Luscious (12 page)

A young girl talked on her own cell phone as she sat behind the table. “
Telefono?
” he asked.

She looked up at him. “
Documenti?
”

He shook his head apologetically. “English?” he asked.

She released a long-suffering sigh and said something in rapid Italian. “
Ciao
,” she said into her phone and pushed a button. “Are you from Italy?” she said slowly.

“No, I need a telephone because I can’t get a signal.” He held up his phone. “Do you have something like this?”

“Yes, but I can’t sell it to you unless you can prove you live here or you show me a passport.”

His passport was in his room at the villa. “Are you kidding me?” he asked.

Her phone signaled a text. “I’m sorry, but no,” she said, looking about as sorry as a teenager with an unread text message can look. Sean tried not to glare at her as she told him that it wasn’t her fault that rules were rules and her employers, indeed the government itself, required
documenti
for every cell phone sold, that no, it wasn’t just her. Her competitors would also be unable to sell him a phone. And no, he didn’t look like a terrorist but she didn’t want to lose her job.

Having no polite response, Sean simply nodded. “Is this the way to the Hotel Loggia Antica?” he gestured down the street.

“Yes, right there.” She pointed at a building across the square, clearly impatient to get back to her conversation.

He crossed the piazza and took the stairs by twos, nodding his thanks to the hotel doorman. The Hotel Loggia Antica was almost as nice as Villa Farfalla. Mrs. Russo had excellent taste in accommodations. He approached the front desk. “Hello, I’m looking for Marilyn Russo. Could you tell her someone is here to see her, please?”

“Certainly, sir.”

The divorce papers were tucked in his pocket. Hopefully his ruse would get Mrs. Russo into the lobby, and he could deliver them without incident. Then he would decide whether to try his luck with another phone vendor or head back to the villa for his passport. Was it worth paying a fortune in taxi fares to stay in touch with Mr. Russo and his family? Maybe he could find the train Gia had mentioned.

The clerk hung up the phone with a smile. “She is coming.”

“
Grazie
.” Sean walked over to the seating arrangement in the middle of the lobby and took a seat next to a tall potted plant. A few minutes later, a woman rushed into the lobby. He knew Mrs. Russo was in her fifties, but this woman looked much younger. Her auburn hair was twisted on top of her head and she was wearing high heels. Her blue dress swirled around her ankles as she whirled to look where the desk clerk was pointing—at him.

Sean moved into her line of sight. As their eyes met, she looked puzzled. Then her face crumpled and she pressed a hand to her lips. Sean felt like someone had punched him in the stomach as he realized she must have been expecting her husband. He forced himself to approach the front desk.

“Mrs. Russo?” he said softly. “I’m Sean Kindred. Your husband sent me.”

Her shoulders straightened. “I realize that now.”

“I’m sorry…I didn’t think…I guess I wasn’t thinking, but I’m sorry for misleading you.” He took a breath and pulled the divorce papers out of his pocket. “I’m your husband’s lawyer. He wants a divorce.”

She cleared her throat. “Yes, I know he does.”

Her sudden smile stunned him. He blinked and felt like a cad as he held out the papers.

Mrs. Russo shook her head and kept her hands at her sides. “He’s not going to get it until after my vacation. I told him that before I left New York.”

“How long is your vacation going to be?” he said, already fearing the answer.

“I haven’t decided.”

Sean had to ask, “Why on earth do you want to stay married to him if he wants a divorce?”

“Because I love him.” Her voice broke on the last word.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, and she nodded.

“Me too. But I’m not going to throw away twenty-eight years of marriage because Tony won’t take a vacation. He works too much and he doesn’t know how to relax. It’s ruining our marriage—”

Sean held up the papers again. “Are you sure it hasn’t already ruined your marriage?”

“Tony is an idiot.”

Sean nodded in agreement. “You can do better than him.”

She patted him on the cheek. “But I want Tony. I picked him, and I’m keeping him. Whether he knows it or not—he’s keeping me too.”

“I’m sorry for being the bearer of bad news, Mrs. Russo.” Sean pressed the papers into her hand and turned toward the door.

She caught his arm. “What are you going to tell Tony?”

“I’m going to tell him I delivered the papers.” He’d also tell him that he should keep his wife, not that Russo would listen to him.

“Would you tell him one more thing?” She gave him an impish smile.

Sean raised his eyebrows and waited. Nothing good could come from a smile like that.

