Baby Steps

by Lily Zante

  “It was lucky for you that my wife went over to take care of your business,” said Nico. Dino narrowed his eyes and appeared to hesitate before replying. “Ava and I don’t always see eye to eye,” he said.

  “We don’t,” she answered sweetly.

  “But,” Dino replied, addressing her, “You got us out of a bind and you probably saved my business.” He nodded at her appreciatively. “I have to ask,” he said, turning to the spa center behind him. “That’s one hell of an impressive building. How did you go about designing it?” He seemed to be saying all the right things, and she and Andrea turned to one another, moving away a little while the two men discussed business.

  “Have you lost weight?” Andrea asked her, running her fingers gently around Ava’s waist. “Or are you wearing Spanx?”

  “Both,” Ava whispered. “As soon as I stopped breast feeding, the weight fell off.”

  Andrea’s eyebrow’s lifted in surprise. “If only it were that easy.”

  “You don’t have any extra weight to lose!” Ava exclaimed, staring at Andrea’s skinny frame. She looked around. “Where’s Leo?”

  “Isn’t he here?”

  “I haven’t seen him,” said Ava. Ravenna was a bit of a drive away and she had assumed they might have come together.

  Unless Andrea had come with Dino.

  She examined her friend’s face carefully. “Do you have something to tell me?” she asked, noticing the glitter on Andrea’s bare shoulders. It wasn’t from the glitter lace of her black knee-length dress. It looked more like shimmery body lotion. She’d obviously made a great effort this evening. “Like what?” asked Andrea.

  “I don’t know. You tell me.”

  Andrea looked even more puzzled.

  “You and Dino are looking pretty cozy together. I go to Denver for a few weeks and come back to find you both looking very much together.”

  Andrea didn’t deny anything. Nor did she confirm. “I’m saying nothing.” They heard a rumble of laughter behind them and turned to find that Leo had joined the men.

  “So he did come,” said Ava, softly. He looked handsome in his all black outfit. Dark trousers, black crew neck shirt and a black blazer.

  “When did you get here?” Andrea asked him as they joined the group of men.

  “I’ve been here a while,” Leo said, pulling out his cell phone. “I ran into some journalist friends and I have some news.” He looked around conspiratorially and lowered his head, and they, sensing the secret nature of what he had to tell them, huddled around him. “I have it on good authority that tomorrow’s papers are going to shock you.” He paused for maximum effect. “Vieri, you know—Armando Vieri,” as if Nico might have forgotten who he was.

  “Go on,” said Nico, impatiently.

  “Caught with male prostitutes,” he whispered.

  “What?” Ava gasped, she was sure she’d misheard.

  “Male prostitutes,” repeated Leo, “Two of them.” He put up two fingers are if to emphasize his point.

  “It can’t be true,” Andrea exclaimed.

  “Can’t it?” Leo asked her.

  “No wonder she looked so miserable when she came to see me,” murmured Nico.

  “Dishonest douchebag,” muttered Ava. “Karma is a bitch but I do so love her.” This would effectively finish his career in politics and humiliate him. “Poor Silvia.” She felt sorry for the woman, even though there was no reason to.

  “Poor Silvia?” Nico asked her.

  “I know she might have had a hand in things, and she’s not a nice person, but still.” She sighed. “It must be heartbreaking to have a man cheat on her like that.”

  “With men, you mean?”

  “With anyone, and especially like that, and in the press for the entire world to see. How humiliating.”

  Nico kissed her forehead. “Humiliating, yes,” he said. “At least I hope he’s out of their lives and away from Alessa. Which reminds me,” he said looking around. “Where’s Elisabetta?”

  “Ingrid had her. My mom was hovering around them somewhere.”

  “I see her,” said Nico, looking over towards the glass tunnel.

  “She’s keeping an eye on Ingrid,” mused Ava. Her mother was sitting on a bench close to where the nanny pushed Elisabetta around in the stroller.

  “She could almost be Ingrid’s shadow,” Nico muttered under his breath. “Excuse us, please,” he said and they made their way over to Elsa.

  “Are you keeping an eye on Ingrid again, Mom?” Ava asked, jokingly.

  “I’m watching over my granddaughter,” Elsa replied.

  “I hired Ingrid so that you’d be free to enjoy your vacation.”

  “Yes,” said Nico, as they sat down on either side of her. “It’s time for you to take it easy. Have you seen all of it? Both the hotel and the spa center?”

  “Twice,” replied Elsa. “I was almost tempted to wade into the infinity pool.”

  “There’s nothing stopping you,” Nico told her. “All of these amenities are yours to use whenever you want.”

  “That’s very kind of you, Nico.” In her hands she had one of the beauty treatment brochures.

  “Let me see,” said Ava and she flicked through the glossy A5 sized magazine. “Ines has done an amazing job on these.”

  “She’s worked a crazy number of hours on it,” agreed Nico. “This whole launch has come alive because of her.”

