Authors: Victoria Connelly
Irresistible You
Irresistible You
Victoria Connelly
Copyright 2003 Victoria Connelly
Previously published as
Unmasking Elena Montella
Cover image copyright Roy Connelly
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Victoria Connelly asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
Published by Cuthland Press
in
association with Notting Hill Press
To my dear friend Bridget
***
There’s magic in the heart of Venice but not everyone can find it.
In Dorsoduro, there is a little mask shop called Viviana’s. It’s like many of the mask shops in Venice with its pretty window display of bejewelled faces; its scarlet walls are covered in the same jolly jesters and sparkling sunbeams, and a little bell tinkles merrily as you open the door. But the masks in this shop are different. It isn’t anything you can see or touch; it’s something that you feel - the curious connection between a mask and its wearer that cannot be explained.
Rows of alabaster faces await their fate - a date with colour. And what colour!
Rubies, sapphires, silvers and golds, cerises, amethysts and jades – richer than a jeweller’s window and far more precious.
There are beautifully feminine feline masks decorated in rich damasks and studded with sequins and pearls, and sombre, tubular-nosed plague doctors who stare down eerily from their home below the great black beam. Each mask seems to have a life of its own - a life first born in the imagination of its creator.
Stefano Cazzaro.
He’s working in the shop now. What else would he be doing? For him, there is no life outside Venice, and Venice, for him, is Viviana’s.
‘Viviana?’ he calls, and his wife soon appears, holding an espresso for her husband. ‘It’s from Cassandra,’ Stefano announces, waving a letter that has just arrived.
‘Oh!’ Viviana says, ‘I liked her. How is she?’
‘Married.’
‘Wonderful!’
‘And pregnant.’
Viviana claps her hands to her mouth. ‘It worked, then?’
‘Of course it worked!’ Stefano says with a little chuckle.
‘And who is this one for?’ Viviana asks as she watches her husband’s paintbrush glide gently over the fresh golden skin of a new mask.
‘Elena,’ he says.
‘Is she coming soon?’
‘She’ll be arriving next week.’
Viviana looks anxious for a moment. ‘Will it be ready?’
‘Will it be ready, she asks me!
Of course
it will be ready! Since when have I not been ready for a visitor?’
Viviana laughs and leaves him to it.
Once again, Stefano focuses on the little mask before him, his bright eyes narrowing in concentration as he holds his paintbrush like a magic wand. He loves this moment best of all. He could take his brush anywhere and create all kinds of wonders. There are such possibilities!
For a moment, he thinks about Elena.
‘She’s in a terrible muddle, isn’t she?’ he says.
The mask stares back up at him, its hollow eyes seeming to understand.
‘I think she’s going to like you,’ he tells it, holding it up to the light for inspection. ‘Yes. You’ll be ready for Elena,’ he says. ‘But will Elena be ready for you?’
Elena Montella woke up with her heart racing. She’d dreamt it again - the same dream that had been tracking her down and haunting her for days now. She shook her head, trying to free her mind of the image of herself stood in the church in a wedding dress. It always started so beautifully with music and flowers and smiling faces but, somewhere amongst the vows, it started to turn ugly.
‘Elena. Do you take
this
man to be your lawful wedded husband?’ the vicar would ask.
‘I do,’ Elena would
say, her voice low and reverential.
‘And do you take this man to be your lawful wedded husband?’
‘I d-’ she’d pause. ‘Pardon?’
‘And do you take
THIS
man to be your lawful wedded husband?’
‘What?’
The vicar’s eyes seemed to spear her with their intensity. ‘Well?’ he’d say impatiently. ‘Who’s it to be?’
Elena would turn around and see three grooms lined up behind each other.
‘Come on, Elena!’ one of them would shout.
‘Yeah!
Make up your mind!’ the second would yell.
‘Are you sure it’s me you want?’ the third would say.
‘What’s going on?’ Elena would scream.
‘
You
tell
us!
’ one of the grooms would bellow, and it was at this point that things really started to get out of hand. Fists flew across faces, bouquets bashed heads, bibles were stuffed into bemused mouths and it would all end in a huge food fight - the congregation chucking wedding cake around in lieu of confetti. Elena could never quite explain that part. But she had a pretty good idea what the rest of it meant.
