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“No surprise there. But I’m still amazed he took time off. It must’ve been one heck of a health scare.”
Fran nodded. She knew Bea’s wariness was legitimate. The number of times Fran had thought this would be the time her father finally made good on his promise to spend some quality father-daughter time...
“It was actually quite sweet. I got to learn a lot more about him as we journeyed through time via the cars.” She smiled at the memory of a Model T that had elicited a story about one of his cousins driving up a mountainside backward because the engine had only been strong enough in reverse. “Even though we all know cars aren’t my passion, I learned more about him in that one weekend than I have...ever, really.”
He’d thought he was going to die—late at night, alone in his office. And it had made him change direction, hadn’t it? Forced him to realize a factory couldn’t give hugs or bake your favorite cookies or help you out when you were elderly and in need of some genuine TLC or a trip down memory lane.
“We’ve even been having phone calls and video-link chats since I left. Every day.”
Bea nodded. Impressed now. “Well, if those two hounds of yours are anything to go by, it’ll be a successful business in no time. Who knows? I might need one of those itty-bitty handbag assistance dogs to keep me chirpy!”
“Ooh! That’s their specialty. Want a display?” Without waiting for an answer, she signaled directions at her specially trained pooches, “Come on, pups! Bedtime for Bea!”
Fran was rewarded with a full peal of Beatrice’s giggles when the dogs went up on their hind legs on either side of the bed and pulled at the soft duvet until it was right up to her chin.
Snuggled up under her covers, Bea turned her kind eyes toward Fran. “Grazie, Francesca. You’re the best. Mamma has promised caffe latte and your favorite brioche con cioccolata if we head over to the palazzo tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll be up early, so don’t worry about me. I’ll just grab something from this enormous fruit bowl before I shoot off.” She feigned trying to lift the huge bowl and failing. “Better save my back. I’ve got to be there at nine. Fit and well!”
“At Clinica Mont di Mare?”
“Aha! I knew I’d get something from you beyond the sat-nav coordinates!”
Bea gave her a sidelong glance, then shook her head. “All I’m going to say is keep an open mind.”
“Sounds a bit scary.”
Bea gave her hand a squeeze. “Of all the people in the world, I know you’re the best one for this particular job.”
“Thanks, friend.”
Fran fought the tickle of tears in her throat. Bea was her absolute best friend and she trusted her implicitly. The fact Bea was still speaking to her after today’s debacle made her heart squeeze tight.
“Un bacione.” She dropped a kiss on her friend’s forehead and gave her hand a final squeeze before heading to her own bedroom and climbing into the antique wrought iron–framed bed.
“Freda, come! Covers!” Might as well get as much practice in as possible.
The fluffy Bernese mountain dog padded over, did as she had been bid, then received a big ol’ cuddle. Fran adored Freda, with her big brown eyes. The three-year-old dog was ever patient, ever kind. In contrast to the other full-of-beans dog she’d brought along.
“Edison! Come, boy!”
The chocolate Lab lolloped up to the side of the bed to receive his own cuddle, before flopping down in a contented pile of brown fur alongside Freda.
The best of friends. Just like her and Bea. It would be so hard to say goodbye.
Never mind. Tomorrow was a new beginning.
Exactly what she needed after a certain someone’s face had been burned into her memory forever.
“You and I will never be friends.”
Luca’s hardened features pinged into her mind’s eye. No matter the set of his jaw, she’d seen kindness in his eyes. Disbelief at what was happening. And resignation. A trinity of emotions that had pulled at her heartstrings and then yanked hard, cinching them in a tight noose. No matter how foul he’d been, she knew she would always feel compassion for him. Always wonder if he’d found someone worthy of his love.
CHAPTER THREE (#u17cae29b-0ec2-52aa-b6b6-58a69ed0be08)
“HOW MUCH?” LUCA’S jaw clenched tight. He was barely able to conceal his disbelief. Another five million to get a swathe of family suites prepared?
He looked at the sober-faced contractor. He was the best, and his family had worked with the Montovano family for years. In other words, five million was a steal.
Five million he didn’t have, thanks to his father’s late nights at the poker table. Very nice poker tables, in the French Riviera’s most exclusive casinos. Casinos where losing was always an option.
Luca’s eyes flicked up to the pure blue sky above him. Now that his father was pushing piles of chips up there, somewhere in the heavenly hereafter, it wasn’t worth holding on to the anger anymore. The bitterness.
