Catherine Spencer - The Man from Tuscany

The menu at the bistro had overwhelmed me. Too much to choose from, and the plate of linguini covered with herb sauce wasn’t what I thought I’d asked for.

“No, grazie, ” I told the waiter, searching my little phrase book.

“ Per favore, signorina, may I help?”

I looked up and there he was: tall, dark, handsome and able to speak English. “Yes, please!” I replied fervently. “All I want is a light meal, but not a salad. Just something small.”

“I understand perfectly.” He engaged the waiter in discussion, and with nothing better to do, I simply stared at my gallant rescuer. He was perhaps five feet ten or eleven, with a slim but powerful build, thick black hair that gleamed under the sun and a face that left me dry-mouthed and reaching for my glass of acqua minerale….

“And the next thing, he asked if he could join you,” my granddaughter said dryly.

“Actually, I asked him.”

“So how long before you decided you were in love with him?”

“About five minutes.”

“Oh, come on, Gran! You don’t mean that.”

“I do. It really was love at first sight, for both of us. Fate’s way of letting us know we were meant to be.”

Dear Reader,

When I was expecting my second child, my three-year-old daughter wanted to know if I’d still love her as much after the new baby was born. When I assured her I would, she asked, “But what if you don’t have enough?”

The Man from Tuscany is Anna and Marco’s story, and is about always having enough. The human heart has an infinite capacity for love in all its guises. It is not always convenient, often not easy and sometimes demands a terrible price from those who embrace it. But it binds us as wives, mothers, daughters, friends and lovers. It makes us fallible and gives us our humanity. As Anna says, “We don’t choose who or when to love, it chooses us.”

May it choose you.

With love,

Catherine Spencer

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Catherine Spencer is a former high school English teacher, and a multi-published author with Harlequin, mostly under the Presents imprint. Her books have been distributed in more than thirty-five countries and translated into over twenty languages. The Man from Tuscany is her first Harlequin Superromance book. She lives on Canada’s west coast with her husband and two adorable yellow Labrador retrievers. She has four children and eight grandchildren—an amazing achievement for a woman who’s still only thirty-nine! She loves to hear from her readers and may be contacted through her Web site at www.catherinespencer.com.

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

EPILOGUE

S OMETHING was definitely amiss. Anna Wexley was a creature of habit, and asking Carly to drop everything and visit her on a weekday morning was a marked departure from the usual. A critical care nurse, Carly knew how precariously balanced her grandmother’s health was, and how little it would take to tip the scales against her. For that reason alone, she wasted no time driving out to Allendale House, the elegant old mansion that was now a retirement residence, where Anna had lived for the past several years.

At first glance, nothing appeared out of the ordinary. No ambulance waited in the paved forecourt, and the French doors to her grandmother’s suite, directly above the building’s main entrance, stood ajar. A good sign, surely, on this warm June morning, because Anna loved sitting on her balcony, listening to the birds and enjoying the distant view of Block Island Sound.

Better yet, no sympathetic voices greeted Carly when she signed in at the front desk. Nor, when her grandmother answered her door, was there any overt hint of trouble. Anna had obviously visited the residence beauty salon earlier, and wore the pretty pleated skirt and white blouse Carly had given her the previous Christmas. With pearl studs in her ears and, as always, her gold filigree heart pendant, she looked remarkably well put-together for an eighty-three-year-old with a history of congestive heart failure. On closer examination, though, Carly saw that although her face lit up with pleasure at the sight of her granddaughter, Anna’s eyes glowed with a feverish agitation that was anything but normal.

Folding her in a careful hug, Carly said, “You seemed upset on the phone, Gran. Has something happened?”

“I suppose it has,” Anna replied tremulously. “Come sit on the balcony and have a glass of lemonade, while I try to explain.”

Following her outside, Carly urged her onto the wicker love seat, sat down next to her and pressed two fingers to her grandmother’s inner wrist. “What’s wrong? Are you in pain? Any difficulty breathing?”

“Not at all, darling girl. I’ve decided to go to Italy, that’s all, and I want you to make the travel arrangements.”

“Italy?” Subduing the impulse to blurt out At your age and in your state of health? Carly asked instead, “Why Italy, Gran?”

“There’s someone there I very much want to see.”

Instincts on high alert again, Carly inspected her critically. “Are you talking about a doctor?”

“No, no. Nothing like that.” Her grandmother indicated a leather-bound scrapbook lying open on the wicker coffee table in front of her. “I want to visit him. ”

Carly scooped the book onto her lap, frowning at the grainy photograph of a man in his twenties. “Who’s he?”

Anna sighed and traced her forefinger over his features. “It would be easy for me to lie and say he’s just an old family friend, but I can’t bring myself to belittle what we’ve always meant to each other, so I’ll tell you the truth. He’s the great love of my life, Carly.”

This time, Carly couldn’t hide her shock. “But he can’t be. He’s not Grandpa!”

“No, precious, he’s not.”

Although she seemed in complete command of her faculties, Carly wondered if her grandmother was losing it. Had the distant and more recent past merged into one gauzy memory in which neither people nor time were clearly defined anymore? “This is an old photograph, Gran,” she pointed out gently. “Do you remember when it was taken?”

“Of course I do. Right before the outbreak of World War Two.”

“Ah! So what you’re really saying is, this man was your first love, but Grandpa was your real love.”

“Your grandfather was my husband and I was devoted to him, but not even he could take Marco’s place in my heart.”

“That name rings a bell. Didn’t he visit you once in England, when Mom was little?”

“Yes. He came all the way from Italy to be with me at a time when I desperately needed him.”