COCO CHANEL SAVED MY LIFE
Danielle F. White
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About this Book
About the Author
Table of Contents
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About Coco Chanel Saved My Life
Caesar is dead. Revenge has armed his hand. His name is Octavian.
Though little more than a boy, Caesar’s heir is determined to avenge his adoptive father, despite the imposing figures from Rome’s long political history who stand in his way: Mark Antony, Cicero, Lepidus, Brutus and Cassius.
Despite some initial failures, Octavian does not give in, and gathers about him a group of allies who are just as determined as he himself: Maecenas, Agrippa and Rufus. With them and a few others on his side, he forms a sect dedicated to vengeance, with the aim of punishing, one by one, all those who have Caesar’s blood on their hands.
Octavian has resolved to overturn the established order, and to finish what Caesar had begun…
To my mother
How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone.
Coco Chanel
Contents
Cover
Welcome Page
About Coco Chanel Saved My Life
Dedication
Chapter 1: Fool’s Gold
Chapter 2: New City, New Life
Chapter 3: Lace, Confetti & Wedding Favors
Chapter 4: My Sheath Dress
Chapter 5: Sofia’s Parrot
Chapter 6: The Special Ingredient
Chapter 7: The Blind Date
Chapter 8: The Night I Stumbled Into Those Incredible Dark Eyes
Chapter 9: The Two-Week Fairy Tale
Chapter 10: The Competition
Chapter 11: My Magical City
Chapter 12: Emma’s Secret
Chapter 13: The Best Christmas Gift Ever
Chapter 14: Paris, Je T’aime
Chapter 15: Never The Right Man
Chapter 16: Dreams Come True
Chapter 17: Love Can’t Wait
Chapter 18: Mademoiselle Uninterrupted
Chapter 19: Right Dress, Wrong Man
Chapter 20: Oui, Je Suis The Number One
Acknowledgements
About Danielle F. White
Become an Aria Addict
Copyright
1
Fool’s Gold
The passengers on the hot and crowded subway car, who saw me rushing in on my five inch heels just as the doors closed behind me, couldn’t imagine that they were looking at the happiest woman in the world.
My move to Milan had been approved by my company, I had just signed a lease for a charming apartment and I was going to announce to the man I loved that I would be living in the same town as him.
I had met Niccolò the year before, at the birthday party of my best friend Emma. I was a guest at her apartment in the big city, having a few days away from Venice and from my very recent ex-fiancé.
Pietro and I were together for five years. He worked at a computer company, but his passion was photography. He conquered me with a beautiful black and white portrait he took of me the first afternoon we met. A month later we were living together, happy and in love. We had beautiful moments. We had fun: we travelled together, we spent Sunday afternoons on the couch watching TV, and we had big plans for the future. Then the misunderstandings began – the lies, the loan to buy a house, our first arguments about tile colour – we started to accuse each other, ‘you are exactly like your mother’ – ‘you are worse than your father’, until the day I found him in bed with another woman. She was his colleague, blonde and chubby, and I kicked him out of the house. I felt outraged. He betrayed me with a chubby woman!
The evening I met Niccolò I wore a short tweed jacket with a camellia in my lapel and tight jeans that made me look at least six pounds lighter. I had on a long pearl necklace that was knotted over my breast. I was trying not to stuff myself with peanuts, while I was being bitchy about the woman I had found in bed with the man I shared my mortgage with. “Can you believe it? He betrayed me with a chubby woman.” I kept repeating this, upset and disgusted, drinking prosecco and chewing on carrots and fennel. “I can’t believe that the man, who listened to me for years about how to keep myself skinny or losing weight, was cruel enough to betray me for a woman with hips like a whale! Evidently he prefers fat women and I – like an idiot – starved myself for years.”
Emma, sick and tired of my constant whining, kept saying: “You’re nuts! What do you care about weight? He betrayed you, do you understand? That is what counts!”
“I know, but I can’t help it, Emma. I close my eyes and all I can see are petite size dresses, flat stomachs, fasting, compulsive binge-eating, purifying herbal teas, diets with carbohydrate, without carbohydrate, with protein, without protein, miraculous drinks, giant scales…” I said to her, biting into another carrot.
“Aren’t you tired of talking about your looks? You are beautiful, intelligent and funny. What the hell more do you want from life?”
