Читать книгу From Rome with Love: Escape the winter blues with the perfect feel-good romance! - Jules Wake, Jules Wake - Страница 12

‘Welcome to Rome.’ Giovanni, planted an enthusiastic kiss on her lips, casting a slightly triumphant glance Will’s way. Lisa took a quick, indrawn breath and almost laughed out loud, except it might have hurt his feelings. Really? Giovanni thought he had competition there?

Tucking away her amusement, she focused on the cheerful chaotic family group that had emerged alongside them in the arrivals hall. With vociferous cries of delight, they fell upon a brown-eyed cherubic toddler, indiscriminate in his smiles as he was passed among welcoming aunts and uncles. A strange pang struck Lisa as he was finally hoisted onto his father’s shoulders. Waves of love radiated from the family group and for a brief second she wondered what it would feel like to be part of that. Nan loved her, but she was hardly the demonstrative type.

Nan’s response to her saying goodbye last night, and imploring her to take her tablets and behave, was a strident huff and a few choice words about Lisa’s fussing. Fussing! If only she knew. Reading those bloody leaflets that Dr Gupta had pressed upon her had left Lisa terrified and reinforced her decision to come to Rome. It was now or never. If anything did happen to Nan, she wouldn’t be able to leave her and she wanted this business with her father sorted before then. Lisa ignored the cowardly whisper, pointing out it would also be far easier to give him the ring and walk away without a backward glance, while Nan was still alive.

‘Come on. The car is this way.’ Giovani took her case and expertly wove his way through the busy airport and, when they stepped outside through the doors, even though it was nearly four o’clock in the afternoon, they were hit by a shaft of Italian heat and brilliant sunshine, a gorgeous contrast to the grey dampness of Luton they’d left scant hours ago. Her spirits lifted. She was here, in Rome and it had been kind of Giovanni to invite her. Despite the doubts that Will had planted in her head, she resolved to make the most of the next few days and enjoy herself.

She would cross any romantically inclined bridges with Giovanni as they came. Will’s dour predictions were Will being cynical. The young Italian was handsome and full of fun and, more importantly, he liked her. Perhaps she should give him a chance and see what developed and not assume that Giovanni was necessarily stereotypical of Italian men.

They stopped beside a tiny, battered Fiat 500, with one wing mirror missing. It looked as if it had done battle in a demolition derby and lost.

‘Seriously?’ Will drawled, looking at the car. ‘Is it safe?’

‘Yes.’ Giovanni grinned. ‘Perfect for Rome traffic.’

‘And what about the luggage?’ He indicated his and Lisa’s cases, looking at the tiny boot.

‘No problem.’ Giovanni picked up Lisa’s case and manhandled it into the back seat waiting for Will to follow suit.

With both cases wedged in the back there was only room for one passenger to squeeze in next to them.

Giovanni held open the driver’s seat and indicated to Will that he should get in the back. Will glanced down at his long legs; Giovanni grinned and held the door wider. Lisa almost giggled.

‘You’re kidding,’ said Will with a scowl.

‘It’s not far.’ Giovanni gave him a cheerful grin.

Lisa bit back a smile as Will climbed into the back, resigned disgust written all over his face.

The traffic was every bit as chaotic as Lisa had been led to believe. Cars zipped in and out of lanes with gay abandon, heedless of blaring horns, leaving eye-wateringly negligible gaps between bumpers. She crossed her fingers tight under her thighs and wondered whether she might have been better in the back. Being back on the plane was almost preferable to this. Giovanni’s jerky, rapid-braking style of driving made her feel slightly sick as did his habit of turning to talk to her as he drove. The car didn’t have any air conditioning and when Giovanni opened all the windows as they came to a stop in grindingly slow traffic, the car filled with hazy exhaust fumes.

‘This is the main road into Rome. It’s usually a lot busier than this,’ said Giovanni, before changing lanes with startling speed, squeezing the car into a gap in the next lane, which was moving fractionally quicker than theirs. Two seconds later he whipped the car back into the original lane, which had started to edge forwards more quickly. This constant lane-changing, trying to second-guess the traffic queues, interspersed with a running commentary on the other drivers, didn’t help the queasiness dancing in her stomach.

‘We have a whole week. Are there any places that you would like to visit? We have a wealth of sights. The tourist season is very busy now.’ He grinned at Lisa, and she smiled uncertainly. She wished he’d watch the road instead of turning her way like that, but she was grateful he hadn’t said anything about looking for her father.

For some reason, she didn’t want Will to know the real reason for her visit.

While looking out at the houses beside the road, and the streets beyond, it struck her rather forcefully that this could be a wild-goose chase. It had seemed quite simple when she was at home. Now the practicality and the enormity rocked home. Rome was a big city. The photo and address were very old. Anything could have happened in the intervening years.

