The Year of Luminous Love (22 page)

Arie said, “We live near Nashville, in Tennessee,” then launched into an account of the state.

As the group trudged up the street and the stacks of stone steps, Garret fell in with Eden, whose head was buzzing with questions. “How do you land jobs in different countries?”

“It helps to speak two or three languages. English is preferred for shop work. I man the coffee shop, Tom’s working as a bellman in the only hotel in town with a few of the others, and Lorna’s selling tours for a Cortona travel business.”

“And then you quit and move on?”

“That’s right. Going to France next. Jacques says we can crash at his family farm.”

“How do you travel?”

“Trains, mostly. And we walk.”

Eden was astounded. Who just took off months at a time to travel? Maybe retired people with money, but kids in their twenties? “When do you plan to go home?”

“When I feel like it. Look, my mum and dad are good people, but I look at them, working hard to pay for a mortgage and cars and furniture. They take one vacation a year.” A grin split
his face. “Not for me. Not yet. World’s a big place and I want to see all of it before I settle in.” He spread his arms. “I keep a journal. Take photos. Try to sell an article to a magazine now and then.”

“You dream big.”

“I do! But I also act on my dreams. And that makes a difference. Dream or act. Safety, like my folks, or adventure. No contest for Garret Locklin. None at all.”

“Hey, look. Here’s a brochure for a winery that’s not too far away. We can take a tour, then do a tasting.” Ciana brandished her find in the air while having breakfast on the patio.

“That should be fun,” Eden said over her mug of steaming coffee.

“Most people in my family drink beer, so I have the palate of a gerbil,” Arie offered.

Eden snickered. “My one benefit of hanging with Tony was drinking good wine. He loved the stuff, so he only drank the best, although he preferred French wines. I think we should give Italian wines equal opportunity.”

After lunch and while Cortona rested, Ciana drove the three of them up into the hills on a serpentine road to the Bertinalli Vineyards, a long-established vineyard fronted by long-abandoned stone watchtowers that stood like silent sentries. Beyond the walls lay fields of well-tended grapevines, heavy with leaves and clusters of hanging grapes ready for harvest.

After parking, they gathered with a group of tourists signed up for a tour of the winery on a tiled loggia. Conducted by a young woman, the tour led them into large stone buildings heady with the scents of wine tinged with fruit and chocolate. Ciana saw stacks and rows of oak barrels—harvests from years before, awaiting their time of perfect maturity.

Drawn to the outdoor sunlight, she slipped out the door and headed for the verdant fields. She tucked herself between the rows, away from the buildings, and leaned over the grapes, closing her eyes and sniffing the velvety clusters, swollen and heavy with juice. She crouched, dug her fingers into the soil, and examined it closely. She held a fistful in her palm, balancing the weight.

She was lost in the process when a man’s voice said,
“Signorina! Cosa stai facendo?”

Startled and with heart pounding, Ciana leaped to her feet. She thrust her hands behind her back like a child caught stealing cookies. “Oh! I … I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“English?” he asked.

“
Si
 … I mean, yes. American.”

The man was ruggedly handsome, with black hair and dark brown eyes, but he looked angry. “Do you know it is a crime to steal vine cuttings from Italian vineyards?” he said in excellent but accented English.

“But I’m not stealing anything. Honest.” She was petrified. What had she been thinking?

“And behind your back? What are you hiding from me,
signorina
?”

Guiltily she brought her hand around and opened her fist to show him. “Dirt,” she confessed. “I … I was studying your dirt.”

He looked incredulous.

She hurtled ahead with her explanation with one long rambling sentence. “I’m a farmer from Tennessee, really … your crop is amazing and I was looking at the soil … you know, what it’s made of … and what makes the grapes so wonderful … I’m on a winery tour, actually, but the fields are so beautiful I came over to study them and the soil and … and …”

He crossed his arms, holding her eye while she sputtered to a halt. His brown eyes narrowed. “And what does my soil say to you?”

Ciana shifted from foot to foot, realizing he was serious. She brought the clump to her nose, sniffed. “Rich in iron.” She squeezed the dirt in her palm into a clump. “Clay too. I have clay on my farm. Heavy, solid stuff. Thicker than this.”

He was nodding. “Perfect soil for growing wine grapes.”

“I grow vegetables, no grapes.” She let the soil drop back to the ground, then dusted her hand on the seat of her jeans. She held out her hand and blasted a smile at him. “Ciana Beauchamp.”

He took her hand and held on to it. “Enzo Bertinalli. My family has owned these vineyards for many generations.” He did not release her hand. “Beauchamp—French. They have always envied our vineyards.”

Just my luck
. She had to meet the owner, not some worker bee. She backed off on her smile. “I’m not a thief. My ancestors raised cotton and soybeans.”

His brown eyes had lost their hostility, and he seemed amused by her obvious discomfort. “That is good. Stealing grapevines from Italy is worthy of prison.”

Her heart bumped. “Dirt too?”

A wry smile broke across his face. “That is free.” He tucked her arm through his and began to walk toward the winery with
her in tow. “Perhaps we should return to your tour. Tell me, why are you in Italy?”

“I have two friends with me. We came because … well … because it’s Italy.” She saw that the tour had gathered back on the loggia and a man was behind a wooden bar pouring tastes of wine for the group. “There they are,” she said, relieved to see Arie and Eden in a line at the bar.

