A Wedding in Italy: A feel good summer holiday romance (From Italy with Love Book 2)

by Tilly Tennant

  ‘I really can see why you love it here,’ Lily said to Kate as she stood and stared at the view, her breath curling into the air. It was one that Kate, already, was beginning to take for granted, but as she gazed at it with her sisters, her belly full of fabulous food, a room full of happiness and good feeling, she saw it as if for the first time and fell in love all over again.

  ‘I really do,’ she said, turning to her with a smile. ‘I can’t imagine ever leaving now.’

  ‘And we love Kate,’ Lucetta said. ‘You do not need to worry that she is far away from family, because she has a new family here and we will take good care of her for you.’

  ‘We can see that,’ Anna said. ‘And we’re grateful she has such wonderful people to look out for her. I must admit that when she first came over we thought she’d want to come back after a couple of weeks, but. . .’ she turned to Kate, ‘you’ve really made it work. A job that’s going well, a flat, good friends, an adopted family, a caring boyfriend – it seems you’ve got everything you could wish for.’

  ‘I could wish for a much posher flat and a lot more money,’ Kate laughed. ‘But the rest. . . yeah, it’s more or less perfect; I’m pretty happy right now.’

  And even as she said it, Kate suddenly shivered. The night air had a bite to it, but she couldn’t help feeling there was more to it than that.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The weekend had come and gone too quickly, and with it Kate’s visitors. Though she’d been happy to see them, her sisters being in Rome had inevitably stirred up feelings of regret that she would have to lose them again. It was silly, of course, because they were only a matter of hours away and come the new year she hoped to have earned enough money to go and visit them even if they couldn’t get back to Rome so easily. But still, watching them go through to the departure lounge of the airport left a hole that was so big, she almost wished they hadn’t come in the first place. Alessandro had pulled her close, seeming to understand her pain, and they had lingered until they could wait no more, knowing that the flight had gone and that Anna and Lily had gone with it.

  The following day had brought a new week at work and little time to miss her sisters. A hectic start had meant she was too busy to think about much at all. There was certainly no danger of being bored and unmotivated at Piccolo Castelli, and a morning doing administration under the watchful eye of Nonna Rossi flew by so fast she almost fell off her chair in the most comical way as she looked up at the clock to see lunchtime had completely passed her by. Nonna Rossi came over to her desk with a stern rebuke.

  ‘Lunch is very important,’ she said. ‘You must not forget to eat.’

  Kate hadn’t noticed Nonna herself go out for lunch, but perhaps it was better not to mention it. She hadn’t noticed anyone else get lunch either, but some had the leftovers of theirs littering their desks, or else were talking about what they’d just eaten, so she had to assume that she really had been that wrapped up in her work.

  Shauna had been happy enough with Kate at the end of the day but didn’t have any visits out of the office for her to undertake alone just yet. All in good time, she’d said, and Kate had to be content with that, even though she was aware that the sooner she got onto the sales sheet proper, the sooner she could start supplementing what was really quite a meagre basic wage with some commission. She was not a natural sales person, and though that aspect of the job might not be her strongest, she was desperate and willing to do what it took, hoping that, above all, a natural rapport with her clients would be enough without having to resort to pressured sales tactics.

  All in all, it had been a good day despite a humble workload, and with Alessandro back on his own night shifts, she was ready for a quiet evening: shower, supper and bed.

  But the universe had other plans, and as she turned the corner, she spotted Salvatore outside her building, his car at the kerb and his back to her as he paced up and down. As she drew closer, she could see that he was on his phone, deep in conversation.

  Kate stopped, a groan forming in her throat. While she liked him, she wasn’t in the mood to make small talk, and especially small talk with a language barrier that made it harder work than usual. And while Alessandro kept telling her that Salvatore’s English was better than he let on, he still wasn’t letting on, not for Kate at least. Could she somehow slip past him and into the building undetected?

  Kate would never get to put her theory to the test. There was a squeal of delight from his car and the door flew open. Nunzia clambered out, tottering towards Kate with a huge smile on her face.

  ‘Ciao, Kate!’ she cried. ‘Hello!’

