‘She saw him do it!’ Trixie had sobbed. ‘How could he do that to his mother? She saw him drown from her bedroom window. She watched him walk into the water and keep on walking until he vanished below the surface. She started running and she was screaming.
‘But she was too late. It was all over by the time we got down there.’
At the time, Jo hadn’t understood that her uncle had taken his own life, distraught at having lost his family’s money in dodgy investments. But she had understood that he had drowned and worry about Gianni had made her break the rule that she was never ever to go near the lake without an adult with her. She had run faster than she had ever run in her life and then she had raced straight into the water to reach Gianni. An accomplished swimmer, she had had no fear.
She had shouted at him just as he’d dipped below the surface but assumed he hadn’t heard her. In an effort to help him she had moved in deeper, starting to swim just as her feet had got tangled in the weeds below the surface. As panic had taken hold of her, she’d forgotten everything she had ever learned about how to handle herself in water. She’d struggled, flailing her arms wildly as she’d tried to free her legs and she’d only sunk deeper and faster into the murky depths.
That was all she remembered until she’d surfaced again, spluttering and gasping on the shore. Gianni’s eyes had been wild and desperate above hers, a fierce burning gold as he’d turned her over and urged her to breathe.
So, who had saved whom? she still wondered. It had never been discussed because she had never told anyone the truth of what she had suspected: that Gianni, devastated by his mother’s death, had gone into the lake with no plan to come out of it again alive. Certainly, she would have drowned had he not grabbed her and dragged her out of the water to get her breathing again. Ever since then she had given the lake a wide berth, reluctant to revisit those memories.
She had no appetite for her evening meal and her grandmother scolded her, telling her that she was already thin enough. To keep the older woman happy, she agreed to have some soup but, in reality, when Jo was apprehensive all appetite deserted her.
‘I suppose you’ll offer Gianni the lakeshore land in return,’ Liz Hamilton assumed quietly. ‘You might as well. Nobody here has fished the lake since your uncle died.’
‘I have to offer him something. Our roof won’t go through another winter,’ Jo pointed out ruefully.
‘The roof on my shop needs attention as well,’ Trixie piped up.
‘The roof of the house is more important,’ Sybil countered. ‘And then there’s the rewiring. That’s next on the list before we get disconnected for failing safety standards.’
‘Yes, one thing does lead to another.’ Liz sighed heavily. ‘The wiring stymied Jo’s plans to open a bed and breakfast here. Everything demands money and we don’t have any. We only bring in enough cash to pay the weekly bills.’
Her shoulders down-curving, Jo pushed her soup plate away. Sometimes it all got on top of her: the sheer weight of responsibility, the robbing Peter to pay Paul outlook she had to maintain, the need to stretch every penny until it squeaked. Essentially the family had coped until her uncle had lost the family savings and then her grandfather, who had had a good business head on his shoulders, had died. Jo had planned to use her business degree to find a job but supporting Ladymead and her family had had to come first. And she had had some good ideas to bring in an income from the unused buildings in the rear courtyard. Unfortunately, any changes or improvements required tomakemoney alsocostmoney.
Trixie now had a little shop selling crystals, candles and handicrafts. She was also much in demand for tarot readings locally. Sybil’s heart was in the small animal shelter she ran in the barn, but she also sold the organic vegetables grown in the walled garden via their one surviving employee, Maurice, who was as old as the hills, lived in the courtyard and refused to retire.
Duffy flew in and landed on the chair in front of Jo and began to sing the song from a popular musical about money making the world go around.
‘You said money, thefatalword, and he heard it,’ Sybil reproved her big sister.
‘It’s better than the biblical quotes, although he’s amazingly soulful when he starts reciting Shakespeare’s sonnets,’ Trixie said fondly.
‘He’s a very well-educated parrot,’ Liz Hamilton murmured with quiet pride.
Jo left them to it and went to freshen up, Fairy, a graceful greyhound, gliding upstairs with her. Their Scottie, McTavish, who hated everyone but Jo, was out chasing rabbits, which was just as well when she was planning to visit Belvedere. He had a particular vicious dislike of Gianni, and his housekeeper had had to phone her twice recently to come and retrieve the little animal when McTavish had lain in hopeful wait for Gianni.
She smoothed down her faded blue sundress and sighed, loosening her long hair from its untidy fraying braid and deciding simply to brush it to save time. Gianni was such a stickler for punctuality. She couldn’t afford to get off on the wrong foot with him, could she?
Fairy by her side, she climbed into the pickup truck that was the only vehicle left at Ladymead, its usage on a strict schedule to allow all of them a chance to take advantage of the freedom it brought. Gianni had a huge garage full of cars of all descriptions, most of them of the fast, sports variety. Her smile dimmed as she recalled their most significant meeting in recent times.
It had been very awkward. Gianni had attended Ralph’s funeral, lingering long enough to offer her his personal condolences on her ‘loss’. Ralph Scott had died in a military helicopter crash. He had been a friend, but just about everyone, with the exception of her family, had believed that Jo and Ralph were unofficially engaged. In reality, the engagement had been a story put around by Ralph to save face when he’d discovered that his former fiancée, Jane, was cheating on him with his best friend. Jo had been shocked when Ralph died but she had grieved only over the loss of a dear friend, not over the loss of a man she loved. She would have liked to explain that to Gianni but with so many people standing nearby she hadn’t had the opportunity.
Even so, Gianni had tried to offer her comfort in his own unique way, declaring that loving someone only got you hurt, and when she’d queried that statement, he had admitted that he had had his heart broken when he was younger and had learned a useful lesson from the experience. She had been stunned that he should have told her something that personal even though she hadn’t agreed with his outlook. Ever since she had wondered who the woman was and what had happened between them.
Suppressing those untimely and inappropriate reflections, Jo parked at the front of the house, crunching over the gravel in her grass-stained canvas sandals to the imposing front entrance. The door opened, Gianni’s plump housekeeper, Abigail, bestowing a smile on her before ushering her in.
‘Mr Renzetti is in the orangery. It’s lovely there at this time of year with the terrace doors wide and the evening sunshine flooding in,’ she said, showing Jo through the big echoing hall out to the leafy splendour of the orangery. ‘How have you been? I ran into your grandmother yesterday and she said you’d been terribly busy.’
‘There’s never enough hours in my day,’ Jo admitted rather breathlessly as she heard footsteps crossing the tiled floor, strong, sure, like the man himself.
‘Jojo,’ Gianni purred. ‘What are you collecting for this evening?’
He had told her once that Josephine was too much of a mouthful and that Jo made her sound like a boy and he had begun calling her Jojo even though she frowned every time he utilised it.
‘C-collecting?’ She stammered out the word, colour rising in her cheeks as she stared at him.
At the worst possible moment, she was remembering that grainy image of him in a suit in that room with that half-naked woman. Her tummy flipped, butterflies breaking free. Her grandmother had told her that Gianni was their neighbour and acquaintance and that it was disrespectful to have that rag of a newspaper in their home when he had been extorted and unaware of the camera. She had been ashamed of herself for devouring every dirty detail. And she was even more ashamed to feel the prickling of her nipples as they tightened and the heat rising between her thighs. But at the end of the day, she was a woman like any other and her body betrayed her in his presence because hewasthat irresistible.