Love at First Sight

by Jessica Gilmore

Genres: General Fiction; Romance

Synopsis

'A lovely warm escapist read' KATE EBERLEN

She's in love. Just with the wrong man...

Nora is done with dating, but still dreams of finding the one. So when a handsome stranger comes to her rescue one night and vanishes leaving only a business card, it's like a scene out of a movie...

It doesn't take long for the two to 'bump' into each other again, and Nora falls for the perfect-on-paper Gabe. Only a few weeks later, he invites her to Sicily, and she cannot believe her luck!

Until Gabe is forced away for work, leaving her alone with his big and warm family in gorgeous Sicily who welcome her with open arms. Everyone but Luca, his older and distrustful brother, who is always around.

Soon Nora finds herself on a dreamy, romantic getaway-just with the wrong brother...

Release date: July 4, 2024

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 352

Sample

‘I mean it, I am done.’ Nora Fitzgerald folded her arms and looked defiantly around the table. She could see why her friends looked sceptical. Her more recent romantic choices had been questionable to say the least. ‘No more dating. No apps, no set-ups. None of it. D.O.N.E. Done.’

‘Hear, hear!’ Ana held up her glass in a toast. ‘I’ll drink to that. Dating sucks.’

Nora clinked Ana’s glass. ‘Exactly! It really really sucks. Here’s to the end of dating. No more being ghosted by a man who still lives with his mother, no more being the rebound fling before he decides to propose to his ex.’

‘No more finding out he’s married with a baby on the way.’ Ana grimaced. ‘Or watching him cry at his university girlfriend’s wedding.’

‘No more standing in sweaty rooms watching terrible guitar bands week after week, only to find him snogging someone else behind the drum kit.’

‘To be fair, you should have known not to trust anyone in a band called Hooray Henry,’ Felix said with a slight shudder, looking up from his intense perusal of the menu from the other side of the table, although, as they came here nearly every week, he probably knew it by heart. ‘And they were really terrible. No offence, Nora, but I for one was delighted when you broke up with Lee. He should have paid us to turn up at those gigs, not charged us for the experience.’

Nora cringed. It was bad enough that she had wasted half a dozen weekends dutifully attending gigs in the back rooms of pubs in the outer reaches of London, but worse she had begged, cajoled and bribed her friends to join her. ‘I can’t believe I put you through that. I am a truly awful friend. And I actually thought I was heartbroken for a good few weeks after I finally dumped him. What was I thinking?’

‘We did wonder.’ Felix’s husband, Dai, nudged her. ‘But we all kiss our fair share of frogs before we find our prince.’ The smile he gave Felix was so tender it almost … almost … weakened Nora’s resolve.

‘Well. I for one have kissed my last frog,’ she said. ‘No more awkward first dates where they don’t ask me a single question about myself or eat all my food. No more sitting awkwardly while everyone in the bar knows I have been stood up. No more commitphobes. No more foot fetishists. No more unsolicited dick pics from random strangers.’ She thumped her fist on the table. ‘It’s time to say no. Applications are closed. Frogs need not apply.’

‘Go, Nora!’ Grace tossed her long braids back as she broke into applause. ‘I’d love to say I’m in, but I’m weak. I don’t want to be single forever.’

‘You’ve haven’t been single for as much as a week since we started Year Seven,’ Nora pointed out affectionately. ‘You just have to lift a finger and men fall into line. Besides, you love the dating game.’

‘True, and I am not ready to stop playing yet. But that’s because I know not to take it seriously. I’m not the romance nut here, Nora. I don’t believe in soulmates or a happy ever after. When it stops being fun, I’ll stop and if I’ve found someone I’m compatible with, then great, and if not, then that’s fine too. But you want the fairy tale. You always have. I just don’t see you settling down with a cat and your knitting and a nice box set.’ She grinned at Nora. ‘Not the way you knit anyway.’

‘Oh, I am not giving up on finding Mr Right,’ Nora said. ‘It’s dating I’m done with, not love. I still want to fall properly in love, to get married and maybe have children and all of that. But I’m not getting anywhere dating, so I have decided that I need to stop trying so hard, and I just have to trust that it will happen for me the old-fashioned way.’

Her friends exchanged amused glances.

‘The old-fashioned way? To join together two grand estates?’

‘Newspaper adverts?’

