guy who ran the hostel she was staying in, still lived with his parents. And his brother, who was long since married, lived in the house next door. Back home, in Melbourne, she went months without catching up with her closest family members but these people couldn’t bear to move further than next door. It was so far out of the realm of her experience that she found it hard to grasp. But she was in Italy to try. She had worn herself ragged, grasping with everything she had to discover that which these people took for granted.
‘Please, is there any way I can help?’ Luca asked.
Gracie was ready to say no. She had been independent for so long, and she had never been one to ask for help. But everything had felt hopeless only minutes before. Maybe, if there was a time to ask for help, this was it.
‘I am sure you are a busy man,’ she said, fumbling her way towards a decision.
He shrugged slightly. ‘At times. But today is Saturday and Mila and I have no set plans. Do we, Mila?’
Mila shook her head, her curls bouncing back and forth.
‘Tell me about it,’ he insisted gently.
Gracie baulked, the words help me just too unfamiliar to utter. But then she remembered the desperation behind her wish at the fountain, the last-ditch hope she had poured into that coin. What if Luca was the answer to her wish? What if he could lead her to her father? What if he was her last chance to find what she was searching for?
Either way, she had come too far, had burned too many bridges and had exhausted too much of her own spirit not to go the distance. Her mouth twitched with the need to at least try.
Gracie glanced at Mila, who was bouncing up and down in her seat, kicking rhythmically at the table leg.
Luca followed her gaze. ‘Mila, why don’t you go and see if Zio Giovanni needs a hand?’
Mila’s mouth turned down. ‘But I don’t want to.’
‘He might even have some tiramisu for you to nibble on, if you’re lucky.’
Mila’s eyes grew wide, then without another word she scrambled over her father and raced into the kitchen.
‘That’s bribery, Dad,’ Gracie said with a smile.
‘Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do,’ Luca said in an impeccable New York mob accent. If possible, his eyes warmed even more when he smiled.
But there was no use encouraging him. Attraction was a nebulous thing. It was nothing to pin your hopes and dreams on. It came from nowhere and just as easily slid back there. She knew better than most, as she was the result of such an attraction.
‘Tell me about your father,’ Luca said, splintering the loaded silence.
‘All I really have is a name. I know he was about twenty years old and on holiday from law school when he met my mother in Rome twenty-five years ago.’
‘Well, there you go. If he is a lawyer, he will be registered.’
‘For whatever reason I have not been able to find him that way. Perhaps I have the spelling wrong, or he didn’t graduate. With the language barrier it makes it that much more difficult.’
‘And your mother cannot give you any more details?’ he asked, his voice soft and sensitive.
Gracie flinched as old screaming fights at her mother’s house came swimming back. Gracie demanding information and her mother calling her ungrateful and insensitive. Funny; she almost longed for those fights now.
‘My mother died several months ago,’ Gracie said, playing with the corner of her napkin and rolling her shoulders, holding at bay the incapacitating chill that shot through her every time she remembered. ‘But the truth is I never would have come looking for him while she was alive. His very existence was always a sore point for her.’
‘I see,’ Luca said, the words so loaded she thought he saw a great deal more than she had told him. ‘It seems that you are at a crossroads. Ensuring assistance from a local may make all the difference in your quest. So do tell me, what is your father’s name?’
The name reverberated around in her head several times before it tripped onto her tongue. She looked down at the table, where her hands rested, pale and cold, upon the chequered tablecloth. ‘His name is Antonio Graziano.’
While Gracie looked back up at Luca, her eyes beseeched him, glittering with desperate hope that perhaps he was the answer to her prayers. Something in her engaging face, in her tense body, made Luca truly wish that the name would mean something to him. But unfortunately it did not.
‘A good, strong name,’ he said, knowing his kind words did nothing to heal her disappointment. The anticipation leaked from her body as she shrank back into her chair.
Well, know the man or not, he still owed her. This woman had delivered his Mila back to him in one piece and he had to repay her with more than a hot lunch.
‘Like it or not, I am going to help you, Gracie Lane,’ he said. The smile that spread across her lovely face was so bright that it dazzled him. He felt it deep down in places that had not made themselves felt in a good long while. It surprised him. She surprised him.
She’d had her wallet stolen and she had laughed! Sarina would have ranted and raved and shouted the piazza down. Mila would have emulated. Bedlam would have ensued, and, as always, he would have had to save the day.
Yet this curiosity before him had laughed. Her day had not needed to be saved. She just went on regardless. And he had been utterly surprised.
Luca had had enough surprises in his life that he thought he had become immune to their effect, but apparently he had not. And he quite liked the fact that he was not so impervious after all.
He further surprised himself by pronouncing, ‘I…we are heading back home to my villa this afternoon. Why don’t you come with us? I have facilities there to help you in your search.’
‘No. Thank you but no.’ Gracie shook her head, her dark curls swishing about her ears. Then she shrugged. ‘Today is to be my last day in Rome.’
Luca finally understood the full measure of her hopelessness. He knew what hopelessness felt like. For the sake of his family he had beaten it down. But this girl had nobody near and dear to her to help her do that.
‘I assume you have an Italian passport, since your father was born here?’ His words came as a question.
‘I do.’
‘Then you can stay in Italy as long as it takes for you to find your father.’
She blinked at him several times. ‘Officially, yes. Practically, not a chance. This is it for me. No more time. No more money. No more chances.’
‘And if you had the means to stay?’
‘Then I would stick around for as long as it took to track him down.’ Her voice was measured, her gaze cautious and her top teeth bit down on her lower lip.
It was enough to distract from his burgeoning idea. ‘As I said earlier,’ he continued, dragging his eyes back to her guarded gaze, ‘Mila’s language skills have been neglected for far too long. I believe she could benefit from having a live-in English tutor and I would like you to take the position.’
Her mouth popped open and she remained speechless. Before she had the chance to say no, he spelt it out for her. ‘You can school Mila in English and in return I will help you find your father.’
There, he thought, that’s an offer she can’t refuse.
‘What are you?’ she asked. ‘My knight in shining armour?’
Luca remembered another time he had been called the same. Once, a few years before, by his younger brother. But where Gracie was looking at him with something akin to awe, his brother’s tone had been bitter and accusing. Luca blanked out the image, much preferring to focus on the much more agreeable image before him