Autumn In Verona (Escape To Italy 2)

by Holly Greene

  She also had a tastefully decorated London apartment and a wardrobe to inspire envy in any fashion editor. An international bestselling author of historical fiction, Lily Forbes had everything she could want, and the ability to jet away to Italy for the weekend in the name of ‘research’ was just one of the perks.

  There was only one small thing she lacked: a love life.

  She almost laughed out loud as the taxi pulled away from Verona’s gleaming airport and into the busy city traffic. Wouldn't her loyal fans just gasp to hear that? Lily Forbes, unlucky in love. Because it was true: under all the layers of success and the luxurious lifestyle she'd cultivated by forty, there was a gaping hole in Lily's life that should have been filled by a relationship.

  While all her friends went on to marry and settle down with children, Lily seemed to be caught in an endless string of dead-end relationships. Not that a white dress, house in the suburbs and 2.5 children were what she desired; she wasn't the type to bleat pitifully that she could only be fulfilled as a wife and mother.

  She loved her career, loved the independence and enjoyed life’s luxuries. But whenever she saw a couple smiling at each other in a café, or walking hand in hand down the street, she felt a small twinge in her chest.

  Why couldn't romance be as simple for her as it was for the characters in her books?

  She thought of some of the recent fan mail she received. Dear Miss Forbes, read a typical letter or e-mail: Where can I meet the heroes in your novels? I've never read anything so romantic. I can't put them down until the last page. Her last novel No Ocean Too Wide, had enjoyed a good run on the Sunday Times bestseller list; the mass market paperbacks were out now and she'd seen some in the stands in the airport lounge at Heathrow. The success of that book however, had been both a blessing and a curse.

  She'd booked her Italian trip after a long and decidedly unpleasant chat with her agent, who reminded her that the follow-up to No Ocean Too Wide was well past deadline.

  The truth was that Lily hadn’t yet even begun writing it, and she'd begged, pleaded and stormed for a deadline extension, but in the end there was no way around it: No Ocean Too Wide had left readers panting for more, and her publisher wanted the next manuscript by the end of the year. They were willing to wait but not too long.

  Unfortunately Lily just wasn’t in a good place to write about romance. She'd finished the last manuscript just as she was embarking on a promising string of dates with a city trader who lived in Dorset but worked in Central London.

  She always wrote her best work when she was in love or in the mood for love, and their hot and heavy relationship had provided ample fuel for some of the novel's best bodice-ripping scenes. Unfortunately for her, a few months of whirlwind romance ground to a halt when he abruptly dumped her.

  Lily suspected his wandering eye meant he'd been doing more in London than mere business, and while she hadn't been particularly thinking a long-term arrangement, the whole thing had soured her mood. It was just the latest in a long string of failed romances and with each successive one, Lily felt herself becoming more jaded and bitter about love.

  Maybe at one time she'd believed in things like love at first sight, or true love uniting two people against all odds, and that breathless optimism has certainly made for a few great novels at the start of her career.

  But now Lily was burned out. A heart broken too many times over had led her to believe that romance was just a ploy used to sell diamonds, flowers (and books), and that true love was not an option for most people.

  Maybe a few people thought they had found it, but really they just hadn't discovered the warts on their frog princes yet. Soon enough something would happen to break the spell and like Lily, they would realise that true love was nothing more than a fairy tale.

  But with her agent breathing down her neck and her publisher’s deadline fast approaching, Lily knew that drastic measures were called for.

  Hence, the trip to Italy; first Rome for a spot of shopping, and then onwards to the city of Verona.

  Where better to find inspiration for a romantic novel than the setting of one of the greatest love stories of all time, Romeo and Juliet?

  Secretly Lily suspected that the place would be brimming with starry-eyed tourists dreaming of their own Romeos, and her inner cynic was prepared to spend a lot of time elbowing her way through crowds while she tried to latch onto some of the famed romance of the city for her new book.

  She certainly didn't expect to feel much of a romantic vibe there, but she thought that she might at least find some nice locations and authentic on-the-ground local flavor.

  And if nothing else, it would be a nice Italian break full of food wine and shopping before she returned to London to work on the book in earnest.

  The traffic of the city flowed on around her as car travelled on towards the city —she glanced with some interest at the views of the countryside sliding by, but her mind was elsewhere. She kept trying to come up with something to use for the start of a book. Jilted bride travels to Verona and meets the man of her dreams? No, that was too similar to the plot of Honeymoon for One. (Although, to be fair, in that novel her heroine at least went through with the wedding—it was after the ceremony that she caught her husband with one of her bridesmaids.)

  She drummed her fingers on the carseat. Perhaps her heroine could be newly divorced and spending some of the cash from the settlement on a European holiday... But she'd done something similar with Around the World For Love, sending her divorcee on a worldwide hunt for romance.

  What about a heroine who keeps bumping into the same unlikeable male traveller and comes to realise he's actually her soulmate? (Done to death in general she decided, and too like the travellers-on-a-delayed-flight scenario of Stopover to Love.)

  Try as she might, though, Lily couldn't bring her travel-wearied brain to come up with a good plot along those lines.