  She pulled Kate into a hug, and as she did, Kate caught the slightly sheepish smile on Salvatore’s face.

  ‘Hi Nunzia,’ Kate said with a smile. ‘Come sta?’

  ‘Bene, grazie!’ Nunzia replied. ‘My dress,’ she continued, grasping Kate’s hands affectionately. ‘My dress. . . very beautiful. Many admire!’

  ‘She is very happy,’ Salvatore put in, now making his way over. ‘All of the friends, they love her dress – bellissimo!’

  ‘I’m glad you like it,’ Kate said. ‘And it’s lovely of you to come over and tell me. I’m assuming you didn’t want me for anything else?’

  Nunzia scuttled off to the car and reappeared a few seconds later with a paper bag. From it she pulled a roll of fabric.

  ‘You want another dress?’ Kate said, trying hard to hold back a frown. It wasn’t that she minded sewing another for Nunzia, but she would have preferred to help choose the fabric, if only to ensure that what they purchased was the appropriate weight and weave to suit whatever style of dress Nunzia had chosen.

  ‘Sì, please!’ Nunzia said.

  ‘Her friend would like a dress too,’ Salvatore put in. ‘If you could.’

  ‘Her friend?’ Kate repeated, realising just how stupid she was sounding right now.

  ‘Sì!’ Nunzia beamed. ‘Loretta. She like very much. She pay plenty money, very rich.’

  ‘I’d need to measure her up,’ Kate replied uncertainly. ‘Could she come here?’

  Would she want to come here was the question Kate really wanted to ask, particularly if she was very rich, but as Salvatore was standing right there, perhaps she shouldn’t insult his building.

  ‘I take you,’ Nunzia replied. ‘Four days. Sì?’

  ‘At the weekend?’ Kate asked. She didn’t have much else to do so perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad idea. And what she was really trying to do was stop herself from getting too excited by the prospect of a real and proper customer.

  ‘Yes, the weekend,’ Salvatore confirmed. ‘She lives outside Roma. Nunzia can drive you. She will want many dresses, I think.’

  ‘She will?’

  ‘Sì,’ Nunzia said. ‘Many dresses!’

  ‘OK, well. . . she won’t want them for Christmas, will she? Only that doesn’t leave a lot of time and I’m working now in the week.’

  Salvatore waved his hands to calm her. ‘It’s no problem. You tell her, not before Christmas. If she wants dress for Christmas, she must go shopping.’

  Kate turned to Nunzia. ‘Do you want yours before Christmas? I could probably manage it but there isn’t a lot of time.’

  ‘Nunzia has plenty dresses,’ Salvatore said, but that didn’t stop Kate feeling somewhat obliged to pull a special favour for her. And it wasn’t as if her evenings were packed while Alessandro was working.

  ‘Well,’ she began thoughtfully, ‘I do already have Nunzia’s measurements, and we have the fabric.’ She looked at Nunzia again. ‘If you want to choose a style now then I suppose I could try to make it before Christmas. I don’t mind, though I can’t promise.’

  Nunzia squished Kate’s cheeks and then pulled her into a hug. ‘Grazie mille, Kate! Siete una piccola stella!’

  It transpired that Nunzia had chosen her fabric well, and the dress that she had asked Kate to make for her suited its handling perfectly. Kate had been glad of the nightly distraction too. And yet i
n her own apartment, with plenty of time to think, she found that instead of dwelling on the positives of her new job and possible new sewing clients, her mind kept taunting her, going back to the idea that Orazia was working side by side with Alessandro – these days probably seeing more of him than she herself did.

  Nunzia duly turned up on Friday night to collect her dress.

  ‘Beautiful!’ she trilled as she studied her reflection, running a hand up and down between her waistline and her hips to admire the fit.

  ‘I’m glad you like it,’ Kate said. ‘Prego.’

  Nunzia hurried over to a little clutch bag she’d left on the dining table. Taking a wad of notes from her purse she pressed them into Kate’s palm with a broad smile. Kate flicked through it and quickly concluded that it was too much again. She separated the money and offered the extra back to Nunzia, but the landlord’s wife simply gave a firm shake of her head. ‘For you,’ she said. ‘My friend Kate.’

