Italian Passion

Italian Passion

Florentine
Awakening

Venetian
Distraction

Two more
romance novellas, set in Florence and Venice, that will sweep you away!

Jayne Castel

All
characters and situations in this publication are fictitious and any
resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

Italian
Passion
by Jayne Castel

Copyright
© 2013 Jayne Castel. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior
written permission of the author.

Edited
by Tim Burton.

Cover
photography courtesy of www.istockphotos.com

Cover
design by Jayne Castel.

Visit
Jayne’s website and blog:
www.jaynecastel.com

Follow
Jayne on Twitter at:
https://twitter.com/JayneCastel

Florentine
Awakening

by Jayne
Castel

“Richard, I think Siena is the next
stop.”

Silence followed Vanessa’s words –
the same silence that had followed almost every comment she had made since they
had boarded the train in Rome.

Vanessa Woods leant back in her seat
and took off her sunglasses, fixing her boyfriend in a wintry stare. She had
let every rude silence go so far, not wanting to spoil their holiday, but she
knew that she could not let this continue; otherwise their entire week in
Tuscany would consist of stony silences and hurtful glares.

“Richard. Did you hear me?”

Silence.

“Richard!”

“I heard you,” Richard lowered the
novel he had been engrossed in since the journey began and frowned at her.
“There’s no need to nag.”

“I’m not nagging. If you’d answered
me the first time, I wouldn’t have had to repeat myself.”

“Can’t you see I’m reading?”

“You’ve had your nose stuck in that
book since Rome,” Vanessa felt anger, and a nauseating stab of fear, twist her
stomach. “The least you can do is acknowledge me when I speak to you.”

Richard’s cheeks flushed and his gaze
narrowed further. Vanessa braced herself for the torrent of abuse she well knew
he was capable of, but he was mercifully cut off when the crackling
loud-speaker announced the train’s arrival into Siena.

“
Attenzione!
Il treno è in arrivo alla stazione di Siena.”

Not waiting for Richard’s response,
Vanessa got to her feet and pulled their matching trolley suitcases down from
the luggage rack. Then, without glancing at her boyfriend’s furious face, she
followed the stream of passengers towards the doors. The train rumbled and
hissed to a halt, before the doors creaked open.

Vanessa stepped off the train into
the bright spring sunshine with a hammering heart. She had not wanted to start
their holiday off with a fight – she had been so looking forward to Tuscany.
Now, with Richard’s anger boring a hole into her back, she felt tears welling.

I was a fool to think a
holiday together would change anything.

She and Richard had been together for
nearly two years, and had been living together the last four months. Richard
was an insurance broker in Bristol, and Vanessa was a PA in the same insurance
firm. They had met at work, and got together after a raucous Christmas party.
Their first year and a half as a couple had gone so well that they had decided
to take the next step and rent a flat together. However, things slid steadily
downhill from there. Before they lived together, Richard had been the perfect,
if at times distracted, boyfriend, but after they moved in together, he had
become gradually more and more distant. Often days would pass with him barely
speaking a word to her; and when she questioned him, more often than not he
would lose his temper and end up storming from the flat.

This holiday had been Vanessa’s idea.
It had taken her weeks to convince him; only now, as the train pulled away from
the platform and Vanessa turned to meet Richard’s angry, red face, she was
beginning to think she had made a terrible mistake.

“Come on,” Vanessa said brightly,
flicking her straight blonde hair off her face and attempting to pretend they
were enjoying themselves. “Shall we walk to the hotel? The guidebook says it’s
a twenty minute walk, but it’s such a nice afternoon…”

“We’re taking a taxi,” Richard
replied shortly. He pushed past her and strode along the platform. He clove a
path through a cluster of Japanese tourists, scattering them. Vanessa hurried
after him, apologising as she went.

Outside the station, Richard marched
up to the first taxi waiting in the rank and barked the name of the hotel at
the driver. Raising his eyebrows slightly, the elderly man lifted their trolley
suitcases into the boot before opening the door for Vanessa.

