Summer in Tuscany by Elizabeth Adler

Author:Elizabeth Adler
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Romance, Suspense, Fiction
ISBN: 9781429901192
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2009-04-14T05:00:00+00:00

It was a Sunday morning, and the piazza by the church in the nearby village was thronged. The church bells clanged the time for services meant to sustain the spirit, while the stuff of life went on under its stained-glass windows.

We browsed our way along the stalls, delightedly checking the produce. There was the signora who specialized in lamponi—raspberries, lustrous as rubies and picked that very morning. The signora herself was not your usual idea of a market vendor. She was of a certain age, blond and charming, smart in a Versace silk scarf. She told us about her berries and about her special raspberry mustard and raspberry vinegar.

Three packets of berries and the mustard later, we were at the fish stall staring into the bright eyes of salmon and trout, striped bass and eels. We browsed through the vegetables, admiring a kind of broccoli they told me was called Romanesque, swirling minispires of beautiful apple-green florets that I had never seen anywhere else, and we bought radicchio and butter lettuce and goat cheeses and pecorino.

The woman at the bread stall spoke English. She was olive-skinned with bright Gypsy eyes. She told me she and her husband had looked for their farm for seven years. Now they had found it, and they were growing their own grains, grinding them on their own mill wheel, and baking their own breads in their kitchen ovens. “My husband bakes our bread with love,” she said, clutching a hand to her heart. And I believed her. I bought a heavy rustic loaf, and we tore off delicious chunks to eat as we pushed our way through the crowd en route to the next stop, the bar.

It was already well populated with locals—the real Italian locals, that is, plus the imported locals from Britain, Holland, Germany, and America, who had left urban delights behind for the simpler pleasures of a country villa, a rural market, and a Sunday espresso with a cognac. First, though, we picked up custard-filled pastries called sfoghiate from the pasticceria opposite. Then we joined the crowd, sipping our coffee—large with hot milk on the side for me, so I could judge how milky I wanted it; straight for Ben. We tried not to breathe in the cigarette smoke, an impossibility, and Ben shouted ciao to the proprietor and other acquaintances as the church clock loudly chimed the hour. Then we shuffled our way out through the throng and back to the car.

“Rural pleasures,” I said, giving him a long glance from under my lashes, the way I remembered from my old teen-flirt days. “I’m all for them.”

“Have you ever really seen Florence?” he said.

I shook my head. “Then that’s where we’re going,” he said, putting the Land Rover into gear.

And you know what? I would have gone anywhere he wanted to take me. I hadn’t had this much fun in a long time. I was on a magic carpet ride.

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