A Mother for His Daughter

‘I see your point,’ he said.

‘Besides, the world gets smaller every day. What with the internet and cable TV, nowhere is really isolated any more.’

His dark eyes looked through her, trying to determine if she was teasing him. ‘So they tell me,’ he finally said, a cheek crease adding impact to the yummy eye crinkles.

Flushed and flustered by her responses to the man’s charming smiles, Gracie stuck her head back out the window, drinking in the cool fresh air. The villa looked quaint, and particular to the region. She would not have been surprised if Luca informed her they still sent post via messengers on horseback.

‘You may have access to all means of communication I have at my disposal while you are here, Gracie. Mi casa, su casa,’ he assured her, and she found it disconcerting but at the same time kind of fabulous that he seemed able to read her thoughts.

Once in front of the house, the tyres crunched to a halt on the gravel. They were met by a number of household staff and a huge black dog tumbled from the large front door and down the ten steps to the driveway.

The humans babbled in Italian over the top of one another, and the big black dog bundled straight up to Luca, throwing itself at him until his paws rested on his chest. Luca ruffled him about the ears yet didn’t break conversational stride with his staff for a moment.

Gracie half expected Mila to be bundled up in the arms of a nanny but none came. She remained resolutely attached to her father’s side, rubbing the dog’s tummy.

Finally, Gracie’s host turned to her. He made quite a picture with his pretty daughter standing silently at one side and his large black dog sitting on the other.

‘My staff have been apprised as to your role here. I will let you acquaint yourself with them as you go. And this,’ Luca ruffled the massive dog’s ear, ‘is Caesar.’

Caesar greeted Gracie with a loud woof that she felt from head to toe. She waved back, happy to keep her distance, her only real experience with dogs being her friend Kelly’s cuddle-sized Maltese terrier.

‘What is he?’ she asked.

‘He’s a Newfoundland.’

‘Are you sure? I could have sworn he was a bear.’

Mila giggled. ‘There are no bears in Tuscany. There are wild boars. But no bears.’

‘Great,’ Gracie said, suddenly wishing herself back in Australia, where one could find the deadliest snakes and spiders in the world but where the chances of meeting a wild boar in your back yard were slim to none.

‘And where is Gran-nonna?’ Gracie asked, her voice thin.

Luca cut a glance to the cottage, which stood several metres to the right of the house. ‘She lives next door. I am sure you will meet her soon.’ He held out an arm. ‘For now, please, follow Cat; she will show you to your room.’

Gracie nodded. Amongst the gaggle of staff, a young woman bowed her head and Gracie figured she was Cat.

‘Venuto,’ the girl said. ‘Come.’

Gracie’s backpack was already being moved off in another direction by one of the men so she had little choice but to venuto as ordered.

Inside the house was even more beautiful than on the outside. It was elegant yet comfortable, though it did not show any of the usual evidence that a four-year-old was in residence. Gracie remembered when her half-brother and half-sister were young; their house had been strewn with toy trucks and dolls, with board-game tokens taking up pride of place on side-tables alongside the more adult bric-à-brac. Luca’s grounds, with their sprawling vineyard, had promised a working home, but the inside looked more like something out of Architectural Digest.

Gracie followed Cat up a large staircase to her room, which turned out to be a small suite with a queen-sized canopy bed, a sitting room by curtained French windows and an en suite. The room smelt like freshly laundered sheets and was twice the size of her room in her hostel, which had slept eight snoring backpackers who were mostly into double-figure days of wearing the same unwashed clothes.

She whistled a steady stream of air. ‘Jeepers creepers.’

Cat looked to her in confusion but Gracie just smiled and gave her two-thumbs-up, the international sign that all was good. Cat looked relieved and sent Gracie her own tentative two-thumbs-up to show she understood, and then she left, closing the door behind her.

Gracie sat on her bed and waited, having no idea what was expected of her. Five minutes of waiting was all she could take. There was no telephone in her room, and, itching to hear from the Australian Embassy, she went in search of one, or a messenger on horseback; whatever was available.