‘Becoming a governess in a spooky Yorkshire mansion?’

‘At a ball?’

‘No, idiots.’ Although a ball would be rather cool. ‘Fate. When the time is right, I’ll meet my soulmate. I just need to trust in that.’ Nora took a gulp of her Prosecco and avoided four sceptical pairs of eyes.

‘Honey, I hear you, but sometimes fate needs a helping hand,’ Dai said. ‘Look at me and Felix. I had to drink an obscene number of flat whites before he even noticed me, let alone started flirting with me.’

‘Oh, I noticed you,’ Felix said softly and Nora’s heart twisted. This was what she wanted. Not the combat of dating, but to be settled. She wanted pyjamas and a takeaway on a Saturday night, long walks across Hampstead Heath talking about nothing and yet finishing each other’s sentences. She wanted a perfect fit. Her perfect fit. And recent experiences were proving that she was unlikely to find him on an app. She shouldn’t be surprised – after all, hadn’t her mother raised her on classic romantic films? If they had taught her anything, it was that you didn’t find love, it found you, often in the most unexpected places and at the most unexpected times.

‘I love the idea of a soulmate, but I just don’t trust my hormones not to lead me astray,’ Ana said. ‘I swear, I can tell each month when I ovulate because I get obsessed with procreation. I sit on the tube and look around and think, if we get taken through to another dimension, who here will be the best hunter-gatherer and I find myself trying to catch their eye in this intense way. I can’t stop myself. The evolutionary instinct is scary stuff. If I trusted in fate, I’d be married to some hulking rugby player with no emotional intelligence but fabulous upper body strength.’

Nora couldn’t help laughing at the image of six foot, leggy Ana hunting down her prey during rush hour like some kind of leopardess on the prowl for a mate. ‘OK. I’ll just make sure I still feel it’s right when I’m not ovulating. All I know is that I need to trust in what my mum always said, that when I meet the one I’ll just know, like she did when she met my dad. She said that the universe has a plan for all of us, I just have to stop trying to make it happen and let it happen.’

‘But I thought you didn’t know who your dad is?’ Dai snagged an olive from the bowl sitting in the middle of the table. ‘Have I got that wrong?’

‘I know who he is,’ Nora said, immediately defensive, although she knew Dai was just interested. It couldn’t be easy for him as the newest member of such a tight-knit group, friends who had known each other so long there were no secrets, no unknowns. ‘I just don’t know him – and he doesn’t even know I exist. My mum met him in Italy, in Florence – isn’t that the most romantic thing you ever heard? She was interrailing the summer after her A levels and met him at a gelato shop – he knocked hers right out of her hand and insisted on buying her a new one. It was the ultimate meet-cute.’ Nora sighed. She could picture it so clearly, her mother, hair in plaits, adorably freckled nose, the gelato falling to the floor. Her father, tall, handsome and apologetic. ‘They spent a few perfect days together; it wasn’t until she got home several weeks later that she realised she was pregnant with me. But the point is, the moment she saw him she knew he was going to be in her life forever – and through me he was.’

‘But they didn’t stay in touch?’

Nora shook her head. ‘No social media in those days. Not even email, not for most people. Mum didn’t even know his surname. They were both heading south so parted in Rome with the promise they would run into each other again, but somehow it didn’t happen. She had other relationships, of course, later, a couple pretty serious, but no one else made the same impact on her. You know, right until she died, I think she hoped she would see him again one day, if only to tell him about me.’ She blinked, her eyes suddenly hot.

It was nearly the fifth anniversary of her mother’s death, but Nora still missed her all the time. They had been unusually close, partly because of her mother’s youth, but mostly because of the kind of person her mother had been – warm, impulsive, empathic. Every time she returned home from another failed date, she wished her mother was there to envelop her in a hug, make her a cup of tea and cheer her up by putting on one of the nineties romcoms they both adored. Who could stay sad while watching Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan find each other on the top of the Empire State Building?

‘That’s incredible. It’s hard to imagine a time when you couldn’t just add someone on Insta and they would still be there long after the tan has faded, liking every cat picture.’ Dai took another olive. ‘Do you know anything about him at all?’