  “Aren’t you glad you handed that over to someone else?” Ava asked him. She knew how much he had on his plate, and that was before the Spa hotel had gotten underway. There would have been no way he’d have been able to come up with the sort of advertising campaign and launch party that Ines had come up with.

  “Are there any treatments in here you liked, Mom?” Ava asked as she looked through the magazine.

  “The Hot Stone Massage,” Elsa replied, nodding. “That does sound interesting, if a little painful.”

  Nico and Ava laughed. “I don’t think any of the treatments will be painful. That’s not the experience I want my guests to take away with them.”

  “Are you looking to impress anyone in particular?” Ava asked, after she and Nico had exchanged knowing smiles. They both peered at Elsa.

  “Impress anyone? At my age?” She snorted and looked around. “As if I would want such a thing.” She patted Nico on the knee gently. “Your father would have been very proud of you, Nico.”

  “You always say that.” His voice turned somber.

  “It’s true and I never want you to forget that.” Nico lowered his head and rolled his lips together, as if he was trying to be brave, trying not to crumble.

  “In one of his last letters to me—an email—Edmondo told me that your spa hotel wouldn’t open when you wanted it to. You were so determined for it to open in November, and I had told him that. But,” Elsa stopped to take a breath, as if the mere remembrance of that time and that conversation had taken her back to that very moment. “But Edmondo,” she continued, her voice wavering as it did when she was overcome with emotion, “He said that in your eagerness you’d probably underestimated the time it took to get things done, that you didn’t account for all the things that might go wrong. He told me he felt sure that your original opening date would be postponed because projects like this always take longer.” Elsa’s lips trembled, and she sniffed, trying to compose herself. “He told me that I must come when it opened, and that it would be the anniversary of my first visit here. He said we would celebrate.”

  Ava took her mother’s other hand and rubbed it gently. “And that’s the reason you came back?”

  Elsa nodded. “Don’t you see? I had to be here.” She lowered her head and let out an anguished sigh, as if it was impossible to hold back the sadness she was fighting so hard to contain.

  Ava put her arms around her mother’s shoulder.

  “I made a promise to myself to honor his request, and that’s why I came back with you both. I had to be here and I feel so happy that I did.
I thought I would be sad, but I’m not as sad as I thought I would be. I’m immensely proud of you, Nico, and I know your father would have been, too.”

  Nico bent over and kissed Elsa’s hand. “Thank you,” he said.

  Ava kissed her mother on the cheek and looked at her with admiration. Elsa was noble in the way she contained her grief, in the way she wouldn’t let it consume her, in the way she kept it at bay. But her mother’s eyes didn’t lie. They were the windows to her suffering. It saddened Ava to think that Elsa had become emotionally attached to someone who could have been good company for her in her twilight years. But it was not to be. But her mother had weathered grief in her lifetime before and Ava knew that she would be fine. Her mother was tough.

  It was Nico she worried about. He wanted to show her and everyone else that he was strong, that nothing troubled him, but she knew this man; she was a part of him, and he a part of her, and she didn’t always need him to tell her how he felt.

  She felt him. She felt his pain, his loneliness, his regret as much as if it were her own and a part of it was hers. She understood, without the need for words, his happiness and his grief. She wanted to reach over now and squeeze his hand, his knee, anything, but her mother sat between them.

  There was many a time when she wondered what Edmondo would have made of Elisabetta, and how much he would have played with her. How he would have taken her out into his beloved gardens and what he would have made of the Cazale Ravenna. But they would never know now. What she understood more acutely now than ever was that the Nico she’d fallen in love with was still here, except this was a man still in mourning. He was still grieving for his loss, and somehow she had lost sight of that along the way.

  “So, you see,” said Elsa, looking into the distance, “sometimes things happen the way they do because it’s just the way they’re meant to happen. You can try all you want to line up the bricks a certain way but if something’s not going to happen, it’s not going to happen.”

  Her mom was right.

  “Where has she disappeared to now?” asked Elsa, looking around.

  “Who, Ingrid? She’s over there,” said Ava pointing to the hotel entrance.

  “What’s she doing there?”

  “She might want to have a look at the hotel,” Nico suggested.

  “She’s entitled to enjoy this day, too, Mom,” said Ava. “And Elisabetta is asleep.”

  “In that case,” said Elsa, getting up. “I’ll take Elisabetta off her hands so that she can have a good look.” She set off.

  “You’re going to have to tell your Mom to back off a little, if you want Ingrid to last longer than a week.” Nico moved closer to her on the bench.

  “She’s a grandmother, she’s just being overly protective. I’ll work on her—either that or we’ll have to find her a distraction.”

  “Salvatore and the lemon trees might do it.” He slipped his arm around her waist.

  “We should go and mingle,” she said, not wanting to move from him.

  “We should,” he said and didn’t move. “I’m thinking of putting up a few small buildings.”

  “Where?”

  “See that space there?” He pulled her to the side and directed her attention to the lane of cypress trees in the distance. “That’s where.”

  She frowned. “For what?”

  “For our painting and cooking classes.”

  “Painting and cooking classes?” Ava asked, in surprise. This was the first she’d heard of it.

