The Summer Villa

by Melissa Hill

  ‘Whereas you’re actually all right,’ Annie continued jokingly.

  ‘So are you,’ Kim replied. ‘Colette, too. I know we haven’t known each that long but I feel lucky to have met you both. Feels like fate brought us together at the villa.’ She’d come across an apt quote in the book just now about that very same subject.

  Strangers are just friends waiting to happen.

  The pair lapsed into casual conversation and Kim reluctantly put the book aside. She’d read some more later. Whoever the writer was, the insights penned were well and truly hitting home with her. Stuff about being true to yourself, letting go, and taking risks spoke straight to Kim’s soul.

  ‘What’s that?’ Annie frowned then, as some commotion further down the beach got their attention.

  Kim sat forward and screwed her eyes up against the sun.

  ‘I don’t know. Looks like something happened.’ She jumped to her feet quickly then, when she spotted a guy run back up with the beach with a woman in his arms.

  It was Colette.

  The girls rushed down to the shore to meet him and saw that Colette seemed to be bleeding from her temple.

  Then all of a sudden, a lifeguard was speaking rapidly in Italian and neither Kim nor Annie had a clue what was being said.

  The man who had apparently pulled Colette from the water was speaking with him and before the others knew what was happening, some paramedics and a stretcher had arrived to take their friend away.

  ‘Wait, what’s going on?’ Kim grabbed at the Italian man’s arm.

  ‘It’s OK. We follow in my car. We go to the clinic. They take Colette there,’ he replied.

  ‘Who are you? And how do you know our friend’s name?’ Annie demanded.

  ‘I am Luca. I explain in the car,’ he said as he turned and stalked away towards the steps up to the car park.

  ‘Who?’ Annie asked Kim as they gathered up their things and moved to follow the stranger. ‘Did Colette say anything to you about some Italian guy she knows?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she replied. ‘I can only guess they got talking on the beach.’

  ‘But what the hell happened? And how do we know we can trust this fella?’ Annie said.

  ‘How can we not at this point? Do you speak enough Italian to know what’s going on?’ Kim pointed out.

  ‘Still, are we really getting in a car with him? He could be some psycho.’

  ‘We’re just going to have to trust that he isn’t. And we have to be sure Colette’s all right.’

  ‘OK, but I’m going to keep my eye on yer man.’

  Kim looked balefully at her. ‘For safety or for other reasons?’

  As they began the long trek back up the steps, there was no denying that this Luca was very handsome, with his chiselled abs, broad back, and toned strong arms.

  She wasn’t blind; she’d noticed this Italian male paragon, too, but right now Colette was their priority.

  Annie just laughed. ‘Cut it out,’ she chided, chuckling at her friend’s openly appreciative gaze as they followed along in the hot sunshine behind Luca. ‘You can ogle lovely Luca all you want later. Once we know Colette’s OK and we’ve figured exactly how the hell she knows him.’

  Chapter 21

  Kim and Annie paced the hallway at the clinic as they waited for news of their friend.

  Colette had been struck by a jet-skier on his way out to open water from the beach. This was according to Luca, who’d given them both a lift to the clinic.

  ‘It is my fault,’ he said, on the journey there. ‘I called out to her from the shore and she strayed into the wrong area on her way back into the beach.’

  ‘But how do you know her?’ Annie asked. ‘I mean, you said you recognised her – how?’

  ‘She had lunch at my aunt’s restaurant a while ago – and she is difficult to forget,’ he said, almost to himself, as Kim and Annie exchanged a glance.

  As all three waited in the corridor for news of their friend’s prognosis, Kim couldn’t help but wonder how on earth she had ended up in a shabby Italian medical centre with this motley crew of an Irish girl and strange Italian man, worried about an Englishwoman she’d only just met. It was a world apart from her shiny, soulless, former New York life.

  And she decided that was no bad thing.

  She was jolted out of her thoughts then by the appearance of a guy in a white coat they could only assume was a doctor, and a pale, limping, but smiling Colette by his side.

  They all rushed to her at once. ‘Oh my God! Are you OK? Are you hurt?’

