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

by Tilly Tennant

  Orazia stared at Kate as her hand flew to her cheek. Clearly she was as shocked by the turn of events as Kate. But then she found her voice. ‘The dog bites after all.’

  ‘I’m sorry!’ Kate clutched her hand. She hadn’t broken anything but it still hurt. And now the adrenalin had ebbed away, so had the anger, and she was consumed by fear. She hadn’t punched just anyone – she’d punched Orazia, a policewoman with a serious grudge against her and the power to do something about it. ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to do it! You just . . . you . . .’

  ‘You will be sorry!’ Orazia spat.

  Kate’s eyes swam with tears. The harder she fought to keep them at bay, the more they threatened to fall. It was a sign of weakness that Orazia would revel in, and Kate hated herself for showing it. But Orazia had won. Whichever way Kate looked at it, Orazia had won. She had sabotaged the job that Kate had worked hard for, a job that she knew she could have been good at, and a job that she’d badly needed if she was going to stay in Italy. The estate agent job, the growing client base for her dresses, the gradual acceptance of Kate by Alessandro’s family, the new understanding with Maria – it was all for nothing, wiped out in an instant with one impulsive, foolish act. Orazia had humiliated Kate, goaded her to react to the situation in a way that was totally out of character. Finally, just to top things off, she would have every right, and would no doubt know those rights very well, to prosecute Kate for assault. If the poverty didn’t drive Kate back to England, a criminal conviction would.

  ‘Come.’ She felt Maria’s hands on her shoulders, the voice of reason in her ear. ‘We must leave. Now.’

  Kate let Maria lead her away and sit her in the car, still staring at Orazia whose eyes, filled with loathing, followed them. But she didn’t make a move to come after and retaliate. Perhaps, despite the look that said otherwise, she had already figured out that a full-blown altercation in the street wouldn’t go well for her. This way, she was the victim, and nobody could argue that. All Orazia had to do now was keep her cool, bide her time, and the justice system would do the rest.

  Kate was up the creek, not just without a paddle but with a bloody great hole in the boat. Orazia had won, and Kate’s time in Rome was finished.

  ‘You must be calm!’ Lucetta scolded, handing Kate another tissue to dry her eyes. It wasn’t like her to cry over every little setback, but these tears were out of sheer frustration at herself, her lack of control, the situation, and the fact that Orazia always seemed to come out on top. At least Maria had taken her straight to the Conti family home, and Kate took a crumb of comfort from the fact that its four strongest female members were now trying to help her figure out what to do next. She needed people thinking straight for her because she certainly wasn’t managing to do that for herself. ‘This crying does not help,’ Lucetta added.

  ‘I know; I can’t stop it.’ Kate looked helplessly from her to Maria, to Abelie, to Signora Conti and back again. All those times when Alessandro had wanted to go and speak to various people on her behalf to put things right, and she had been annoyed and forbidden it. Now she would give anything for him to be here to sort out the mess she’d created. If there was any sorting out to be done, because there might be no saving her this time. How could she have been so stupid? How could she have let Orazia wind her up like that? It had fallen so perfectly for Orazia, it was almost as if she’d guessed what Kate’s reaction would be down to the nth degree, as if she’d planned for events to unfold in exactly this way all along. Perhaps she had, but whether this was the case or not, Kate had screwed everything up by failing to keep her cool.

  ‘I will call Alessandro home,’ Abelie said.

  ‘No!’ Maria replied. She glanced at Kate, who nodded in agreement.

  ‘Much as I would love to have him here, there’s no point in making him leave work. There’s not a lot he can do anyway.’ She looked at Maria. ‘You say you don’t think Orazia is on duty tonight?’

  ‘I cannot be sure, but I think no.’

  ‘Well, at least she won’t get to Alessandro first to tell him her side of the story. Which won’t be anything like ours.’

  ‘He would not believe her.’

  ‘But the courts might. Do you think she’s reported it yet?’

  ‘You did nothing,’ Maria said.