I was thirty-two and considered myself pretty enough, but just enough. I was wearing a small size in clothes, sometimes a medium. But I didn’t want to admit it, so I squeezed uncomfortably into them. I had firm bottom, small but pretty breasts – two big brown doe eyes and full sensual lips. I’ve never been beautiful enough for the cover of a fashion magazine or a woman who turns a man’s head. And I was not the kind of girl who broke hearts and only gave herself to the chosen few. Yet, having overcome my damned adolescence, I understood I could have some success. My sense of irony and humour, as a kid condemned me to always be the nice friend, the back-up girl – you know – for the snobby blonde girl-friends that everybody wanted to seduce. Growing up I became a type, impertinent and charming. When Mother Nature does not give one perfect beauty, one must rely on personality.
“You are right,” I admitted to Emma, “but I can’t think of anything else.”
“Do you really think good looks are so important?” she asked, pouring herself a glass of wine.
“Coco Chanel used to say, we should be beautiful so that men love us and we should be stupid to love men.” I answered.
“Well, it may be a great truth!” Emma said, raising her glass in a toast to my health.
While I kept munching on vegetables and cursing my ex-fiancé, the downstairs bell rang. A few minutes later, a very handsome man made a triumphal entry. He had very dark eyes, mussed up hair and two days growth of beard. He wore a charcoal grey tailored suit, without a tie. His big, warm smile made all the other smiles around look pathetic. Immediately I understood that Niccolò was a self-confident man – charismatic, funny and undoubtedly sexy. All the women at the party seemed to know him very well. After saying hello to some friends, shaking hands and kissing cheeks, he took off his jacket, threw it on the sofa and came straight into the kitchen. Walking towards us, he began to roll up his white shirt sleeves, slowly and carefully, showing his fantastic forearms. I must confess, I have a great passion, which is perhaps slightly strange, for men in shirt sleeves. When the sleeves stop just below the elbow showing muscular arms, I lose control. While Niccolò approached the kitchen island, probably looking for a drink, I was hypnotized by his arms.
He looked at me for a moment. “Are you interested in watches?” he asked, waking me up in the middle of an erotic dream.
“Sorry?” I answered, staring at him, like a trout stares at a fisherman before being thrown on the bottom of the boat.
“I thought you were looking at my watch, so I assumed you were an expert…”
“Right! Your watch.” I said, almost choking my carrot in front of this gorgeous hunk. “Y
es, I have a passion for watches. Yours is really a beautiful one. It enhances your wrist.”
“Funny! I never thought of watches as something ’wrist enhancing’. Obviously you like them, so why don’t you wear one?”
I hate watches. Just the idea of wearing a symbol of time passing seems ridiculous and scary. As if life were not enough to remind us every twenty-four hours that another day went by and we are older.
“Oh, I love watches! I don’t wear one because… um, because I’m allergic.” I answered like an idiot.
“Allergic to watches?” Listening to him repeat my sentence seemed even more stupid. Thank god, at that moment Emma returned to the kitchen, interrupting this embarrassing and surreal conversation. I wanted to kiss her for saving me.
“Hey, have you two already met?” She asked grabbing a bottle of rum from a shelf.
“Actually, no,” he answered, smiling at me.
“Rebecca or Coco to my friends.”
“As in the grand Chanel,” added Emma, sneering. “Rebecca is a big fan of Coco Chanel.”
“Yes, I am a great admirer,” I smiled shyly, while extending my hand.
“Niccolò.” He answered, shaking it warmly. Even his hand was sexy, I thought.
“Rebecca is my childhood friend. We went to school together. She lives in Venice and is here for a few days.”
“Welcome to Milan, Rebecca,” he smiled again. “What do you do?”
One of the things I hate most is when people ask you, as soon as they meet you, what you do for a living. Your job. As if it should of course be great! Nobody asks if you listen to Lucio Battisti or to Lou Reed, or if you prefer Hogan shoes to All Stars, if you love holiday resorts or prefer camping in the wild, if you laugh at Vanzina films or at the Coen brothers – they only ask about your damn job!
“I organize events.” I answered vaguely. Actually I worked at a big company that organized events and meetings around Europe. To a layman it could sound exciting: parties, elegant dinners, evening gowns and centre pieces with flowers and exotic fruit. In reality I was organizing mostly boring medical and scientific meetings. The most exciting thing that could happen to me were conferences about proctology or seminars about prostate problems.
“Beautiful! I could ask you for some advice about the opening party I’m organizing for my new studio. I am an architect.” He said, raising his arm to drink, emphasizing the beauty of his bicep.
I was already his love slave.
We spent all evening talking. Besides being beautiful, Niccolò was also well-read, intelligent, funny and gentle. He was filling my glass as soon as it was empty and kept asking me if I enjoyed being there. I was drunk with wine and with him. I didn’t give one more thought about my ex and his whale of a girlfriend.