  ‘Please, sit down,’ Luca urged, taking her hand and leading her to a nearby seat, while Colette looked overcome and more than a little embarrassed by all the fuss.

  Between them, she and the doctor explained that the jet-ski had managed to swerve away from her just in time, which meant that thankfully her injuries hadn’t been terribly serious: just a slight concussion and a couple of stitches to the head.

  ‘Are you sure there is no concussion now?’ Luca demanded and Kim was impressed by his insistence that Colette was actually OK before she was signed out.

  ‘No, she is fine,’ the medic replied curtly, before turning back to Colette. ‘Please, just rest in your accommodation for a few days, and stay out of the hot sun,’ he added, glancing at the English girl’s sunburnt shoulders, which Kim knew Colette had picked up out of complacency about the Med’s UV rays during the early days.

  ‘I will, thank you.’ Again, she was mortified at being the centre of attention, and gratefully accepted Luca’s offer of a lift for all three of them back to the villa.

  Since her return, the Italian had been a regular visitor.

  ‘How is he this hot?’ Annie drooled now from a pair of rickety loungers on the pool terrace, as she and Kim watched Luca pass through the courtyard and inside the house, to where the other girl convalesced amid the cool of the rear living room.

  ‘Dunno, but he sure is burning.’

  ‘Burning for Colette it seems,’ she replied with some dismay.

  Kim chuckled. ‘Clearly there’s a helluva lot more to our girl than meets the eye.’

  ‘Lucky wagon,’ Annie muttered darkly.

  ‘But why should it bother you?’ Kim asked, raising an eyebrow. ‘Don’t you have your very own Romeo in the wings?’ She watched with satisfaction as Annie flushed a bit and a small smile tugged at her lips.

  It was apparent that Colette wasn’t the only one being romanced at the moment.

  ‘Mind your own business.’

  ‘I am. Believe me,’ Kim said, lifting up her book again.

  Annie rolled her eyes. ‘You and that bloody book – you’re always stuck in it. Must be a good one, though in fairness you seem to have been reading it forever.’

  ‘Maybe I just read slowly,’ Kim countered.

  ‘And maybe my name is Steve.’ Her response dripped with sarcasm as she stood up and wrapped a sarong around her waist, her boobs bursting out of the skimpy bikini she wore. Kim knew they were completely natural, too, not bought and paid for like so many of her friends back home.

  Annie really was the living, breathing definition of voluptuous, though Kim knew the Irish girl had major insecurities about her looks, always referring to herself as a ‘heifer’ and ‘massive’.

  Despite Kim and Colette’s protests, the other girl just couldn’t seem to admit that she had a body most girls would die for. But those assets and, no doubt, Annie’s sparkly wit, throaty laugh, and infectious sense of humour attracted plenty of male attention, especially here.

  Whenever they went out, their Irish friend was the radiant flame who attracted all of the moths nearby, and since Colette was a little too shy to head off the obvious players – groups of locals or other holidaymakers out for a good time – Kim pretty much played bodyguard on their nights out. She wasn’t a complete bore and enjoyed the attention and odd flirtation, too, for sure, but she was determined not to fall back into her old party girl ways.

  ‘I’
m going to head in for a while, before I start getting ready to go out later. Like you said, I have a hot date tonight and I want to straighten my hair and do a bit of a defuzz. See ya.’

  ‘Have fun,’ Kim called after her.

  Annie winked mischievously. ‘Don’t worry. I will.’

  She smiled and shook her head. Between Colette and Annie, she wasn’t sure who was the more smitten.

  Annie definitely had some mystery man on the go downtown that she seemed especially keen on, given her insistence on taking so much time in getting ready for tonight’s outing when it was only early evening and still hours away till dinner.

  Colette, on the other hand, seemed completely mortified by Luca’s visits.

  Kim watched as the guy in question now emerged from the kitchen with a tray of freshly prepared treats. ‘I leave the food on the kitchen table. Help yourself,’ he informed her.

