The Italians also loved their food but Alice had to be careful—just one look at all the delicious food and she felt her hips expand. Not that she was really overweight, just more curvy than she would have liked.
She was about to pack up her bag when her eyes were drawn to a figure sitting on a bench opposite her.
Dressed in a pair of thigh-hugging faded blue jeans and a white T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, the man was muscular without being bulky. His face was turned upwards as if he was drinking in the rays of the sun. The muscles of his arms rippled as he lifted his arms and pulled his T-shirt over his head. Alice took a deep breath. He was a real-life copy of the statue of Michelangelo she had been attempting to draw. His chest and arms were tanned and fine dark hair formed a V down to the top button of his jeans.
She started to sketch his face. Dark, almost black hair flopped across a broad forehead. He had a long Roman nose and a strong jawline.
She moved to the mouth: full lips, the edges turned up at the corner as if he was a man who was used to laughing. As if he could read her mind, he smiled, stretched and opened eyes framed by eyelashes that were longer than hers. His eyes were not quite brown with a glint that made them almost amber. Perfectly straight white teeth. Of course. This man couldn’t possibly have an imperfection. He was without a doubt the most beautiful man she had seen in real life—and that was saying something.
As she ran her eyes over his chest, her pencil scribbling furiously on the paper, she saw that he wasn’t perfect. Across his chest was a scar. A few inches long, it ran in a diagonal line from his shoulder down towards his abdomen.
Alice took a long swig of tepid water. For some reason her mouth was dry.
The man shifted slightly before lifting his T-shirt from the bench beside him. As he raised his arms to put it back on, his muscles bunched.
Alice fanned herself with a piece of paper from her pad. Florence was hot in midsummer.
Ten more days and she’d be going back to her life in London. She sighed. Why did the thought fill her with dread? Most women would give their eye teeth to live her life. But to her it felt empty, almost pointless. On the other hand, since she’d come to Italy she’d had the strange sense of coming home. It was crazy. She could barely speak the language and as far as she knew there were no Italians in her ancestry. Perhaps it was because here she could be anonymous Alice instead of Lady Alice Granville, daughter of one of the richest men in London.
For once in her life, Alice wasn’t on show and she intended to make the most of it. Every morning she left the villa and wandered around Florence, drinking in the art and architecture, craning her neck lest she miss another breathtaking sculpture or carving. She’d promised Peter that she would think about his proposal. In every way he should be the right man for her. He was perfect husband material—wealthy, sophisticated, aristocratic and, even more importantly as far as her father was concerned, he had a bright future with her father’s company. But, and this was a big but, he did nothing to set Alice’s heart racing. In fact, ‘boring’ was the word that sprang to mind. She had come to Florence to give herself time and space to think about his proposal and already she knew she could never marry him. Telling him would be awful, but she would do it as soon as she got home.
This last week and a half, Alice had allowed herself to daydream that she was Italian, an ordinary woman living an ordinary life, and she liked the feeling. For the rest of her time in Italy she was going to be Alice Granville, university student, who had to bring her lunch into the city to save money. Even if that lunch was provided by the trained chef who worked at her father’s friend’s holiday villa.
A screech of brakes and a terror-filled scream filled the air, jerking her out of her reverie. For a moment there was silence as the world seemed to stop. Alice jumped up, abandoning her belongings on the step and hurried over to where the noise had come from.
At first it was difficult to see what had happened. A jumble of metal and clothes lay on the ground where one of the stalls selling leather handbags had been knocked over. Next to it was a moped, its wheels twisted and the metal bent and misshapen. A car had careered off to one side and as they watched a man staggered out of the car. He swayed and clutched the bonnet of his car for support.
‘Dio mio,’ he said, shocked and dazed. ‘Dio mio.‘
Horrified, Alice spotted the still form of a little girl lying on the ground. A few feet from her, a woman was moaning and struggling to sit up.
The man from the bench was running towards the victims and without thinking Alice followed him.
‘Chiamante un ambulanza!‘ he shouted to the people who had stopped to stare as he dropped to his knees beside the injured girl. A young woman instantly punched numbers into a phone. Everyone else was still staring in horrified silence. Some even began to move away.
‘Can I help?’ Alice asked, dropping to her knees beside the man she had been sketching only minutes before.
‘Go to the woman,’ he replied in accented English. ‘Make sure she stays still and that no one else tries to move her until I have examined her. I need to see to the child first.’ He must have noticed Alice’s hesitation. ‘Prego! Go!’ he said. ‘I’m a doctor. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’
Her heart thumping, Alice ran across to the woman. She hoped she wasn’t badly injured. The only experience of first aid Alice had was a course she had taken at school and that had been four years ago. At least the woman was conscious and breathing. Wishing she could speak Italian, Alice spoke quietly to the grey-haired victim, hoping that the woman would at least be reassured by her presence. She mumbled something that Alice couldn’t follow. Fortunately the woman who had phoned for the ambulance stopped and translated. ‘She is asking if her grandchild is okay,’ she told Alice.
‘Tell her a doctor is looking at her now.’
The grandmother started to raise herself off the ground. Alice pressed her back, gently but firmly. ‘No, no. You mustn’t move till the doctor’s examined you. You could make any injuries you do have worse.’ While her words were hurriedly translated, Alice searched for signs of injury. She winced in sympathy as she noticed that the grandmother’s ankle looked to be broken.
‘You’ll be fine. An ambulance is on its way.’
The grandmother’s gaze was straining towards her granddaughter, who was partly obscured by the kneeling doctor. The woman muttered another stream of incomprehensible Italian.
‘A prayer,’ the bystander told Alice.
Alice stood to see if she could help the driver of the car.
His forehead was bleeding profusely, but Alice had read somewhere that even shallow head wounds tended to do that. Apart from the cut to his head and his dazed expression he didn’t seem badly hurt. ‘I didn’t see them. I was talking on my phone. I didn’t see them.’
‘Someone has phoned for an ambulance,’ Alice reassured him. ‘They will be here soon.’
‘Could you stay with this lady and this gentleman?’ Alice asked the helpful bystander. ‘I’ll be back in a minute. I must see if the doctor needs help.’
Her heart still beating painfully fast, Alice sped across to where the doctor was examining the child. Alice noticed that he’d moved the little girl into the recovery position. She was disturbingly pale but what was worse was that she had a piece of metal protruding from just below her collar bone. Horrified, Alice sucked in a breath. The man had removed his T-shirt and was using it to staunch the blood pumping from the wound.
Although his attention was focussed on his patient, he must have sensed her presence.
‘Are the other two all right?’ he asked.
‘The driver seems okay, but the grandmother seems to have broken her ankle.’
‘What is your name?’
‘Alice.’