Chapter 1 #2
Tuscany might have been like a dream, but these days it was Hannah’s dream come true.
She parked her little car in its usual place in the staff parking area, and stepped out into the chill of the morning.
It was lovely and quiet today, with a cold wind dancing high above and scrubbing the sky clean.
The hills rolled away toward the horizon, a more muted green than their summer splendor, but that did not make them any less beautiful.
While she’d grown up in Nebraska, she often dreamed of places like this.
Magical places so far away from what she thought of as real life.
Fairy tales made real, and beautiful, in sophisticated settings far, far away from her small town life.
Her family had always teased her for that, and not always good-naturedly. They’d loved nothing more than to tell her that the real world wouldn’t be kind to a girl who lived and breathed fantasies the way she did.
So she’d proved them wrong, obviously.
She’d gone to college and found her way into the hospitality field.
They had expected her to return home, and possibly move as far away as Omaha, a solid forty-five-minute drive away from her childhood home.
They had all found it flashy and tasteless that she’d instead gone off to a terrible din of a place like New York City.
And worse, had dressed like the sort of person who would be successful in New York City—as if you really think you’re going to make it, her sister had said one Thanksgiving with a derisive laugh.
But of course she felt that way. They all felt that way.
They found it unimaginable that Hannah started off right out of college working in hotels so luxurious that no one from her entire hometown could imagine that anyone would spend that much money on a single night’s stay.
Much less go to a restaurant that charged even more.
Hannah had learned to downplay her initial run of success because they all found even that garish and showy. Or maybe it was that they thought she was.
At a certain point, she thought now, she’d had to accept that the common denominator in the things her family didn’t like about her…was her.
Something that had become very clear and impossible to ignore when she’d gone home after losing her job at the restaurant.
She stood where she was, there near the parking area that was part of an ancient forecourt.
In every direction, she was surrounded by the hills of Tuscany, the trees that seemed almost like heather this time of year—dressed in russets and deep autumn colors—and the winter vineyards slumbering in the cold ground.
It was a sunny day now, if cool, with the morning mist burning off even as she watched.
Hannah took a deep breath, as if blowing it out again could scrape her family directly out of her system. That little sniff her mother liked to make. Her sister’s arch, judgmental asides. Her father’s quiet disapproval.
The fact that not one of them had reached out after she left at six months’ pregnant. She’d been the one to let them know that she’d settled in Italy when, three weeks after she’d left, there still hadn’t been so much as a text.
For all they knew, she’d been living rough somewhere.
Of course you’ve moved to Italy, of all places, her mother had said with a sniff. Typical Hannah.
It had baffled her then. It still did.
Though there was no mystery as to why she was thinking about them now, she acknowledged.
It was December. Christmas was coming. And despite her very real and very hard feelings about the way they’d treated her—and had always treated her—try though she might, Hannah couldn’t bring herself to love them any less.
Especially at this time of year.
“Love doesn’t mean full access,” she murmured to herself. The way she often did because it was supposed to be soothing. “I can love them from afar.”
She called home every Sunday and made herself suffer through the usual stilted conversation, in which her parents acted as if she’d had their grandchild simply to spite them.
She’d stopped asking them to come visit, because they wouldn’t.
But Dominic deserved to know his family, she reasoned, and to make his own decisions about whether or not he wanted them in his life.
She couldn’t make that decision for him.
Maybe, she liked to tell herself, she would stop calling one day. But deep down, she knew that if she did, she would never hear from them again. Something about that continued to hurt too much.
“One day,” Hannah promised herself under her breath, “it won’t hurt at all.”
One day.
But today, there were far more exciting things to think about than tired, old family dynamics.
She smoothed down the front of her dress as she walked toward the entrance to the hotel, swinging around to the front of the main building because she always liked to get a sense of the place as if it was new. As if she was a guest arriving for the first time.