Swinging her legs out of bed, she got up and showered, hoping that the warm needles of water would wash away the remnants of her trio of bridegrooms. Some women collected shoes, she thought. Others preferred lipsticks, earrings or miniature teapots. But she had to go and be different. Her own particular collection was fiancés and, at that moment, she had three.
Men had always been a little weakness of hers; she just loved them but three at once could prove problematical from time to time. Her answerphone was usually chock-a-block with messages, and she had to think of all sorts of excuses to avoid treble-booking herself. Her diary was always a mass of colour because she used a different pen for each fiancé: Mark was blue, Reuben was red and Prof was purple. It should have been a simple enough system but she had been known to turn up at the wrong house at the wrong time and then have to explain herself to the fiancé she’d stood up. But, believe it or not, she hadn’t deliberately got herself into this situation; it all happened quite by accident.
Prof had been the first to propose, Elena remembered as she lathered her hair in apple shampoo, and she’d been so surprised that she didn’t really say anything at all as he’d pushed a ring onto her finger. And then Mark had proposed on the very night she was going to break up with him and, shortly after that, Reuben had gone down on one knee and done the same thing. Words had completely failed her. She loved each one of them and didn’t want to hurt their feelings and so, to avoid any kind of confrontation, she’d accepted. She knew it was weak-willed of her and that she wouldn’t be quite so popular if the truth ever came out, but it also felt overwhelmingly wonderful to be loved by three gorgeous men.
Nevertheless, things had got to change and she knew she was going to have to choose just one man if she was ever going to banish her nightmares and lead a normal life.
‘Elena, my babe,’ Mark had said to her at the beginning of the week, ‘we really should start thinking about fixing a date.’ He’d stroked her dark hair in that annoyingly sensuous way of his and she’d tried to push him away. They were, after all, in open view of the
students on the way to class and she really didn’t want to encourage the teasing that was already going on.
‘I think the end of July would be perfect,’ he’d continued, his fingers stroking the oh-so-sensitive place behind her ear. ‘What do you think?’
Elena had looked at him in quiet bewilderment. ‘I - er - I have to get these worksheets photocopied,’ she’d said, ducking underneath his imprisoning arm and running into the office before he could stop her.
Mark, Elena felt, was the best friend a girl could wish for. He was sweet, attentive, boyishly handsome with bright mischievous eyes, and he didn’t get all huffy when she was in a bad mood like some men did. But, on the negative side, he had the bank balance of a Benedictine monk. She really had tried to look passed this unfortunate obstacle but one look around his flat had sent a shiver of horror down her spine.
A couple of weeks ago, after he’d presented her with dinner in his dingy kitchen and they’d sat snuggling on the sofa of a thousand stains, she’d tried to break it off with him. Was this what she really wanted out of life? she kept asking herself. But, just as she was going to tell him things weren’t really working out, he’d presented her with the ring. How could she have disappointed him? His eyes were so warm and full of love that she didn’t have the heart to say no.
But it wasn’t just Mark who’d been putting pressure on her, she thought, stepping out of the shower and drying
herself with a fluffy pink towel. Her evening class professor had also been dropping very heavy hints in between lectures on nineteenth-century heroines.
‘Mother’s been asking again, you know,’ Prof told her last week. Elena knew she shouldn’t have asked him for an extension on her Emily Bronte paper. He always made conditions with such things.
Prof was Elena’s older man. She called him Prof because she just couldn’t cope with his ribbon of names: Sigmund Algernon Mortimer. They were far too posh and pretentious for her to use without bursting into hysterical laughter every time she did so. He was forty-nine years old, had a mind like Einstein and a mouth like a hungry porn star. He was handsome and self-assured; old-fashioned in the best possible way, dashing with threads of silver in his mahogany locks; and he was deeply protective - constantly checking up on her which could sometimes prove just a little bit exhausting. She was twenty-nine; she could look after herself. But he was the sweetest, tenderest man she’d ever met, and he always looked so cute in his little round glasses and paisley bow tie.
She wouldn’t have felt quite so pressured with just Mark and Prof hounding her for an answer, she thought as she blow dried her hair upside down, but even Reuben had been getting in on the act.
‘
ELENA!
’ he’d shouted across the studio the other day, paintbrush poised in the most threatening manner. ‘You’re driving me crazy! I want to make an honest model out of you!’