  ‘I punched her! That’s assault! And she’s a police officer!’ Kate’s lip trembled, and the tears began to fall again. ‘What the hell am I going to do?’

  ‘We are going to stay calm. There will be a solution,’ Maria said.

  ‘I don’t know what that could be,’ Kate replied. ‘It’s all a huge mess now – I have no job, a vindictive cow determined to see me off and now a possible criminal conviction hanging over me. I’m not exactly any government’s most desirable citizen, and if I don’t end up in jail here I’ll be sent back to England.’

  ‘You will not go to jail,’ Abelie said and looked to the others, who all nodded.

  They fell silent for a moment, and the silence almost told Kate they weren’t really sure of that fact at all, even after they’d all said it. Kate stared miserably at her hands. Her knuckles were bruised from the blow she’d landed on Orazia’s cheek, her fingers red. But then the sharp smell of lemons tempered with sweet honey and earthy whisky drifted her way, and she looked up to see Signora Conti holding out a mug for her.

  ‘Hot toddy,’ she said and smiled. ‘Better.’

  As Kate took it, touched by the gesture, she burst into tears again. Just when she had finally got Alessandro’s family on her side, just when she finally felt like she might start to belong, she had to go and screw it all up with one act of supreme stupidity. How could she bear to lose all this now, when she had come so far?

  Abelie pulled her into a hug. ‘We will not lose you,’ she soothed. ‘You can trust us; you are our family now and we will make things right.’

  ‘I don’t see how you can,’ Kate sobbed. ‘Even you can’t go above the law.’

  ‘Orazia will not report you.’

  ‘Of course she will.’

  ‘You do not know Orazia as I do,’ Maria cut in. ‘It would make her look weak, and she would not like that. She will tell no one, and no one saw it happen.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Kate dragged the heel of her hand across her eyes. ‘How do you know someone wasn’t watching from a window? And she’ll have a bruise, on her cheek – people will ask her about that.’

  ‘She will lie.’

  ‘But she said she was going to get me kicked out of Italy!’ Kate cried. ‘This is perfect for her so I don’t understand why she wouldn’t report me! I mean, I’d bloody well report me if I thought it would get what I wanted!’

  ‘You must be calm!’ Lucetta frowned, her tone rising with a sense of vexation now. Kate supposed she couldn’t blame her for that, because she’d lost count of the number of times Lucetta had said it. But while it was easy to say, it was not so easy to do. But then Lucetta was distracted by something buzzing in her pocket, and she reached into it to produce her phone. Her expression became one of consternation as she looked at it, and then at Kate.

  ‘Alessandro,’ she said before swiping the screen to answer.

  As Lucetta spoke to her brother, Kate put down her drink and reached into her handbag for her own phone. Five missed calls from him.

  He knew. That was the only explanation for him calling while he was on duty – a thing he rarely did, and certainly not that desperately. Either Orazia had told him personally or the complaint had come in officially. The idea of the latter scenario made Kate feel sick. What if he’d been on desk duty at the time? What if the complaint had come to him directly through his daily work? She couldn’t imagine a more horrifying turn of events, and yet it was more than possible. He would be shocked and ashamed, and it was no wonder he’d feel the need to call and find out just what the hell was going on.

  In the time it took for these thoughts to coalesce in the storm of Kate’s turbulent emotions, Lucetta had end
ed the call. She locked her phone and folded her arms.

  ‘Orazia has told Alessandro she was attacked by you.’

  Kate winced at the description. She had thought of it many ways since the event, but attack was not a word she’d associated with it. She wasn’t the sort of person who attacked anyone – she’d never even had a catfight at school. But in the cold light of day, there was no other word you could use for it. Kate had attacked Orazia – provoked with words but certainly not with a reason that would stand up in court.

  ‘She’s going to press charges? Make a complaint to the police?’ Kate asked, her head swimming as the room started spinning around her. She didn’t know what was more terrifying now – the thought of losing Alessandro, her home in Italy, or being in trouble with the law. Her throat tightened, and her breath came in short gasps, and Lucetta’s voice grew somehow distant as the roaring of her own blood filled her ears. Then everything went black.