  “Look at it, Ava. It would be the perfect spot to have them there.” She looked, but she couldn’t see what he could. Couldn’t imagine what he could, and maybe that was his strong suit. “We could entice a whole new group of people. There is so much land here,” he said, excitement infusing his words. “I could offer so much more. Ravenna doesn’t seem like a spa haven. People know it for its mausoleums and basilicas decorated with mosaics but I want it to be known for something else. A haven, a place to unwind and relax and it doesn't always have to be about treatments and massages. My father liked to cook, as well as to do gardening, and your mother likes to paint.”

  "I wouldn't say it’s a passion of hers...." Ava stopped. "Did these ideas come from your father and my mother?"

  “I got to thinking of ways in which people like to relax. Not everyone wants to put a mashed up avocado on their face. I can give them alternatives and the more I can offer in a place like this, somewhere people wouldn’t think to visit, the more it would make my hotel more desirable.”

  She turned to him. “Your hotel is already desirable. I don’t know why you worry about the location.”

  “It’s not Santorini, or Sicily or Amalfi. Those will come later.”

  “Nico,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re doing it again. You remember what I told you about taking things—”

  But he didn’t let her finish. Instead he dropped a chaste kiss on her lips. “Slow. I know,” he said. “But not so slow that I lose the excitement, and not so fast that I forget what matters the most.” He kissed her hand, still entwined in his.

  “I won’t let you forget what matters the most,” she said.

  They stood a while and watched their guests, heard their laughter and chatter, saw the gardens filled with merriment. Nico would continue with his quest, only now she hoped he didn’t feel the need to prove anything to anyone.

  In a short space of time they had grown together, and grown stronger, in spite of their struggles. As long as they were together, it wouldn’t matter where they were, which project he turned his attention to, what dramas awaited her with the store; they would grow old together. A prickle of shivers crept along her bare arms and she flinched involuntarily.

  “Cold?” he asked, rubbing her arm.

  “Happy,” she said.

  “I didn’t think it would keep on growing,” he said, finally, as his lips turned up into a half-smile.

  Her brows pinched together in question. “What?”

  “What I feel here,” he said, lifting her entwined hand to his heart. “For you, for Elisabetta. It makes me want to make the world a better place. I don’t know if building hotels makes the world a better place. Maybe it doesn’t but—”

  “You make my world a better place, Nico.”

  “That’s all I ever wanted to do,” he said, “from that first day I saw you, when you’d lost your luggage.”

  How did he do that? How did his words touch her heart so deeply that she wanted to cry tears of joy? She nudged closer to him. “We should get back to our guests.” It was the second time she’d said this, but they hadn’t quite managed it, always finding their own way and veering off.

  “Elisabetta might have woken up and she’ll be looking for us,” he said, squeezing her hand as they walked along the stone pathway. “I want to carry her around and show her off to everyone.”

  His pride in what they had created was written all over him.

  “You can show her off all you want,” she said, content to play second fiddle to her daughter.

  ~~

  I hope you enjoyed this final instalment to Ava and Nico’s story. While Baby Steps concludes their journey, you can still get glimpses into their lives in the spin-off series, Italian Summer.

  This series consists of standalone stories about the lives of the other characters: Rona, Andrea, Gina and Elsa. All 6 books are now available.

  Click here to find out how the Honeymoon and Italian Summer series are connected.

  It Takes Two (Rona’s story) is the first book in the Italian Summer series.

  Click here to read an excerpt

  Thank you for reading Baby Steps. I hope you enjoyed it!

  If you did, and if it’s not too much trouble, please consider leaving a review. A review can be as short as one sentence and your opinion goes a long way in helping others decide if a book is for them.

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  Thank you.

  Lily

  Excerpt from It Takes Two

  “Can I buy you a drink?”

  Rona glanced at the tall stranger with his unkempt hair and eyes so intense that a lesser diva would have melted. She assessed him casually, appeared to consider his offer but shook her head even though she enjoyed the way he looked at her. “I’m good, thanks.”

  “I bet you’re not that good. Not really. Not dressed like that.” His gaze dropped to the deep V of her turquoise top and he licked his lips in appreciation.

  “I’m old enough to buy my own drinks.”

  “I’m sure you’re old enough to do a lot of things.”

  This guy wasn’t shy. She held up her left hand so he could see her wedding ring.

  “My husband thinks I am.” She picked up the pitcher of Margarita in one hand and a pitcher of mint Mojito in the other and walked away.

  “If you ever get lonely...” He shouted after her. She sashayed back to the table where her friends were waiting; three pairs of wide open eyes stared back at her.

  “You’ve still got it, girlfriend,” Mercedes commented as she refilled her empty glass. “What’s your secret?”

  “The five-two diet,” said Rona. “It works, I’m telling you.” She held up her cocktail glass. “May our girls’ nights out never end—even when we’re old and past it.”

  They all tapped their glasses lightly with hers.

  “Amen,” said Mercedes, solemnly. As a mother of two children under the age of five, these nights out were her life buoy.