‘I know that he was Swedish, planning to study architecture and called Erik and that’s it. Luckily, I do have a couple of photos, so I at least know what he looked like in his late teens or early twenties.’ She looked down at the table. ‘I was doing some tidying the other day and I came across Mum’s diary. Well, it’s more a collection of postcards and letters, so I don’t feel like I’m intruding reading them. Seeing their time together through her eyes makes me feel like I know him a little better.’ She blinked, remembering the way her mother’s expression would soften whenever she talked about the brief time she and Nora’s father had spent together. Finding and reading the postcards made her feel like her mother was still here, for a few moments at least, her voice so vivid and alive. Nora was doing her best not to rush through them, reading them one at a time, in those moments when she really missed her mother.

And if her mother were here, she knew she would tell Nora to stop trying so hard to meet someone. To trust in fate. Finding the postcards and letters felt like a sign to do exactly that.

‘At least you have a name,’ Dai said. ‘Can’t you use that to track him down?’

‘Do you know how many Eriks there are in Sweden?’

‘Er, a lot?’

Nora took a sip from her nearly empty glass. ‘There are around sixty thousand males called Erik in Sweden. I can discount any aged under forty-five and over sixty, but it’s still too wide a field and narrowing the search area down to architecture hasn’t helped. Besides, even if I did track him down, he might not want to know me. He might not even remember Mum or he might have a family of his own and not want the complication of an adult daughter wanting to play happy families.’

Nora had told herself that many times, but it didn’t stop her trying to find her father. Didn’t stop her spending especially lonely evenings on social media, search sites, using photo recognition software, searching architecture firms around the world, the crumpled photos by her side, looking for any clue, any man of the right age who might have been in Italy at the right time. What she would actually do if she did ever find him, she wasn’t sure. Her dream was to be part of a family again, the reality might be rejection.

‘If anyone can find him, you can,’ Grace said loyally. ‘You’re the best in the business.’

‘It’s not quite the same.’ But Nora couldn’t deny that part of the reason she enjoyed her job working for an heir hunter firm was because, even if she was missing part of her heritage, she got to reunite other families. Yes, her job was all about money, but the people she tracked down often inherited more than just cash and assets, they found a family history and sometimes an actual family as well.

For someone as alone in the world as Nora was, that was the biggest prize of all.

To Nora’s relief, the waitress turned up at that moment and Dai’s questions ended as they got down to the important business of ordering. Nora had been friends with Grace, Felix and Ana since school; there was nothing about her life they didn’t know. Well, almost nothing, they didn’t know how lonely she was, that fact she kept to herself, not wanting their pity. They’d already steered her through enough tragedy. They knew she wanted to find her soulmate but they didn’t know how much of that desire stemmed from her longing to be part of a big, bustling family. To come home to noise and chaos and love, not an empty house where her footsteps echoed forlornly around the hallway and just two coats hung on the hatstand meant to hold five times as many.

Dai reached for the Prosecco bottle, but when he lifted it up, it was empty. ‘Have we finished it already? There’s the red we brought, but I’m still in the mood for bubbles. Anyone else?’

‘I’ll go and get a bottle,’ Nora said, getting to her feet. Their favourite tapas restaurant was a bring your own, which made it surprisingly affordable even in trendy Hoxton. ‘I meant to grab a bottle before I got here, but I was running late. No, honestly, Dai,’ she insisted as he tried to dissuade her. ‘It’s my turn and there’s that lovely wine shop just over the road. I’ll only be a few minutes. Just leave me an olive – and if the padron peppers arrive, do not eat them all!’

Grabbing her bag Nora made for the exit, glad of the opportunity to clear her head and get some air. Dai’s innocent questions had stirred up a lot of feelings she tried to keep dampened down and, she realised, as she swayed in her too-high heels, she had been swigging the Prosecco more quickly than usual as she had responded.

Her shoes, like many of her clothes, had belonged to her mother. Since her teens, Nora and Charlotte Fitzgerald had shared a wardrobe as amicably as they had shared a house. Even better, her packrat mother had thrown very little out, leaving Nora with a plethora of original eighties and nineties outfits to choose from, in addition to some gems from her grandmother’s wardrobe. Tonight, she wore a silk slip dress of her mother’s teamed with the black-laced ankle boots. They had been her mother’s favourite shoes and wearing them always made Nora feel closer to her. It didn’t hurt that they also added three inches to her diminutive five foot two height.

