Flipped (Better With Prosecco Book 1)

by Lisa-Marie Cabrelli

  “I thought we decided that you wouldn’t come right away.” He turned from the couple. “I didn’t realize you’d decided you weren’t coming at all?”

  She must have heard the rise of emotion in his voice because suddenly she was purring. “What do you want me there for, baby? You know I’ll just be unhappy. I might miss some auditions, and I won’t be able to eat a thing. Pasta makes me fat. You’re much better off recovering there on your own. Sara’s helping you, right?”

  “What if I asked you to come? What if I said I needed you, specifically?”

  Her flighty giggle caused prickles of irritation across the back of his neck. He needed to keep his temper. Being angry wouldn’t help anyone.

  “You wouldn’t ask me that, silly! You know how important my career is to me right now. You know how anxious I would be away from it all. You love me too much to ask me such a selfish thing.”

  Did he love her? He had thought so. Before he had invited her to move in, he’d even had flashes of their lives together many years in the future. But now? Since she’d moved in, she’d changed. Or maybe she hadn’t. Maybe he was just seeing all of her now, instead of the carefully curated Isabella that she’d presented to him on their weekly dates. There was a mumbling of a male voice in the background, and he heard the muffling sound of her hand going over the receiver and her mumbling back. “Who’s there, Iz?”

  More mumbling and then another muffled swish as her hand came away. “Oh, just the gardener. He wanted to know if we are passionate about that baby lemon tree or if he can cut it down. Are we passionate about it?”

  “Not particularly. So you’re not coming? Like, you’re never coming?”

  “Well, never say never, baby, but I don’t think I need to be there right now, do you?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “On another note… how is the testing going?”

  Before he’d left LA, Adam had handed him a case filled with equipment. A large tripod, a camera, and a standing light. The idea was he could create a fake set somewhere and use the camera to test himself, to see if he had any reaction. It would be a kind of litmus test for his mental health. “Isabella, I just arrived a few hours ago. I haven’t even unpacked my bag yet, let alone set up equipment. How about next week?”

  “Next week! You need to get on top of that stuff before next week, Dean. You need to be focused on getting your act together, right? I mean, that’s what you’re there for, right?”

  Dean turned from the window and sat heavily on the couch. “No, I meant next week to fly out here. That gives you a week to get things set up for a short absence.”

  Dean heard the opening of the patio door swishing along its track and the sound of the waves of the Pacific hit his ear. She’d gone back outside. A signal she was done with the conversation. “Why don’t you stop worrying so much about me and start worrying about your health, baby? We’re all waiting for you to come home. The quicker you get that equipment set up and start practicing, the quicker you’ll get back here. Gotta go, baby. The gardener needs me again. Love you!”

  Dean heard Isabella disconnect and sat there with the phone against his ear. Seriously, she wasn’t going to come? He jumped when another voice came through the receiver, loud in his ear.

  “That’s not a very nice lady,” the voice said.

  “Stella?” Stella appeared in the living room doorway and pressed the end button on the extension in her hand.

  She shuffled over and enveloped him in a crushing hug before stepping back and shaking her head at him. “Not a nice lady. Must be a California problem. We need to find you someone better.”

  Dean raised his eyebrows at her in confusion, and she raised hers right back and headed toward the kitchen, tutting her tongue and shaking her head. “Not a nice lady.”

  16

  Hazel

  Hazel had no idea what Indigo was talking about. Why would her sister be mad at her that she didn’t know some guy from Italy? And what the heck had that been? Hazel didn’t have those kinds of reactions to men. There was no way she was letting any man make her feel something she hadn’t decided she wanted to feel. She had no time for it. Especially when she had to deal with her mother. She needed to get Indigo back on track.