  Kate stood awkwardly with the notes in an extended hand. She didn’t want to keep taking more than Salvatore had agreed but she didn’t want to offend Nunzia by refusing her kindness. But then Nunzia fastened her handbag as if to indicate that the matter was closed and she would hear no argument, and Kate curled her hand around the money, shoving it guiltily into the pocket of her dress.

  ‘We have party,’ Nunzia said, going back to the mirror to check her reflection again. ‘Natale . . .’

  Kate frowned slightly. ‘Christmas party?’

  ‘Sì. You come?’

  ‘It’s your Christmas party?’ Kate asked.

  ‘Sì. My house.’

  Lovely as Nunzia was, the last thing Kate wanted to do was go to her Christmas party, mostly because she knew that Salvatore wouldn’t be happy about it. She felt quite certain that he’d rather chew his own arm off than have one of his poorer and less socially impressive tenants at his own private function. A friendly word whilst collecting her rent was one thing, but having her over for dinner was quite another.

  ‘It sounds lovely,’ Kate began slowly, ‘but. . . well, my Italian is not good and I would find it difficult to talk to the other guests. You understand?’

  ‘You come,’ Nunzia insisted. Kate wasn’t sure whether she hadn’t taken in her argument or whether she simply didn’t care.

  ‘When is it?’

  Nunzia hesitated, working it out silently on her fingers. ‘Ten days.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ Kate said. ‘I’m not sure whether we have family commitments coming up but I’ll check with Alessandro and let you know.’

  Nunzia gave a satisfied grunt and turned her attention to a stray hair. Kate was pretty sure she’d discover something in the diary for ten days’ time, even if it was a little white lie she had to pencil in herself.

  ‘You see my friend for dresses?’ Nunzia asked, breaking into Kate’s thoughts.

  ‘Loretta? When does she want me?’

  ‘Sì, Loretta. I ask. I call you.’

  ‘Before Christmas?’

  Nunzia tilted her head this way and that.

  ‘Natale?’ Kate corrected. ‘She wants her dress before Natale?’

  Nunzia held her hands up in an exaggerated shrug. ‘I telephone and I tell you when.’

  Kate held in a sigh. Not exactly the kind of scheduling she found useful, but it looked as though it was the best she was going to get for now. Forcing a smile, she began to unzip Nunzia’s dress. ‘I’ll get this packed for you and then I’ll make us a coffee.’

  Saturday evening saw Alessandro off shift again, and he was sitting with his arms curled around Kate on the sofa as they shared a bottle of wine.

  ‘Christmas is almost upon us,’ he said slowly, ‘and Maria will have to decide what to do.’

  ‘So you think Christmas may persuade her to take her husband back?’ Kate asked.

  ‘No. She has made her mind up about that. She will have to decide where she will live. Her husband owns the house, and he will want to sell it; Maria will have nothing.’

  ‘She must be entitled to things – half of the property and money for the children?’

  ‘Perhaps. But she will find life hard by herself.’

  ‘Will your mother take her back – to live with her, I mean?’

  ‘Yes, always. Mamma says there is always a home with her to all of us when we leave, no matter what. But there is not much room for Maria and all of her children all of the time, and Mamma is not so strong these days.’

  ‘There would be more space for Maria if you moved out,’ Kate said, and she shot him a sideways glance as she reached for her wine glass. ‘A noble sacrifice, I think.’ The idea had struck suddenly, but perhaps, for once, Maria would be doing Kate a favour, even if she didn’t know it.

  ‘You mean I should live here? With you?’

  ‘Would your mother be very upset by the idea? After all, she’s getting used to a lot of new ideas these days, with Maria getting divorced and you dating me. Perhaps she’d be more open to the possibility than we think. It would help everyone out and I’d love it.’

  ‘It would be too much for Mamma. She must get used to Maria’s divorce first, and then perhaps we will try it.’

  Kate smiled. ‘You’d move into this apartment with me? I mean, sometime soon?’

  ‘Maybe. I would sooner marry you.’

  ‘But we can’t, remember? There’s too much to sort out first, and if I’m honest, I don’t know if I can be bothered with all that annulment business. Can’t we just live over the brush and have done with it?’

