A tall, good-looking man in a suit walked past and, much as she had been working hard to suppress the memory of him, she found herself thinking of James. He always wore a suit to work and he travelled a lot. It would be the height of irony if she were to meet him here, today, in Venice. She shook her head angrily. And if she were to meet him, how would she react? It was eight days since what should have been her wedding day, and, in the meantime, she had spent many tough hours going over in her head just what had happened and how she could maybe have prevented it. She found herself still at a loss to explain what had got into him and how she could have missed the signs. Try as she might, she couldn’t think of more than a handful of minor disagreements that could have indicated his dissatisfaction with the relationship and with her. As a rational, very organised person, it was bitterly frustrating to realise just how little she had truly known about the man with whom she had been fully prepared to spend the rest of her life.
The all-too-familiar stinging in the corners of her eyes threatened to develop into tears once more, but she was prevented from any further introspection as the sliding doors opened and her future bosses appeared. Along with them was a group of people, many of them carrying bikes in bags or boxes. At their head was Paul. He gave Sarah a cheery wave and led the others across to her as she surreptitiously wiped her eyes. They made up a group of fifteen people, nine of them men. At first sight, everybody looked pretty fit and Sarah drew heart from this. Maybe Polly’s minibus wouldn’t get too crowded, after all. Bringing up the rear of the group was Miles and she took a good look at him for the first time since his brief appearance in her office earlier that week. He looked leaner than she remembered and there was not even a hint of the sedentary businessman’s paunch she had noted a few years ago. However, her fears were reawakened when she saw that, although all the other members of the group were smiling cheerfully, his face looked serious, maybe even surly. She sighed to herself and hoped he would cheer up as the trip went on. She went across to greet them all, noting with relief, out of the corner of her eye, the reappearance of Polly from the bus.
‘Hi, everybody.’ Sarah put on her brightest smile and introduced herself, realising as she did so that this smile was now going to have to be plastered across her face permanently for the next two weeks. Considering how little smiling she had been doing recently, she had a feeling her face muscles were in for a real workout. ‘Welcome to Venice. I’m Sarah and I’m going to be riding with you. This is Polly, who’ll be with us all the way as well.’ They both passed among the group, shaking hands, exchanging greetings and handing out programmes. As she went round, Sarah ticked off names on her list. When she reached Miles, she stuck out her hand and managed to broaden her smile even wider.
‘Hi, Miles, I’m very glad to see you again.’
To her surprise, he managed to smile back at her and it was as if a wave had washed over his face, changing his appearance from grim to almost cheerful, and taking ten years off him in the process. As she shook hands, she took a closer look at him. Although she had always assumed he was well into his forties, with a smile on his face he looked a good bit younger.
‘Sarah, hi, good to see you again.’ His grip was firm and, for the first time, she saw his eyes close up. Although dark-ringed and surrounded by care lines, they were an amazing deep royal blue and strangely hypnotic. She felt a quite unexpected surge of physical attraction, which disappeared in an instant as the memory of the other man in her life with amazing blue eyes made its unwelcome return. It must have shown on her face as Miles’s smile vanished as suddenly as it had come. Sarah hastily turned her attention to the others and supervised them as they loaded their luggage onto trolleys and headed out to the bus. It was only when they had all disappeared with Polly that Sarah had a few moments to analyse her first impressions.
Paul was undeniably handsome and he knew it. Miles wasn’t as gloomy as she had feared, although she hadn’t missed the lines on his careworn face. Hopefully, he would manage to relax as the trip unfolded, if relaxation was a word to be used by people about to cycle a thousand kilometres. The other members of the group all looked as if they were up for it, and one of the women in particular was very pretty indeed. From previous experience, Sarah wondered how that might affect the dynamics of the group, particularly if Paul was still in predatory mode. She determined to keep a close eye on him. It would reflect badly on Hall’s Tours if the son of the proprietor were to start playing fast and loose with the customers.
‘Hello, are you part of the cycle ride?’ She raised her eyes from her clipboard and found herself confronted by a very tall blond man, probably her age, with the lightest blue eyes she had ever seen. Where Miles had cobalt-blue eyes, these were like the blue of an iceberg in the sun. His eyes and mouth were smiling and she had no difficulty in giving him a big smile in return. From his accent, he was Scandinavian, and there was only one of these on her list. He had to be Lars from Sweden.
‘Hi, you must be Lars.’ She saw him nod. ‘Welcome to Venice, Lars. Did you have a good flight?’
His smile was infectious and she was still chatting happily to him when Polly returned from dropping the others off. When Lars disappeared with Polly, Sarah felt quite sorry. Talking to him had been remarkably easy and this had really cheered her. Maybe two weeks of being nice wasn’t going to be too hard, after all.
By two o’clock, almost all the participants had turned up and nobody had lost any luggage or suffered a significant delay. The last to arrive were three women whose flight from Cardiff had arrived over an hour ago. Sarah was just beginning to get worried when the automatic doors swished open and the girls appeared, pushing a trolley full of bags. They all looked flustered, the redhead in the middle particularly so. She spotted Sarah’s yellow shirt and the clipboard and came rushing across to explain.
‘Hi, I’m Glynis Phillips. I’m terribly sorry, but I lost my phone.’
Sarah’s eyebrows shot up. ‘You lost it? What, on board the aircraft or after you got off?’
Glynis nodded, the embarrassed look on her face now more evident. ‘I turned it off for the flight and was going to turn it back on again once we got off, and it was then that I realised I’d lost it, just before passport control. I searched all my stuff, but I couldn’t find it. I was just starting to explain to the policemen when it turned up.’
One of her companions, a pretty, dark-haired girl, supplied the explanation. ‘I managed to find a girl who works for the airline and she made a call.’ She shot a long-suffering glance across at Glynis. ‘It was in the aircraft, tucked into the seat pocket.’
Glynis nodded miserably. ‘I must have dropped it in there by accident. I don’t know what I’d have done without you, Jo.’ She gave Sarah an apologetic look. ‘I’m so sorry. I hope I haven’t kept you waiting too long.’
Sarah gave her a grin, determined to reassure her and calm her down. ‘Not at all. I’m just glad you found it.’ She smiled at all three of them. ‘Well, you’ve arrived now. If you’d like to come with me, there’s a bus outside to ferry you to the hotel.’
As they made their way out of the terminal building, Jo, the girl who had saved the day, fell in alongside Sarah and whispered to her. ‘Glynis is a sweetie, but I’m afraid she can be a bit scatty at times. Naomi and I’ll do our best to keep an eye on her.’ She was an attractive girl and, by the sound of it, a bright one. Somehow, Sarah had a feeling Paul was going to like her a lot. Surreptitiously, she crossed her fingers, hoping he would behave himself. Anyway, she told herself, everybody had turned up and she could breathe a sigh of relief. So far, so good. As long as she didn’t think too hard about Gianluca.
***
Dinner was set for half past eight in a restaurant a few kilometres inland of the airport and the hotel. They had booked a coach to ferry everybody there and Sarah breathed a sigh of relief when everybody was safely