Flipped (Better With Prosecco Book 1)

by Lisa-Marie Cabrelli

  She stared at the pile of tissues in front of her and hiccupped a sob. Right now she had no job, no boyfriend, no money and no options other than an expensive lawsuit she was bound to lose. Why had she even come to Italy in the first place? This had all been a huge mistake.

  It was time for action. Not moping. Time to take matters into her own hands and get something, anything, done that would move her forward. She'd take a walk to the real estate office downtown and get this house appraised “as is”, and get it on the market. The price would be significantly lower with these half-finished renovations, but at least it would be something. She'd persuade Indigo to give Stefano a portion so he could get back on his feet, and she'd move Indigo in with her in Florida. At least then they could go back to Jax with a little money in their pockets and make a plan.

  Antonio, the real estate guy, was laughing. He was snorting with laughter; like real, uncontrollable snorting and there might have been tears as well, but Hazel couldn’t bear to look at his laughing face long enough to find out. He had come highly recommended from the old men drinking at Gio’s - but Hazel didn’t think this was professional behavior.

  “You want to sell before the month is over? Is that what you said?” He had calmed down just enough to lean forward, fold his arms across his desk and ask Hazel this question.

  “Yes. I would like to sell this month. It’s a good house and I will offer it for a good price so it will move. What’s the problem?”

  Antonio pulled a tissue out of the box on his desk and wiped his eyes, remnants of his giggle fit popping from his grinning mouth like hiccups. “The problem, sigñora, is that, perhaps no one told you, we are the middle of a crisis here in Italy. No money. No one has money. No one has money to buy a new house, especially one that needs even more money to live in it. Not a house that big. You have no chance of selling that house.”

  Wait. This made no sense. The entire point of coming to Italy in the first place was to renovate and sell this house. That was Indigo's plan. In her US centric brain, she hadn’t considered the economic market. People were flipping houses in Florida all over the place; she’d seen it on the home improvement channel.

  “By no chance, you mean…” She left the question hanging, having no clue how she'd intended to finish it.

  Antonio smiled at her, this time with real sympathy in his eyes. “The only person who would buy a house like that in this market is a foreigner like you. I have maybe one foreign purchase a year and they look at houses for years before buying. That’s your only chance of selling, but it won’t happen this month. Or even this year.”

  Hazel stood up from her chair, the legs scraping across the tiles. She needed to move quickly before she needed those tissues for her own tears.

  “Thank you, Antonio. You’ve been helpful.”

  She ran from the office. Once again tears were blurring her vision. She'd cried more in the last few days than she had in her entire life. She staggered across the street, ignoring the concerned "ciaos". If she didn't get herself together her lack of response and her appearance would start a round of intense gossip amongst the Borgotarese. She needed to stop somewhere quiet and get herself together before she stumbled home. A crumbling brick wall appeared in front of her so she sat down gratefully and wiped her arm across her eyes. As her vision cleared she realized where she was sitting. Right in front of the old hotel. She laughed. She laughed at those naïve daydreams of renovating this grand old lady. Her silly dreams of a quiet life in this lovely town living la dolce vita with Dean at her side.

  It was crazy to think she'd even considered it. She belonged in Jax. This entire trip had been a mistake and had achieved nothing. She was worse off now than she’d been the day she left. Today she was yearning for her quiet apartment in Jacksonville. She should get back to quiet nights at home with her work and the occasional Netflix treat. She wanted to go home where she didn’t have to talk to anyone, where she could sink herself into work again, and where she could avoid any chance of human interaction. Look where human interaction had gotten her this time. She'd leave as soon as she could. They'd put the house on the market, leave it there, and cut their losses.

  She crossed the street to Via National and headed toward the travel agency. Franco, the owner would take care of her. She'd be better off at home.