As Nora left the restaurant, she turned to look at her friends framed in the window. Ana’s often stern, sharply cut features relaxed in laughter at something Grace had said, while Dai and Felix leant close to each other across the table, lost in their own world. Who would have thought that Felix would be the first of them to settle down? Dai had softened some of his more cynical edges, made public his romantic side. They were the perfect example of two people who were just meant to be together. And they had had the perfect meet-cute. If Felix hadn’t decided that following his father into the city wasn’t for him after all and opened up a coffee shop instead, if Dai hadn’t taken the wrong exit off the Heath, if he hadn’t been so smitten with the handsome barista that he had continued to take the wrong exit day after day, then Dai wouldn’t even be part of their lives. It was almost terrifying how much had hinged on that wrong exit and a flat white. Thank goodness fate had brought them together. OK, fate with a bit of a helping hand from Dai. Regardless, the pair had everything she wanted for herself. They were proof that her soulmate was out there waiting for her.

Lost in thought, Nora stepped out into the road, only to stagger and nearly fall as, instead of landing on hard tarmac, her foot sank down. Had she snapped a heel? These were Gucci ankle boots! Her mother would kill her, no matter that she herself had been dead for five years!

The moment of dark humour took away from the discomfort of the misstep and the humiliation of nearly falling flat on her face in the street. Not very hipster Hoxton cool of her.

Nora straightened carefully, flexing her ankles and knees to check for damage as she did so, and looked down to see what had happened.

A grate. A big grate right by the pavement and she had gone straight through it. At least, her heel had. Idiot.

She lifted her foot. Except it didn’t move. What the actual? She pulled again, but no, the heel was obstinately and definitely stuck in the grate. Another tug, harder, the effort squeezing her ankle and bringing sudden tears to her eyes.

‘Damn it.’

Nora looked around wildly, but all she could see was a taxi a few metres away with two men standing beside it, one holding a bag. Besides, what could she say? ‘Please help me, my vintage and horribly impractical boots are stuck in a grate.’ What could anyone actually do? The only option was to unlace the boot, take it off and try to wiggle it free when it wasn’t encumbered by her foot.

Right. A plan.

Only, of course – of course – it was starting to rain, the wind whipping up. It was early May, but the weather clearly hadn’t got the springtime memo. What had she been thinking coming out without a coat? Her dress might be an original Ghost 90s slip dress, but it was still silky, skimpy and now increasingly damp. As for her hair, she could actually feel it starting to frizz, to rise like dough on a warm windowsill.

Nora bent down and started to tug at the laces. These boots had seemed oh so cute at home, with their hooks and the way they laced all the way up her calves, but, as her fingers numbed, she was bitterly regretting not pushing her feet into her flat fur-lined boots and choosing practicality over style. And had this lace knotted? Damn. It. She tugged again, only to realise she was making the problem ten times worse. The rain intensified and she swore under her breath. If only it would stop raining. If only she could see! If only her fingers would work …

One of the two men standing by the taxi called out sharply in her direction. ‘Attenzione! Look out!’

Nora whirled round, wrenching her ankle as she did so, and saw a motorbike coming towards her at what seemed like an impossible speed, lights blaring straight at her. Desperately, she tugged her now painful foot, tears of vexation, pain and fear mingling with the rain running down her face.

‘I can’t get it free!’ she cried out and heard running footsteps before a hand grabbed her shoulder.

Nora looked up, dimly taking in a tall slim figure, a glimpse of wet, dark hair and the impression of razor-sharp cheekbones. She gave another tug. ‘It’s stuck.’

‘Cavola! Accidento,’ the man muttered, before slipping an arm around her shoulders and holding her tightly as he gave a sharp tug and, with a moment of exquisite pain, her foot was pulled free from the drain, the motorbike roared past and, for the first time in her life, Nora Fitzgerald fainted. Right into the arms of her rescuer.

Nora knew three things. One, it was still raining. Two, her foot really hurt. And three, she was propped up against a wall, her eyes closed.

‘What happened?’ she murmured like some kind of film heroine, the effort of opening her eyes somehow too much, but still uncomfortably aware that her dress was soaked through, her hair dripping. Woozy as she was, she couldn’t help but worry that her mascara had ended up halfway down her face.

There was no answer, but she could hear a rumble of male voices speaking Italian, one indistinct, the other a deep, gravelly voice that was somehow comforting. More, familiar. Safe.