Elena really did find it most off-putting to be told such a thing when naked on a chaise longue. She’d ignored him, as usual, because he was rather prone to these little outbursts. She thought it was all part of the artistic temperament. However, this caused him to become even more furious
until, finally, he’d ripped his canvas with a palette knife and told her to go home without so much as a ravishment for her pains.
Elena had, on two separate occasions, walked out on Rueben and threatened not to come back. Sometimes, she felt that his ego was far greater than his talent and she wasn’t at all sure that she could put up with him for the rest of her life, but something kept on pulling her back to him.
Men!
They really were the most unpredictable of species, she mused, choosing a crisp white shirt and pair of black cotton trousers for the day ahead. She couldn’t believe that she’d managed to pick, perhaps, the only three men in the world who wanted to sprint up the nearest aisle. Didn’t anyone want to live in sin anymore? Her only explanation was that each of her paramours had come to the realisation that they might not be the only ones in her life, and that had brought their hunter-gatherer genes to the fore. She couldn’t really believe that they had found her out, though, as she kept each one of them very separate.
Mark was Elena’s work colleague at the foreign school she taught at in West London. She saw him four days a week when she was teaching, and kept Saturday morning’s free for him.
She saw Prof every Thursday evening for her literature class at evening school and occasionally dropped by the university during Friday lunchtimes when she knew he wasn’t tutoring.
Sundays were for Reuben and, because he had a whole posse of models, she didn’t think he minded only seeing her once a week. He certainly hadn’t questioned her about it. So, why the sudden urge for each one of them to get married? Whatever the reason for their Mrs Bennet behaviour, it spelt trouble for her.
Hence her decision to make some life changes.
She was going away. Her bags were packed and she was just about ready to leave for the airport.
It was the Easter holidays and her flight to Venice was in three hours’ time and she was going to stay with her sister, Rosanna, who was sitting an artist’s apartment there and getting paid for the privilege.
She’d phoned Rosanna the week before but she hadn’t sounded too pleased to hear from her.
‘What do you want, Elena?’ she’d asked.
‘I want to come and see you,’ she said in her sweetest sister’s voice, but Rosanna wasn’t having any of it
‘What for? Are you in trouble again?’
‘Yes, I am,’ she said matter-of-factly.
‘Dio Mio! I
knew
it.’
‘I was joking!’ Elena said. ‘I just want to see you. What’s wrong with that?’
‘Nothing,’ Rosanna relented.
‘Good! I’ll book a ticket, then,’ she said, laughing at her little sister’s bossiness.
Elena had a distinct memory of Rosanna wagging her finger at her from her cradle, but maybe she was mistaken.
*
Sitting on a plane can be a very soporific experience for some people, and Elena happened to be sat next to such a person. No sooner had they taken off from Gatwick than the woman in tartan beside her was snoring sonorously. Her glasses had fallen half-way down her nose, and her mouth hung open like a dog’s on a hot day. Elena looked down at the lady’s left hand, and saw two gold rings: a stunning emerald surrounded by diamonds, and a thick gold wedding ring. She wondered who had placed them on her finger and if they’d known she snored as they’d done so.
Mark had seen Elena off at the airport. That was why she was wearing his ring - a classic diamond solitaire. It was a bit smaller than she’d hoped for but she knew he didn’t have much money. Her other rings were hidden in a red velvet pouch in one of her stockings. There was Reuben’s row of rubies, and Prof’s antique amethyst. All of the rings were so beautiful, and all so very different, just like the men who’d given them. So, how was a girl meant to choose
just one?
She closed her eyes and tried to switch off her brain, which wasn’t easy with the hippo-snorter beside her but, gradually, she felt herself drifting into a dreamless sleep and was only
woken up by the announcement that they were about to land and, less than an hour later, she was on a boat ploughing across the open waters of the lagoon, sitting up high in her seat in anticipation.
And there she was: La Serenissima.
The Pearl of the Adriatic. Venice.
In the deep haze of sunshine, everything looked milky-blue. Sunlight danced happily on the water like notes from a Vivaldi concerto. There were bell towers, church domes, houses and bridges and, as the boat pulled in to its stop, Elena breathed a long, contented sigh.
It felt so good to be back in the country in whose language she dreamt.
