As expected, the wallet was empty. Money, credit cards were all gone. But what really appalled Leo was the fact that the slip of paper with Selena’s number had also vanished.
Renzo, his overseer, collected him from the hospital and drove him the fifty miles home to Bella Podena. As soon as he found himself among the rolling hills of Tuscany Leo began to relax. Whatever the surface turmoil of his life, his instincts were telling him that what really mattered was to be home, where his vines grew and his fields of wheat lay under a benevolent sun.
He was popular with his employees because he paid them generously, trusted them and let them get on with their jobs. For the last lap of the journey they waved and yelled to him, glad to see him back.
The Calvani lands were extensive. For the last few miles he was looking at his own fields, and even his own village. Morenza, a tiny community of medieval buildings, stood on Calvani land, at the foot of the incline that led up to Leo’s house. Its high street curved around the church, and a small duck pond, before leading out of the village and up through vines planted on the slope to catch the sun.
There at the top was the farmhouse, also medieval, made of stone, with a magnificent view down the valley. He entered it with a sigh of satisfaction, dropping his bags onto the floor and looking around him at the familiar things he loved.
There was Gina, with his favourite dish, already prepared and ready to serve. His favourite wine was at exactly the right temperature. His favourite dogs swarmed around his feet.
He ate a huge meal, kissed Gina on the cheek in thanks, and went to the room he used as a study, and from which he ran his estate. A couple of hours with Enrico, the assistant who supervised the paperwork during his absence, showed him that Enrico could manage this side of things perfectly well without him. He asked no more. The next day he would go over the land with men as close to the earth as himself.
He spent the next couple of hours on the telephone to his family, catching up on the news. Finally he went out and stood with a glass of wine, gazing down to the village, where the lights were coming on. He stood for a long time, listening to the breeze in the trees and the sound of bells echoing across the valley, and thought that he had never known such peace and beauty. And yet…
It was the perfect homecoming to the perfect place. But suddenly he felt alone as he had never done in his life before.
He went to bed and tried to sleep, but it was useless, and he got up and went downstairs to the study. In Texas it was early morning. It was Barton who answered.
‘Selena isn’t still there by any chance?’ he asked hopefully.
‘No, she left straight after you did. Just drove back here, collected Jeepers, and headed off. Didn’t she do great? Jeepers was just the horse she needed. She’s going to be a star with that animal.’
‘Great. Great.’ Leo tried to sound cheerful, but for a reason he didn’t want to explore he wasn’t pleased to hear of her success a world away. ‘Has she called you at all?’
‘Called yesterday to ask after Elliot. I told her he was doing fine.’
‘Did she ask after me?’ He’d promised himself not to ask that, but it came out anyway.
‘No, she never mentioned you. But I’m sure if you called her-’
Why the devil should I call her if she doesn’t care enough about me to ask? he thought.
‘Barton, I can’t call her. I got mugged and lost the paper with her mobile phone number. Can you let me have it?’
‘I would if I had it myself. I wouldn’t know how to contact her.’
‘Next time she calls, will you explain and get her to call me?’
‘Sure thing.’
‘Did she tell you where she was going?’
‘Reno-I think.’
‘I’ll leave a message for her there.’
He tried to concentrate on his coming visit to Venice, for the wedding of his younger half-brother, Guido, to his English fiancee, Dulcie. There would be another wedding the day before, when his uncle, Count Francesco Calvani, would marry Liza, his one-time housekeeper and the love of his life. That ceremony would be small and private.
He’d been looking forward to a cheerful family occasion, but now, suddenly, he didn’t have the heart for weddings.
Where was she? Why didn’t she contact him? Had she forgotten their night together so easily?
He sent emails to the rodeo web site at Reno, detailing his movements over the coming days, giving the phone number of his uncle’s home in Venice and his own mobile. For good measure he reminded her of his home number.
To the last minute he clung to the hope that she would telephone him. But the phone remained silent, and at last he left for Venice.
Leo had never been a man to brood. It was rare for a woman to pass out of his life against his will, but if it happened he’d always been positive. The world was full of laughing ladies, as easygoing as himself, with whom he could pass the time. Suddenly, that thought brought him no cheer.
He took the train from Florence to Venice, where there was a family motor boat waiting to convey him to the Palazzo Calvani on the Grand Canal. He arrived to find the family at supper. He kissed Liza, then his uncle, then Dulcie, Harriet, and Lucia, Marco’s mother. Guido was there too, and his cousin Marco. When he’d thumped them and been thumped back, the greetings were complete.
As he ate he tried to seem his normal self, and maybe he fooled his male relatives. But the women had sharper eyes, and when the meal was over Dulcie and Harriet corralled him onto the sofa like a pair of eager sheep dogs herding a lion, and settled one each side of him.
‘You’ve found her at last,’ Harriet said.
‘Her?’ he asked uneasily.
‘You know what I mean.
‘What’s her name?’ Dulcie demanded.
He gave up stalling. He wasn’t kidding them. ‘She’s called Selena,’ he admitted. I met her in Texas. We were both in the rodeo.’ He fell silent.
‘And?’ they asked eagerly.
‘She fell off. So did I.’
‘So you had something in common,’ Dulcie said, nodding.
‘A marriage of true minds,’ Harriet agreed.
‘I shouldn’t think minds had much to do with it,’ Dulcie suggested.
‘Nothing at all,’ Leo said, remembering Selena’s sweetness, the tensile strength in her slim body, like spun steel, yet feeling so delicate in his hands. For a moment her hot breath seemed to whisper against his skin, inciting him to ever greater passion and tenderness.
‘It was wonderful,’ he said abruptly.
‘You should have brought her here to meet us,’ Harriet told him.
‘That’s just the trouble, I don’t know where to find her.’
‘But didn’t you exchange names and addresses?’ Dulcie asked.
‘She doesn’t have an address. She drives around the rodeos and lives wherever she is. I had her mobile phone number, but-well, if you must know someone stole my wallet, with the paper. I’ve tried to track her down over the internet, but for some reason I always seem to miss her. I might never see her again.’
The two young women made sympathetic noises, but Leo suspected they secretly found it rather funny. Perhaps it was. Leo Calvani, stallion and free spirit, off his feed because one young woman, with a prickly temper and no figure to speak of, had vanished. Hilarious.
After a while he joined the other men, but even their company couldn’t soothe him. Two blissful bridegrooms and a fiance weren’t what he needed in his present disconsolate mood.
Gradually the party broke up. Guido and Dulcie disappeared together to enjoy the sweet nothings of a soon-to- be married couple. Marco and Harriet went off to stroll the streets of Venice. Leo went out into the garden, where he found his Aunt Lucia sitting peacefully, gazing up at the stars.
‘I suppose Marco and Harriet will be setting the date at any moment,’ Leo said, sitting down with her.
‘I do hope so,’ Lucia said eagerly. ‘I know they’ve gone off together now, so maybe they’ll come back with it all