  She sighed inwardly. You could get lost in the guy’s accent, never mind his arms. It was like condensed milk – thick and sweet. Lucky old Colette.

  ‘Thanks.’

  She lingered for a few moments as she contemplated food or reading. It had been a long time since lunch, but she was so comfortable here. The intense heat of the afternoon sun was starting to dissipate now, enabling her to move out of the shade and bask in the late-evening glow. This was her favourite time of the day to sunbathe and the only time she exposed her skin to the sun’s direct rays. Not like Annie, who was only too happy to forgo the parasol and lay out cooking like a weiner on a barbecue all day long.

  On the other hand, poor Colette could barely glance at the sun without reddening up like a tomato, and like the doctor had pointed out, it was probably no bad thing that she needed to rest up inside for a while.

  Kim’s stomach finally won out, and she reluctantly pushed herself up from the comfortable sun lounger and walked back into the cool of the villa. She plated some chicken and pulled a slice of crusty garlic bread from the white paper it was wrapped in, then drifted back out and down to the terrace before curling back into her poolside sun lounger.

  Opening the book, she began to once more skim through the words written on the page, as she nibbled on her bread.

  Happiness is like the ocean. It comes and goes. You need to be able to ride the waves of the tide if you’re going to stay happy. It means you have to be light enough to float and strong enough to stand up the to the breaking on the shore.

  Was she light enough to the ride waves? Kim knew she definitely wasn’t strong enough for the breaking on the shore. How often had she tried to stand up and found herself conforming to what her parents wanted?

  Back home, she hadn’t been able to ride the waves. Instead she’d drowned in them, and every day sank lower as the waves got higher.

  But since she’d come to Italy, the waves had subsided a little.

  Maybe little by little she could start to overcome them and perhaps, given enough time here in Villa Dolce Vita, Kim might eventually be light enough to float.

  Chapter 22

  Then

  Annie had always found it easy to make friends, but what she’d experienced since she’d arrived in Italy was something unexpected. She, Colette and Kim had become almost inseparable in such a short space of time.

  She’d already shared with them the story of how she’d come to be there thanks to Felicity Finch.

  ‘It was like something from a movie,’ she told them over one of their late-night chats on the terrace beneath the stars. ‘All this time, I was doing this woman’s hair, making idle chit-chat and thinking I knew her, when I had no idea.’

  ‘Such a wonderful gift,’ Colette sighed dreamily. ‘Not so much the money, but the freedom, and the opportunity to come here while you figure out what to do with your life.’

  ‘What will you do?’ Kim asked. ‘If the old woman meant for this trip to be life-changing, you’ve gotta honour that, don’t you?’

  ‘And I will,’ Annie enthused. ‘I’m going to enjoy myself first and foremost, but when I get back, I’m going to look into opening my own salon.’ She frowned. ‘Problem is, while I know hair, I know sweet FA about money or how to manage it.’

  Kim took a sip of her water. ‘It’s not actually that hard. But before you do anything major like find a premises or buy stock, first find yourself an accountant to have the company registered officially, and give you some advice on how best to plan things when it comes to paying taxes and stuff.’

  Annie’s heart sank a little. She didn’t even know she had to consider that kind of thing. But she knew she could learn.

  Then there was Colette. Her disarming naïvety, openness, and unbridled generosity were more than Annie had ever come across in a person, with the exception of Felicity, perhaps. The English girl was genuinely good-hearted, though a bit immature in her ways, to be fair.

  She was hilarious, too, in the way she’d reacted to Luca’s attentions after the accident. ‘It’s just so weird …’ she confessed to Annie and Kim in the clinic that day, when Luca had slipped out to get her a fresh glass of water. ‘I just saw this gorgeous guy waving at me from the water, and yes, I thought I recognised him from the restaurant … But truly, I couldn’t be sure he was actually waving at me, because, well … why would he? So I moved closer, and then, bam – next thing I know, I wake up here. Or at least I think I’ve woken up. Maybe it’s really all dream?’ she said, without a trace of irony. ‘Because it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve conjured up some drama or another in my mind. I had an imaginary friend growing up, you know …’ she rambled, sending Annie and Kim doubling up with laughter and considerable relief that their new friend was indeed OK.

