SHE was not going to do the girly thing and burst into

tears, Jodie told herself, gritting her teeth. It might be

growing dark; she might be feeling sick with that familiar

stomach-churning fear that she had made a big

mistake — and about more than just the direction she

had taken in that last village she had passed through

what seemed like for ever ago; tonight might be the

night she and John should have been spending at their

romantic honeymoon hotel — their first night as husband

and wife…but she was not going to cry. Not

now, and in fact not ever, ever again over any man.

Not ever. Love was out of her life and out of her

vocabulary and it was going to stay out.

She winced as her small hire car lurched into a

deep rut in the road — a road which was definitely

climbing towards the mountains when it should have

been dropping down towards the sea.

Her cousin and his wife, her only close family since

her parents" death in a car accident when Jodie was

nineteen, had tried to dissuade her from coming to

Italy.

"But everything’s paid for," she had reminded

them. "And besides…"

Besides, she wanted to be out of the country, and

she wanted to stay out of it for the next few weeks

during the build-up to John’s marriage to his new

fiance.e, Louise, who had taken Jodie’s place in his

heart, in his life, and in his future.

Not that she’d told her cousin David or Andrea, his

wife, about that part of her decision as yet. She knew

they would have tried to persuade her to stay at home.

But when home was a very small Cotswold market

town, where everyone knew you and knew that you