  Chapter Twenty

  When her eyes opened again, the faces of Signora Conti, Maria and Lucetta were all staring down at her, while Abelie was cleaning. As Kate tried to lift her head and focus, she saw that the mug she’d been drinking her hot toddy from was lying on its side on the floor, its contents now being mopped up by Alessandro’s youngest sister. She must have knocked it over as she passed out.

  ‘I fainted?’ she asked, though it was obvious. ‘I haven’t done that for a very long time – not since high school.’

  ‘Too much fear,’ Maria said.

  ‘I know. I think my body needed to shut down to stop my brain from exploding.’ Kate made a weak attempt at a smile.

  ‘Should we call for the doctor?’ Lucetta asked, looking distinctly worried by the prospect of Kate’s brain exploding.

  Kate shook her head. ‘Was I out for long?’

  ‘Perhaps a couple of minutes.’

  ‘It’s nothing to worry about then. Give me a few more and I’ll be fine.’

  It was strange, but Kate did feel much calmer, as if her system had somehow been rebooted. She was still stressed and anxious about the situation that had triggered the loss of consciousness in the first place, but the engulfing sense of blind panic had subsided into a grim acceptance of her now perilous position. She needed to do something about it, that was for sure, and what that thing might be was a huge question that seemed to have no answer, but at least now she felt able to process it better.

  ‘You would like some water?’ Maria asked.

  Kate nodded gratefully and began to push herself to sit as Maria hurried to the kitchen.

  ‘Would you like Alessandro to come home?’ Lucetta asked.

  ‘No. Absolutely not,’ Kate replied. She half expected him to take it upon himself to try to finish his shift early and come back anyway, but she certainly wasn’t going to ask him to. She was in enough trouble without making things awkward for him at work as well. Besides, it was probably sensible for him to be at work in case the official complaint from Orazia came in. He might be able to access the details (perhaps unethical, but Kate couldn’t worry about that now) and they’d have some kind of warning about what to expect when the police did come calling. ‘Did he sound angry?’ she added.

  ‘A little,’ Lucetta admitted. ‘But I think he was angry with Orazia and not you.’

  Kate wanted to believe that was true, but she couldn’t convince herself. More likely he was angry at the whole situation – at Orazia for her part in manipulating it, at Kate for reacting and at the fact it was about to make his professional life very difficult indeed, not to mention his professional relationship – such as it was – with Orazia. He was never happier than when he was working within well-defined moral parameters, but the personal nature of this turn of events blurred the edges of his black-and-white world until the picture was a mass of grey that he would have no hope of seeing the lines of right and wrong through.

  ‘I just don’t know where we go from here.’ Kate ran a hand through her hair, gratefully accepting the glass of water handed to her by Maria. She took a sip and looked at them all in the vain hope that one of them would have a genius solution to sort it all out in one fell swoop. But they simply stared at her, and then at each other, and Kate’s hopes were dashed. None of them had any more clue what to do now than she did.

  ‘I will see Orazia,’ Maria said finally. ‘She will listen to me.’

  ‘Excuse me for saying it but she wasn’t exactly listening earlier,’ Kate reminded her.

  ‘I will make her see that she is wrong. If she makes this complaint against you, then we will make one against her.’

  ‘What for? It was me who threw the punch – and I still can’t believe those words are actually coming out of my mouth.’

  ‘She has used her cousin to cause trouble for you.’

  ‘We can’t prove that,’ Kate countered. ‘Who’s to say it wasn’t a total coincidence that the apartment I visited just happened to belong to Orazia’s cousin, who genuinely wanted to sell it, and that I didn’t steal from him? Nobody can prove anything either way. She can, however, prove that I hit her.’

  ‘She cannot prove that,’ Maria said emphatically.

  ‘Of course she can,’ Kate said.

