In All the Way to Heaven, Anica Tomlin sets off for a romantic escape to Italy to heal a broken heart—solo. But from the moment she boards the wrong train in Pisa, her carefully laid plans begin to unravel. A bicycle accident, a charming Tuscan villa, and a family full of surprises soon lead Ani down a winding path she never expected… one that just might lead her straight to love.

Here’s a peek at Chapter One and Two…

📖 Chapter One

I am the dawn, born to dispel all the enchantment of moonlight. Never trust love.

(The voice in the distance – la Rondine)

~ ~ ~

Tish’s lips kept moving, but I couldn’t hear what she said over the bass drum pounding inside my head. In contrast, the pitch of conversation around us, coupled with the tinkling of silverware against china, reverberated like some discordant orchestral climax. I longed to cover my ears and close my eyes to shut out the scene unfolding before me.

A man. A woman. Three children who each bore a striking resemblance to their parents. A beautiful little family out for a fancy Sunday evening meal. Their waiter, in crisp black and white, stood by, bottle held out for inspection as the man swirled and sampled the perfunctory dash of wine. The woman, her sleek, short hair framing delicate features, reached over to tuck a napkin into the neckline of their daughter’s pink organza dress. Two older boys talked animatedly to each other, but as I watched, even their frenzied gestures seemed to expand and elongate, slowing for dramatic effect.

The man turned to nod his approval over the vintage in his glass. His self-important gaze slid past the waiter’s elbow, making a lazy circuit of the room, before crashing into mine. I couldn’t look away, no matter how desperately I wanted to. Time came to a complete standstill as I watched him watch me.

It took a moment for the situation to register—I’d had the benefit of seeing him first—but the change in his expression from benevolent patriarch to caught-red-handed cheater hit me like a slap in the face. His eyes narrowed in warning, and then he smiled confidently. He dismissed me, turning back to his family and resuming the ritual of ordering the bottle of fine wine he planned to share with his wife.

His family. His wife.

“My Jacob,” I rallied.

No, their Jacob. Her Jacob.

Tish’s hand on my arm startled me, drawing me back to our own table, and all around me, time picked up again. “What is it?” Tish asked, shifting in her seat to peer over her shoulder.

“No!” I tried to stop her. I couldn’t bear to hear an ‘I told you’ in this moment. But her fingers tightening around my wrist told me she’d seen him, too.

He wouldn’t look over here again, of that, I was certain. I could see the determination in his contrived casualness, the way he relaxed in his seat, one arm looped around the back of his wife’s chair, the other hand toying with the stem of his goblet. He would pretend he hadn’t seen me, that I simply didn’t exist.

And I wasn’t the kind of person to contradict him in public, to make a scene. My stomach clenched.

Home wrecker.

Him. Not me. I didn’t know. I didn’t know.

“Ani. Anica!” Tish’s voice dropped to an appalled whisper. “What is going on?”

I shook my head, afraid to open my mouth, afraid of what sound might come out.

“Is that his family? Jacob has a family?”

I shrugged, not meeting her eyes. Of course, it was his family.

“We need to go. We’re leaving. Now.” Tish straightened in her seat and scouted the room for our waitress. Service at Brigantines was typically efficient, but of course, at the moment, the young woman who’d taken our order was nowhere to be seen.

I lowered my gaze to the unused place setting in front of me, its shining emptiness mocking me.

Happy birthday to me.

Love what you’ve read so far?

📘Buy Direct from Becky's Bookshop and SAVE!

📖 Chapter Two

I came awake slowly, regret pressing down on my eyelids. A haunting aria had found wings and escaped my dreams to accompany me back to reality. The words were unintelligible, but each phrase tore new holes in the fragile fabric of my heart. I groaned and curled in on myself, not yet ready to face a new day.

Alone.

It was not how I’d planned to spend my first trip to Italy.

Morning, however, wasn’t something I could hold back by refusing to open my eyes. The melody of the rich mezzo soprano didn’t fade away either, but grew louder and more heartfelt as the real-life songstress below my window warmed up in the morning sunlight. The notes soared higher and higher, and I realized I recognized the aria, “Doretta’s Beautiful Dream,” from La rondine, one of my parents’ favorite Puccini operas.

Giacomo Puccini. He was the reason I was here. The reason I’d chosen Lucca, the birthplace and stomping grounds of the illustrious composer, in which to find my footing again. I was not an opera buff myself, but I’d grown up with strains of Nessun dorma and Quando men vo emanating from the kitchen practically every evening. My parents always made dinner together, mainly because my mother did not enjoy cooking, at least not alone, a trait I seemed to have inherited. The music helped turn a mundane chore into an event for them, one to which I was always invited.