His gaze realigned with the village—his inheritance...his millstone. Finding peace was difficult when he had a paraplegic niece to care for and a half-built clinic he was supposed to open in a week’s time.
Basta! He shook off the ill will. Nothing would get in the way of providing for Pia. Bringing her every happiness he could afford. Be it sunshine or some much-needed savings—he would give her whatever he had. After the losses she’d suffered...
“Dottore?” The contractor’s voice jarred him back into the moment.
“Looks like we’re going to have to do it in phases, Piero. Mi perdoni.”
Luca didn’t even bother with a smile—they both knew it wouldn’t be genuine—and shook hands with the disappointed contractor. They walked out to the main gate, where he had parked. Luca remained in the open courtyard as the van slowly worked its way along the kilometer-long bridge that joined the mountaintop village to the fertile seaside valley below.
He took in a deep breath of air—just now hinting at all the wildflowers on the brink of appearing. It was rare for him to take a moment like this—a few seconds of peace before heading back into the building site that needed to be transformed into an elite rehabilitation clinic in one week’s time.
He scanned the broad valley below him. Where the hell was this dog specialist? Time was money. Money he didn’t have to spare. Not that Canny Canines was charging him. Bea had said something about fulfilling pro bono quotas and rescue dogs, but it hadn’t sat entirely right with him. He might have strained the seams of his bag of ducats to the limit, but he wasn’t in the habit of accepting charity. Not yet anyway.
The jarring clang of a scaffolding rail reverberated against the stone walls of the medieval village along with a gust of blue language. Luca’s fists tightened. He willed it to be the sound of intention rather than disaster. There was no time for mistakes—even less for catastrophe.
Sucking in another deep breath, Luca turned around to face the arched stone entryway that led into the renamed “city.” Microcity, more like. Civita di Montovano di Marino. His family’s name bore the legacy of a bustling medieval village perched atop this seaside mountain—once thriving in the trades of the day, but now left to fade away to nothing after two World Wars had shaken nearly every family from its charitable embrace.
Just another one of Italy’s innumerable ghost towns—barely able to sustain the livelihood of one family, let alone the hundred or so who had lived there so many years ago.
But in one week’s time all that would change, when the Clinica Mont di Mare opened its doors to its first five patients. All wheelchair bound. All teenagers. Just like his niece. Only, unlike his niece, they all had parents. Families willing to dedicate their time and energy to trying rehabilitation one more time when all the hospitals had said there was no more hope.
A sharp laugh rasped against his throat. After the accident, that was exactly what the doctors at the hospital working with Pia had said. “She’ll just have to resign herself to having little to no strength.”
Screw that.
Montovanos didn’t resign themselves to anything. They fought back. Hard.
His hand crept up to the thin raised line of his scar and took its well-traveled route from chin to throat. A permanent reminder of the promise he’d made to his family to save their legacy.
“Zio! Are they here yet?”
Luca looked up and smiled. Pia might not be his kid, but she had his blood pumping through her veins. Type A positive. Two liters’ worth. Montovano di Marino blood. She was a dead ringer for her mother—his sister—but from the way she was haphazardly bumping and whizzing her way along the cobbled street instead of the wheelchair-ready side path to get to their favorite lookout site, he was pretty sure she’d inherited her bravura from him.
Pride swelled in him as he watched her now—two years after being released from hospital—surpassing each of his expectations with ease.
Breathless, his niece finally arrived beside him. “Move over, Zio Luca. I want to see when she gets here.”
“What makes you so sure the trainer is a she?”
“Must be my teenage superpowers.” Pia smirked. “And also Bea told me it was a she. Girl power!”
Another deep hit of pride struck him in the chest as he watched her execute a crazy three-point turn any Paralympian would have been hard-pressed to rival and then punch up into the morning sunshine, shouting positive affirmations.
“Never let her down. You’re all she has now.”
The words pounded his conscience as if he’d heard them only yesterday. His sister’s last plea before her fight for survival had been lost.
His little ray of sunshine.
A furnace blast of determination was more like it.
Pia wanted—needed—to prove to herself that she could do everything on her own. Her C5 vertebra fracture might have left her paralyzed from the waist down, but it hadn’t crushed her spirits as she’d powered through the initial stages of recovery at the same time as dealing with the loss of her parents and grandparents all in one deadly car crash. She had even spoken of training for the Paralympics.
And then early-onset rheumatoid arthritis had thrown a spanner in the works. Hence the dog.