The main building looked like an ancient fort built around a bell tower, though the old stone gleamed these days. The entrance itself was wide and welcoming, with evergreen displays wrapped in lights as a nod toward the season. Even looking at it made her feel peaceful.
This was how Hannah wanted the whole hotel to feel.
This was particularly how she wanted this Christmas season to feel.
And so it will, she assured herself as she walked. She adjusted her flowy, soft wool wrap on her shoulders and gripped the leather folder in her hand tightly.
La Paloma was a woman of many projects and a deep well of boredom.
Or so she had told Hannah one night as they sat together in the finest suite in the hotel, which was, of course, the only place she would stay when she visited.
She served only vodka gimlets and insisted that anyone who she invited to join her drink up.
And Hannah had never met anyone who argued with La Paloma.
I’ve sold the hotel, her benefactress had told her.
It had been two weeks ago now, out of the blue. But that was La Paloma.
But don’t fret, my dear girl, I have made your continuing employment condition of the sale. To tell you the truth, I think you will be delighted.
Hannah had spent a lot of time working with the older woman over the past couple of years.
She was not quite as overawed by La Paloma as she had been at the start.
But that didn’t mean she didn’t maintain a healthy level of respect.
This was the only reason that she didn’t respond immediately to express how extremely not delighted she was by this development.
This place is special to me for many reasons, La Paloma had continued, waving her gimlet in the air the way she liked to do, for drama and emphasis.
Not that she ever spilt so much as a drop.
Not least of which is that it was once a prize possession of my ex-husband, upon whom we wish every last thing that he richly deserves.
But it is also unique in that it gave me something of a blank canvas, and I find that what I have done here has pleased me excessively. In every possible way.
She had sighed then, as if congratulating herself. I knew that I could not sell it to the typical portfolio-hoarding financier, or any other such person. It could only be a friend.
Hannah had made herself smile. With apologies, madam, but I was under the impression that you did not suffer friends.
Paloma laughed. So needy. So grasping. But no, darling, I’m a great fan of friendships that run precisely as I wish them to run.
In this case, we are speaking of a local friend, who I’ve known for some time.
I met him when he was very young, brash, and edgy.
Now he is… How do I put this? Something of a grumpy hermit who likes his village as it is. Sleepy. Undisturbed.
Another wild swing of her drink, yet still no drop fell.
I informed him that this hotel was only going to grow in stature and desirability, and he could either fume about it, or get involved. He chose the latter.
You are very persuasive, Hannah had said.
Indeed I am, La Paloma had agreed, with a smile that might have appeared demure on someone else. On her it was nothing but an expression of power. You will meet with him when he gets back from whatever trip he’s currently on, doing whatever it is wealthy men do with their time.
But she had laughed as if she knew very well what that was.
I told him you would explain the Christmas Jubilee that you have planned and walk him through the reservations, the festivities, and all the rest. I’m sure he will wish to put his stamp on things, as all men do, but I’m also certain that he will be deeply impressed with you.
The older woman had smiled then, wider than before, and lifted her glass in Hannah’s direction. Because I am, you see, and I am not impressed by anything.
It was only later, when she’d been cuddled up with Dominic and kissing his sweet head as he tried valiantly to fight off sleep, that it occurred to her that what Paloma had done was flatter her into acquiescence.
Not to mention a headache the following morning.
But now the day and the great man had arrived.
The whole hotel had been aflutter for two weeks. Il maestro, they had murmured, sometimes like prayers and sometimes like wild chants to the moon. Il maestro sta arrivando qui!
The master was coming here.
Hannah had no idea who the master was.
But she had learned early on in her career in hospitality that if she defaulted to her knee-jerk, Midwestern politeness, people made all kinds of assumptions about her.
Mostly that they could treat her badly. So she had quickly developed a sleek, cool exterior.
She’d learned how to do her blond hair in an icy sort of twist that sat at the nape of her neck, because she’d understood that elegance was a weapon when wielded correctly.
The more understated, the better.