An Accidental Christmas
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You can't always get what you want… you get what you need…*
Ursula has given up on Christmas and is doing her level best to avoid it—family, presents, traditions—the whole package. Trouble is, when she becomes lost in the snowy mountains of Italy, with a car that won’t start, and nowhere to stay, she finds she’s landed in the midst of a traditional Christmas with no place to hide.
Widower Demetrio is devoted to his family, his land and tradition. And then he falls for Ursula—a beautiful woman from a very different world to his—and knows he has to get her to fall in love, not just with him, but his life. So he tempts her… one tradition in return for one more day together.
But can Demetrio’s traditions and love do the impossible? Can they make Ursula stop running from her emotions, and instead, embrace them? Enjoy a heart-warming escape to Italy and An Accidental Christmas!
*Thank you, Rolling Stones!
Italian Romance
- The Italian’s Perfect Lover
- Seduced by the Italian
- The Passionate Italian
- An Accidental Christmas
Excerpt
Ursula watched the sleek Ferrari, its front grill festooned with flowers and ribbons, drive away from the Montecorvio Rovella estate. There was a backward glance from both Alessandro and Emily, a wave, and then they were gone.
She sighed. Emily’s eyes had held hers momentarily before Alessandro had commanded her attention. They’d radiated happiness that only briefly dimmed when they’d caught Ursula’s gaze. Sympathy. She hated it.
“Now they are a couple in love.”
The woman speaking was hushed by her friend and turned round puzzled until she caught sight of Ursula. Ursula recognized her as Simone, an old friend of Alessandro’s whom she knew only slightly. Simone fell into step beside Ursula, as they walked over to the cars.
“So, are you returning to Sweden for Christmas?” Simone asked.
Ursula had been, but suddenly she couldn’t face it. Her father, stepmother and her teenage half-sisters wouldn’t miss her. They didn’t need her to complete their family at Christmas. Her married friends had extended kind invitations for Ursula to join them, but they all had their own families. They’d all be looking at her wondering why the girl they’d known at boarding school as “the girl likeliest to succeed,” was alone at Christmas.
She smiled—the smile that could always be counted on to disguise her real thoughts and emotions. “No. I thought I might stay in Italy.”
“Christmas with friends. Sounds good. Christmas with family is so often fraught with issues.”
Ursula nodded, unwilling to tell her that Christmas without family or friends was what she was seeking. “It makes a change.”
“Whereabouts are you going?”
Ursula thought quickly. “North.” She hoped the vague destination would suffice. She’d hoped wrong.
“The coast?”
“No.” Just the idea of retracing the holidays she’d had with Alessandro along Italy’s coast tightened the knot in her gut. “No,” she repeated more firmly. “The mountains.”
“Ah, good idea. You should stop off in Abbadia San Alexis on your way. It has amazing medieval buildings. And the frescoes—Emily would love them.” Simone stopped speaking abruptly, suddenly realizing what she’d said.
Ursula smiled. “It’s okay, you know. Emily and I are good friends. Alessandro and I broke up long before Emily came along.”
Simone’s relief was palpable. “Oh, yeah, I realize that. Anyhow, you should stop off in Abbadia if you’ve time.”
Ursula smiled again as she tried to hide the vast expanse of emptiness that had been resting deep inside, buried until now. It had taken the wedding of two of her closest friends to uncover it. “Sure. Well, I’d best be off.”
She said her goodbyes, and walked over to her rental car.
No-one was looking at her now, and she could allow the void which had been revealed at seeing Alessandro so in love with someone else, to find its place in the dead center of her heart. She didn’t have to pretend anymore. She was happy for Alessandro. She was. They weren’t just words to reassure everyone. But it had been Alessandro who’d called off their relationship; it had been Alessandro who hadn’t loved her enough, and it had been her who’d been left wondering why.
She couldn’t help it. She hadn’t been enough for him, she hadn’t been enough for her previous boyfriend who’d finished their relationship with a text and she doubted she’d be enough for anyone. Despite what all the school yearbooks stated, despite all the advances from people who shouldn’t be flirting with her, despite how busy she kept herself, there was an emptiness in the place where her heart should have been.
It had died a little with each rejection. Beginning with when she’d been sent to live with her grandparents as a child after her parent’s divorce, continuing with when she’d been packed off to an elite boarding school at eleven years of age, and sealed with the rejections of men who’d been unable, or unwilling, to see beyond the exterior she’d created to hide behind.
She needed to leave her world, just for a while. She needed to come to terms with the fact that she didn’t believe that emptiness would ever be filled.