It was, in fact, Puccini’s music my father used to charm my mother. On an enchanted evening in May, twenty-nine years ago, a rather smitten Alex Tomlin escorted Tammy Robinson to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. There she experienced—because one did not simply see an opera—her first Puccini masterpiece, La boheme. “When I turned to find her weeping even before Rodolfo had finished wooing Mimi in the first act, I knew I was going to marry that girl,” my father liked to say. Before Tammy slipped inside the door of her parents’ home that night, Alex slipped his class ring onto the delicate gold chain she always wore around her neck, replacing it a few months later with an engagement ring on her finger. Needless to say, after dozens of operas experienced together over the duration of their marriage, Giacomo Puccini was still their favorite composer. A household name in our home, his music was part of the soundtrack of my life.

The fact that Puccini had walked these very streets, had birthed some of the stage’s greatest arias in this very town, gave Lucca an odd cerebral echo of the familiar to me. A connection to home in this faraway place, circling back in on itself.

I’d tried to explain it to Tish when she asked why not Florence, Rome, or Venice. She didn’t get it. I wasn’t even sure I got it. But it did make my parents feel a little better about me running off to Italy for a couple weeks, knowing I’d be spending so much of my time in Puccini’s hometown.

Seven AM in Lucca, and the quaint medieval town was teeming with life, fueled by a caffeine-and-Mediterranean-air-induced high. Bicycle bells jingle-jangled, and boisterous greetings volleyed from one side of the narrow streets to the other. School children laughed and called out to comrades as they scurried off to class.

“Why is everyone so happy?” I pulled a lumpy pillow over my head, but I could find no entry back into the anesthetizing arms of sleep.

My first morning in this enchanted place, and I felt more like a forgotten princess in a tower than a girl on a much-anticipated trip to Italy.

Perched two stories up, my guesthouse accommodations had a surprisingly high ceiling, a tiny private bathroom, and access to a kitchenette shared with two other rooms on the same floor. My windows opened out over the narrow street below.

It also provided a perfect view into the window of the second-floor apartment on the other side of the lane.

Last night, a woman, maybe a little older than my twenty-four years, waved and smiled from across the way. “Buona sera,” she called out in a lilting voice, just before a set of dark arms encircled her waist from behind, pulling her, laughing, back into the room. Moments later, a slightly disheveled, balding man wearing a playful grin, a pair of dress pants, and a white t-shirt waved at me, too. Then he leaned out and drew their shutters closed. The light from inside still thrust its way between the dark green slats of the wooden panels, and the woman’s voice, raised in saucy notes, poked at my bruised heart. I turned away, but left my own window open, listening like a too-curious child standing outside her parents’ bedroom door.

I hadn’t expected to fall asleep right away, but after a hot shower and a bowl of the packaged soup my mom had slipped into my luggage before they drove me to the airport, fatigue settled its heavy cloak around my shoulders. Crawling between the crisp sheets that smelled of bleach and lavender, I was disquieted by the unfamiliar stillness of a town that collectively slept at night. My world was round-the-clock, where the freeway slowed, but never stopped, businesses stayed open twenty-four hours a day, and people lived in shifts, as though afraid the earth might cease turning on its axis the moment no one was looking. But sleep, I did, like a stone, despite the tears that made it impossible to breathe through my nose.

Morning, however, had arrived with a vengeance, the stillness before dawn exploding into a cacophony of sound as unfamiliar to me as last night’s stillness. Cobbled streets bordered by tall, ancient stone buildings made shouts and laughter echo and reverberate, each sound amplified. Everything felt so close, but no one here seemed to mind. Like an orchestra tuning its instruments before a performance, each noise outside the window was finding its perfect pitch in the symphony entitled, “A Day in the Life of Lucca.”

Sliding my legs over the edge of the bed, I sat up and rolled my shoulders, tight from lugging around my suitcase and backpack. I secretly relished the pain, though. It felt like penance and beating myself up came easy these days. The cool tile under my bare feet made me shiver as I studied the blue and gold tones of the intricate mosaic pattern of the floor.

October in Tuscany dressed like October in Southern California. The Tuscan air, however, even with its hint of onshore flow, was unadulterated by big city smog, and seemed lighter. Somehow… airier. I breathed in deeply. To my dismay, that breath seemed to snag on the jagged edges of my heart, and what came rushing back out was a sob, as homesickness and heartsickness overwhelmed me.

I refused to utter his name out loud, but my traitorous heart throbbed Jacob, Jacob, Jacob, instead of lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub. I imagined his arms around me, cradling me, his soothing, cultured voice assuring me that everything would work out, that it was all a misunderstanding. A mistake. That he still belonged to me. But it had been over two months now, and sitting through his class every Tuesday and Thursday, all but invisible to a man who had once held my heart in his hands, had become torture.

Like succumbing to an addiction, I willed my senses to dredge up every detail about him.

My nostrils flared at the memory of the scent of his skin mingled with his subtle aftershave and the laundry detergent he used. His smile, one side of his mouth hitching up a little higher than the other, the way he studied me in the quiet spaces of our conversations. His eyes. I could never quite decide if they were more green than blue, or the other way around, but when he slid his hungry gaze over me, it didn’t seem to matter. His hands, long fingers threading through my hair, how he loved my hair. His smooth palms cupping my cheeks, thumbs under my jaw, tilting my face up, his mouth lowering to mine....

