Italian Affair

by Annie Seaton

  “Benvenuto, figlio mio.” Signore Caranto greeted him at the door himself.

  “Still no Brianna?” the old man asked. Tom shook his head and wondered how much her grandfather knew, but he didn’t answer until they were seated in the salon. Signore Caranto poured a large glass of red wine for each of them.

  “I’m waiting for a message from her.” He couldn’t help himself and pulled his phone out but the screen was clear. “Scusi.” Scrolling down to the in-box, he checked in case a message had filed itself. Nothing.

  Signore Caranto looked him with sympathy. “She will come back. She love you.”

  Tom’s head flew up.

  “I see the way she look at you.” The old man shook his head and leaned forward. He spoke in Italian and explained that he wanted there to be no misunderstandings, so if Tom was happy he would stay in his native language.

  Tom nodded.

  He listened carefully and a great sense of relief overtook him. Brianna’s grandfather told him about visiting Brianna the day Tom had left for Australia. He told him about the photographs and the letter he’d given Brianna, and why she’d gone to Scotland.

  The old man sat back and stared at Tom, a frown wrinkling his forehead.

  “I know why you married her. And it is all right. It was her mother’s wish she be married and it has all worked out good.” He explained that he had kept his distance until he was sure it was the right thing for his granddaughter to be here. He didn’t want to be selfish. He had seen the unsettled life Rosa had lived. When he described how he’d held his granddaughter in his arms and they had made their peace, Tom closed his eyes.

  He missed her so much.

  It was time for the last text. He explained what he was about to do and a wide smile took years off Signore Caranto’s lined face.

  “It’s time,” Tom said to the old man and pulled out his phone and pressed the letters firmly and confidently.

  #8 Marry me again?

  #9 Love you

  #10 Love you heaps

  #11 Last message

  #12 Over to you.

  Tom put the phone on the table and picked up his wine. Signore Caranto sat next to him and together they watched the phone and waited. It was seconds before it buzzed and Tom grabbed it from the table. He let out a great whoop and grabbed the old man in an embrace before giving him a smacking kiss on both cheeks.

  “She’s on the ferry!” he exclaimed and ran for the door. “Rain check on lunch.”

  Grabbing his bike, he jumped on it and pedaled furiously down the hill. The afternoon breeze from the harbor cooled his cheeks as he coasted down the bumpy road, excitement zinging through his veins.

  It had to be good news. It had to be yes.

  She wouldn’t have come home if she didn’t love him.

  Tom was confident and wouldn’t let the niggling doubts creep in. As soon as he saw her, he’d know.

  The blast of the ferry’s horn announced its arrival as it turned into the harbor. The pressure wave from the bow broke the surface of the calm water. Seagulls screeched and hovered above the ferry as it drew closer to the shore. Tom put the bike outside the marina and ran down the steps to the boarding area.

  Brianna stood on the top deck, her hair braided and her thick fringe blowing in the stiff afternoon breeze. She was too far away for him to see her face, but she waved wildly as soon as she saw him, and he waved back.

  Tom stood patiently as the ferry docked and the tourist crowd shuffled off. Leaning against the wall in the shade of the terminal building, he waited.

  A high-pitched squeal ahead of him caught his attention and he stepped forward, smiling as he remembered his first sight of those long, bare legs sliding to a stop at the international airport in Sydney a few months ago. The girlish figure with a long dark braid flying behind her ran across the boardwalk in front of the ticket office and flung herself into his waiting arms. She rained kisses on his cheeks, her long legs wrapped around his hips. Tom smiled at her exuberance and dropped his head and captured her mouth with his. After a moment, she pulled back and her dark gaze held his.

  “I’m so happy you waited for me, Tom. I love you, love you, love you so much.”

  Arms looped around each other, Brianna chattered nonstop as they walked across to collect Tom’s bike.

  “I was wrong,” she said.

  “About a lot of things,” Tom said.

  She pretended to punch him on the arm and he stopped walking.

  “I can do relationships. I just needed the right man.”