‘I … the usual places, I guess.’ She’d fully intended to read her guide book on the plane, but with Will sitting next to her she’d been reluctant. An organised person might have planned and prepared much earlier. In fact, he made her feel like a grubby, unsophisticated schoolgirl on her first trip abroad. Flying by herself, while absolutely terrifying, had also felt grown up and glamorous and ever so slightly daring. Will made it look like hopping on a bloody bus.

With a fixed smile, she focused on the sights around them, which looked rather industrial and run down, although every now and then they’d dip below an ancient viaduct running over the road. As they neared the city, the buildings started to become more interesting, the juxtapositions decidedly odd. There, next to a modern square electrical department store was an ancient bridge, the worn pointing making the bricks look as if they might tumble down at any moment. A huge many-tiered church towered over a square, the white marble making it look like an elaborate wedding cake. The numbers of pedestrians increased, gaily taking their life in their hands as they sauntered through the traffic, which had once again begun to back up.

Despite the touch of a headache from the liberal use of horns and the fumes, Lisa was fascinated by the good-natured chaos. Cars seemed to join the main arteries of roads from every side road, opening like tributaries flooding evermore into a river already threatening to burst its banks. Drivers threw their hands up in the air, tooting with exasperated exuberance, and it seemed like a contest as to who could toot loudest and longest. Giovanni seemed completely unconcerned about the early-evening cacophony around them, with the window open and his arm resting on the opening, he tapped along to the Europop blasting from the car’s radio. Most of the songs seemed to be English, to be fair, but the stream of Italian between, spoken at the speed of light, was yet another reminder that she wasn’t in Leighton Buzzard any more.

She squirmed in her seat, itching to get out and walk along the streets in the balmy air, along with the early-evening crowd, who all looked as if they had somewhere to be. It was infectious, that sense of a city on the move, heading somewhere important. Were that couple, arm in arm, going home to eat pasta? Was the handsome man with the briefcase heading to a rendezvous with a gorgeous brunette, already waiting with a double espresso in a café? Lisa sighed.

‘You okay?’ asked Giovanni. ‘We’re nearly there.’

‘I’m fine. Is the traffic always like this?’

He let out an uproarious laugh. ‘No, this is good. This is tourist season, remember. No one stays in Rome in the summer unless they have to.’

With a sudden lurch, Giovanni hauled the car into a side street, hurtling along the quiet road, racing through the gears before dropping back down, with equal drama, to throw the car around another corner, before screeching to a halt outside a gate. With a quick toot, it rolled open with slow grace.

After a short drive along a winding foliage-bordered road, Giovanni pulled up with a flourish, throwing his arm out of the open window to indicate the building nestled right between one of the ancient arches of the aqueduct.

‘Wow! This is the apartment?’ Lisa gasped. It reminded her of some crab or snail which had taken up residence in someone else’s shell.

‘Very nice. I wasn’t expecting this,’ murmured Will, as he clambered out of the back of the car, stretching as he did so. Lisa averted her eyes from the flash of stomach and dark-blonde hair above the waistband of his very low-slung jeans, irritated by the rapturous appreciation of her hormones. Since when were they in charge?

‘I didn’t know they were allowed to do things like this.’ Thinking about bricks and mortar was a good distraction. The planning departments at home wouldn’t let someone build within spitting distance of this type of ancient monument, let alone use the walls of it as part of the structure.

Will laughed. ‘Welcome to Italy. I think they take their history in their stride because there’s so much of it.’

‘Si, si.’ Giovanni pulled her case out of the back of the car and carried it to the door, before opening up with a large, old-fashioned key.

The entrance led into a high-ceilinged, cool, dark hall, tiled in black-and-white marble stone. To their left, an ornate wrought-iron railing edged a wide staircase, which curved up and around two sides of the room, the stone steps worn in the middle, smoothed away by many years of footsteps treading up and down them.

‘We are on the first floor,’ Giovanni announced with pride, leading the way upwards.

At the top, directly opposite the last step, was a rather imposing doorway, with highly polished and embellished brass knobs on each of the double doors.

Lisa had visions of the Lord of the Rings again, arriving at some Middle Earth palace. Giovanni opened both doors, throwing them wide and stepping back like Sir Walter Raleigh, ushering Lisa in.

After the dark hallway, they were bathed in light, which came flooding in from a series of windows, each dressed with full-length flowing drapes in some gauzy fabric, secured with silken tie-backs like willowy maidens in chiffon dresses belted at the waist.

‘It’s lovely,’ said Lisa, entranced by the beautiful room, which combined modern elegant comfort with period charm. Stylish plush-velvet sofas in deep plum faced each other across a contemporary glass-and-gilt table on a faded silk rug. Over by the windows, the sumptuous lines of a pale-grey chaise longue practically begged for someone to drop down and recline into its plump upholstery to enjoy the view out over the extensive gardens.

