Rebecca Winters: Miracle for the Girl Next Door / Mother of the Bride: Miracle for the Girl Next Door

Until he’d called out to her, she’d been holding her own, dealing with her challenges on a day-to-day basis, determined not to let them defeat her. But he was like this overpowering force field, a super-bright constellation in the heavens whose magnetic pull drew the world to him.

His appearance had managed to shatter the fragile shell of her existence. She rested her head against the back of the seat and closed her eyes, tortured by her own inner demons that seemed to have magnified a hundredfold by running into him without warning.

The second the bus rounded the corner and was out of sight, a troubled Valentino moved swiftly toward the hub of the village where his father’s restaurant was located. Right next to it—in fact adjoining it by a back terrace—sat his aunt’s restaurant. The courtyard in front of both opened up into the bustling center square.

Sorella, a restaurant started by Valentino’s grandmother Rosa, was now owned by his aunt Lisa Firenzi who’d turned it into a chic, contemporary place serving an international cuisine. His father, Luca Casali, had fallen out with his sister and had broken away from the family business, starting his own Italian traditional family restaurant he’d named Rosa. Isabella was the day manager.

Valentino had kept in touch with her and their father through e-mails, but in the last nine years he’d only come home fleetingly. The most recent had been just last month on the occasion of his father’s birthday. Much to his sister’s chagrin he’d only stayed the evening.

Just remembering that fateful evening and the fireworks that had ensued caused him to shudder. He always experienced an unpleasant sensation in his gut at the thought that two warring factions of the same family would want to be anywhere near each other. Valentino abhorred confrontation and was continually mystified that two intelligent people like his father and his aunt Lisa, who’d had a jealous rivalry going for years, still maintained businesses side by side.

It was a sick kind of symbiosis. They were like organisms surviving in close approximation, not able to live with or without the other.

As he reached the courtyard he was reminded of the ugly confrontation that had gone on out here during the party. Tempers had flared. Uncaring of who might overhear them, his aunt had lost control. In her rage she’d blurted out a sensitive secret about Luca that had rocked the entire family.

Pain had gutted Valentino. Unable to deal with all the ramifications, not the least of which was his bitter disappointment in his father, he’d left Monta Correnti after having barely arrived not knowing when he’d ever be back. If it weren’t for his father’s declining health and Isabella’s plea for help with him, Valentino wouldn’t have canceled his next two races to be here now.

However, his overriding concern tonight had nothing to do with his father. After leaving the furnished villa he’d just rented at the upper end of the village, he’d been making his way down to the restaurant on foot, never dreaming he would run into Clara Rossetti within hours of arriving back in town.

Their chance meeting had saved him the trouble of looking her up at the farm. The knowledge that he could reconnect with her while he was in Monta Correnti had been the only thing he’d been looking forward to on his return.

Clara had been his saving grace, had always accepted him with his flaws and imperfections. After the party he’d needed desperately to talk to her about what he’d learned, but he’d been in such bad shape at the time he hadn’t been willing to inflict himself on her.

He wasn’t doing much better now, but seeing her again made him realize how much he wanted to talk to her. There was no one as insightful or as easy to be with as Clara. No one understood him the way she did, but at first glance he hadn’t recognized her except for her eyes.

Those incredible irises studded with luminous, diamond-like green dust hadn’t changed though everything else about her had. Gone was the overweight teenager with the pretty face who’d been his abiding friend since they’d first attended school as children. In her place stood a gorgeous woman, albeit a little too thin, no longer hidden beneath a cascading veil of glossy dark hair. Just looking at her amazing coloring and figure stopped him in his tracks.

But more startling was the fact that, beyond the drastic alteration in her physical appearance, she didn’t radiate that joie de vivre he’d thought inherent in her nature.

Instead of crying out ‘Tino’, the name she used to call him, she’d proffered the more formal greeting of his name, treating him as she might a former acquaintance. In reality they’d been partners in crime, doing everything together, getting in and out of trouble on a regular basis.

The old fun-loving Clara, always ready for a new adventure, wouldn’t have gotten on that bus.

Maybe she was telling the truth and did have to get home, but something had been missing. She’d said all the right words, yet the warm, compassionate girl he’d turned to in his youth—the one person who’d always listened to him and had never scoffed at his bold ideas—had put him off.

That had come as a shock.

He’d been arrogant enough to believe in some corner of his mind that, of all the people who’d come and gone in his life, she’d placed their friendship on a higher par—or at least on a unique plane that meant it was something special, even if he hadn’t written letters or sent her pictures. It seemed she didn’t want to spend time with him now.

With the Rossettis’ farm of lemon, orange and olive groves located several miles south of town, the formerly vivacious Clara wouldn’t have turned him down for a ride home. He’d never known a woman who didn’t want to take a jaunt with him in his Ferrari. Valentino supposed his ego was hurt that she wasn’t impressed, let alone that her memories of him had made no lasting mark on her psyche.

Her dark-fringed eyes might have flared with interest when she’d first seen him, but as they had talked it had felt as if she were staring through him, making him feel at a loss. That spark of life he’d always associated with her had been missing, delivering a one-two punch to the gut he hadn’t expected. In truth, he had to reach back to being five years old again to remember that same sensation, leaving him feeling devastated.

He quickened his pace and hurried inside the restaurant where the staff was setting up for dinner. They called out greetings he acknowledged, but he was in too big a hurry to get engaged in conversation. Without hesitation he headed toward the kitchen where his recently engaged sister was probably doing ten tasks at once to keep things running smoothly.

After taking possession of the villa where he planned to live for the next few months, he’d come here with every intention of eating his evening meal, but, after the strange experience with Clara in the piazza, he was now put off the thought of food.

Rosa, named after his grandmother, delivered traditional, home-cooked Italian food in surroundings of frescoed walls and terracotta floors. The rustic restaurant represented his father’s dream of owning his own place. He’d wanted it to be evocative of his mother’s warm, family-oriented spirit.

In that regard, he hadn’t failed. Aside from Clara, who’d made up the best part of the background fabric of his life, Valentino’s few good memories included the experience of walking in here to encounter the distinctive aroma of the tomato sauce, Rosa’s house specialty, wafting past his nostrils.

William Valentine, his English grandfather, had passed his secret sauce recipe to his sweetheart Rosa who had later passed it on to her son Luca, Valentino’s father. Luca had then improved on the recipe, which was the reason for the restaurant’s popularity, even if at this point in time he was heavily in debt.