  “Come over here and kiss me again, woman. I missed you.”

  “Are you going to propose to me?”

  “We’re already married,” he said between kisses.

  “But I want to do it right.”

  Epilogue

  As far as weddings went, well…it was different.

  The setting was on a wildflower-covered clifftop overlooking the azure blue sea. Mount Stromboli put on a fine show for the guests. The bride wore a secondhand wedding dress because the groom had insisted she wear the same dress she had worn to their first wedding. The groom wore jeans and a black T-shirt, because the bride chose his outfit. The best man, Nick, held his wife’s hand and their new baby gurgled as the vows were made.

  The bride’s grandfather held the hand of the groom’s aunt. They had made their peace, and the Italian cousins from the island suspected they may be attending another wedding in the not-too-distant future.

  As the groom kissed his bride, a flurry of congratulations in Italian, and in English with Scottish and Australian accents, surrounded them as their three families bestowed them with good wishes.

  Tom had arrived holding Brianna’s hand, and he’d kept his arm around her for the whole ceremony. As the Italian cousins sprinkled them with confetti, he murmured against her lips.

  “Have I told you what a beautiful bride you make, Mrs. Richards?”

  “Have I told you how much I love you, Mr. Richards?” Brianna lifted her head and smiled at her husband.

  One man, one woman, a second wedding…for a lifetime this time.

  About the Author

  Annie Seaton lives on the beautiful east coast of Australia, where she loves sitting in her writing chair, gazing at the ocean and writing romance. She is a true romantic at heart and loves a happy ending.

  Annie lives with her husband, and “Bob” the dog and her two white cats, in a house next to the beach in a small coastal town in New South Wales. Their two children are grown and married and she loves spending time gardening, walking on the beach and spoiling her two grandchildren.

  Want more? Turn the page for a sneak peak at another Indulgence released this month!

  Fair Play

  by Tracy A. Ward

  Chapter One

  Ashlyn

  Sitting on a ladder-backed barstool at the Double Shot, still sweaty from spending the day shut in my oven for an apartment—who didn’t have AC in Texas?—I took a slug of my gin and tonic and glanced at my watch for the eight billionth time. Seven p.m. Anxiety sat like gathered fieldstone in my stomach, all jagged and sharp-edged. Lucas Marshall was late—and given the terse voice message he’d left on my cell an hour before, telling me to meet him in ten minutes, I was naturally concerned.

  As the owner of The Marshall Theater, an old limestone playhouse that was both an historic landmark and one of the most prestigious regional theaters in the country, Lucas had taken a chance on me, a playwright without a hit to my name in this type of a venue, to write three original scripts for The Marshall Theater Players. The most noteworthy thing I’d done before was help pull a small community playhouse in Arlington out of a slump. The Marshall Theater was big-time in the world of a playwright.

  The Marshall Theater Players, where Lucas was also Executive and Artistic Director, performed every year at the nationally-renowned Phair Theater Festival. From producers to directors, fans to critics, people swarmed the small Texas hill country town of Phair for the festi
val, hoping to discover the theater world’s next big thing. The Marshall Theater Players always brought back the big wins.

  A great review of my upcoming script could give me my first real shot at Broadway.

  I washed down my anxiety with the dregs of the gin and tonic and pushed the empty glass across the mahogany bar. Then I nodded to Babs, the bartender. A thin wisp of a woman with bottle-black hair and too much eyeliner for someone on the upper end of fifty, Babs Blake had been a bartender with the Double Shot chain for years. She was nice enough, and friendly. Though neither of us were Phair natives, I’d actually known her since I was in high school. She’d been there for me once when I’d needed a friend. When I’d first arrived at Phair, it had been a nice welcome to see a familiar face.

  “You hangin’ in there, Ashlyn?” Babs asked in her clipped, New York dialect. “You look stressed.”

  I blew out a long breath before answering. “Waiting on Lucas and trying to keep my nerves under control.” I looked around the bar. Limestone walls were decorated, all depicting the Double Shot’s sixty-year history, beginning with its flagship bar in New York and ending with its most recent addition in Phair, Texas, opened nearly eighteen months ago.