  Annie couldn’t wait to introduce the two of them to Harry. She was a bit disappointed not to see him at Music on the Rocks the second night she’d gone back there with Kim and Annie, but he’d reappeared a couple of nights later when she’d once again ventured down there on her own and this time, neither of them held back.

  ‘Well, hello there, handsome.’ Annie grinned when he came up alongside her at the bar. She’d spotted him as soon as she arrived. Gathered in the corner with his friends, and feeling his gaze on her while she strutted to the bar – decked out in a sexy red tassel dress and strappy silver heels – she knew it wouldn’t be long before she had company. ‘Got your dancing shoes on tonight?’

  ‘Depends on if I’ve got a dancing partner,’ he replied with a devilish wink that made her go weak at the knees. ‘Though from what I’ve already seen, I get the feeling you could teach me a few moves.’

  Annie smiled, enjoying the open flirtation and the confident way he was pursuing her. ‘You better believe it.’

  Back home, lads usually needed a fill of drink before awkwardly trying to cop off. Harry’s suave assurance made him all the more attractive.

  They’d danced all night and since then had met up casually again a couple of nights, mostly in bars with his mates. But tonight he’d asked Annie if she’d meet him for dinner, just the two of them.

  A sure sign that for him, things were heading beyond just casual. But Annie had kept him under wraps because she honestly wasn’t sure if it was just a holiday fling, or whether she was even that interested. And also because she was pretty certain that once he caught sight of Kim, she herself would be forgotten in an instant.

  That happened a lot.

  The American girl literally dripped with unbridled sensuality and, to be fair, didn’t even seem to realise that she was that hot. She certainly didn’t play on it, anyway. Annie was usually the one who ended up flirting and chatting to fellas on their nights out, while of course Colette wouldn’t say boo to a goose. It was funny, but also made her and Kim a little bit protective of her, she thought fondly.

  Besides, Colette seemed to have found a new protector in the gorgeous Luca. Man, he was a fine thing. The kind of Italian stallion you dreamed about meeting when coming to a place like this. Annie grinned to herself, suspecting he was exactly that – pure stallion –
in the sack, too. She definitely wouldn’t mind giving someone like him a go if the chance ever arose.

  And speaking of which …

  Annie licked her lips. She wondered if tonight would be the night she and Harry did the deed. God, she hoped so. The summer heat here, especially the balmy nights, made her horny as hell and she wouldn’t mind working off some of that sexual energy.

  They were meeting at a traditional trattoria in town that he had chosen. Arriving at the restaurant, Annie followed the waitress down a short stairway and into a cavernous subterranean dining area.

  Arches lined in pale orange brick stood overhead. Square tables lined the walls and the floor was laid in a burnt orange tile. Paintings of the Italian countryside adorned the walls and the tables were decorated in red-and-white check-patterned cloths.

  So far, so touristy.

  Harry was already waiting at the table and Annie could feel her cheeks rise in a smile as she laid eyes on him. No doubt, he was a fine thing, too.

  His sandy blond hair stood slightly askew at the top of his head and she had to resist the urge to pat it down, but it looked so cute all the same, like a bold schoolboy. Instead of his usual rugby-style top or T-shirt, tonight he was wearing a smart blue shirt, but it was his cheeky smile that really got her.

  No one had ever smiled at Annie like that. And no fella ever seemed that happy to see her until now.

  Thank you for this trip, Felicity. It’s helped me more than you know.

  ‘Hey beautiful,’ he greeted as she approached, stepping out from behind the table to kiss her. His kisses were more intoxicating than any alcohol. It was as if he knew exactly how and where to move his lips so that Annie’s insides melted like butter.

  ‘Hello yourself, handsome,’ she replied jauntily.

  ‘Allow me.’ Harry pulled out her chair for her and she smiled at the gentlemanly gesture. She’d never had a man do anything like that for her in her entire life.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said with a smile, lowering herself into the chair.