“
Grazie
,” she murmured – using
the only Italian word she knew.

“
Prego signorina
!” his
wrinkled face broke into a warm grin.

Inside the taxi, the air was
decidedly chilly – although the coldness was nothing do no with the air
conditioning, but rather the result of Richard’s disdain. As the taxi pulled
out onto the main road leading into Siena’s
centro storico
, Vanessa
glanced across at her boyfriend and felt her stomach twist once more. She could
see he was fuming, and knew to expect a tongue-lashing once they reached their
hotel room.

Running an eye over Richard, Vanessa
was shocked to find she no longer found him as attractive as she had during the
early stages of their relationship. When they had first met his blond
good-looks and tall, gym-toned physique had caught her eye immediately. She had
liked his cool, nonchalant manner and dry sense of humour; although these days
she found his face sullen and his brow creased with a perpetual frown. Whenever
she enraged him, which was often these days, his face turned an angry
beetroot-red.

She knew better than to try and
engage Richard in conversation when he was angry with her, and so Vanessa held
her tongue and turned her gaze, instead, to the terracotta façades of Siena’s
historic centre. It was as if they had stepped back into the past, into the
heart of the Middle Ages; each street they passed through had managed to blend
old and new – shop fronts nestled in between ancient stone walls, seamlessly.

The taxi dropped them off in an
ivy-draped backstreet in front of their
pensione
. Vanessa followed
Richard inside, admiring the charming façade as she did so. The fact that it
was crumbling just added to its beauty.

Inside, a young woman with long dark
hair and almond-shaped chocolate brown eyes greeted them at reception.
Richard’s surly attitude vanished in an instant, and he gave the girl lingering
smiles as she checked them in. Vanessa stood behind him, watching in horror as
Richard flirted openly with the Italian siren.

“What’s your name?” he asked with
that half-smile that had wooed Vanessa in the beginning.

“Maria,” the young woman smiled back,
before busying herself with copying down their passport numbers into a ledger.

“I’d heard Italian women were
beautiful but you make the average English woman look like a frump. You could
be a model you know.”

Maria’s smile wavered and her gaze
flicked over to Vanessa. Richard was making her uncomfortable.

For her part, Vanessa had heard
enough. She felt ill listening to Richard’s heavy-handed attempts at seduction;
even if it was only designed to make her jealous. She stepped forward,
deliberately, jabbing her elbow into Richard’s side as she did so and gave
Maria a bright smile.

“Good to meet you Maria. I’m
Vanessa.”

The warmth returned to Maria’s gaze
before she handed both their passports back to Vanessa, and their room keys.

“Lovely to meet you,” she replied in
lightly accented English. “I hope you enjoy your stay. Your room is number 14 –
it’s on the second floor.”

Vanessa took the keys and, without
even glancing at Richard, stormed over to the stairs, running over his foot
with her trolley as she did so. She could hear his voice behind her, attempting
to engage the receptionist in conversation once more while he waited for the
lift. Vanessa ground her teeth, picked up her trolley suitcase, and marched up
the narrow stairwell to the second floor. Finding their room, she unlocked the
door and let herself in.

The sight of it made her eyes fill
with tears. It was gorgeous – a spacious room with a terracotta tiled floor,
gauzy curtains and wooden shutters. A king-sized bed with white linen dominated
the space. It was the perfect honeymoon suite for a loving couple, only she was
here with a man who treated her like something he had just scraped off his
shoe.

Hearing his footsteps approaching
along the tiled corridor, Vanessa fled into the ensuite bathroom, locking the
door behind her. Like the bedroom, the bathroom was immaculate, with expensive
fittings. It had a large bathtub in one corner with a shower over it.

“Vanessa!” she heard the door slam,
and the hard edge to his voice.

“I’m having a bath,” Vanessa shouted
back, before switching on the hot tap and turning on the extraction fan to
drown out his voice. “I’ll be out in a bit!”

