PROLOGUE
There are some people who live such a charmed existence that they cannot possibly comprehend what true hardship is. People who seem to walk upon rose petals and dream only of gold dust.
Cristiano Cesar Barata was, at one time, just such a person.
The only son of parents who doubted they would ever be blessed with children, he was worshipped and cossetted from the moment his being was discovered. Affluent and socially influential, there was nothing his family would not do to guarantee him every advantage in life.
Even without his parents’ willingness to enable his success and happiness, Cristiano had more personal charms than was fair. As a child, he had drawn stares for his handsome little face and swarthy complexion. As a teen, he discovered that women would fall to their knees at almost a single glance. And as a twenty eight year old man, he felt he had all the answers to life.
Life, after all, was for fun and frivolity.
Until he met Ava, he could have had no idea that some people faced monumental struggles each and every day.
Until he met Ava, he couldn’t have known that his answers to life were all wrong.
Until he met Ava, Cristiano Barata, at twenty eight years old, was still very much a boy.
Ava.
The woman who had changed him, for good.
Despite the passage of several years, thoughts of that one glorious month were thick in his mind.
How could he not have been reflective; lost to the mammoth beast that was his past with her? As his hire car ate up the miles from Perth, he was driving not simply towards a destination, but deep into a part of his history that he took great pains never to re-visit.
He gripped the wheel until the knuckles of his broad, tanned hands glowed white.
Ava.
His groan was an audible complaint in the luxurious confines of the car.
How long had it been? Five years? Four? No, not quite. Only three. It felt longer, and he didn’t want to analyse why. After all, they’d only known each other for four weeks. And she was married now to someone else.
His gut clenched with remembered insult. Angus Edwards. A boy. His lips curled in a derisive sneer. That she had preferred his insipid, boring safety over the relationship Cristiano had offered had been the ultimate insult.
Ava had provided Cristiano with the first bitter taste of heartbreak and defeat…
And he would never forgive her for it.
CHAPTER ONE
The day was warm and the dough had risen quickly. Ava punched it back with more force than was necessary.
She was nervous. How could she be anything but?
Her eyes lifted, for the millionth time, to the enormous windows above the sinks. They perfectly framed the view of the rows of vines that rolled their way gently towards the sparkling Indian Ocean.
The sky was a startling blue; milky and pale with a golden orb of sunshine radiating heat. Far in the distance, she could make out the stoic ute that belonged to her farm-hand Jackson Scott. He must have been somewhere amongst the grapes, though she couldn’t spy him from the house.
Her eyes skidded back to the clock beside her. He was late.
Cristiano.
Her heart turned over in her chest and her temperature spiked as it had done every time she thought of his impending arrival. For months she’d dreaded this day. Since the booking had come through and she’d learned that she would once more come face to face with him.
She swallowed convulsively and reached for the flour on instinct. She lifted a small handful and sprinkled it onto the ancient timber workbench that had belonged to Angus’s uncle, then tossed the dough onto it with a satisfying thwomp. A little flour lifted in a plume of white and sprayed the front of her apron.
Ava didn’t notice.
She’d thought often of the last time she’d seen him. How could she not dwell on that scene? How could she not remember it with regret and doubt? Had she done the right thing?
The love she’d felt for Cristiano had been the very definition of passion. But everything about him had terrified her. His lust for life and his impatience with the predictable; these were qualities that Ava could never aspire to. And though Ava had known with an absolute certainty that she had loved Cristiano, she had also understood two other facts.
First, that he would never change. His spirit of adventure was as firmly a part of his makeup as were his dark brown eyes and flop of black hair. Second, that they were absolutely, essentially incompatible. For as much as Cristiano sought newness and the thrill of danger, Ava wanted only calm and the reassurance of familiarity.
How could she ever have been what he wanted of her?
To leave Casa Celli, the only home she’d ever known, and travel the world by his side – why, it had been as impossible to contemplate as if he’d asked her to take to the depths of the ocean and swim to America.
Sophie? Sure. Olivia? Of course. Her sisters were far more inclined to just the kind of wild abandon that defined Cristiano.
Not Ava.
Never Ava.
Not that. And especially not now.
Her fingers worked with expert skill over the dough, forming it into three equal size balls and then rolling them into long snakes. She knitted them together at the top and then plaited them to form a loaf, before covering them in a cotton tea towel.
Her plan had been to keep herself as busy as possible, so that she would forget that Cristiano was not a ‘normal’ guest.
The rest of his party had checked in the day before. She’d crossed that enormous hurdle. Though they had no idea she and Cristiano had ever been anything to one another, she knew. She’d looked at them – these people he was friends with – and wondered how she could have ever been a part of the crowd. They were so different to her. So glamorous and care-free, they had seemed fogged with laughter and joy. Ava had taken a nauseating pleasure in studying them covertly, wondering at this glimpse into Cristiano’s other life. His life since her. The life he’d left her for.
How could she not have felt a tremble of emotion as she’d prepared his cottage for him? She’d made the bed with the same linen that she used in all the other cottages, and yet her cheeks had blushed, for she’d tucked it over the mattress and imagined him in it.
Shards of memory as sharp and unwelcome as a broken mirror had punctuated the simple task. Picturing him in the King size bed had meant remembering.
His hands. His legs. His body, so
tanned and kissed by sunshine and water. The way his taut chest moved up and down, up and down, rhythmically in time with his breathing. She remembered every detail, and each one caused the ache in her gut to intensify.