Page 20 of My Fake Italian Marriage

“I’m the one who pushed Evan for more of a commitment, remember?” Cleo protested. Another Mama’s Boy, though she hadn’t realised it at the time.

Sarah arched an eyebrow. “Or maybe you pushed Evan for a commitment because you knew it would make him back off?” She turned off the tarred provincial road onto a narrower farm road, and Cleo finally noticed that they were not headed to Castel Sant’Angelo. “Where are we going?”

“We’ve been invited to lunch with the Rossi family.”

Cleo remembered the Rossis, a big boisterous family of farmers who reminded her of her own family. Their daughter, Beatrice, a good friend of Sarah’s, ran a taverna on the farm.

It was on the taverna’s terrace, with a view over a valley of poppy-strewn wheat fields, that the family met for Sunday lunch. In the distance lay the same abbey Cleo had run to again this morning.

“Benvenuta.” The family patriarch Alberto greeted them, hugging Sarah and kissing Cleo on both cheeks. Sarah’s husband, Tommaso, already sat at one end of the long table, engrossed in conversation with Alberto’s younger son, Daniele. Both men looked up at their arrival, and Daniele quickly moved over on the bench to make room for Cleo. He was good-looking, in a less refined, more rugged way than Luca Fioravanti, and dressed in fashionably ripped jeans. It was a pity Daniele was too young for her, because he was the kind of man she wanted to fall for: down-to-earth, a man not afraid of hard work, and who, though he clearly respected his parents, was not afraid to stand up to them for what he believed, as was evident from the heated debate about a local election that endured for half the meal.

The food was unsurprisingly delicious. Course followed course, antipasti and pasta, then a rich, slow-cooked beef and red wine stew with a delicate peppery after-taste, wiped up with thick chunks of Sarah’s home-made Tuscan bread. And there was red wine. Not served out of bottles—or boxes—but in plain glass jugs. “Straight from the cask,” Tommaso told her proudly.

This wine, thankfully, tasted well matured. “Smooth on the palate,” Sarah said, and Cleo filed the phrase away in case she needed to sound like she knew something about wine.

The terrace was full of people, neighbours, extended cousins, grandparents and young children. Cleo leaned back, made lazy by the good food and wine, and watched the children dart under the sprinkler that sprayed across the lawn, just as she and her brothers and cousins had done as kids. The voices around her might be speaking a different language, and the food might be different, but this family gathering was no different from the Sunday lunches of her childhood.

“Is that wise?” Beatrice asked her father with a frown, waving at the sprinklers.

“Let them enjoy the water while they can. If there’s rationing in the summer, then…” He shrugged helplessly.

Cleo knew that shrug. She’d lived through drought years in South Africa, and her cousin Thalia had lost her job thanks to the most recent drought, when the fruit farm where she’d been working let go a third of its staff due to declining production.

“Is water a big problem here?” she asked. And what would that mean for the Fioravanti vineyard’s already precarious position?

She caught the hesitant glance between Alberto and Tommaso.

“Rain has been scarce the last few springs,” Alberto explained. “And a dry spring can mean a dry summer.”

“Some vineyards are lucky and have their own water sources, so they don’t rely on the municipal supply,” Tommaso added. “Some are not as lucky.”

“The Fioravanti vineyard?”

Another look was exchanged.

“What?” she demanded.

“Water is the reason for the tension between our vineyards,” Tommaso answered. “At Castel Sant’Angelo, we have our own natural spring. Giovanni tried to get his hands on that water supply by less than ethical means. As you know, he sold shares in his own vineyard to finance his attempted take-over of Castel Sant’Angelo, and it’s only thanks to Kevin, who bought up those shares for Sarah, that the attempt failed.” He shrugged.

Now why wasn’t that surprising? Cutting corners appeared to be Giovanni’s modus operandi. But his desperate bid for the spring meant that the Fioravanti vineyard was one of the unlucky ones with no independent water source. She rubbed the back of her neck. “Is that vineyard a lost cause?”

Tommaso’s usually serious expression brightened, the way Evan’s had when he’d driven in that ridiculously impractical Lamborghini. “Not at all. There was a time when Fioravanti wines were sought after and well respected, and they could be again. When he couldn’t force us to sell, Giovanni used your bank’s money instead to install an expensive drip irrigation system, and to introduce some other innovations that have made Fioravanti one of the most technologically advanced wineries in the area.”

Sarah groaned. “Oh no! Now that you’ve got him talking about wine, he won’t talk about anything else for the rest of the afternoon!”

Cleo grinned. “I don’t mind.” She leaned her chin in her hand and looked at Tommaso. “Tell me more.”

Tommaso didn’t need to be asked twice. “The Fioravanti estate is perfectly situated, with a range of mineral-rich soils and different elevations to add complexity to the wines, and our subzone in the southern part of thecomunebenefits from lots of sunshine and warmer temperatures, balanced with the cooling effects of the Orcia River.”

“If it has so much going for it, why is the vineyard struggling to stay profitable?”

Tommaso glanced at Alberto, as if looking for moral support. “Their problem isn’t resources, it’s the quality of the wine itself. Wine blending is an art as well as a skill. The vintner needs to evaluate each barrel, and then decide how to mix them—and when—to get the perfect balance of structure, earthiness, fruit and spice. Sometimes a combination works, and sometimes it doesn’t. For Giovanni, it tends to be more of the latter.”

Over the course of that lazy Sunday afternoon, with the sunshine angling across the green hills, and the sound of children’s laughter and the hum of conversation as a backdrop, Cleo learned more about winemaking than she’d thought possible. Almost enough to feel ready to return to Giovanni’s desk on Monday morning.

* * *

Cleo hadn’t done anything as banal as typing up invoices since she was seventeen and working part-time in the office of the wine farm where her father worked. Her Aunty Rolene, the farm’s accountant, had taught Cleo to file, input data and do basic admin. Cleo had saved every penny from that after-school job, along with the money she’d received for birthdays and Christmases, since she’d been old enough to open her first bank account. But no matter how many hours she worked after school, it was never going to be enough to cover the cost of university tuition.

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