Besides, it was Saturday night. Kelly and Cara would be on the next plane over if she didn’t contact them soon. But for the first time in…forever, she didn’t feel like confiding in them. In saying aloud, to them, to those who cared for her, that she still hadn’t found her dad.

At least with Luca it was new and fresh, not feeling as if she had to explain herself all over again to the same people. People who loved her, people who would have come over to help her if she had let them, but people who had their lives so together it hurt Gracie to think about them. And it hurt that it hurt her to think about them.

She would call the embassy then go to bed. It was already Sunday morning in Australia, so she had technically missed Saturday Night Cocktails anyway. The girls could wait until the next day, or maybe the next week, when hopefully she would have something of consequence to say.

Once downstairs, Gracie heard Luca’s voice. He was having a one-sided conversation behind a half-closed door. She sidled up to the door and listened. It hardly helped she only recognised one word in ten, and none of those words were ‘Antonio’ or ‘Graziano’. Nevertheless, she could not help peeking around the corner.

Luca was seated behind a grand wooden desk, which accommodated a computer, a fax machine and a photocopier.

Gracie realised she had no idea what the guy did for a crust, but by the look of his home, and the state-of-the-art office set-up, whatever it was he earned a pretty penny. No wonder he could afford to hire help on a whim. But she wasn’t really hired, was she? They were doing each other a favour.

A sweet gurgle caught her attention. Mila was sitting on a rug on the floor with a doll and a toy palomino horse having a conversation in her lap. The great Caesar lay behind her, and she leaned against his immense bulk.

Gracie could tell Luca was not happy with whoever was on the other end of the phone but he was keeping his voice down for his daughter’s sake. His daughter, who it seemed went nowhere but at her father’s side.

A warm glow threatened to overcome her. They looked like something out of an advertisement. Father, daughter, warmth, wealth. The perfect family, except for one thing—the missing mother.

Gracie wondered what she had been like, the woman who had managed to land such an exquisite man and produce such a gorgeous little girl. She must have been something else. She must have been sorely missed. And she would be darned difficult to replace.

‘Buonjourno,’ a gravelly voice called from behind Gracie.

‘Jeepers creepers!’ Gracie shouted, spinning so fast she slammed against the outer wall with a thud.

A tall woman dressed in head-to-toe black, with silver hair dragged back into a low bun, looked down her glorious Roman nose. This had to be Luca’s grandmother, Mila’s great-grandmother. She had the same elegant height, the same aristocratic cheekbones and the same intelligent brown eyes as her grandson.

‘So you are the new English tutor,’ the woman said in proud, thickly accented English, obviously awaiting a more dignified response to her arrival than jeepers creepers.

‘That’s me,’ Gracie returned brightly. ‘And you just have to be…Mila’s gran-nonna.’ She had had to pause so as not to name the woman Pino, after Mila’s horse.

Gracie waited for the utterly sensible questions that would surely come next:

Who were her family? That she barely knew.

Where had she worked previously? Croupier in the high-rollers room of Crown Casino in Melbourne, Australia.

Main duties? Fending off wandering hands and marriage proposals from oil barons and visiting billionaires.

Gracie knew that her answers would not have made her past a first interview for such a position in any good home. But Gran-nonna said not another word, so Gracie nodded and filled the silence ably.

‘English tutor extraordinaire,’ she gabbled. ‘Here for Mila. To teach her to talk like a right little Aussie.’

The longer she went the less she could stop the verbal incontinence. It was as though she was determined to frighten the stern look from the older lady’s face. But she was shocked to her little cotton socks when it worked.

A cheeky glimmer lit the old lady’s dark brown eyes. ‘Good,’ Gran-nonna said. ‘Our little Mila needs someone with your…skills around here. As does Luca.’ Before Gracie could work her way through that cryptic statement Gran-nonna went on, ‘You see, our Luca was once a lion.’

Gracie gave her a tight smile, having no idea what one could say to such a statement. ‘A lion, you say?’