Giving the furniture a very wide berth, in case she succumbed to the urge to lie down and test the chaise, she crossed to one of the three floor-length French windows. Each one opened onto its own balcony, the central one being double the size of the other two and big enough to hold a small bistro table and two chairs.

‘Oh, this is gorgeous,’ she said, a broad grin taking over her face.

Directly opposite was a mansion-style house, perfectly placed in the centre of landscaped gardens, dotted with unfamiliar shrubs. The very grand entrance to the house had a twin set of staircases with cream balustrades curving up to meet each other at the imposing entrance, like a perfectly trimmed moustache.

‘Who lives there?’ asked Lisa, turning back to look over her shoulder, but either Giovanni hadn’t heard or didn’t know because he melted away with her case.

Will came to join on her on the balcony.

‘Hmm, very nice.’ He leaned on the railing and surveyed the grounds.

She waited for him to make some clever comment, but he seemed to be content to drink in the view.

The scent of pine teased the air and she tipped her face up to the sunshine, a sense of contentment filling her. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad with Will around.

‘Guess we’d better find out where we’re all sleeping. And what the price of the accommodation will be?’ With a barely suppressed smirk, he went back inside.

Who had she been kidding? Having Will around was going to be every bit as bad as she’d first thought.

Lisa unpacked quickly, stowing underwear in the shallow drawers of a French grey-painted dressing table and hanging a couple of dresses and pairs of trousers in the sort of wardrobe with little lace-dressed windows that ought to have some fancy name. Her jeans were sticking to her legs and she relished the cooler linen as she slid into a pair of loose trousers and yanked on a clean rose-pink t-shirt.

Thanks for letting me raid your wardrobe. Yay for linen!

She paused in her text to Siena and added Did you know Will was coming too??????!!!! He was on my flight. Sat next to me. Invited himself to stay at Giovanni’s place too. I could bloody kill him. Angry face, can’t find emoticons.

Crossing to the tiny dressing table, she plugged her ailing phone into charge. The battery was rubbish.

As she did, Siena’s response came back.

Nooooo! He said he was going away, but didn’t say where! Now I realise why he was being deliberately cagey. Obviously couldn’t bear to let you go! xxx

Lisa pulled a face as she read the text.

Ha! Yeah right. He says he’s got lots of business meetings, hopefully he’ll stay out of our way. Damn cheeky, though. Poor Giovanni could hardly say no. Typical bloody Will.

She pulled out the photograph of her father, touching the glossy front. It felt furtive to hide the picture and she had nothing to hide, but she slid it between the pages of her guide book and into her handbag. Having heard plenty about handbag-snatchers and pickpockets in Rome, she popped the ring box in amongst her underwear.

With that done she glanced around the room, giving the narrow, single, walnut-wood sleigh bed a cautious glance. While there was barely room to swing a hamster, let alone a cat, it was exceptionally pretty, with its pale-blue and white lace-trimmed bedding, matching curtains and ornate plasterwork on the ceiling. Moreover, it was her own room, so Will could stuff his earlier insinuations.

With a quick spritz of perfume, regretting her confiscated deodorant, she was ready to go. Giovanni had suggested they go out to a local bar in ten minutes and having had a brief look at the tiny kitchen and the sparse contents of its fridge, it was clear that any eating to be done wasn’t going to be here. There wasn’t even any beer in the fridge.

Will met her in the hall, looking annoyingly fresh, his hair damp.

‘Have you had a shower?’ she asked accusingly, wishing she’d had time to explore the bathroom situation.

‘Yup.’

‘A record-breaking one. Have you even unpacked?’

Will shrugged with complete unconcern. ‘Nope.’

‘Boys.’ She looked over his shoulder into his room, where she could see a trail of clothes on his floor leading to a door on the other side – obviously an en-suite bathroom.

‘I was hot. And Giovanni said …’ Will looked at his watch.

They were bang on time and Giovanni had yet to emerge from his room on the opposite side of the hallway. She looked again at Will’s room.

‘Nice room,’ she commented, unable to keep the acidic tone out of her voice.

‘It’s okay, how’s yours?’

‘Fine,’ she said tightly. How come he’d got the better room? ‘How long are you staying?’

Will smiled. ‘Fed up with me, already?’

‘I’m always fed up with you.’

His smile deepened, lazy amusement dancing in his eyes, making her want to punch him hard in the washboard stomach and wipe it off his handsome bloody face.

‘After tonight you won’t see me. I’ve got my first appointment fixed up in the morning. I’m off to visit a place outside Rome where they make cheese to die for and then I’m seeing a guy who runs a restaurant in Trastevere. I’m here to work.’

That was one thing about Will. He worked hard. It was typical that he’d got everything thoroughly organised, while she had a hazy itinerary and a goal, which as yet, she had no idea how to achieve.

At last, Giovanni emerged from his room, his Hugo Boss aftershave arriving before him.

‘Ah, we’re all ready. Let’s go.’