Summer in Tuscany Read Free

receiver—he’s up there with the football greats—and he has the neck to prove it.
    Actually, he’s Livvie’s surrogate dog, the huge Newfoundland I promised her when I still believed in that future dream of a house in the country. Because there was a time, you know, not so long ago, when life could have been different…a time of “might have been.” A time when that country house loomed as a bright possibility, filled with a normal, happy family unit: husband, wife, a few kids, dogs and cats….
    What am I thinking? I’m not supposed to go there. He isn’t supposed to be there. I’ve trained myself never to talk about him, never to think of him. And yet there he is in my memory, larger than life and twice as handsome. Cash Drummond, the man who brought magic into my life. And changed it forever.

Chapter Two
    I don’t quite know why, but what I’m remembering right now is the time we were in his car, the two of us, taking a quick vacation together. I was at the wheel and Cash was beside me, map reading. We were lost and I was annoyed. I said it was his fault and he laughed and said he was sorry and how about we stop and have lunch somewhere. And just like magic, which was the way it always seemed to happen when I was with Cash, we practically tripped over this sweet little country inn. We drove past, screeched to a halt, backed down the winding lane to check it out, and saw the sign RESTAURANT.
    We piled out of the car, a little old red sports model (what else would Cash have had?), and walked hand in hand into a New England wonderland of dark-paneled walls and braided rugs and potpourri. There were antlers and wall sconces, throw pillows, flowered chintz and rickety side tables full of bric-a-brac, and a grizzled, sleepy Labrador who opened one eye to check us out and then went back to his snooze.
    A kindly blue-haired lady behind the desk smiled at us over her bifocals. “Lunch?” she asked.
    Cash squeezed my hand tightly. “Actually, we were wondering if you had a room.”
    He caught my surprised gasp, and so, I know, did the woman. “Of course,” she said. “Let me show you.”
    I clutched Cash’s hand as we headed up the stairs. “I thought we were lost and just coming here for lunch,” I whispered.
    He threw me a look over his shoulder, already two steps in front of me—as he somehow always was—and I felt myself melt. Did I mention that he was blond and handsome in that strong-jawed all-American, or should I say all- Texan, way? Sort of cowboy crossed with Malibu surfer? And I had seen that look before and knew what it meant. In fact, that’s the way our relationship had started.
    Actually, it started with a pickup in a Starbucks where I was sipping an illicit frappuccino (illicit because, though I know how much sugar there is in those things, I still can’t resist). He gave me a smiling glance in passing, and our eyes locked. Then he said in an exaggerated Texas drawl, “Hi, how’re y’doin’, ma’am?” and I giggled because nobody had ever called me “ma’am” before.
    “Actually, it’s Doctor,” I said primly, because I don’t usually go around talking to complete strangers except at the hospital, of course, and then they’re on a gurney, and the dialogue is hardly racy.
    “How’re you, Doc?” He hitched himself onto the stool next to me. I nodded okay, staring out the window, anything to stop looking at him, because they just didn’t grow them like this in New York City. His long shaggy blond hair gleamed with lights my own did not possess, his tanned skin glowed with health, and his blue eyes were ten shades lighter than mine and looked surprisingly world-weary.
    This guy is no hick from Hicksville, I warned myself. He knows where he’s at, all right. All muscular six-four of him, with shoulders whose breadth owed nothing to the old suede shirt he was wearing. I sneaked a glance at his feet. Thank God he was not wearing cowboy boots; that would have been just too