  ‘No. There is no witness.’

  ‘She’ll have the bruise I gave her—’

  ‘Pah!’ Maria folded her arms. ‘I have hit my husband harder than that playing games. There will be no bruise.’

  ‘But I can see marks on my knuckles,’ Kate insisted, inspecting her hands again. Looking at them now, perhaps they weren’t quite as obvious as they’d seemed half an hour ago, but then, half an hour ago everything had looked a million times worse than it probably was. Was there a chance Maria might be on to something? It was more than she dared to hope for, and yet she clung to the notion like a shipwrecked sailor clinging to driftwood.

  ‘They are not so bad,’ Maria said, taking one of Kate’s hands and inspecting it. ‘I have worse from kneading dough.’

  ‘She’ll still try,’ Kate insisted.

  ‘She may.’ Maria inclined her head in acknowledgement of Kate’s argument. ‘I have known her for many years. What she will not like most of all is to lose. So, we will make her think she has won.’

  Kate frowned. So did Abelie and Lucetta.

  ‘What do you mean by this?’ Lucetta asked.

  ‘I will tell her that you are willing to give Alessandro up, and that the family will give their blessing if she can make Alessandro love her.’

  ‘I think that’s pretty much what she’s been trying to do for the past few months,’ Kate said darkly. ‘And look where it’s got us.’

  ‘You are the enemy,’ Maria said. ‘You are the reason, to her, that Alessandro does not love her, and she thinks that if he was free, he would love her – no?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Kate said.

  ‘She wants you to leave so that he is free.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We will give her what she wants.’

  ‘But I can’t leave!’ Kate squeaked.

  ‘No,’ Maria said. ‘We will not ask it of you.’

  ‘Then I don’t understand.’

  ‘We will tell her that you are leaving Italy. Alessandro will play along, and he will pretend he is heartbroken because you must leave and he has lost you. She will think she has won. When Alessandro does not want her still, she will see that nothing she does will win him, and she will give up.’

  ‘I don’t think she will,’ Kate said.

  Maria simply smiled. ‘We will see.’

  Kate didn’t like Maria’s plan. She didn’t like it one bit, but she had agreed to it in desperation, unable to see a better solution. Alessandro had phoned briefly and spoken to her, but to her relief he hadn’t chastised or blamed her, only asked if she was alright and told her that he believed her version of the story. But he’d had to work and she’d assured him that she expected nothing else, and they’d agreed that she would spend the night at his mother’s place and wait for him
to return the next morning so they could talk things over with the whole family.

  Right now, Kate was curled up on the sofa while Signora Conti was in the kitchen making a light supper. Maria had gone to pick up her children from her mother-in-law’s, where they had spent the day, and then she would return to put them to bed. Lucetta had gone home, and Abelie was making up Alessandro’s bed with clean sheets for Kate to sleep there while he was at work, at Signora Conti’s behest, despite Kate insisting that there was no need and she was perfectly happy to sleep in his unwashed sheets. There was a part of her that would have found his scent on the pillows comforting, because right now what she wanted more than anything else was to lie in his arms while he kissed her and told her everything would be alright. Despite Maria’s confidence, the truth was she didn’t think everything would be alright at all. If they couldn’t make this work, she would have to leave Italy, and she couldn’t possibly ask him to give up everything he knew for her and move to England. Even if he did, he would never be truly happy there, and worse than them splitting up now was the thought of him becoming bitter and resentful, forced to live a life he didn’t want, and forced to live apart from the family that meant so much to him. It would mean the end for them, one way or another.

  She glanced at her watch and wondered vaguely whether Anna was free. At times like this, her sister always had solid words of advice and encouragement, but then Kate didn’t really fancy recounting the whole sorry turn of events to her – at least not yet. It was too painful, and Anna would either worry to distraction or be so incensed by it all that she’d be on the first plane over to throw a punch at Orazia herself. More out of habit than anything else, she pulled her phone from her pocket anyway and glanced at the screen.