“No!” I surged up off the bed, my heart a sledgehammer pounding against the inside of my rib cage. “No!” Still scratchy from sleep, my voice sounded weak and pitiful. “No more.” I had come here to get the man out of my system once and for all.

“Why now?” Tish had asked more than once before I left. “This whole situation will be lurking in the background waiting for you when you get back. Stay here. Stand up for yourself. You shouldn’t be tucking your tail between your legs like this.” She squeezed me too hard, as she was wont to do. Tish had no hang ups about personal space. But then, she grew up rough-housing with four brothers.

I, on the other hand, although raised by affectionate parents, preferred to keep touchy-feely stuff indoors, or at least in private.

Which no doubt had been rather convenient for Jacob, come to think of it.

“If anyone should duck and cover, it’s Jerkob.” Tish’s favorite name for him. “Not you.”

“I’ve been planning this trip to Italy forever,” I reminded her, unwavering in my decision.

“Yeah, as a graduation present to yourself,” she shot back. “Besides, you can’t just bail on a month of school. Things will go all Nakatomi Tower on you, Ani,” she added, referencing the mass destruction in her beloved Die Hard franchise.

“It’s not a month, Tish. Not even three whole weeks. My professors have all approved alternate work or keeping up online while I’m gone. Jacob is actually letting me off the hook completely.”

“Appeasing his guilty conscience, the—”

“Well, I wish I could just drop his class altogether." I had cut her off, wanting to be done talking about it, to be done thinking about anything to do with the man I'd so naively fallen for. "But it’s a requirement for graduation, and he’s not stupid enough to make waves for me. In fact, he’s probably relieved to have me gone for a few weeks.” The words had hurt coming out, and I’d had to swallow hard to keep my voice steady. “I need to do this, Tish. When I get back, I’ll hold my head up for the rest of the semester, keep a stiff upper lip, all that stuff, and then I'll be done with him for good. But for now, I just want to fly away and leave this whole ugly mess behind me for a while.”

“Your heart is going with you, girlie. You can’t leave that ugly mess behind you.”

“Thanks.” I had elbowed her in the ribs, but then I smiled at her and shrugged. “Seriously, though. What better place to go with a broken heart than to Italy?”

I had made light of things for Tish’s sake, but my friend was right. I knew it then, and I knew it now, sitting alone in my golden tower in Tuscany.

The singing below had stopped. Crossing to the window, I drew back the lace curtains, pushed both shutters open as far as they’d go, and leaned against the stone sill. It was wide enough to sit on, but I wasn’t taking any chances, as there was no balcony or safety grill in place. I was one of those people prone to trip over non-existent impediments, so a window like this one was potentially dangerous territory for someone like me.

In the light of day, details of the town came into sharp relief, intricacies I’d missed arriving after dark. Buildings color-washed in apricot, russet, and gold stood shoulder-to-shoulder, warm and welcoming. Stonework, patched and plastered, lent Lucca an air of timelessness framed in the cobbled stones of the ancient streets.

A lady in a pinstriped suit and heels on a bicycle caught my attention as she pulled up to a storefront less than a block away. After an impossibly elegant dismount, she disappeared, along with her bike, behind a counter displaying shoes and handbags.

The shutters across the way burst open, startling me. It was the woman who’d greeted me last night, a tiny demitasse cup in her hand. She waved when she spotted me. I waved back, blushing, and stepped out of sight. I hoped she didn’t think I spent all my time peeping in other people’s windows. Besides that, I was in my flannel pajamas, with rumpled bedhead and a red nose, while she looked like she’d just stepped off the cover of Today’s Modern Woman. She wore a green fluttery blouse, one wrist draped in bangles, and her straight bobbed hair framed high cheekbones and wide, almond-shaped eyes. From my hiding spot behind a lace panel, I watched her lean out a little and call down to someone on the street below.

“Buon giorno, Madalina!” She apparently had no fear of falling to her death.

“Un altro glorioso giorno, Signora Adimari!” came the reply from right beneath my window.

I caught the words “glorious day” in the greeting, and I found myself smiling at the exchange, the cliché of it satisfying the tourist in me. I lifted my puffy eyes to the sky. All suffering aside, it truly was a glorious day. The sun was out, paint splotches of clouds sprinkled the blue canvas dome overhead, and the music of the charming Italian town resounded in the air.

I took another deep breath, this one a little steadier. Pushing thoughts of Jacob away, I succumbed to the siren call outside my window and turned to rifle through my suitcase for something to wear.

Love what you’ve read so far?

📘Buy Direct from Becky's Bookshop and SAVE!

Also available from other retailers:

Amazon ~ Apple ~ Barnes & Noble ~ Kobo ~ More Retailers