  41

  Dean

  Dean was sitting at the kitchen table back at Stella's, surrounded by his surrogate family. After Adam and Isabella had swooped away from the scene of their crime, a kindly tourist had helped him back down the tower. Thankfully, the young man had no idea who he was so he might not see himself in the tabloids tomorrow. He spent over an hour wandering Pisa looking for Hazel. He knew the chances of finding her were slim but he had to try. His heart broke at what she must be thinking. He'd called her every hour since, but she wasn't answering her phone. He'd contemplated going straight to the house to speak to her, but he needed to get himself together first and figure out what he would do. He couldn't bring her all of his problems and dump them on her. Especially when he hadn't even spoken to her yet about what Indigo had told him. That would need to be his first order of business and the thought of it was breaking his heart.

  “This man sounds like a very bad man. Seems like you should have known, no?” Atillio was slicing one of Stella's cakes and passing around slices. He'd insisted it was a cake-for-breakfast kind of day, but no one was eating.

  “Pfft! I didn’t know. I fell for it hook, line and sinker." Sara was standing with the baby on her hip trying to keep him from dropping his slimy, half eaten banana on the kitchen floor. "I believed every word he said - until I didn’t.”

  “I guessed there was something bad going on between the two of you. Why didn’t you tell me?” Dean asked.

  “Look Dean. I love you. And one reason I love you so much is that even though you are a movie star, you are so not-Hollywood. You never developed a BS radar. You got sucked in by every compliment, every schmooze, every beautiful girl. You wanted to find a home. I get that but you didn’t see things as they really were.” The baby dropped the banana. Stella swooped to pick it up and put a new one in his hands before he realized it had gone. “If I had told you not to trust Adam… if I had told you he wasn’t a nice guy… would you have believed me?”

  Dean thought back to everything he had been through with Adam. No matter how hard he poked in every nook and cranny of his memory he couldn’t find a single moment where he had doubted his best friend. And why would he? Dean would be nothing without Adam. Adam had plucked him out of obscurity and given him success and wealth, and a sense of belonging he’d never had before. That was, until recently. He realized now that he'd known whose voice he'd heard when he'd talked to Isabella soon after he’d arrived. Deep down he had known it was Adam at his house and he'd known why he was there. He just didn’t want to believe it.

  “But he hates Isabella. He always has. He tells me all the time.”

  Sara rolled her eyes. “Methinks the man doth protest too much. I can’t tell you how many times I had to tell him to shut up about her before it finally sank in and I came out here. I was trying to decide whether to let you figure that one for yourself too, but once you fell for Hazel, it didn’t seem worth it.”

  “How long?” Dean pulled his hand through his hair, it was tangled from the buckets of terrified sweat he'd spilled on the tower. He had to put that out of his mind. Even thinking about the height of it made him feel sick.

  “Well since before I came here, so a few months at least. I think they’ve been trying to figure out the best way to extract you from the scene without causing an industry uproar for a while. The headline, “Movie Star quits the business and moves to Italy to find himself” reads a lot better than, “Movie’s star’s girlfriend runs off with his best friend and manager.” Even in Hollywood that would be a tough stain to wash out.”

  “Huh,” Dean said. “No wonder she wasn’t interested in making a happy home. She probably hates that ho
use.”

  Sara gave him a sad look and shrugged. "I don't think that woman knows what a happy home looks like." She moved the baby to her other hip. Dean could tell she had something else she wanted to say.

  "What?" He said. "Don't worry, Sara I can take it. I don't think anything could shock me after yesterday."

  "Adam's been meeting with Christopher Brooks for months. Since before your incident and before I left. Ed Hardy didn't want you out Dean, Adam did. He wanted his hands on those royalties. Everything Ed Hardy thinks has been planted there by Adam."