  What if there just wasn't anything original left for her to write?

  At last she arrived at her hotel, and momentarily set aside the problem of her book. She'd requested one of the best hotel suites—no expenses spared for her trips—and Lily already had plans to order in dinner this evening rather than going out, complete with a bottle of excellent Italian wine.

  It was only Thursday after all, and she had plenty of time over the weekend to explore the city and gather inspiration for her novel. For now, she intended to have a long bubble bath, a quiet dinner and an early bedtime. Tomorrow she'd set out on her quest to trace the story of Romeo and Juliet, and perhaps come up with a few choice locations for her story.

  For now, Lily needed her beauty sleep.

  4

  Declan O’Neill collected his luggage from the airline terminal and hailed a taxi outside with minimal interaction with his fellow passengers and the Aer Lingus crew.

  His flight from Dublin had not been uncomfortable and he wasn't particularly tired, at least not in a physical sense. All the same, as he slumped into the car and gave mumbled directions to the driver, he felt a powerful sense of exhaustion. He wanted only to find his hotel and crawl into bed for the evening.

  Even so, on the short drive in to the centre of Verona, he found that his mind was restless. The fatigue that had plagued him on the flight earlier had been replaced by a nervous energy, denying him the one thing he desired most: sleep.

  At least if he could sleep, he could see Hannah.

  He stared out the window of the car, not really seeing anything past his own reflection in the glass. Absentmindedly he twisted the thin gold band on his finger. He'd passed the year in something of a fog, trying to remember her while selectively forgetting so many things: the painful gauntness of her cheeks during her last months, the way she'd tried so hard not to show that she was in pain, the way she mostly slept through her days and nights at the end.

  The reason she'd insisted that he take this trip.

  It had been almost exactly one year since his beloved wife’s death. It was a fairly mild d
ay at the end of August, sunny and calm. Hannah had been having one of her better days, and he'd carried her out onto their back yard and fixed her up with blankets and hot tea in her favorite wicker chair.

  The cancer ravaging her body and the merciless rounds of chemo treatment had left her frail and weak, and even with the warm summer temperatures she pulled the covers tighter around her body. Declan sat next to her, mute with the pain of holding back the lump in his throat, trying not to grip her hand too tightly for fear of hurting her.

  It was Hannah who broke the silence first. “Love, I want you to do me a favour.”

  He sat up straighter, instantly alert. “Anything,” he said, hoping his voice wouldn't crack.

  “It's big favour,” she said tiredly, trying to smile and he tried to smile back.

  “There's nothing I wouldn't do for you. Tell me and I'll do it.”

  “I want you to do something for me after...after I'm gone.” Declan gripped her hand a little more tightly in spite of himself, but he forced himself to keep quiet. “I want you to make a trip. To Verona. Will you do that?”

  Declan opened his mouth to ask why, but the look on his wife's face was so pleading, so hopeful, that instead he could only say, “Of course.”

  And so it all was settled. Hannah wanted him to make the trip to Italy on the anniversary of her death. He protested then, struck by the horrible unfairness of it all.

  When they had married as young twenty-somethings, they'd had little enough money to start their married life and nothing for a honeymoon. Hannah, ever the romantic, had dreamed of a trip to Italy, and especially of a weekend in Verona; she researched the city online and was constantly telling him little tidbits about its history, particularly as the romantic backdrop to the tragic love story of Romeo and Juliet.

  Declan never quite shared her fascination with the place, but nonetheless he would have loved nothing more than to spirit her away for a weekend there, if only money permitted.

  But life doesn't always give us what we want, and money and schedules never quite allowed the holiday they'd envisioned; and as the years rolled by Declan and Hannah found plenty of happiness in their life together that the dream of traveling to Verona slowly died away, a nice thought that had just never come to fruition.

  There were no children, which Declan thought saddened Hannah, especially as their tenth anniversary came and went; but as they moved into their mid-thirties they were both still head over heels in love, and having just moved out of a small Dublin apartment and into a new home in the suburbs, they were perfectly busy and content with painting, gardening, and everything else that goes with creating a little bubble of domestic bliss together.

  Then came the long bouts of fatigue, the dizzy spells, the doctor visits, the diagnosis.

  Almost before Declan and Hannah could adjust to the shock, their lives had been taken over by the cancer and then by the treatments, which after a while nearly seemed worse than the illness itself. Declan clung desperately to hope even as he sat up in the dead of night, watching his wife breathe and wondering if this night would be her last.

  When the time finally came in early September only eight months after that first visit to the specialist, Declan was so numb with grief that he moved through his days as if on autopilot.

  There were so many things to do and to wrap up in the wake of Hannah's death, and in a way it was a blessing in disguise that he had no time to stop and think. But as the days turned into weeks and then into months, he kept coming back to the letter she'd written for him in her last days and secretly tucked away for him to read, reminding him of his promise and urging him to go on the trip they'd never taken together.

  People tell me the first year is the hardest, she'd written, and the smudges in the ink showed she must have been tired, dragging her hand across the page. I don't want you to be alone on that day. I know you never fell in love with the idea of Verona like I did, but I think once you're there you'll feel me with you, at least in spirit. And I hope all the love you sense there will help you feel whole again.

