Page 26 of His Lost-and-Found Bride

A warm feeling crept across her stomach. Logan had always loved finding her like that, his shirt loose around her body and her hair twisted on top of her head with an errant paintbrush holding it in place. He’d usually pulled it free, followed by the shirt, and the following hours had been lost in a rush of love.

But that light had flickered out and died along with the death of their daughter. For a long time she couldn’t even bear to look at a paintbrush, let alone hold one.

Working for the heritage board had helped her heal. She didn’t paint her own creations any more. But she did paint. Restoration work was painstaking. In every fresco she restored she tried to re-create the passion and drama that the original artist had felt when he’d envisaged the work.

There was still a little part of her that longed to feel like that again too.

There was a lift inside her building but Logan was captivated by the grandiose staircase inside the entranceway. As it curved upwards there were archways hollowed out in the plaster in the walls. A long time ago each had been painted individually and had held sculptures. In between each hollowed archway was a large circular fresco embedded into the plaster on the walls.

Logan moved quickly up the stairs, stopping to admire each individual one. ‘These are amazing,’ he said, his hand hovering about them. Logan’s professional expertise knew far better than to actually touch.

She followed him upwards. A warmth was spreading through her. She was proud of her home—and secretly pleased that the man she’d shared part of her life with loved it just as much as she did.

As they walked upwards she leaned a little closer and whispered, ‘I might have restored some of these.’

His head shot around towards her. ‘You did?’

She nodded as his eyes fixed on the walls again. His fingers were still hovering just above a fresco of Moses. ‘You’ve made an amazing job of these.’

‘Thank you,’ she said simply, as they reached her floor and she pulled out her key and opened the apartment door.

He walked inside and looked around. Her living area was spacious and held a dining table and chairs and two wooden-footed red sofas. As with most Italian traditional apartments the floor was marble. A dark wooden bookcase adorned one wall, jam-packed with books.

But the most spectacular aspect of the apartment was the view. Lucia strode across the room and pulled open the black-and-gilt-edged glass doors. The warm air and noise from the Grand Canal below flooded in. It was like flicking a button and bringing the place to life. Next to the doors was a small wooden table, a chaise longue and an armchair. It was like having a real-live television. You could sit here all day and night and watch the world go by.

She knew his head must be spinning. This apartment was sumptuous. Well out of her price range. She stood shoulder to shoulder with him, watching the vaporetti and private boats motor past. On the other side of the canal stood another magnificent long-abandoned palace. Renaissance in style again, with Gothic-styled windows and ornate frescoes on the outside of the building.

He turned towards her and smiled. ‘It’s almost like your perfect view, isn’t it?’ There was an edge of curiosity in his voice. But he wasn’t going to ask the question out loud. Logan was far too polite for that.

‘Coffee?’ she asked, as she walked towards the kitchen. It was right next door to the open living area and again had windows looking out on the canal. He nodded and walked in next to her, sitting down on one of the high stools looking over the canal. She switched on her coffee-machine and put in her favourite blend.

She leaned back against the countertop. ‘I haven’t always stayed here,’ she said quietly. ‘After I’d been in Venice for two years one of my colleagues retired from the heritage board. They subsidise our living arrangements because—as you know—Venice can be very expensive.’ She held out her hands. ‘I sort of inherited this place. I pay roughly the same as we did for our apartment in Florence.’ She watched his eyebrows rise and couldn’t stop the smile. ‘It was like all my Saturdays at once.’ She laughed as she watched the coffee brew and pointed across the waterway. ‘Do you know, they actually asked me how I’d feel about staying here? It was all I could do not to snatch the key and just run.’

The warm feeling was spreading further. She rarely brought friends back to her apartment. This place was her sanctuary. From the moment she’d stepped inside it had always felt like that.

She’d thought having Logan here would be unbearable. She’d been so busy focusing on all the negatives she hadn’t even considered the positives.

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