“Tell him I won’t contest the divorce if he takes a two-week vacation in Italy. I just know he’d love it here as much as I do. Have you seen much of Padua?” she asked.

“I’m staying in Verona at Villa Farfalla,” he said.

“I’ve heard wonderful things about that place! When you speak with Tony, tell him to book a room there, please.”

Sean bit back a chuckle. Mrs. Russo was as relentless as her husband. Maybe they were perfectly matched after all. “I’ll send him an email when I get back to the villa. I imagine he’ll need some time to get used to the idea before I talk to him.”

“Tony’s like that,” Mrs. Russo said complacently, and he heard the truth of twenty-eight years ring in her voice.

Sean pulled his wallet out of his pocket and gave her his card. “Keep in touch.”

She shook his hand. “Thank you for your help. I hope we’ll see you at the villa.”

“Good luck,” he said and meant it.

He stopped at the front desk to pocket a hotel card in case he needed to contact her again. Then he stepped outside and headed back toward the market. Russo was going to be furious, but he wasn’t sure he cared. To be perfectly honest, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be his lawyer anymore. It was hard to believe the lovely woman he had just met had been driving Mr. Russo crazy. It seemed more likely the other way around.

Slowly he became aware of music. He followed the cheerful sound and found several musicians set up outside a café. His stomach growled, so he sat down at an empty table.
Vivi nel presente
. He might as well have lunch while he figured out what to do about his phone.

Olivia staggered out of the spa. Her muscles felt like room temperature butter, soft and malleable. Her nails were gorgeous, fingertips buffed to a natural shine and toes painted a racy dark red. Her stomach ached from giggling for hours as her cousin entertained her with even racier stories from her love life. As Olivia reached the bottom of the stairs, she fought the urge to hook a sharp left and keep walking, to continue out the back door and into the vineyard. So far her day had been stress free. That would end once she joined her mother in the kitchen. She stopped in the hall and took a deep breath.

The desire to please her mother was too strong for her to actually walk out the door, but just for a minute, she indulged the fantasy. What would she do? Where would she go?

She could spend the day lying in the vineyard watching the grapes grow. Or maybe she would walk into the village. A long lunch in a cute
trattoria
sounded very appealing.

The back door opened and she jumped.

“
Ciao, cara
. How was your morning?” her father asked, stepping into the hall.

“Peaceful. I was just on my way to help Mamma.”

His face softened and a teasing light entered his dark green eyes. “I can see you’re in a big hurry.”

Olivia turned toward the kitchen but her father touched her arm, holding her back. “You don’t look like you’ve had a peaceful morning,
tesoro
.”

“I’m fine. Just gearing up to chop some more herbs.”

“Bah! Why don’t you play in the vineyard with me instead? It is lovely among the vines.” The kindness in his eyes made her feel weak. She shook her head.

“I can’t. Mamma is expecting me.”

“And what’s the worst thing that could happen if you disappointed her?”

Olivia opened her mouth to answer before she realized she didn’t know. She had never deliberately defied her mother. She pressed her lips together, frowning.

“Your Mamma loves you,” he said.

“Of course she does.” That wasn’t the sort of thing a daughter needed to be told. She glanced out the door behind him, looking for Sean. “How was your morning? Did Sean find a phone?”

“I wouldn’t know.” Her father crossed his arms. He looked like he was trying not to laugh.

“Where is he?” she asked, suspicious.

“In Padua.”

“You left him there?” she exclaimed.

“He’s a big boy. He’ll find his way back.”

“Papà, he doesn’t speak Italian! How is he going to—” She broke off. “Go get him.”

Her father’s truculent expression told her he would do no such thing. Logically, she knew Sean could get back to the villa fairly easily. Someone would speak English and help him find the train but it had been a dirty trick. “Fine. Be that way. But when he does make it back on his own, you have to promise to be nice to him.”

A calculating grin creased her father’s tanned face. “Only if he makes it back before dinner.”

“Then you have to be nice to him for the rest of the week,” she countered.

“It’s a deal.” He held out his hand and they shook. “But I can’t speak for your mother.”

He kissed her cheek and headed toward the front of the house, chuckling. Olivia entered the kitchen and saw a young man clearing the chef’s table. His back was to her as he lifted a heavy tray onto his shoulder. She stepped out of the way, nodding a greeting as he passed. Below, she could see her mother deftly rolling pasta dough while Alessandro hovered over the stove, stirring something with a long wooden spoon. The kitchen smelled like garlic and roasting vegetables. She felt a twinge of guilt for spending the morning getting pounded like veal while they had been busy serving up lunch. She tugged an apron from the stack in the dish room and joined them.