  Declan had the letter carefully folded and tucked away in his suitcase. He liked to smooth out the creases and look at the familiar handwriting; if he closed his eyes he could almost smell her perfume. He still didn't understand it all, but a promise was a promise, and he would do anything to honor Hannah's memory.

  As tired and unhappy as he felt, he had dutifully purchased a guidebook to the city of Verona and mapped out a series of tours and activities for his weekend, all based on places he thought Hannah might have enjoyed.

  There was a visit to the famous wall where lovelorn young women (and young men? he wondered idly) placed letters to Juliet, asking for her assistance in all matters of the heart.

  Hannah would have of course loved visiting such a location he thought, and so it went into the itinerary neatly sketched in a little notebook that he carried in his jacket pocket.

  The Casa di Giulietta as it was called, was supposedly the home of Juliet and her family, and it was a popular tourist destination in the city. There were other places he would visit too, museums and cafes that Hannah might have enjoyed, simply for the sake of keeping her memory alive.

  All told Declan intended to spend about three days there before returning home.

  At the hotel he unpacked his bag, showered, thought about eating (but decided against it), and finally tried to occupy his mind with a business magazine that he'd tucked into his bag.

  There was nothing on TV that interested him. He turned off the bedside lamp and tried to will himself to sleep, but it was no use; his mind wouldn't let him switch off.

  Finally he thought of the trick. “You have to rest,” he said quietly to the dark. “You owe it to Hannah. You need to be well-rested so you can enjoy everything here to the fullest, to remember her. She would want that.”

  Whether that was the push his body needed, or whether he simply finally succumbed to his fatigue, Declan closed his eyes and drifted into sleep.

  5

  Lily permitted herself the luxury of sleeping in on her first morning in Verona—and why not? She was on holiday, after all.

  When she finally woke she yawned and stretched like a cat, dropping her sleeping mask on the bedside table and slipping into a silk robe to go out on the balcony. Luckily her room had a little coffeemaker sitting on the bureau, so she was able to brew a cup of espresso to enjoy while she woke up.

  The view from the balcony wasn't bad. Much of Verona, for having been modernised over the past few decades, still retained a distinctly rustic charm, and architecture that made it look like it had one foot still firmly planted in another era.

  There was a bit of the sound of traffic from the main streets (several blocks away from her hotel, thankfully—she couldn't sleep with the sound of heavy traffic) but here it was mostly peaceful, and in the distance she could see the sun shining on the Adige River. It was a pleasant morning, seasonally warm and inviting, and a perfect day for a little sight-seeing.

  Lily dressed for the day in slim-cut jeans, stylish flats and a cashmere scarf just in case the weather turned chilly. She went down to the dining room and dithered a bit over breakfast, finally settling on fruit and yogurt with just a small pastry on the side—one little concession to tradition, and one that she was sure she could walk off during her sightseeing that day.

  Outside the air was warming up and promising a beautiful day for sight-seeing, and Lily decided to take a taxi across town to visit one of the main attractions in Verona, the Casa di Giulietta.

  She was sure the place would be packed with tourists vying for a chance to stand on the balcony and reenact scenes from Romeo and Juliet with lovers and friends, but she wanted to take at least a peek at the house.

  She honestly didn't have that much interest in the rest of the historical attractions of the city, at least for the moment; it wasn't that she disliked history, art or architecture, and on another trip she might have found a bit of general sight-seeing to be amusin
g, but she grudgingly admitted that she needed to focus on her work first and fun second. If she visited the romantic historical site and didn't feel a surge of inspiration, she would permit herself a bit of wandering through piazzas and museums for the rest of the day.

  The taxi didn't take long to zip across the city and deposit her in front of the old structure, and she stepped out to survey her surroundings. Unlike many of the women visiting the site, Lily didn't place a high romantic value on the house or on the story of Romeo and Juliet themselves, for that matter.

  She thought it highly likely that the house had nothing whatsoever to do with star-crossed lovers and that Juliet's famous balcony had never been used for poetic declarations of love or secret assignations in the face of disapproving rival families. If anything, it was just another house, one that some enterprising soul had thought to fix up and market as the home of one of the most famous romantic heroines in history.

  Lily couldn't exactly say that she disapproved. After all, someone had clearly made a smart move that had paid off beyond their wildest dreams; the courtyard of the old stone building was packed with camera-toting tourists.

  And in truth it was a romantic place to imagine a doomed heroine; the old brick masonry of the building was interrupted by small Gothic windows and large arched doorways leading to shady interiors, and there was an abundance of late summer greenery still trailing down some of the walls. Iron sconces, which Lily supposed were now fitted with electrical wiring, could have once held lanterns casting dim candlelight over the cobblestones at night.

  Lily had brought a small notebook in her shoulder bag to jot down any scenes or thoughts that came to mind, and she quickly recorded these thoughts on the house as they came to her. She'd also brought her camera, and she took a few snaps of the courtyard and some of the choice details therein.