across to explain.

‘Hi, I’m Glynis Phillips. I’m terribly sorry, but I lost my phone.’

Sarah’s eyebrows shot up. ‘You lost it? What, on board the aircraft or after you got off?’

Glynis nodded, the embarrassed look on her face now more evident. ‘I turned it off for the flight and was going to turn it back on again once we got off, and it was then that I realised I’d lost it, just before passport control. I searched all my stuff, but I couldn’t find it. I was just starting to explain to the policemen when it turned up.’

One of her companions, a pretty, dark-haired girl, supplied the explanation. ‘I managed to find a girl who works for the airline and she made a call.’ She shot a long-suffering glance across at Glynis. ‘It was in the aircraft, tucked into the seat pocket.’

Glynis nodded miserably. ‘I must have dropped it in there by accident. I don’t know what I’d have done without you, Jo.’ She gave Sarah an apologetic look. ‘I’m so sorry. I hope I haven’t kept you waiting too long.’

Sarah gave her a grin, determined to reassure her and calm her down. ‘Not at all. I’m just glad you found it.’ She smiled at all three of them. ‘Well, you’ve arrived now. If you’d like to come with me, there’s a bus outside to ferry you to the hotel.’

As they made their way out of the terminal building, Jo, the girl who had saved the day, fell in alongside Sarah and whispered to her. ‘Glynis is a sweetie, but I’m afraid she can be a bit scatty at times. Naomi and I’ll do our best to keep an eye on her.’ She was an attractive girl and, by the sound of it, a bright one. Somehow, Sarah had a feeling Paul was going to like her a lot. Surreptitiously, she crossed her fingers, hoping he would behave himself. Anyway, she told herself, everybody had turned up and she could breathe a sigh of relief. So far, so good. As long as she didn’t think too hard about Gianluca.

***

Dinner was set for half past eight in a restaurant a few kilometres inland of the airport and the hotel. They had booked a coach to ferry everybody there and Sarah breathed a sigh of relief when everybody was safely on board. As they started off on the fifteen minute journey, she walked down through the bus, chatting to everybody and checking they were all satisfied with their accommodation. Everybody seemed happy and those who had taken the water bus into Venice were singing the praises of that wonderful city. Paul and Miles were sitting halfway down the bus and Paul was chatting volubly with the trio of girls from Cardiff, his eyes very much on Jo. Miles was sitting on his own, engrossed in a call on his phone. Sarah remembered his reputation for being a workaholic and hoped this wouldn’t be how he spent all his free time. Mind you, she thought to herself, she had been branded a workaholic herself so many times, she felt a sense of sympathy for him. At least, she thought to herself, it would be hard for him to carry on a telephone conversation while riding a bike.

After returning to her seat, satisfied that all was going well so far, she was reminded that one of the people who had accused her of working too hard had been James. Had her appetite for her job contributed to his decision not to go ahead with the wedding? In the wake of the impact of his decision, she had been conducting a post-mortem in her head, asking herself just why he had made up his mind to dump her and whether it really was the disaster she had initially thought. Certainly, he would have objected to her participation in this trip, even though she had found herself faced with little or no choice in the matter. She had always known he had a very selfish, controlling side to his character and it was only just occurring to her now that his insistence they get married might have been in order to further cement his hold over her. Maybe, tough as it was, his decision had been the right one, after all. She found herself feeling very confused. She shook her head miserably and sighed as the coach drove across the dead flat countryside, criss-crossed by little waterways, through which they would be riding the following day. The thought of two weeks on a bike should have cheered her, but she knew she was still bleeding internally and it would take a lot to cheer her up.

‘Can I join you, Sarah?’

Miles’s voice dragged her out of her introspection. ‘Of course. All well?’

She was referring to his telephone conversation, which had been going on for a good ten or fifteen minutes, but he chose to interpret her query as referring to the trip. ‘You tell me – you’re in charge, after all. Now, what do you want me to do tonight?’

He was sitting close beside her and she could feel the hairs of his bare forearm resting against her arm. It was a not unpleasant sensation and, yet again, she had to remind herself that the very last thing she wanted right now was any kind of involvement with another man. She eased her arm away from him and replied.

‘I want you to turn on the charm, Miles. Plonk yourself at table and dazzle everybody with your bonhomie and friendliness. Line one, page one of the tour guides’ manual: “Keep a smile on your face at all times and this will ensure a smile on the faces of the clients.” So, big smiles all round, all right?’ She shot him a quick glance to see how he was reacting and was relieved to see a smile forming on his lips.

‘Of course, you’re right.’ He met her eyes for a few seconds and she read something more serious that belied his words. ‘Do me a favour, Sarah; remind me of that from time to time. I know I should smile more.’

‘Normally, all that’s needed is to be happy and the smile comes automatically. Are you happy, Miles?’ She looked over at his face again, but his eyes were now trained down at his hands.

‘I’ll work on that, too, Sarah.’ His voice now sounded bleak and she felt a surge of compassion. Clearly, things weren’t all right and she wondered if the cause was work, the conflict with his brother, or something more personal. Then he looked up, out of the window. ‘Unless I’m very much mistaken, we’re here.’ He turned back towards her, his smile firmly in place. ‘See, Sarah, I’m smiling.’

It almost looked convincing.

The restaurant was called La Stalla and had pretty evidently been converted from an old stable block. Just in case anybody failed to get the connection, there were saddles and sundry horsey paraphernalia all around the walls to make the point. The walls were exposed stone and brick, the high ceilings supported by hefty wooden beams, and the floors were ancient, worn terracotta tiles. It was a charming place and she sensed the approval of the guests as they walked inside. They were escorted to a private room at one end of the building where a long table had been set up for all thirty of them. Sarah, as mistress of ceremonies, sat right in the middle on one side and the others helped themselves to seats around her. As everybody settled down she noticed that Miles had taken up position right opposite her and she wondered whether this was a deliberate move to keep an eye on her, presumably so as to assess her performance at firsthand. For a moment, Sarah remembered what Melissa had said about possible redundancies and she suppressed a shiver. She loved her job and really didn’t want to lose it.

‘What a fabulous place.’ Lars the Swede had taken his place at her right hand and was looking around admiringly. On the other side of her, Sarah had made sure to put one of the two women who had come on their own, as she was determined to see they were made welcome by the others in the group as soon as possible. She turned towards Lars and nodded.

‘And the food’s supposed to be even better.’ She glanced across the table at Miles and was relieved to see him looking, by his standards, relatively relaxed, a reasonably convincing smile still on his face, chatting to the very pretty girl who had arrived with the others on the flight from London. Sarah had now identified her as Diana from a big tour operator based in Bristol. Ominously, Paul, looking very smart in a sky-blue polo shirt, had taken up position on the other side of her and was clearly waiting until his brother tired so that he could leap in and start a conversation with her. As Sarah was watching Paul, he suddenly looked up and his eyes caught hers. He gave her a big smile and a wink.