  With the exception of a few guys and their wives holding court in front of the big screen, a place that had the capacity for at least a hundred and fifty sat mostly empty. I glanced outside. The wide-paned front windows gave an unobstructed view to Main Street’s old-world western façade. Like the bar, the street, too, was empty. “Where is everybody?”

  Babs replaced my drink before taking a drag on her electronic cigarette, the skin around her mouth puckering. “Business is slow when the theater’s dark.”

  “That’ll change in a few weeks, once people arrive for the festival.” I fiddled with my stir stick. “Which means this is the calm before the storm, right?”

  “Blessing and a curse.” She took another drag on her e-cig. “Listen, sweetie, I heard you got a few bad reviews on your last two scripts. Those critics, they’re just trying to mess with your head. You’re a good writer. Don’t let those bastards get to you.”

  To date, fifteen of the plays I’d written had been performed in various community theaters, and two more in regional. Those regional plays had been performed at The Marshall and had earned a more than respectable amount in ticket sales. But I’d be lying if I said my confidence hadn’t been shaken after a stodgy old critic named Anderson Jones had slammed my two most recent plays. The revenue my scripts brought in was important, but the reputation gained by critical acclaim was what would keep me in the game. And get me on Broadway.

  But those negative reviews had cracked the foundation of my Broadway dreams.

  My only option to save my career now was to rally my nerves and write a killer script for the festival. No pressure.

  I gave Babs a wide smile in thanks for the support. The kitchen door flew open and Noah Blake, the owner and Babs’s stepson, appeared.

  My back went up as my smile turned down.

  With his lean, hard body that could only be gifted from God, dark hair, olive skin, and eyes the color of melted chocolate, Noah was often the subject of most women’s fantasies here in Phair.

  Girls might get their panties all wet at the sight of him, but I disagreed with the mainstream. My own private nickname for Noah was the Patron Saint of Assholes. His cold attitude to me made all that yummy maleness easy to look past. If he hadn’t been my brother Quinn’s college roommate at Columbia, we never would’ve met.

  Too bad my brother hadn’t gone to Stanford.

  Too bad, also, that I’d taken a job in Phair the same time Noah was overseeing the opening of a new Double Shot bar. It meant I had to see him more than I would have liked. But with the Double Shot directly across from The Marshall Theater, where I both worked and lived, I found it tough to avoid him. There weren’t a lot of other places in Phair where one could get a decent gin and tonic.

  Noah strode through the bar, a crate of glasses on his shoulder. “Why the sour face all of a sudden, Training Wheels?”

  I groaned at the hated nickname but refused to show him my irritation. He’d given it to me after I’d gotten drunk for the first time, sneaking mimosas during Quinn’s college graduation brunch. After two glasses of Moet-spiked OJ had caused me to throw up in a bowl of fruit salad, he’d deemed me forever in need of training wheels—unable to hold even the mildest of liquor.

  While Quinn and Noah were in college, Noah and I had shared an affectionate relationship. Me being the little sister of his best friend and him being an only child with a tumultuous family life and therefore always at our house on college breaks, we’d bonded. But that was before he’d gone and ruined everything.

  He passed me, then set the crate of glasses on the counter behind the bar.

  “Since when does the majority shareholder of a multi-million dollar company empty the dishwasher?” I asked, adding a little snark to my tone, just to needle him.

  “Since the bartender who was supposed to work tonight left town for a funeral.” His gaze settled on my face. “The Double Shot is a family-owned enterprise, Wheels. No task is too menial.”

  Noah had climbed the ladder of his family’s company since his father’s death a while back. He’d taken the few bars his dad had founded around New York and turned them into a major chain, with locations throughout the US. Prior to coming to Phair seven months ago, I hadn’t talked to him in five years—and only then because he’d come to my Grandma June’s funeral in Dallas. Quinn had invited him for moral support, I supposed.