She tried to open her eyes but couldn’t make out much more than a blur before she had to close them again, the throb in her ankle drowning everything else, before drifting back off into that strange twilight world.

‘Nora? Nora!’

‘Is she hurt?’

‘Do we need an ambulance?’

‘Nora, honey, are you OK?’

‘Give her some air.’

‘We need to move her inside.’

‘Should we? What if she’s hurt?’

‘But she’ll catch pneumonia if she stays out here!’

It was nice that her friends were so concerned, but Nora wished they weren’t quite so loud. Her shoulder was throbbing, her foot was still doing something that made throbbing seem like a benign activity, she felt faintly nauseous and she’d gone from wet through to absolutely soaking.

She managed to open her eyes and this time keep them open and blurrily made out Grace, Ana, Felix and Dai standing over her. Behind them, looking concerned, were Tony and Elena, the restaurant owners.

‘I’m fine,’ Nora croaked, but nobody seemed to hear her.

‘No ambulance,’ she tried again and this time her voice was stronger.

‘Nora! She’s awake.’ Ana crouched down by her. ‘Are you sure? What if you have concussion?’

‘I didn’t hit my head.’ Nora touched her head doubtfully. Surely, she would feel it if she had? ‘A guy caught me.’ Nora suddenly felt bereft, missing the strong arms around her, that strangely familiar feeling of safety. ‘Where is he?’

‘What guy? Are you sure you’re not concussed?’ Ana looked even more concerned.

‘There was a guy,’ Grace said excitedly. ‘He stepped away when we all came out. I think Dai spoke to him? Dai? Who was the guy?’

‘Nora’s knight in shining armour? No idea.’

‘He was Italian, I think. A real hero. He saved my life. Or at least he saved me from a nasty accident. Tall, dark …’ Nora caught herself. Maybe she had hit her head if she was blurting out every thought.

‘Tall, dark and heroic. Maybe fate is telling you something,’ Felix teased. Then he turned serious. ‘Nora, I think we should call a paramedic and get you checked out.’

‘I’m fine,’ and she increasingly was, the ache in her shoulder receding, the pain in her ankle lessening. She looked around. ‘I just wish I could say thank you. Did he take off?’

‘Once we were here and he knew you were OK,’ Dai said.

‘Oh.’ Nora wasn’t sure what her sudden swoop of disappointment meant. ‘Well, I’m just glad he was here in the first place.’

‘So are we,’ Dai agreed. ‘Oh! He asked me to give you this.’ He held up a small business card. ‘In case you need a statement for insurance or anything, he said.’

‘Thank you.’ Nora used Felix’s proffered arm to get gingerly to her feet and test her ankle. It twinged as she put weight on it. Possibly sprained, she decided, but definitely not broken. ‘Let’s get out of the rain, I want my patatas bravas even if you don’t. I didn’t make it to the off-licence though.’

‘Don’t worry about that.’ Felix put his arm around her and helped her limp to the restaurant door. ‘I’m still not sure we shouldn’t get you checked out, let alone feed you alcohol.’

‘I wouldn’t turn down some ice for my foot, but otherwise I’m fine.’ Nora wasn’t being brave, with every step she really did feel better. Oh, her ankle ached, as did her shoulder, clearly a little wrenched from when the stranger had grabbed her to pull her back, she was beginning to shiver as the wet fabric of her dress clung to her skin and she wasn’t sure she dared check her boots for damage, but for all that, she felt strangely excited. It was almost as if she had recognised her rescuer, even though the whole thing had taken seconds, she hadn’t even spoken to him and she had never seen him before. It was just like her mother had described meeting her father. Looking up and just knowing, despite the driving rain and the fact she could barely make out his features. And even though, in this case, the hero of the story hadn’t stuck around.

Despite everything, Nora managed to enjoy her dinner, gratefully accepting Elena’s offer of a towel and a sweatshirt and tracksuit bottoms to change into and sensibly sticking to water rather than any more wine, but she found it hard to concentrate on her friends’ conversations, instead replaying the events of the accident over and over. The whole thing had probably taken less than a minute, and yet every millisecond was stamped on her brain. The shout, the rescue, the strength as he had hauled her to safety …

‘Did he say anything else?’ she asked Da. . .