She could hear his muffled curses but
deliberately shut her ears to them. Turning to look for some bubble bath to
use, she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror. A small, curvaceous
woman of around thirty, with straight blonde hair cut in layers around a
heart-shaped face, and tear-filled blue eyes, stared back at her.

This had been her dream holiday and
if she could, she would get on the first plane home.

Vanessa undressed, tears running down
her cheeks. She filled the bath as full as she dared, using copious amounts of
an orange and basil bubble bath, before piling her hair on the top of her head
and climbing in. The hot water was a salve, soothing her raw nerves. Closing
her eyes, she listened to the whirr of the extractor fan and the dripping of
the tap, and wished that she would never have to leave this bathtub.

Pink from her bath and wrapped in a
thick, white towel, Vanessa sat on the edge of the bed and listened while
Richard stormed around the room, ranting.

Selfish, nagging, spoilt,
demanding.
The insults did not stop. He catalogued, in detail, all her transgressions
since they had boarded the plane at Gatwick.

You talk too much. You expect
too much. You only think about yourself. You always want to be the centre of
attention
.
After a few, half-hearted efforts to defend herself, which only made him
angrier, Vanessa lapsed into silence.

The late afternoon sun filtered in
through the window and pooled on the terracotta tiles. Outside, a scooter
puttered down the street; the noise of its engine vibrating off the ancient
walls. Eventually, her vacant expression and glazed gaze, only served to make
Richard turn nastier.

“I can’t believe I ended up with such
a moron,” he snarled, grabbing his jacket and heading for the door, “I suppose
that’s what I get for shagging the company secretary. Find someone else to have
dinner with this evening. I’m going out on my own.”

Richard’s last words caused Vanessa
to start.

“What?” She jumped to her feet and
followed him. “But we’ve just arrived. I thought we’d go out for dinner a
later. You’re ruining our holiday Richard.”

“I’m ruining it?” he turned on her.
“Haven’t you listened to a word I just said? Have dinner on your own you
selfish bitch.”

With that he stormed from the room
and slammed the door in her face.

Vanessa stood in the centre of the
room, stunned. Although Richard’s presence was starting to give her stomach
ache, she could not believe he would go out for the evening without her. Still
wrapped in her towel, Vanessa walked back to the bed and sat woodenly down on
the edge.

They had a week booked in Tuscany –
two nights here in Siena followed by five nights in Florence. If things did not
improve, it would end up being the longest week of her life.

***

The sun shone through the car window
and pooled on Vanessa’s lap. Reaching over, she pushed a button, and opened the
front passenger window slightly, letting the whisper of a breeze into the car.
Then, she glanced to her left, at where Richard was peering at the SatNav and
felt some of the tension in her neck and shoulders ease. He either had not
noticed she had opened the window slightly, or was too pre-occupied to care.

Today had got off to a considerably
better start than the day before. With any luck, she and Richard would enjoy
their Tuscan holiday after all.

The Fiat 500 nosed its way down the
narrow cobbled street. Above the tumble of orange tiled roofs, the sky was
robin’s-egg blue. It was a glorious morning, and they had just picked up a hire
car and were off to the small, walled, medieval town of San Gimignano for the
day.

Last night, after she had dressed and
put on a bit of make up to disguise the fact that she had been crying, Vanessa
had gone out to explore Siena on her own. She had walked through the
shell-shaped Piazza del Campo, where the locals held their famous horse race,
the
Palio
, every summer; and visited the white and black-striped façade
of Siena’s Cathedral. She had sat for a long while in Piazza del Campo,
watching the locals stroll through the square, before the sun set in a blaze of
gold and her stomach began to rumble. Not used to dining on her own, Vanessa
had opted for a hole-in-the-wall pizzeria, where she could take away a slab of
steaming hot
margherita
pizza with a can of soft-drink. She sat on a
bench, enjoying her simple dinner, and watching as couples wandered past,
hovering outside restaurants and gazing at the menus before deciding whether or
not to dine there. Vanessa’s eyes had filled with tears as she watched them.
That should have been her and Richard this evening. Instead, he was off most
probably getting drunk, while she ate takeaway pizza alone.