  Babs cleared her throat and caught her stepson’s attention. “Excuse me, boss, but speaking of menial tasks…” She jerked her thumb toward the other end of the bar. “Why don’t you do us all a favor and fix the leaky pipe under the sink? Or are you too busy wheeling and dealing with investors?” When Noah ignored her, she shook her head and turned back to me, drumming her acrylic nails against the waist-high prep counter. Then she looked over my shoulder, past me, and straightened.

  I followed her gaze. Lucas had arrived. Finally.

  “Uh-oh,” Babs said. “He isn’t looking so good. What is it you Texans say?”

  I filled in the blanks with my best native twang. “Looks like someone kicked his dog.”

  Dressed in a tweed jacket and bolo tie, Lucas also wore a defeated attitude that put a good ten years on the sixty-five he’d lived so far. I couldn’t tell if his wrung-out appearance was because of the hundred-and-ten-degree late-August heat or if my earlier suspicions were true—something was majorly off.

  Wearily sitting in the stool next to mine, he pulled out from an inside jacket pocket the script I’d e-mailed earlier and set it on the bar in front of me. “I may have made a terrible mistake,” he said.

  A ball of dread formed and sat lodged somewhere beneath my windpipe. Babs, sensing tension, did the decent thing. She excused herself to check on three locals at the opposite end of the bar who were glued to a preseason Cowboys game playing on the oversized screen. Noah, however, stayed in place under the pretext of sliding glasses into an overhead rack, perfectly positioned to eavesdrop.

  Though I hated the fact that I noticed, Noah’s backside in those jeans drew my attention in a way I couldn’t get past. He might be nosy and a pest, but damn it all, the local women were right—he was sexy as hell. Only right now, I didn’t need the distraction.

  “Should we grab a booth?” I asked Lucas.

  “No need,” he replied. “This will only take a minute.”

  Maybe I’d been overreacting earlier. If our conversation was supposed to only take a minute, the news couldn’t be that bad. Could it? Plus, Lucas hadn’t made a definitive statement. I may have made a mistake wasn’t the same as I made a mistake. No sooner had the ball of dread sunk in my gut than it lurched back up to my throat. What if the dreaded reviewer Anderson Jones had signed on to be a judge in the upcoming festival?

  “This…” Lucas said, gesturing at the script in
front of me. “The Phair Theater Festival is four weeks away and this script still isn’t finished.”

  With every word Lucas uttered, I shrank deeper and deeper into the back of my stool. I’d warned Lucas before I hit send this morning that the script for Midnight in Summer was not only unfinished, but also wasn’t representative of my best work. My two main characters, Andy Rich and Caroline, weren’t cooperating with me. But at the same time, I wasn’t totally panicked about the script being incomplete. We were on target for the production for the Phair Theater Festival. Due to recycling from a previous show, the set was nearly complete, casting had been made, and the first act was close to perfection. With the actors already learning their lines to act 1, we were in good shape for when rehearsals officially began next week.

  Evidently, Lucas saw things differently.

  “I’m afraid, Ashlyn, I may have no choice but to look elsewhere for a script. Too much is at stake to risk—”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Noah said, butting in.

  If only I could get another five years of silence out of him…starting now. Damn him. I could handle this. I opened my mouth to protest, but he waved me off.

  His gaze locked on Lucas. “Think this through. You’re not the only one affected if The Marshall Theater Players production doesn’t succeed at the festival.”

  What the hell was Noah talking about? And who did he think he was, interfering in my business? Again.

  The ball of dread turned to a flare of anger. “This is a private conversation, Noah. Butt. Out.” I turned back to Lucas. “Look, there are four weeks until the festival. Let me keep working on the script. I’ve pulled off bigger miracles in less time. I’m confident I’ll do it again.”

  Lucas’s normally kind eyes settled on me. “How well did the critics receive your last two plays?”

  Now he was hitting below the belt, invoking the only critical flops in my dossier. “You said yourself the theater made more money during the run of my plays than it has with any other playwright in ten years,” I protested.