  Dean's world had spun off of its axis since the moment he stepped out of the stairwell on the tower yesterday. How had he not seen all of this? How had he not known? He'd been blinded by his past with Adam and like Sara said, he'd only been seeing what he wanted to see. The killer was that Adam seemed to believe his behaviour was justified. After that tourist had helped him down the tower he'd run into Adam and Isabella. They were climbing into a shining black Lexus that had appeared out of nowhere and swept up to the edge of the lawn. Adam had called out a bunch of platitudes about how he would call and they could work on something else, and their friendship meant everything, but Dean had seen through the handsome exterior and right into his black soul. He'd just shaken his head and went to look for Hazel.

  “The question is, Deany, what now?” Dean loved how Atillio called him Deany, apparently Sara hadn’t clued him in to the fact that it was a pet name. She smiled over at Dean in apology. He gave her a shrug and a sheepish grin back. He liked it.

  "I have to talk to Hazel." He couldn't get her distraught face out of his head.

  “Do you love her?” Stella asked, poking at the cake plate in front of him. “Mangia.”

  Dean didn’t bother pretending. What was the point? This was his family. “Yes. I do. I’ve never loved anyone more. But how can I explain everything to her? It’s so complicated. She'd never believe me. She’ll just think I’m some flighty movie star ready to conquer and move on. She thinks I was making out with Isabella on the tower and that I didn’t follow her when she ran.”

  Atillio put his warm hand on Dean’s arm and his old eyes twinkled. “I think I have a plan that will work. A molti, molti buono plan.”

  42

  Hazel

  That’s it! Hazel marched up the hill toward the house. She was done here. It was time to go home, get into her bed, pull the sheets over her head and never get up. These past few months had been a complete disaster, not to mention her own idiocy for falling in love with a movie-star, like some delusional teenager, convinced that he returned her feelings. He had lied to her!

  When Dean had said he needed the weekend to himself she'd thought he'd been mad at her and had beaten herself up about it, too. But it turns out he'd just been planning a dirty weekend with his perfect girlfriend. Ridiculous! When she'd stood in front of that hotel and realized how badly she'd been deceiving herself her tears had turned to anger. She was angry she'd fallen for Dean, angry she'd allowed Samuel to ruin her career, and even angry with Indigo for bringing her here. Her anger fueled her march, but the steep hill still burned in her calves. She remembered the first time she had walked up this hill and how it had nearly killed her. Now she usually ambled up to the house, not rushing. There was plenty of time in Borgo; time to stop and chat with her neighbors, help old Mr. Parala with his shopping bags, pat the Flanders new puppy. Suddenly she stopped her determined march, leaned her hip against the wall next to her, and felt the dam break.

  Dean had broken her heart, but she wasn't just angry about that, she was angry that she had to leave Borgotaro. She didn’t want to go back to Jacksonville. She wanted to live here. She wanted the long walks, and the late mornings and the coffee and strolling through the sunsets on the Via Nationale. She wanted trips to the river for picnics. She wanted day trips into Parma to visit the food markets and coming home with piles of cheese and salami and bottles of ice cold Prosecco. She loved this town. But everything was ruined now. It could never be her home. She wiped the back of her arm across her eyes and steeled herself to face Indigo. She wouldn’t want to leave either, but what other option did they have?

  Hazel quickened her pace as she got closer to the house. Someone was shouting. She could hear Indigo and she could also hear Stefano. It sounded like he was trying to calm her down. She ran to the back door and flung it open. Her mother was in the kitchen surrounded by piles of bags. Not just her own bags either, she could see the jacket of her favorite work suit, the white linen one, sticking out of the zipper of an overstuffed backpack. Great, she'd wrecked that suit. Why would Indigo put her suit in a backpack?

  Even though she came banging through the back door, Indigo either didn’t see her or didn’t register her presence. She just screamed, “We need to go now!” and took off running up the stairs.

  Hazel turned to Stefano and threw her arms out in a “what now?” gesture. Stefano shrugged. “She got a phone call, and she was yelling but speaking so fast I could not understand the English. Then she slams down the phone and starts this.” He swept his arm around the kitchen. No further explanation needed. “She keeps saying ‘we need to leave, we need to leave, except you Stefano you stay. Sorry, sorry.’”