  “Okay, here’s the deal, Mother,” Hazel crossed back into the living room and picked up her bags. “I’m going upstairs to take a bath. When I come back down, I want you sitting at that kitchen table with a cup of tea and some explanations. If I don’t get both I’m going to pick up the phone, call for a taxi, and head right back to the airport. I’m stressed out enough about my job. I don’t need to be stressed about all this,” she waved her hand around the kitchen and flicked it to the back door, where Dean Mclean had just exited, “as well. This was supposed to be a distraction but so far it’s just given me worse anxiety. It’s not a …” She caught a glimpse of a figure at the edge of her vision and stopped. “Oh God, what now? What are you doing here again?”

  The young man from earlier (Stefano?) was standing on the threshold of the back door. This time he had a large duffel bag in each hand. He took a deep, hitching breath. “I’m staying. Indigo said I could.” The boy lifted his chin and tried to look Hazel directly in the eye, but after about three seconds of her suspicious stare, his gaze flickered away.

  “You can add him,” Hazel pointed her finger directly at Stefano and moved her scary stare to Indigo, “to your list of explanations, Mother.”

  That was it. She’d reached her limit. she needed a hot bath and some silence in which to think.

  The bathroom upstairs, next to what she assumed was her bedroom, was surprisingly bright, clean, and inviting. Indigo must have been in a considerate mood because the bed in the bedroom was neatly made with a stack of fluffy towels sitting on the slightly musty, floral bedspread. Hazel was even more amazed when the hot water poured from the faucet immediately and just kept coming. She filled the old, claw foot tub to its absolute limit, poured in some bubble bath she dug out of her suitcase, and sank into the steaming water. As the heat eased her muscles, she felt her tension drain and her control falter. A lump rose in her throat. She would not cry. She could handle this, just like she handled the rest of her life, with very limited crying. She sank further into the blissful bubbles and bent her legs so that she could push her shoulders under. Steam rose from her pink knees.

  Her mother had a lot of explaining to do. Whose house was this really? Who was that boy, Stefano, and why was she letting him stay here? But as her stress eased, Hazel found that the explanation she was most looking forward to was, who was Dean McLean? Indigo had said her sister would be disappointed she didn’t know him. Was he a friend of hers? He seemed a little old to be a pal of a scatter-brained 22-year-old. His eyes! Man. Hazel had been avoiding men the last few years. She had been one-hundred percent focused on her career with no time for dating. Heck, she didn’t even have time for TV, let alone going out to a movie or dinner. Liz had tried to set her up with a few friends but quickly realized that she was wasting her time. Hazel was single-minded. She wanted to be a success. Those blue eyes though…they had thrown her for a loop. She would need to avoid Dean McLean.

  An hour later, when she padded down the stairs in fresh jeans and a t-shirt, she felt like a new woman. She headed for the kitchen. The sun was going down, and the dust motes swirling in the orange light that streamed through the kitchen window made her smile. Even with all of the work still to be done, this was a perfect room. Indigo sat at the table; the red teapot was sitting in the center along with a plate of sandwiches, crusts cut off and piled high. She felt the stirrings of hunger and a wave of fondness for her goofy mother. She was capable of taking things seriously when the chips were down.

  She caught Hazel’s eye and folded her arms across her chest. “I know you don’t like the idea of that boy staying in the house, but he has nowhere to go. I couldn’t just leave him standing on the street surrounded by suitcases, could I? What would everyone say?”

  Hazel sighed and
slipped into the chair next to her, pulling her hair into a loose bun before she reached for the sandwiches. “Who’s “everyone”, Mother? You don’t know anyone here.”

  “Hmph.”

  She didn’t like that sound. The sandwich looked good, but it would have to wait. She put it back down on the pile. “Hmph what? Start at the beginning, please. What’s going on here? Whose house is this? Who is Stefano and who is that guy, Dean?”

  Indigo avoided Hazel’s gaze, always a bad sign, and brushed imaginary crumbs off the front of her blouse. “So, when I told you this was your second cousin’s house, I lied.”

  “You told me this was my great-uncle’s house.”

  Indigo shrugged. “Same thing.”

  “Not the same thing. Whose house is it, Mother?”

  “I’d really like it if you’d stop calling me Mother, it makes me feel so old.” She stuck out her bottom lip in an exaggerated pout, and Hazel rolled her eyes.

