Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
HANNAH HANSEN MADE her way into work one morning that December fairly bursting with the holiday spirit.
Part of it was the gorgeous Italian scenery that beckoned from every direction.
The hills were browner this time of year, the skies less gold and blue, but Hannah thought that only made the magic of Tuscany more apparent.
That magic was in the mist that clung to the hills and the church steeple.
It was there in the quiet stone streets of the hilltop village she drove through today, the one she was coming to consider her home.
This was a magic that was right here, all year long, stamped down into the earth like its long history even when the bustle of tourists was gone.
There was something about Italy in the cold that made her heart ache in all the best ways.
Especially during the Christmas season.
It had been a difficult decision to leave the United States behind three years ago. It wasn’t something Hannah had ever imagined she would do, but then again, there were a lot of things about the last few years that she never could have imagined in advance.
This morning she had left the best of those things—her son, the sweet and good-natured Dominic—-playing merrily with his toys in the care of the marvelous Cinzia.
Cinzia, who had started as the landlady, had become the very best neighbor imaginable.
And she was now, for all intents and purposes, the family Hannah had always wished she had.
Instead of the family she did have, all of them still clustered together in a scrum of judgment and shame in a tiny town outside of Omaha, Nebraska.
The prospect of Hannah having a baby out of wedlock had scandalized them all. How can we hold up our heads at the market? her sister had asked once.
In all seriousness.
This and many other similar interactions were why Hannah had decided, at six months pregnant while she still had some savings left, that she deserved better than being treated like the blackest of black sheep in the state of Nebraska. With a set of scarlet letters to boot.
And she had always dreamed of going to Italy one day, because didn’t everyone?
So she decided that one day had come. She’d bought herself a one-way ticket to Florence, the city that had inhabited her dreams for as long as she could remember.
She’d wandered about piazzas, ate too much gelato, and spent too many nights in lustily robust trattorias before making her way to a tiny little village out in Tuscany’s undulating hills that felt familiar the moment she saw it.
As if she’d always been meant to find her way here.
Aside from the fate aspect of it all, she was pretty sure she’d read about this village once, back when she’d still been living in New York City.
New York City.
She shivered a little as memories of that frenetic, exuberant city and her time there washed over her once again. The way it always seemed to do no matter how many times she assured herself that she was done looking back.
Hannah blew out a sigh as she navigated her way through the narrow streets of the ancient village that clung to the side of the hill, stones steeped in thousands of years of history.
She followed the winding road down toward the fields again, and tried to breathe deep a few more times as she headed up another rolling hill on the far side.
It was hard to imagine on crisp and beautiful December mornings in Tuscany, far away from any sort of city, that she’d ever lived in the thrilling, overwhelming, concrete sprawl of Manhattan.
Like she was remembering a television show, not her own life.
Because those short, busy, overwhelming years seemed like not just a different life entirely, but something she might have dreamed up one night.
One of those dreams that didn’t go away in the morning, but lingered on forever.
“And then ended poorly,” she muttered to herself as she crested the hill, lest she forget the crucial part of her Manhattan years.
Though Dominic made up for pretty much anything and everything that might have happened before his birth.
But she stopped thinking about the past then, because the view before her opened up again.
She sighed again, but happily this time, the way she always did at this point in her drive to work from her darling cottage on the other side of the village. Because there, lolling across the spine of the next rolling Tuscan hill, was the estate.
Not quite a castle in any classic sense, it was a collection of manor houses strung along the hillside like a necklace fit with jewels that some indolent Italian noble had tossed aside on his way to some or other Renaissance.
Once the home of a succession of minor nobles, the estate had fallen into disrepair by the early twentieth century.
It had been bought and toyed with by one optimistic and/or wealthy individual after the next since then, because the vineyards still produced rich red wines and the cypress trees still marked the age-old roadways.
It was a place that seemed half sky, half ancient earth, strung round with olive groves, lavender, and vines of determined wisteria.
But a place like the estate required vision to fully resurrect, and so it had stood dormant for some time.
In the village, they called the attempt to launch a pile of stones and abandoned houses into something luxurious una follia, a folly.
Nonetheless, some ten years ago, the wife of the extremely wealthy Italian businessman who had recently claimed the place had taken it as part of her divorce settlement.
She had then renovated the whole of the estate, transforming it into a hotel that exuded style from every newly polished stone.
La Paloma, as both she and the estate were known, was infamous for her deep delight in taking petty revenge on those she felt wronged her—meaning, all of her ex-husbands, and she’d racked up a fair few—as well as her architectural flair and eye for design.
Hannah had walked into the hotel a scant ten days after she’d arrived in Italy, the gluttonous week in Florence behind her, because she knew she needed to find a job.
She had driven into this village, overcome with that sense of homecoming.
She’d eaten in the tiny trattoria in town, and had watched the old men gather in the square.
She had stayed in a pensione a bit of a walk from the center of the village, and it was while walking back to her room that she’d seen the estate on the hill.
It was so beautiful. That had been her first thought.
When she’d learned that it was a hotel, she’d been thrilled. Because she could work in a hotel. It had to be better than a restaurant. Because anything was better than the nightly chaos of a restaurant.
She had pled her case to the hotel manager when she’d presented herself at the front desk, though she glossed over the reasons she’d left her last position of managing a Michelin-starred restaurant in New York.
She’d focused more on the fact that she’d worked in hospitality for her whole career.
And more, that she had just moved to the area and would be delighted to work in any potential open position he had—because it was clear that La Paloma was destined to become the uncontested gem of the region, polished as it was to such a bright and glorious shine.
But the hotel manager had looked at her belly, sneered, and only then looked her in the face. Perhaps la signora should be at home with her husband, awaiting this most blessed event. This would surely be a better use of your time.
He did not say and mine. Though it was heavily implied.
La Paloma had descended upon them then, appearing in a cloud of scent and fury as she wafted her way into view.
She was a formidable woman in every regard.
She was the kind of skinny that was best suited by bespoke couture garments from ateliers in places like Milan and Paris, all of which hung perfectly on the sort of ruthlessly emaciated body that was more an advertisement of determination and self-control than any aesthetic.
She had waved one bejeweled finger at the hotel manager.
Perhaps you should take your own advice, Raffaele.
And that easily, Hannah was hired.
La Paloma, champion of women though not one to go easy on anyone, had tossed Hannah directly into the deep end. She’d informed Hannah that she had two weeks to figure out the manager’s job and to excel at it. If she managed this feat, the position was hers. Complete with maternity leave.
That is remarkably kind, Hannah had said in sheer wonder as the furious Raffaele took his leave.
I’m never kind, La Paloma had told her, her dark eyes gleaming. But I like to think that I can spot a diamond in the rough, my dear girl. And I know how to make one gleam.
As if the diamonds dripping off of her didn’t tell the same story.
Hannah, obviously, had made certain to exceed the older woman’s expectations.
When Dominic was born, she had taken a month of leave and then had returned to work.
She stayed mainly in her office so that she could keep the baby with her as much as possible and tend to what matters she could from there, since the guests certainly did not need to see the hotel manager’s private, domestic affairs.
When he was six months old, Cinzia had offered to watch Dominic whenever Hannah was working, and that was that.
She had somehow stumbled into this beautiful little life that fit her well, made her happy, and as far as she could discern, could not possibly be better in any regard.
She loved what she did. She loved the hotel, was eternally indebted to La Paloma, and enjoyed the demands of her position and all the problem-solving it entailed.
Best of all, no one in the hotel was in the habit of flinging food in her direction, like the overwrought chef she’d had to contend with back in New York.