Finding Mr Right In Florence. Kate Hardy

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       CHAPTER ONE

      MARIANA THACKERAY.

      Angelo Beresford looked at the name on the email his sister had sent him.

      Mariana was a presenter on a television programme about art—about paintings people had found in their attic or had been hanging on a wall unremarked-on for years, and then they turned out to be lost masterpieces worth a small fortune.

      Camilla had spent the last couple of months of her pregnancy making a special trip from Rome to Florence every week to watch the programme with their grandfather. And Leo Moretti had apparently taken a real shine to the woman. He called her the Debussy girl—the girl with the flaxen hair. Cammie’s version was that she looked like a pre-Raphaelite model.

      Though it didn’t matter what Mariana Thackeray looked like. What Angelo wanted from her had nothing to do with her looks and everything to do with what was inside her head.

      Did Mariana Thackeray really know her stuff about art, or was she presenting the programme from a script?

      There was only one way to find out.

      Angelo flicked into the Internet and typed in the programme’s name.

      Her profile came up on the programme’s website, along with a couple of links to newspaper articles.

      Yup. She looked exactly like a model for one of his grandfather’s nineteenth-century paintings. Long golden curls, blue eyes, fine cheekbones, and a sensual curve to her mouth. She was absolutely gorgeous.

      He shook himself. That wasn’t what he needed to know.

      He looked at the caption. Mariana Thackeray, MA. Broadcaster and art historian.

      Solid academic qualifications: she worked from knowledge rather than just a script, then. Good.

      And the next bit was better still: she was studying Italian nineteenth-century art for her PhD. His grandfather’s passion. So she’d be just about the perfect person to help Angelo achieve his aims.

      He wanted to check out her TV programme first, though. According to the Internet TV guides, it wasn’t on air or even on catch-up TV at the moment; though a new series was planned for October.

      Right now it was May. So, although Angelo didn’t know exactly what the lead time of her series was, there was a good chance that she’d have the time to do the work he needed her to do. Better and better. The ducks were lining up nicely in a row.

      The programme trailers were available, but a couple of minutes of screen time weren’t really enough to tell him what he wanted to know. He went in search of the full episodes, guessing that someone would have downloaded them to the Internet, and bookmarked them in his laptop for viewing later that evening. Then he checked out the newspaper articles.

      It looked as if her former partner was a nasty piece of work, a bully who was quite happy to lie in court and who’d made her life miserable in the extreme. Although Angelo’s own branch of law was a very different one, he had friends who worked in that area and he knew how gruelling a case like that could be.

      Mariana Thackeray had enough strength of character to stand up for herself in court and tell the truth, even though it must’ve been painful for her to have her life laid bare before strangers and scrutinised, and she’d spoken out in the newspaper article about how it felt to be in an abusive relationship and where you could get help. She’d talked about how easy it was to doubt yourself and think that the rows were all your fault. How easy it was to believe that you were useless and unworthy, drip by slow drip; how it felt to question your own reality and feel guilty that you were doubting your partner.

      And she’d been frank about how hard it was to build yourself up again, how counselling could help you shift your mindset. She’d used her own painful experiences to help others. And the journalist had made it very clear that Mariana’s fee for the interview had been donated to a women’s refuge. He liked that: she hadn’t profited from the experience, but used it to help others.

      On one hand, it was a complication he could do without—a nasty-tempered ex who might want to make trouble. On the other, Angelo respected the fact that Mariana hadn’t let the experience drag her down. That she’d worked hard and gone on to make a good life for herself, built herself back up from nothing.

      He’d check out the programme, and then he’d make the decision about whether to contact her.

      When he finally got home, Angelo ended up watching four episodes of Hidden Treasure back-to-back.

      Now he knew exactly what had caught his grandfather’s attention: Mariana’s passion for art. Yes, she was beautiful. But it was when she talked about art that she really came alive. She sparkled. She took her audience along with her, showing them the technical side of the paintings and how the brushstrokes and pigments could be analysed; and she brought in the human side, showing snippets of the painter’s life and where that particular painting fitted in. But most of all she brought out what the painting meant to the owner.

      None of it seemed to be about the money. It was about vindication. Proving that the owners weren’t dreaming about the art they’d fallen in love with—that they had a genuine painting rather than a copy or a fake. Something that could be traced all the way back to the artist; even when there wasn’t a traditional paper trail, there were other bits of evidence that could back up a hunch. Scientific evidence.

      Vindication.

      That was what Angelo’s grandfather needed. Proof that the painting he’d loved for years, his pride and joy, really was a Carulli. The Girl in the Window.

      If anyone could prove it, Mariana Thackeray could. Even if it wasn’t a suitable candidate for the show, he could still commission her to investigate the painting privately. He was perfectly happy to pay; what was the point in having money in the bank when you could use it to help someone you loved?

      Angelo flicked into the word-processing program on his laptop and began to write.

      * * *

      The last lead in the file was a letter.

      Most of the correspondence to Hidden Treasure, the television programme Mariana presented about lost art treasures found in people’s homes, came by email, and she’d already sifted through this week’s batch to find three potential leads for further investigation and sent a standard reply to the rest, thanking them for their interest and apologising that unfortunately they weren’t suitable for the programme but she wished them the very best.

      Letters were rare.

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