  “Don’t change the subject. Who owns this house?”

  Indigo brightened. “Oh that’s easy, I own it. Maria left it to me.”

  “Still changing the subject, but we’re getting somewhere at last. Who’s Maria?” Indigo reached for the sandwiches, but Hazel pulled the plate away. “Oh no you don’t. Answers first. Who’s Maria?”

  “Oh, I don’t know why you have to be so nosy about all of this. Can’t a parent have some privacy?” Hazel just stared and pushed the plate of sandwiches further out of reach. “She was an old friend okay? I hadn’t seen her in many, many years, but we kept in touch, and I’d done a few favors for her in the past, and we were close. So she left me her house. What’s the big deal?”

  “The “big deal” is that I’ve never heard you mention this person before. Or the fact that you were ever in Italy. And what kind of favors? You don’t have the resources to do people favors!”

  “What? I have to tell you everything?” Indigo stood up and crossed to the kitchen counter. She picked up a package of cookies and ripped into it, stuffing one into her mouth. The silence lasted about thirty seconds, which Hazel knew was about as long as Indigo would be able to stand it. She hated quiet. “Okay, okay, so I was a backpacker like your sister after college. I had a kinda bad experience in Pisa, so I hopped on the train and ended up here. I met a boy. He let me stay with his family for a few weeks. I got along very well with his mother. This was their house.”

  This story still didn’t explain why a virtual stranger would leave the house to her mother, but Hazel knew from experience that it was best to tread slowly with Indigo. If she felt backed into a corner, she’d just start to make stuff up. This was the first thing she’d told Hazel that felt even mildly believable. “Why didn’t you tell me this before instead of making up some story about Dad’s great-uncle?”

  “I knew that you knew that your father and I were together since college and I didn’t want you to get all funny on me. I know I have to tread lightly when things concern your sainted Dad. I didn’t want you to get all uppity and upset.”

  That was believable. Hazel was very protective of her Dad and his memory. Truth be told, she didn’t remember much about him at all. Just a smell and a large presence, but Indigo had shared enough with her when she was growing up that she understood he’d been an incredible father before he’d died in a traffic accident. She missed him every day, well as much as you could miss someone you couldn’t remember.

  She decided to keep the momentum going. “Next question. Who is Stefano and why is he staying here?”

  Indigo sat back down and dug into the sandwiches. “Oh, that one’s easy. It’s just like I said. He thought maybe old lady Zanre had left him this house, he’s some distant relation or something, but I’ve explained it all to him, and he understands. It’s just that when we were chatting, he told me he had nowhere to go. This house is huge, honey. I told him he could have the third floor. We won’t get to that part of the renovation for months.”

  Hazel couldn’t help smiling at her nutty mother. She did have a giant heart. She wasn’t crazy about having a stranger staying in the house, but how could she argue with Indigo’s generosity? She reached across the table and grabbed her mom’s hand.

  “Why am I not surprised, although you should have asked me first. And months? I don’t have months to work on this house. I have about seventy days, Mother, remember? We discussed this. I can’t be working here for months. We need to get this house sold, so I’ll have the money for the partnership.”

  Indigo squeezed her hand. “I don’t know why you want that partnership anyway, honey. It’s beneath your lovely, creative soul.” Indigo said around her half-chewed sandwich.

  Hazel was getting to the limit of her ability to manage this crazy Indigo conversation, but there was one more thing she needed to know. “And who was that other guy that I thought was the lawyer. That guy, Dean?”

  Indigo blushed a deep red and took her hand from Hazel’s to fan her face dramatically. “Oh, honey bunny - sometimes I do wonder what you do with your time. That was Dean McLean, baby. A very famous movie star. I texted Sylvie, and she actually answered this time. Turns out he had some nervous breakdown in Hollywood and disappeared. No one knew where he had gone to. But we know now, don’t we, honey? Oh, I have all kinds of things to talk to Dean Mclean about. I’ll be hunting that man down.”

