Page 25 of The Italian's Innocent Cinderella

MAUDEWASASTOUNDEDat how easy it was to forget about London, her parents, her brother’s imminent wedding and a phoney engagement story doing the rounds courtesy of Mateo’s spiteful ex.

The truth was he could not have brought her to a more perfect spot when it came to escaping those thorny problems. His beautiful villa, with its stretching vistas of rolling hills and trellises heavy with grapes disappearing into the horizon, was so wonderfully peaceful that it was hardly surprising that her brain was finding it very easy to shut down.

It was also making Maude realise just how little time she had ever taken to really unwind. She had spent so many years keen to prove that she could pursue the career she wanted and be happy that most of her time was devoted to work.

Her degree had been enormously difficult, and afterwards she had launched herself into the job market without pausing for breath. While friends had taken a year out to travel or pick up casual work in new cities, she had been filling out online application forms for jobs and, once she had landed her first job, she had had no time to surface.

Total peace would have been achieved now had she not been so acutely aware of Mateo and the disturbing effect he had on her. For the past two days they had circled one another, making no mention of those fraught few moments when the world seemed to have stood still and she had had to fight off the yearning to drown in the temptation of touching him.

She’d pulled back. He’d pulled back. Common sense had been reinstated...

And since then work had continued, interrupted by a trip to three of the local towns, where she had wandered around on her own, dazzled by a scenery of jumbled sepia houses clambering up hills, nestled amidst lush greenery. Mateo, on one occasion, had joined her, taking her to a quaint antiques market and an ancient church, its walls decorated with Mediaeval and Renaissance art.

He had been informative, knowledgeable, charming and very, very polite, and Maude had hated it.

How on earth could shemissthe treacherous excitement of the forbidden? She justdid. He had awakened something in her and she was helpless to fight it.

Clearly, he had no such problem. Maybe he had sensed the attraction and was now in a hurry to ensure it came to nothing.

For the past two evenings, there had been company, one or other of his associates from the nearby estates, and as soon as they had gone he had excused himself and disappeared into the bowels of the villa to work.

Where was he now at a little after five in the afternoon? Giving her time to relax, he had said first thing that morning, over a breakfast of fresh breads served on the veranda by Luisa, the young girl who was the resident chef.

‘I won’t be back until reasonably late,’ he had apologised, glancing at his watch and rising to his feet, his body language letting her know that he was a guy who didn’t have time to hang around chatting. ‘But you can instruct the chef to prepare whatever you want for yourself this evening.’

He’d dispensed politeness and she’d responded in kind, murmuring something and nothing about a salad, while her eyes had skittered away from the temptation to drink him in. He was so dark, virile and stupidly sexy in a pair of cream chinos and a white linen shirt cuffed to the elbows and hanging over the waistband of the trousers. He should have looked sloppy but instead he looked way too hot for her peace of mind.

She should have been grateful for the brief reprieve from being in his company but instead, as she’d heard the purr of his sports car leaving, she’d felt a surge of silly disappointment which she’d had to squash by bracingly telling herself that the less she saw of him, the better.

In the morning, she would ask him about leaving. As in...when?

It was something they hadn’t discussed. He’d become submerged in work and she had fallen in step, working alongside him with the ease of familiarity, and enjoying the vision he was creating with the other vineyard owners for some of the tiny villages they did a lot to support.

On one occasion, she had met some of the people who had jobs in the various wineries. A spread had been laid out under an awning in the centre of one of the villages, in a square surrounded by old stone buildings with a tiny, well used church in the corner. Maude had become consumed by the sort of community spirit that was very hard to find in London. The sun had poured down from a milky blue sky and, intrigued, she had seen a different Mateo, a more relaxed Mateo, one who listened to everything the locals were saying and who communicated with them with curiosity and interest, keen to hear what had been going on. She had smiled when he had apologised for having stayed away for far too long, his Italian fast and his gestures so typically, exotically foreign.

Meanwhile, her mother had texted daily, filling her in on progress with the wedding and keeping a dignified and tactful silence on the subject of the engagement. Although, the day after they had arrived in Tuscany, she had confessed that she had got hold of the tabloid where the gossip had first hit the press and just couldn’t help being thrilled that her baby had finally found the man of her dreams.

And who could blame her? Because Mateo was a dream.

Maude fretted over what the next step in their ill-judged charade would be but, oh, how easy it was to put those niggling anxieties on hold over here.

How easy to live in this parallel universe, where life had taken on a technicolour clarity, and every minute was spent in a state of illicit heightened excitement.

And the surroundings... They were like nothing she had ever experienced, a world apart from middle class suburbia, which looked mundane in comparison.

Maude paused where she was for a few seconds and breathed it all in. For the first time, she was going to use the swimming pool. Mateo wasn’t going to be around, and she had told Luisa that she could head off early, as there would be no need to prepare an evening meal. After a lot of gesticulating, she had also managed to communicate to the smiling Italiannonnawho was the daily help that she too could leave ahead of schedule.

It was slightly cooler now but still very warm and the sky was a watercolour blend of deep blues, light blues and tinges of streaky orange.

In the distance, the hills were vague shapes cutting across the horizon, framing the rustle of green that fanned out in waves across the acres of Mateo’s estate.

The pool looked amazing and Maude walked towards it, not bothering to test the water or let her body adjust to the cold. She tossed her towel on one of the wooden loungers, along with the bag she had brought containing her sun block, her shades and a book she was having trouble finishing and dived in.

She was a strong swimmer. She had always loved the way she could hear herself really think when she was under water. She had no idea how many lengths she was doing. She picked up speed, slicing through the crisp, cold water, her body remembering all the flips and turns from way back when.

She was clearing her eyes, surfacing at the deep end, ready to do a few more laps before calling it a day, when she realised that she was no longer alone at the pool.

She swiped wet hair from her face and saw his feet first.

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