1 Chapter 1

For a memorial service, everyone seemed quite jolly, Rob thought as he followed the stream of people out of the church. There was much chatting going on. He wandered away from his parents, looking to do some networking. Since coming home from his MBA six months ago, he’d been too busy working to do much of the networking an up-and-coming young businessman should do. At least that was his excuse, because if he gave in to his dad’s advice, he’d have to take up golf, and the thought made him shudder.

He looked around for someone to chat to and spotted…well, first he spotted Liliana Bianchi, dressed in unrelieved black, and he knew her, because she hadn’t changed a bit in twenty years. Though she might be a little shorter. Or was that only an effect of standing next to the tall man at her side? Holy cats, is that…?

“Chez?” he said, approaching them, holding out his hand. “Is that you?”

“Rob?” Chez said.

A briefly startled expression crossed his face. His frankly gorgeous face. He had not been this pretty when Rob saw him last, almost a decade ago when they were both sixteen, and Chez had gone off to one sixth-form college and Rob to another. His skin had cleared up, for one thing.

“Mrs Bianchi,” Rob said to Liliana. “We have met before. Rob Catteneo.”

“Oh,” she said, eyebrows raised. “From the new firm.”

The new firm, yes, since the Catteneo family had onlybeen selling ice creams in this town since 1973, a mere forty years. Unlike the oldfirm, the Bianchi family, who’d come over from Italy in the early 1950s.

“I was at school with Chez,” Rob reminded her.

“Chez?” She looked up at her great-grandson. “What is this ‘Chez’ he calls you, Cesare?”

“It’s what my friends call me, Nana.” Chez swept wavy black hair out of his eyes as the strong wind off the sea blew it across his face. “They called me that at school.”

“School? This is not school. This is church.” She looked at Rob again with recognition in her dark eyes. “Ah yes. Roberto. The cheeky one.”

“Nana!”

Rob grinned. “You do remember me.”

“It’s Robert, Nana,” Chez said. “Not Roberto.”

Her snort told Rob what she thought of that. The Bianchis hung onto the old ways, the old names, and, whenever they could, the old genetics. His last name might give him away, but since his dad had married a local girl, Rob looked as Anglo-Saxon as most other men in this town. Chez looked like he’d just stepped off his Vespa in Milan to go buy a cappuccino.

“Still playing football?” Rob asked Chez.

“When I have time.”

Rob remembered him being a pretty good winger back in school. Though hampered by the fact he’d been tall yet willowy and a stiff breeze could have knocked him over, never mind a hard tackle. He’d been one of those boys who’d hit his adult height long before he gained enough weight to go with it. He wasn’t willowy anymore, though. He’d filled out nicely. His dark suit showed off his long legs, slim waist, and broad shoulders to perfection. Still rangy and lean, but not a waif anymore. Rob would give up his best van pitch in exchange for a chance to peel that suit off him but tried not to drool too obviously. He didn’t know if Chez was gay. He probably wasn’t. There’d been name-calling at school, but that hardly counted as conclusive. Most likely he had a beautiful wife and a bunch of cute kids.

“I suppose you’re busy these days,” Rob said.

When Rob had learned Cesare, the younger brother, was now running the Bianchi family’s ice cream business, he’d been baffled. The Bianchis always passed the business on to the eldest son. That’s how an old-fashioned firm like theirs worked. But the older brother, Teo, had relinquished control last year and gone off down south somewhere.

“Cesare works so hard,” Liliana said. “We’re all so proud of him. He’s a boy who knows how to be loyal to his family.”

Despite the praise, Rob saw pain cross Chez’s face. Not liking this hint of reproof against his big brother? What was the story there? Mum and Dad didn’t know. Rob wanted to find out, because he had plans for Bianchi’s. And now he’d seen Chez again, he had to say he looked forward to putting those plans into effect.

“It’s great to see you again,” Rob said. He pulled out a business card and handed it to Chez. “Give me a call. We should get together some time, have a drink, talk about school, eh?”

Chez offered his business card in return. Not a good design. Looked cheap. But he displayed little enthusiasm for talking about school. That was okay. Rob had a whole range of subjects he’d love to talk to Cesare Bianchi about. Their fingers brushed as Rob took Chez’s card. And for an instant, their eyes met. Rob saw something there, something deep in the large dark eyes.