She’d head north, as she’d told Simone. She suddenly remembered her friend Ruby would be in Florence for New Year. She’d find someplace to hide out for Christmas and then she’d go to Florence. Now, where was the place Simone had mentioned? She couldn’t remember, but it didn’t matter. She’d just drive.
* * *
The traffic was barely moving along the coastal highway. The rain, which had begun as soon as Ursula had left Naples, had turned to sleet, and red tail lights pierced the gloom as far as she could see. She checked her dashboard; the temperature had plummeted. Some holiday. At least she’d managed to contact Ruby and arrange to meet in early January. It was only just over a week away. She’d find something between now and then if she ever got out of this traffic jam, that was.
She peered at the unfamiliar gear stick, and crunched the car into gear as the line of traffic edged forward. She looked up just as the brake lights of the vehicle in front flared. She slammed on the brakes and sat, motor running, listening to yet another irritating Christmas song on the radio. Of course. What did she expect when she tried to drive through the rush hour at the beginning of the Christmas holiday season? The one time she decides to do something impromptu, and it backfires.
The traffic crawled briefly before stopping again. Ursula banged her fists impotently on the steering wheel. She couldn’t do this. It was making her crazy. All she wanted to do was put her foot hard on the accelerator and drive away from everything that was haunting her.
She gripped the wheel. She had to get off the main road. Anywhere. As a small road approached on the right, she signaled and turned into it. She didn’t even know where it was going. It was enough for her that it was leading away from Rome. She just wanted to drive, to follow her nose and stop only at nightfall where she could be away from everyone. Only her, in some anonymous, nameless hotel. There, she’d wait for Christmas to be over.
* * *
Lost in her thoughts as she negotiated the winding mountain road, away from all the traffic now, Ursula was hardly aware of the change in the light. The sleet had turned into airy snowflakes which drifted slowly down from an iron-gray sky. It wasn’t until she continued onwards, up through thickening trees—their branches already weighed down by snow—that the snow began to accumulate on the windscreen and Ursula realized this was more than just a passing snow shower. She peered out at the white world around her and smiled to herself as she absorbed its sheer beauty.
At a bend in the road, she pulled over into a siding, thick with newly fallen snow. She switched the engine off, and stepped out into a world of white. There was no sound, just the soft brush of giant snowflakes as they drifted down onto her upturned face. She laughed, unable to resist sticking out her tongue and tasting them, as she’d done as a child. The whiteness of the wooded valley, with its steep sides to which the road clung, was alleviated only by dark streaks on the sheltered side of the tree trunks, downwind from the snow. They looked as if they’d been touched by the brush of an artist.
Above the steep side of the mountain, with its forest of white-cloaked chestnut trees plunging down into the valley below, the view faded out into a snow-filled sky. It was an unspoiled landscape and a strangely calming one. She was glad she’d come, even if she was lost. She shivered, pulled her coat more tightly around her and stamped her feet which were beginning to numb with cold. Time to go. Climbing back into the car, she turned on the ignition but, instead of an engine roaring into life, there was only an ominous whirring sound that sent a sickening chill into her stomach.
She got out, opened up the bonnet and gave it a cursory look. Why, she didn’t know because she had no idea what she was looking for. She let it fall with a clang and looked around. The snow was settling deeper now, and no recent tracks disturbed its pristine beauty. For the first time, she felt a stab of concern. She tried her cell phone again. There was no reception. If only she’d paid more attention to the road signs giving a destination, or a historic site, anything that could have given her some sense of where she was in this landscape devoid of people or houses. But she hadn’t. She looked uphill to where the road disappeared around a corner, into a wall of white. It had to lead somewhere. She decided she’d walk for half an hour and, if there were no signs of life, she’d return to the car.
She grabbed her bags, locked the car and began walking, trundling the case behind her on the snowy road. Half an hour passed, and her light coat was wet through. Her boots were starting to chafe her feet, and not one car had gone by. The snow began to fall more heavily. She dragged the case behind her on the snowy road. Her Gucci handbag was soaked, she thought glumly. The suede would never recover.
Then she heard something. A rumbling. She stopped and turned around, but couldn’t see anything through the thickly falling snow. She shivered, whether through fear or cold she couldn’t have said. She rarely felt vulnerable, but she did now.
A puff of exhaust rose from around the bend, and a tractor emerged, its headlamps blinding in the snow, pulling behind it a trailer load of wood. It wasn’t until it drew up beside her that she saw the outline of a solitary man in the driver’s seat, seemingly oblivious to the cold and wet. She couldn’t see anything of him beneath the broad hat, and the turned-up collar of his thick coat.
“Caio!” he called.
***