  He frowned. ‘What is over the brush?’

  Kate laughed. ‘My gran used to say it. For years I had no idea what it meant, but she always said it in a very disapproving voice about couples she thought were quite filthy. It means living together without being married.’

  ‘Mamma would disapprove too. I do not think it is such a good idea.’

  ‘But people do it all the time now. Nobody cares.’

  ‘Mamma does.’

  Kate was silent for a moment. God, his family, as much as she loved them, could be so bloody infuriating. While their delightful old-fashionedness was reassuring and endearing, it also drove her mad. It wasn’t that she was against the idea of marrying Alessandro, and even this early in their relationship she felt in her heart she would be happy with him, but she railed against the idea of having no other option. Other couples happily spent a year or two living together before they committed, but if she wanted him there full time, it looked as if she was going to have to dive into another marriage. Not only that, but it sounded like a lot of hassle, stress and expense to get to the stage where they would be in a position to marry because they had to jump through a ton of religious hoops so that they could wed in the church, where Signora Conti wanted them to marry, when a civil service would have suited Kate just as well.

  ‘I could buy an apartment of my own,’ he said. ‘If Mamma is happy for that.’

  ‘There doesn’t seem a lot of point when I have this one here. Why pay out for another; it seems like a waste of money that you could be saving towards a better place in the long run. That’s why it makes sense for you to come and live with me. I mean, you spend quite a lot of time here anyway so it wouldn’t be that different if you moved in completely.’

  ‘It would be different for Mamma.’

  Kate bit back the irritated sigh she so wanted to let out. ‘So Maria will come to live with you and you’ll all be squashed in like sardines?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She’ll move back in with your mother before Christmas?’

  ‘Perhaps this week. Today we will know what she has decided.’

  Kate was quiet again. She’d been looking forward to her first Christmas in Rome with the Conti family, especially now she’d been able to meet up with her sisters for an early celebration of their own, but now she wasn’t so sure.

  Try as she might to concentrate, it was hard. Sitting at her desk, knowing that Alessandro was helping to move Maria back in
to their childhood home along with her four children was driving Kate to distraction. On top of that Christmas was coming, and although Maria would have been present at their celebrations (as everyone always was despite the lack of room), the finality of her situation would lend the atmosphere a new heaviness that would be hard for them all to ignore. Strangely, the one positive to come from the situation was that Maria’s new circumstances had somehow softened her towards Kate. Perhaps in Kate she now recognised a kindred spirit, an inspiration, a template to show that life could and did get better, even after an unwanted and unexpected divorce. She’d moved in bit by bit, a little more each day, but today Alessandro was helping her with the final belongings. What was going to happen to her house once she left was a matter Maria seemed reluctant to discuss, even when Kate had offered the services of Piccolo Castelli if they wanted to sell it. But Kate hadn’t pushed, guessing that Maria was still in some kind of denial and didn’t want to think about it. She had simply shrugged and said that her husband could clean up his own mess, and left it at that.

  She’d read the same paragraph of the particulars of a villa in Umbria three times when Shauna came over to her desk.

  ‘How’s it going?’ she asked, perching herself on the edge and crossing her long legs. ‘Still happy?’

  ‘Yes, it’s brilliant,’ Kate lied. ‘I’m very happy.’

  It wasn’t brilliant lately. Her colleagues were lovely, the job was interesting enough, but Kate felt the absence of something that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Was it, perhaps, inspiration? Passion? It was a job, and she needed it, but she was beginning to feel that it wasn’t all she’d hoped it would be. In ten years, would she be sitting here and wishing she’d followed her heart rather than her head? First Mr Woofy back in England and now this. Would she feel she’d wasted her working life doing jobs that didn’t seem to matter? She shook the notion. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, as Matt had so often reminded her when she’d complained about Mr Woofy, and the fact of the matter was she’d made the decision to come to Rome knowing that things wouldn’t be perfect at first, and that she would just have to dig in and get on with it if she was going to make the move work. At least she had work, and it was better than some of the jobs she’d been prepared to take – probably better than her woeful qualifications deserved.