They both scanned the approaching roads. One from the north, the other from the south and their own road—a straight line from the civita to the sea, right in the middle. There was the usual collection of delivery vehicles and medical staff preparing the facility for its opening. And inspectors. Endless numbers of inspectors.
He was a doctor, for heaven’s sake—not a bureaucrat.
“Just think, Pia...in one short week that road and this sky will be busy with arriving patients. Ambulances, helicopters...”
She let out a wistful sigh. “Friends!”
“Patients,” he reminded her sternly, lips twitching against the smile he’d rather give.
“I know, Uncle Luca. But isn’t it part of the Clinica Mont di Mare’s ethos that rehab covers all the bases. And that means having friends—like me!”
“Remember, chiara, they won’t all be as well-adjusted and conversation starved as you.”
He gave her plaits a tug, only to have his hand swatted away. She was sixteen. Too old for that sort of thing. Too young to find him interesting 24/7. Having other teens here would be good for her.
“They’re all in wheelchairs, right?”
“You know as well as I do they are. And thank you for being a guinea pig for all the doctors here in advance of their coming.”
“Anything for Mont di Mare!” Pia’s face lit up, then just as quickly clouded. “Do you think they’ll try to take my dog? The other patients, I mean? What if they need the dog more than I do?”
Luca shook his head. “No. Absolutely not. This is solely for you.”
“What if they get jealous and want one, too?”
“That’s a bridge to cross further down the line, Pia. Besides,” he added gently, “they’ll have their families with them.”
“I have you!” Pia riposted loyally.
“And I have you.” He reached out a hand and she met it for a fist bump—still determined to make him hip.
Hard graft for Pia, given everything he’d been dealing with over the past few months in the lead-up to opening the clinic. Endless logistics. Paint samples. Cement grades. Accessibility ramps. Safety rails. And the list went on. It was as if he was missing a part of himself, not being able to practice medicine.
It’s what your family would have wanted. You’re doing it for them. Medicine will wait.
“Do you think that’s her?” Pia’s voice rose with excitement.
In the distance they could see a sky blue 4x4 coming along the road from the north, with a telltale blinking light. It was turning left.
“Can’t you remember anything about her at all?” Pia looked up at him, eyes sparkling with excitement.
“Sorry, amore. Beatrice didn’t say much. Just said it was a friend she’d stake our own friendship on.”
“Wow! Beatrice is an amazing friend. That means a lot. Not like—” Pia stopped herself and grimaced an apology. “I mean, Marina was never really very nice anyway! You deserve better.”
He grunted. There wasn’t much to say on the matter. Not anymore. His thoughts were all for Bea and her privacy. He’d offered her a cottage up here at Mont di Mare, but she’d said she needed some serious alone time.
“Do you know what Dr. Murro and I called Marina?” Pia asked, a mischievous smile tweaking at the edges of her sparkle-glossed lips.
He shook his head. “Do I want to know?”
“Medusa!” She put her hands up beside her head and turned them into a tangle of serpents, all the while making creepy snake faces.
“Charming, chiara. Next time you go to the gym to work with Dr. Murro, please do tell him that perhaps a bit less chat about my defunct love life and a splash more work might be in order.”
“Zio!” Pia widened her big puppy-dog eyes. “We can’t help it if she was horrible.”
Luca gave one of her plaits another playful tug. Just what a man needed. To find out that no one liked his girlfriend all along. Then again...being upset about Marina was pretty much the last thing on his mind. Making the clinic a running, functioning entity was most important.
Six months. That was how far what little money he had left would last before the bank made good on their promise to repossess what had been under his family’s care for generations.
Pia shrugged unapologetically, then pulled the pair of binoculars she always had looped around her neck up to her eyes, to track the car that was still making its way toward the turnoff to Mont di Mare.
“I hope Freda looks exactly like she did in the pictures Bea forwarded. And Edison. He’s definitely a he, and Freda’s a she, but I’m glad the trainer is a she, too.”
“Why’s that?”
“It’ll be nice to have a grown-up friend.”
“You have me!”
“I know, but...” Her eyes flicked away from his.
She’d always been so good about making him feel worthy of the enormous role of caring for her. And yet at moments like these...he knew there were gaps to be filled.
“It’ll be nice to have a girl to talk to about...you know...things.”
Luca looked away. Of course she could do with a woman in her life. Someone to fill even a small portion of the hole left when her mother had been killed in that insane accident. A massive truck hurtling toward them from the other side of the tunnel with nowhere else to go...
