Italian Bachelors: Irresistible Sicilians. Michelle Smart

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       CHAPTER THREE

      GRACE DID NOT think she had ever felt as nauseous as she did when the reinforced four-by-four came to a stop before the imposing electric gates. Two on-duty armed guards nodded at them respectfully as they drove through and into the Mastrangelo estate.

      As they travelled along the smooth drive, cutting through rolling vineyards and verdant olive groves, the familiar scent of Sicilian nature at its crispest pervaded the air, flooding her with bittersweet memories.

      After the freezing climate of Cornwall, a part of the UK that tended to have mild winters but was suffering from a particularly acute cold spell, the freshness of Sicily in December was a sharp contrast. The sun had yet to set, the brilliant cobalt sky unmarred by a single cloud. Her thick winter coat lay sprawled across her lap, her jumper warmth enough.

      She turned her mind to her mobile phone and silently cursed.

      She cursed the heavy snowstorm that had engulfed the south-west of England the previous week and made the roads so treacherous. If Lily hadn’t needed to attend the local doctor’s surgery for her three-month inoculation, she would never have attempted the journey. But she had. For safety’s sake she had recharged the phone she had bought in Frankfurt for emergencies, and taken it with her on the hazardous bus journey, not dreaming that to do so would set in motion the wheels enabling Luca to find her. She had switched it back off the minute she returned home to her rented cottage.

      She cursed that she hadn’t dumped the stupid phone the moment she ended her brief calls to her mother and Cara all those months ago. She’d been in Amsterdam, waiting to catch a flight to Portugal. She’d reasoned that if Luca could trace the calls then good luck to him tracking her down at Schiphol Airport. She’d called her mum’s landline but Cara only had a mobile phone. To play safe, she had advised Cara to destroy it. To play even safer, upon landing in Portugal she had hired a car and driven to Spain.

      What she couldn’t curse was using the phone in the first place. Her mum and Cara would have been the first people Luca contacted about her disappearance. After two weeks on the run and no contact, the guilt had been crippling her.

      She looked at him now, sitting in the front passenger seat, his head turned to the side by the window. Such was his stillness she wondered if he had fallen asleep, dismissing the thought almost immediately. He had power-napped on the jet back home but his naps always evoked images of a guard dog sleeping with one ear up. He would not properly relax until he was safe inside his home.

      As much as she hated him and everything he represented, Grace cursed herself too. The more she thought about the past wasted month, time she should have used moving herself and Lily to a remote Greek island as she had intended, the more she wanted to give herself a good slap.

      She had watched her fill of gangster and mobster films in the ten months since fleeing Sicily, had read everything she could get her hands on about them too. Know your enemy had become her mantra. She had known the second Luca found her he would not hesitate to have her dragged back to Sicily. As she had learned, it was the way of his world, where women were little more than possessions.

      Which again begged the question, why? Why did she not move on when she had known the longer she stayed, the greater the trail she would be creating for him to find her? Even using Lily’s inoculations as an excuse was no good—she’d had over a week since then to get her act together.

      After a couple of miles they reached a larger wrought-iron gate, this one with guard shelters either side, both of which had monitors connecting to the larger security station in one of the estate cottages. From this point onwards, the ground was alarmed. Anyone who stepped onto the land triggered it, the boffins in the cottage using their technology to zoom onto the intruder. In all the time she had lived there the system had only been activated by large animals.

      The head of security, Paolo, came out of the left shelter to greet Luca, tipping his cap as they exchanged a few words. When he spotted Grace in the back he nodded respectfully before returning to his station.

      So he hadn’t lost his job. She could not begin to describe her relief. As the person in charge of all security on the estate, losing the boss’s wife was definitely on the ‘do not do’ list.

      She leaned forward and rested a hand on the shoulder of Luca’s seat. ‘Thank you for letting Paolo stay in his job,’ she said quietly.

      He turned his head. ‘If you mean the fact you were able to waltz out of the estate without an escort, then rest assured, I never blamed him for that.’

      ‘I didn’t waltz. I walked.’ She had walked through acres and acres of vineyards and miles of arable land until she had found the field she was looking for. It was the same field she had inadvertently trespassed onto with Cara the day she first met Luca. The broken section of fence they had originally slipped through had long been mended. It took little effort to climb over it. It had felt prophetic, like coming full circle.

      ‘I saw the footage. You looked as if you were going on an early-evening stroll. There was nothing in your demeanour to suggest you had no intention of returning. I give you credit, bella. You are a wonderful actress.’

      Her coolness had been external only. As soon as she was off Mastrangelo land and no longer subject to scrutiny from the multitude of spying cameras, she had dumped the tracker-installed phone Luca had given her into a hedge and run, all the way to the nearest town. From Lebbrossi, she had taken a taxi to Palermo and caught the first flight off the island. That the first flight had been to Germany had been neither here nor there. If anything, it had done her a favour. It had made Luca’s job of tracking her down difficult from the outset.

      The drive veered to the right. As the four-by-four turned with it onto the straight she caught her first glimpse of the pink sandstone converted monastery. The late-afternoon sun beamed down, bathing it in a pool of warm light, setting off the brilliance of the simple architecture.

      They drove through an arched entrance and into the courtyard, which the monastery wrapped around in a square.

      No sooner had they stopped when the heavy oak front door flew open and a petite, raven-haired woman appeared.

      Donatella. Luca’s mother.

      Throughout the journey back to Sicily, Grace had thought with varying degrees of emotion about her mother-in-law.

      Donatella had never conformed to the stereotype of the traditional fire-breathing monster-in-law. If a little distant, she had treated Grace with nothing but courtesy and respect. All the same, Grace had never been that comfortable in her company, had always felt if Donatella had been able to choose a wife for her son, she would have chosen someone with traditional Sicilian values. The kind of woman Luca had sworn he never wanted her to be because he loved her exactly as she was. The type of woman he now wanted her to become.

      She had no idea what kind of welcome she could expect from her.