When Ciana walked to her friends on the arm of the man, both simply stared. She introduced her escort. Enzo offered each a courtly nod. “Are you farmers also?”

Arie and Eden shook their heads. “Just friends,” Arie said while Eden mouthed,
“What did you do?”
when Enzo wasn’t looking.

Totally embarrassed, Ciana ignored her.

Eden said brightly, “Glad to meet you. You have an amazing place. Gee, Ciana, you got a man. All I got today was this wineglass.” She twirled it by its stem.

Enzo laughed heartily. Ciana shot daggers at Eden.

“Come,
bella
Ciana, and her friends. I will let you taste some of the best wines my vineyard has to offer.”

“Oh, but we shouldn’t,” Ciana said, begging off his offer. “I’ve already imposed—”

“Speak for yourself,” Eden said, and smiled flirtatiously at Enzo.

“Come to my private cellar.” He led the girls inside the modern building behind the loggia designed for commerce. Crates of wine bottles stood along the walls, and in the center of the room were tables attractively arranged with Italian pottery, dishes, and seemingly every wine accoutrement known. “I will offer you some of my best vintages.”

Ciana balked. He smiled, showing his straight white teeth. Hard to resist him. He led them down a staircase and into a
large chilly room lined with wooden stacks reaching the ceiling. Inside every cubbyhole, a bottle of wine rested on its side. He pulled out chairs for each around a circular wood table, all the while talking about the history of his vineyard.

He pulled out bottles, examined labels, and placed some on the table or returned others to their slots. “You know not every year is perfect for the grapes. So much depends on the benevolence of Mother Nature. Too much rain, not so good. Too little, not so good.”

Ciana understood what he was saying. It was the same on her farm.

Enzo had a collection on the table, which he uncorked and poured gently into bowl-shaped glasses. “We let it breathe.” He picked up a phone receiver on the wall and said something in Italian. In less than fifteen minutes, a man appeared with a tray of bread and an assortment of cheeses. “To complement the wines and cleanse the palate.”

The four of them spent the afternoon savoring red wines, and Enzo talked of the Bertinallis’ storied past, of how the Greeks came through Tuscany after the Trojan War and how one general fell in love with the area. By the time they had sipped from every bottle, each attached to a story, all of them were laughing and giddy. When Enzo led them back upstairs, Ciana was surprised to see the sun was sinking behind a rise of distant hills.

“You must have dinner with me,” Enzo said. “I cannot send my lovely guests away without good food too. You are excellent company and a lovely surprise.”

They stayed, treated to his gracious hospitality and a dinner upstairs in his private apartment. They ate fish, pasta, salad, and fresh crusty bread, each course accompanied with a special wine, served by a woman and the man who’d brought
the cheese platter to the wine cellar. The meal took several hours and ended with espresso and gelato, rich Italian ice cream. When Enzo walked them to their car in the moonlight, he held Ciana back slightly and said, “I would like to see you again,
bella
Ciana.”

She was grateful for his hospitality and that he hadn’t called the Italian police for her trespassing, so she told him how to reach her at the villa. He kissed both her cheeks. “Until the next time.
Ciao, bella
.”

She slipped into the backseat, and Eden drove away with Arie humming some Americanized Italian song lyric. Ciana glanced through the back window and saw the tall, slim Enzo standing in the moonlight. With a heart-wrenching jolt, she suddenly had a vision of another man watching her leave. Jon Mercer. She took a deep breath. The wonderful afternoon at the winery faded. The memory of Jon had followed her across an ocean, all the way to Italy. She wondered if she would ever break free—or would she always be haunted by a man she could not have?

Arie liked coming into Cortona to write her emails to her family while Eden and Ciana languished in the sun at the villa. The coffee café had Internet access, and Garret always had a cheery word for her. Her chatty emails helped relieve some of her terrible guilt over not having been honest with them about her failed remission and true condition. Perhaps if they read how happy she was in Italy, they’d forgive her when it came time to confess.

Truth was, she felt good. Whatever the tumor was busy doing inside her, it wasn’t affecting her daily life so far. A blessing. As long as she felt fine, she pushed her health out of her mind. If only she could put it out of her body as easily.

The other reason she came was to contemplate the town’s various art treasures. She loved staring at Fra Angelico’s seminal work,
The Annunciation
, one of the most revered paintings in Italy. She never tired of touring the small museum with its Etruscan treasures or visiting the church of Santa Margherita,
built in the fourteenth century to hold the tomb of Margaret of Cortona, the city’s patron saint.

She sat in the warm sunlight, chuckling as she read her mother’s latest email, filled with gossipy tidbits. It ended with
Don’t faint, but Eric popped the question and Abbie said yes. We’re looking toward the spring for them to get married, so don’t you be having such a good time in Italy that you decide to stay. We miss you! Love, Mom and Dad
.

She missed home too. And she missed Jon Mercer. She’d grown accustomed to seeing him every day while they worked on training her horse. She missed the sight of him, the sound of his voice, his nearness as he whispered directions on how to get Caramel to execute a certain move. Arie had written him two chatty postcards in the month they’d been in Italy but lacked the courage to pour out her heart to him in a letter.

“Some tea?” Garret interrupted Arie’s thoughts.

She smiled up at him and nodded, and he placed a small pot of tea on the table. “Thanks.”

“You’re smiling. Good news?”

“My brother’s getting married next spring.”

“Love makes the world go round.” He lingered, then asked, “Mind if I sit with you a bit? No customers at the moment.”