“
Ciao
, Olivia,” her mother said as she stepped down the stairs.

“
Ciao
, Mamma. What’s on the menu today? Do you have a list ready for me?”

Her mother turned to Alessandro.

He untied his apron. “Ask Marco. I gave the list to him.” He gestured toward the young man who had been clearing the chef’s table, who was now leaning on the table and laughing with two women wearing black pants and white shirts. Her mother made a beeline for the stairs. To get the list? To put the waitstaff back to work? Alessandro glowered and threw his apron in the linen bin. He moved toward the glass door.

She followed him. “Alessandro, I’m here to help. I don’t plan to stay long, but I’d like to be useful while I’m here. Isn’t there something I can do while you’re gone?”

He turned to face her. The proud lines of his face softened. Olivia waited, hoping he would accept her olive branch, but the sudden ring of his cell phone ruined the moment. His face hardened again. “Nothing,” he said.

Olivia crossed her arms. “What about the class tomorrow?”

“What about it? The people will come. We will cook.” His hand moved toward his pocket. “
Un
momento
,” he said sharply into his phone. He turned back to her and jerked his chin toward the stove. “Make soup for
primo
piatto
if you want something to do.”

Olivia had taught occasional cooking classes at Chameleon. They were a ton of work, and it was far easier to have a good bit of the prep done ahead of time. Amateur chefs were interested in the exciting parts of cooking not the scut work. It was fun to peel one potato; it was not fun to peel two bags of them. It had taken both her and Marlene, prepping at warp speed the day before the class, to get everything ready to roll. There was no way in hell she was going to show up and wing it tomorrow.

She stepped in front of him. “Where’s the menu for the class?”

He pointed impatiently at the chalkboard next to the stairs.

“What time will you be back?” she asked, refusing to allow him to intimidate her.

He waved his cell phone at her. “
Mi
scusi.
”

She shrugged and stepped aside. The patio door slammed behind him. What on earth was wrong with that guy? As her mother had said, dinner wasn’t going to make itself and she wanted to help. Well, she was done being polite and trying not to step on his toes. She’d run her own kitchen for years, and she didn’t need him to tell her how to make dinner.

She walked back to the stove, automatically taking stock of what was cooking on the burners. Polenta? He’d left polenta sitting on the stove and walked out the door? The bottom of that pot was going to be scorched as hell. She killed the flame and poured the cornmeal pudding into a pan, being careful not to scrape the bottom or sides. After pressing plastic wrap to the top of the pudding, she cleaned out the pot, then put it back on the stove with some baking soda in the bottom to cook off the mess.

She carried the polenta to the walk-in and found two enormous pans of lasagna sitting on the shelf. That was enough to feed fifty people. He clearly intended to serve it as the entrée, but Italians customarily served lasagna for
primo
piatto
. Was he catering to American tastes? And what had he planned for dessert?

She found
amaretti
cookies cooling on the baker’s rack. She pulled one from the parchment and took a bite. It was delicious—sweet and fragrant with almond paste, crisp on the outside, and chewy in the center. She grabbed another cookie.

She supposed she could spend the rest of the day lolling around her room, but damned if she’d be thrown out of the kitchen because Chef Alessandro didn’t think she was big enough to play with the grown-ups. She was used to being busy, and she’d had enough relaxation this morning to last her a month. Shaking her head, she studied the chalkboard for the next day’s menu:
sottaceti
and bruschetta, risotto,
bollito
misto
with
la
peara
and
torta
sabbiosa
.

She had to admit that Alessandro had a gift for menu planning. It wasn’t easy to create a four-course menu that was simple to prepare yet impressive to serve. As far as she could tell, he hadn’t used any ingredients that cost the earth either. That was good for the villa and even better for the guests who might wish to repeat the dinner at home. The menu was simple yet rich. Light and refreshing. The colors would be beautiful, as much a feast for the eyes as for the palate.
Bastard
. She rolled her eyes.
Alessandro
Bellin, the man who can cook
. And bake, she thought, swallowing the last bite of cookie. Still, he didn’t have to be such an ass.

She returned to the stove, assuming the lazily bubbling stock was meant for soup since she hadn’t seen an older batch in the walk-in. She grabbed a strainer, a large pot, and a smaller pot to use as a ladle. She began to strain the hot stock.

Her mother appeared on the stairs just as she was deciding she probably shouldn’t try to lift the pot off the stove by herself. “Perfect timing,” Olivia said with a smile.