  And Hazel knew she would. Poor Dean. She thought of her hand on his shoulder and that jolt of connection, and she blushed. How dumb was she, thinking that had meant something? Now some of his weird statements made sense. Given his identity, he didn’t seem so arrogant. And at least now she knew she was safe from distraction. There was no chance a movie star would be interested in her.

  17

  Hazel

  The next day was a flurry of cleaning, shopping, and list-making. Hazel had walked down to the town at one point to the phone shop to see if she could buy a local phone card. She still hadn’t been able to make or receive calls on her plan and was getting anxious about being cut off from Liz and Slimy Samuel. The visit to the shop had been hopeless. When she arrived, she’d had to stand around for forty-five minutes in a crowd that was pretending to be a queue. No one seemed to have the faintest clue what turn-taking was all about. The old ladies were the worst - they just assumed they were allowed to the front of the line and pushed their way through. She had been just about to lose her temper when the girl at the counter had called on her. After fifteen minutes of stilted conversation in the girl’s limited English and her non-existent Italian, she managed to get her requirements across. The girl took the next ten minutes opening her phone and locating the SIM card and then had asked for her passport.

  “My passport?”

  “Si. I cannot sell you a phone card unless I have a photocopy of your passport.”

  “You can’t sell me a phone card unless you have a copy of my passport?”

  “Correct. It is the rules of government.”

  It seemed to Hazel that she’d been on the verge of tears for a week; since the moment in the conference room when Shannon had told Samuel to go first. She managed to hold the tears in until she had gathered up her phone and wallet and left the SIM card on the counter. She pushed through the crowd and stepped onto the cobblestones before her tears could spill over.

  “Damn it!”

  She couldn’t go back to the house now. Her mother would be all over her in an instant. She would be borderline ecstatic to see her oldest in tears. According to Indigo, all emotion should be set free. An emotion not expressed was poison for your internal organs.

  Hazel saw an expanse of green diagonally across the road to her right and figured that a walk in the park might cheer her up and shake the cobwebs out of her head. After a rest she would go back to the house, get her passport and then visit the phone shop again. Although she couldn’t understand why on earth she needed a passport to buy a ten Euro SIM card. It was like Interpol or something.

  She was halfway across the road when the vision in front o
f her caused her to stop dead in the middle of the road. A car, cruising around the corner from her left, had to swerve around her and blew an angry horn.

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” she called out to the driver as he sped away and she hurried to the opposite sidewalk. She looked up at the sight before her that had, literally, stopped her in her tracks, nearly getting herself run down in the process. It was an old abandoned hotel. It was amazing.

  Although it’s crumbling facade spoke of better days, the old hotel had not lost its sense of dignity. In front of her was a four-story building fronted by a large open patio. At the rear of the patio were six giant archways filled with glass. In the center of each glass archway was a large double door leading into the building. The top three floors were set back from the archways, and so there was enough room for an expansive balcony patio that was surrounded by a decorative iron railing. The plaster around windows of the top three floors was decorated with fading floral murals, and the middle window was fronted by a tiny Juliet balcony. At the very top of the grand, old dame was a painted sign, also fading, that read “Albergo Roma.”

  What a shame it was empty and abandoned. What a beautiful addition it would make to this already charming town. And this town was charming. Hazel was suddenly aware of how tense she was. The crisp air, the shouts of the children, the slow pace, should be seriously chilling her out, and she could feel the town working on her, trying it’s hardest to sooth her, but her body resisted.

  She got a little reprieve when she turned right into the shady park. Her shoulders relaxed and tears no longer threatened. Taking a seat on a wooden bench, freshly painted for the summer season, she looked around at the buzzing life at the heart of this town. Mothers with their babies in prams stood in gossiping clusters. Little ones raced around together, looking as though they belonged to no one and no adult could touch them; onto the slide, over to the swings, a lap around the paths. Old people sat on the benches, holding hands, heads close together gossiping and complaining. She was surprised to find herself smiling.