  “What is going on?” Hazel dropped her head into her hands. Just when she needed a calm, thoughtful, steady mother she gets this. Crazy.

  Indigo appeared back in the kitchen again clutching an armful of shampoo bottles and lotions, some still dripping with water. She walked to an open suitcase and dropped them in, slamming the lid shut on top of them. It was only then she registered Hazel’s presence.

  “Thank God you’re here!” she said, grabbing her by the arm and dragging her toward the staircase. “I think I got most of your room but you get the rest, the taxi's on the way to drive us to Pisa.”

  “A taxi? To Pisa? Mother what are you talking about. I agree that it might be time for us to go but we need to sit down and discuss this. We need to figure out what to do with the house.”

  “Stefano can have the house.” She turned to him, “You want the house, Stefano?” Stefano looked at Hazel, his eyes wide. “Don’t look at her," Indigo snapped, "It’s not her house, it’s my house. Do you want this house?”

  Stefano shook his head at her. “Not by myself, no. I want this house to be a family house. I want it to be our house.”

  Indigo threw her head back and laughed, her initial guffaws turning into hysterical giggling like some kind of evil Disney queen. They stared at her in shock. Hazel had seen her mother in some strange states but never anything close to this fearful hysteria. Then she tugged on Hazel’s arm again. “Now, now Hazel, now. We have to go!”

  43

  Dean

  Dean signed the final paper with a flourish, a huge grin on his face. He had never felt so right about anything he had done before in his life.

  “Are you sure you have to leave?” Atillio asked as he gathered up the papers and tucked them into a folder.

  “I have a house there, Atillio, and things to deal with, including my contract. It’s not as easy as Adam thinks it is to get me out of that contract. He's a good manager from the relationship side but paperwork was never his forte. I have a huge out clause penalty in that contract so the director will be hesitant to let me go. The evil genius didn’t think of everything, did he? Once he realized that Christopher Brook would do the film after all, he plain forgot. I can make things very difficult for him.” He stood up and patted Atillio on the back. “I have to go.”

  “Don’t you want to see Hazel before you go?”

  Dean’s stomach filled with butterflies at the thought of Hazel. He was desperate to see her. But there were a number of important discussions they needed to have that they wouldn't have time for before he left. He had to remind himself he wasn't abandoning her. His family would look out for her and he'd made some provisions of his own. “I think I should, don’t you? I don’t expect her to understand but at least I can apologize.”

 
; “Will you tell her anything?”

  “I’ll tell her I need to go back to Hollywood. If she forgives me, if I can explain about Isabella, I’ll call her from the US and we can have the conversation we need to have. If she doesn't forgive me, it's not my place to tell her anything.”

  “Good plan!” Atillio held open the door of the lawyer’s office for Dean to pass through and then followed behind. “You are doing the right thing Figlio, you know you are.” Dean nodded and swallowed the lump that had jumped into his throat. Atillio had just called him “son”.

  They were only a ten meters from Hazel’s house when they heard a commotion inside, Dean thought he heard both Hazel’s and Indigo’s voices. He exchanged a look of concern with Atillio and they increased their pace. A stumbling man appeared in front of them coming from the other direction. Dean ignored him in his rush to get to Hazel, stepping onto the back lawn of the house. The stumbling man called out, “Hey! Hey! What are you doing in my house?”

  “Mio Dio,” Atillio muttered under his breath, “Cosa adesso?”

  The man walked faster toward them. His foot hit a tuft of grass bursting through the concrete of the old road, and he fell down hard, cursing in a loud string of Italian. He struggled to his feet and closed the gap between them. He was drunk. Very drunk. The man wore filthy jeans, expensive shoes that had seen better days, and a hooded sweatshirt with the words, “NYC Police Department” printed across the front. Dean recognized it as one of the fake US sweatshirts they sold in the Monday market. He also had a glaring black eye and swollen knuckles.