Tempted By The Bridesmaid

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...

“Zio! I think I see Freda!”

“Who’s Freda?”

“Freda’s the dog!”

“Right.”

“And it is a her! She’s a her!”

“Who? The dog?”

“The trainer!”

Pia was clapping with excitement now and Luca couldn’t help but crack a smile. His first genuine one in the last twenty-four hours.

“Zio! Comb your hair. She’s almost here!”

Luca laughed outright. Fat lot of good a comb would do with the rest of him covered in sawdust and paint.

A far cry from his Armani-suited and booted days at his consultancy in Rome. The one none of his colleagues had been able to believe he’d just up and leave for a life in the hinterlands. He wouldn’t have wished the life lessons he’d had to learn that night on anyone. His cross to bear. The suits were moth food as far as he was concerned.

He tugged both hands through his hair and messed it up werewolf-style.

“Suitable?”

Pia gave his “makeover” the kind of studious inspection to which only a sixteen-year-old could add gravitas, then rolled her eyes.

“It’s not my fault if you’re a fashion plate,” he teased.

“I’m trying to save you from yourself,” Pia shot back. “What if she’s a beautiful blonde and you fall in love?”

“Nice try, Pia. I’m officially off the market.”

“Officially off your rocker, more like,” she muttered with an eye roll. “Look! They’re turning onto the bridge!”

He spotted the vehicle, then looked out beyond the road and took in the sparkle of the sun upon the Adriatic Sea. Italy’s most famed coastline. Croatia and Montenegro were somewhere out there in the distance. Dozens of ports where the world’s billionaires parked their superyachts. The price tag of just one of those would have him up and running in no time.

He gave himself a short sharp shake. This wasn’t the time for self-pity or envy. It was time to prove he was worthy of the name he’d been given. The name he hoped would stay on this village he now called home.

“Shall we go and greet our new guest?” Luca flourished a hand in the direction of the approaching vehicle, even though his niece already had the wheels of her chair in motion.

* * *

Fran had to remind herself to breathe. Way up there on the hilltop was the most beautiful village she’d ever seen. Golden stone. Archways everywhere. The hillsides were terraced in graduated “shelves.” If one could define countless acres of verdant wildflower meadows and a generous sprinkling of olive trees to be the “shelves” of a mountainside.

It was almost impossible to focus on driving, let alone the figures coming into view in the courtyard at the end of the bridge. She rolled down the window to inhale a deep breath of air. Meadow grass. The tang of the sea. The sweetness of fruit ripening on trees.

Heaven.

For the first time in just about forever, Fran wondered how she was going to find the strength to leave.

Was that...? Wait a minute.

All the air shot out of her lungs.

Long, lean and dark haired was no anomaly in Italy, but she recognized this particular long, lean, dark-haired man. As she clapped eyes on the tall figure jogging alongside the beaming girl in the wheelchair, her heart rate shot into overdrive.

Fight or flight kicked in like something crazy. Her skin went hot and cold, then hot again. Not that it had anything to do with the picture-perfect jawline and cheekbones now squaring off in front of her SUV.

No wonder Beatrice had been all mysterious and tight-lipped last night.

Un-freakin’-believable.

Mr. You-and-I-Will-Never-Be-Friends was her new boss.

Chills skittered along her arms as their gazes caught and locked.

From the steely look in his eyes he hadn’t exactly erased her from his memory either.

From the flip-flop of warmth in her tummy, her body hadn’t forgotten all that glossy dark hair, tousled like a lusty he-man ready to drag her into a cave and—

Silver linings, Fran. Think of the silver linings. He hates you, so flirting isn’t something you need to worry about.

The dogs were both standing up in the back now, mouths open, tongues hanging out as if smiling in anticipation of meeting Pia. Trust them to remember they were here to help—not ogle the local talent.

Take a deep breath... One...two...three... Here goes nothing.

She pulled the car up to where the pair were waiting, then jumped out and ran around the back to the dogs. The dogs would be the perfect buffer for meeting—

“Francesca.”

Gulp! His voice was still all melted chocolate and a splash of whiskey. Or was it grappa because they were in Italy? Whatever. It was all late-night radio and she liked it. Precisely the reason to pretend she didn’t by saying absolutely nothing.

“We meet again.”

Mmm-hmm. All she could do was nod. Luca had looked a treat in his fancy-schmancy suit yesterday, but now, with a bit of sawdust... Mmm. The sleeves of his chambray shirt were rolled up enough to show forearms that had done hard graft...and he wore a pair of hip-riding moleskin trousers that looked as if they’d seen their fair share of DIY...

Mamma mia!

Of all the completely gorgeous, compellingly enigmatic Italians needing an assistance dog for his...

“Allow me to introduce my niece, Pia.”

Fran shook herself out of her reverie.

Niece! Nieces were nice.

“Yes! Pia—of course.” She swept a few stray wisps of hair behind her ear and turned her full attention on the teenager whose smile was near enough splitting her face in two. “I bet you’re far more interested in meeting these two than me.”

They all turned to face the back of her SUV, where two big furry heads were panting away in anticipation of meeting their new charge. Fran deftly unlocked the internal cage after commanding the two canines to sit.

“If you’d just back your chair up a bit, Pia. They are both really excited to meet you.”

“Both?” Luca’s voice shuddered down her spine.

“Yes, both,” she answered as solidly as she could. “Not everyone gets off on the right foot when they first meet.”

She lifted her gaze to meet his.

Luca’s eyebrow quirked.

“Is that so? I thought dogs were instinctive about knowing a good match.”

“Dogs are,” Fran parried, with a little press and push of her lips. “People sometimes need a second chance to get things right.”

Luca’s eyebrow dipped, then arced again, and just when she was expecting a cutting remark she saw it—the kindness she’d knew she’d seen lurking somewhere in those smoky brown eyes of his.

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