Her mother descended the stairs and stepped into place beside her. Together, they lifted the heavy stockpot and poured the rest of the steaming liquid through the strainer. When the pot was empty, her mother carried it to the dish room while Olivia dumped the discarded vegetables into the garbage can.

“Can I do something with your pasta?” Olivia asked, when her mother returned.

“I’ll take care of it.”

Olivia nodded and set up a cutting board as her mother began to wrap up the dough. An easy peace settled between them, so different from the agitation Olivia usually felt in her mother’s kitchen.

“What are you working on,
cara
?” her mother asked.

“Alessandro asked me to make soup. I’d also like to get a few things done for tomorrow’s class, if that’s all right with you.”

“Go ahead,
cara
. Do whatever you think is necessary. I’d help you but I need to double-check the rooms and make our guests comfortable when they arrive. I also promised your father I’d find someone to fix his tractor. I swear it seems like something new breaks every week.” Her mother wiped her hands on her side towel and turned to go.

At the bottom of the stairs, she paused. Olivia looked up from the pan she was wrapping in plastic and waited for her mother to speak, sure that whatever she was going to say would ruin their fragile camaraderie. She braced herself.

“Thank you,
cara
.” Her mother gave her a brief nod and swept up the stairs.

Olivia stared after her, bemused. Well, that was a first. She couldn’t remember the last time her mother had thanked her for anything. She was always too busy rushing off to organize the next task. Right now, Olivia could hear her voice in the dish room, probably adding to Marco’s list. Her mother expected everyone to share her goals. Anyone standing still was put to work. She smiled, remembering the many times when they were teenagers that she and Marlene had tried to look busy when they heard her mother coming into the kitchen.

Now that Olivia was a boss herself, she admired her mother’s ability to delegate work to those around her. Everyone had a job to do at Villa Farfalla. She was in the kitchen. Marco was in the dish room. Her father was in the vineyard. Gia was likely in the tasting room. The servers were in the dining room, and her mother was directing traffic and checking rooms.

How had Alessandro managed to slip her mother’s leash so easily?

He seemed fairly compulsive about his work. The kitchen was clean and the cooler was well organized. His food was excellent. She doubted he shirked his duties often because her mother didn’t tolerate slackers. She wondered what had been important enough to pull him away in the middle of the day. What had he said last night? A family emergency?

Olivia placed the polenta in the cooler and set up a cutting board. She wished she had asked a few more questions about the cooking classes. It was difficult to figure out what to do first. Since there was no one here to instruct her, she would just have to do things her way.

Upstairs in the dish room, Marco began to sing something operatic. His voice was lovely and although he sang in Italian, she could tell it was a love song. Suddenly, she remembered the golden rule of the professional kitchen—a good dishwasher knows everything. She left her station and bounded up the stairs.

“Marco?” She peered around the tapestry that divided the dish room from the rest of the kitchen.

He stopped mid aria and gave her a smile that made him look like a naughty angel. No wonder the servers had been flirting with him. He grasped her hand and pulled her forward, kissing her soundly on both cheeks. “Bella Olivia! Yes, I am Marco. So nice to finally meet you! What can I do for you?”

She smiled back at him. “I need some help figuring out how things work around here. I don’t want to bother my mother and the chef is gone. Can you tell me how they usually prepare for the cooking classes?”

“I will tell you everything I know…” He sighed dramatically. “Which is nothing. The classes were your Nonna’s idea and she left for the States before they started.” Olivia bit her lip, feeling guilty. Nonna had left Verona to help her.

He dried his hands on the towel slung over his shoulder. His black eyes danced with humor. “Your mother declared last week that she would do the classes herself.”

“Naturally,” Olivia said sourly.

He gave her a philosophical shrug. “You need help. I help you. What do you need?”

“Do you have a prep list somewhere?” She could only hope. He handed her a long list, written in Italian. Why on earth hadn’t Alessandro asked her to do some of the work? “Whoa, you’re a busy boy.”

“I’m used to the work. I will show you what to do.”

Fifteen minutes later, Olivia had everything she needed and she’d met the waitstaff, Rosa and Elena, a mother and daughter who lived in the village. They didn’t speak English as well as Marco, but they were very friendly. They found her a fat stack of plastic trays and a tub of ramekins for her
mise
en
place
. Marco had volunteered to cool the white beef stock and peel the artichokes, an offer she gratefully accepted, so she could focus on inventing a soup.