At the end of the evening, Niccolò kissed me on the cheek and gave me his business card. Then he put on his jacket and disappeared into the Milanese night.
“Don’t you hate this new trend, when men leave you with their telephone number?” I asked Emma, staring the business card.
“Are you upset because you’re not used to making the first move?”
“I just can’t accept how times have changed, that men have stopped being the pursuers, that they simply give out their cell phone number and then wait to be called.” I said, drinking my last glass of prosecco.
“You sound very old fashioned!”
“Old fashioned? I completely believe in the equality of sexes, but I’m still convinced that the man should call first. It’s a question of DNA. It’s like paying for dinner, hanging shelves, opening car doors and carrying your luggage.”
“This is really emancipation!” Emma laughed.
Before going to sleep with my head spinning while trying to count the calories I must have consumed that evening, I thought that maybe for Niccolò I was ready to make an exception. My DNA theory could go to hell!
Next day I awoke with all the known hangover symptoms. Emma and I talked about the best strategy. Then I took a deep breath and called his damn number.
It was much easier I expected.
That same evening, I saw Niccolò. I think I made an impression on him. It had to be my tight jeans!
He came to pick me up. He opened the car door for me and then selected the perfect music. At the restaurant he ordered an incredible wine. I felt like his goddess. I wore a little black dress that was loose enough to hide some of my curves. He noticed my fantastic Sergio Rossi sandals and complimented me on my slender ankles.
“I’m crazy about shoes,” I confessed during dinner. “I have more than a hundred pairs.”
“Congratulations! A big collection,” he answered, slightly puzzled.
“I know, I could look like the typical woman who spends all her salary on high heels and sophisticated boots and goes to crazy parties every night wearing a different pair. Actually, I buy them and keep them in a stockpile because I never know when to wear them. Some are still brand new, never worn. Yet I like the idea they are there, waiting for me. I even think that some of them love me!” I laughed.
Being with Niccolò made me high.
“You’re funny, Coco,” he said, letting me go on about shoes, even showing a certain interest. I felt comfortable and at the same time I felt as if I was in a dream. We talked all evening as if we’d known each other for years. I told him about my ex-fiancé, our misunderstandings and disagreements, how we feel vulnerable when we are betrayed. We discussed the ending of a love affair. He spoke of a relationship of his that ended the year before, the planned wedding that went up in smoke, of the returned gifts and the dog he left with her and how much he missed that puppy. He told me about his life as a single thirty-five-year-old in Milan.
He talked with a relaxed, warm voice. He looked at me, smiling from time to time. Listening to his past love life, his suffering, discovering his romantic side, made him even seem more sensual.
He was the perfect man for me. We discovered that we shared a similar taste and, not wanting to disappoint him, I lied in good faith. He liked rock music, electronic music and punk. Meanwhile I had grown up listening to Italian singers and song writers who spoke of romantic love. My friends and I used to play guitar and sing those songs. I used to watch all the Sanremo Music Festival finales on TV, betting with friends on the winner.
“Don’t you like the Tools? And the Incubus?” He asked me.
“Of course!” I answered, although I didn’t even catch their names. I hoped he wouldn’t ask me which were my favourite CD’s.
He loved American writers. I love Russian writers. But why should I have had disappointed him, when he was telling me the boring plot of Don Winslow’s last novel in detail and with such enthusiasm?
I was ready to turn myself inside out for this man. If he had asked me to, I would had eaten only carbohydrates for dinner and worn plain beige underwear! I couldn’t believe that Niccolò had dropped out of the sky to take care of my broken heart. I was so happy he found me attractive!
We ended our evening at Niccolò’s apartment. The furniture had been selected with great taste. Every detail seemed ready to be photographed for a design magazine. I sat on the sofa and he put some music on. He looked into my eyes and said I was beautiful. I came closer and kissed him. This was heaven and I had conquered it. We made love for hours, naturally, without any embarrassment, as if we had known each other for a long time. Except for an irrelevant episode of quick sex with a drunk colleague during a meeting for gynaecologists, I had never betrayed Pietro. I was used to his body and his moves. With Niccolò everything was new, but he was able to make me feel comfortable immediately. He knew how to touch me, kiss me and what to say. We were perfectly in tune with each other.
Around 4 a.m. when I asked him to call a taxi, (Emma had warned me about the new singles trend of never spending the night at a partner’s apartment, especially the first night) he asked me to stay. “I would love to make coffee for you later this morning.” I almost cried.
And now
here I am. Niccolò and I will finally live in the same city. At Piazza Duomo I got out of the train to take the red line toward Porta Venezia. I walked slowly. My shoes were new and not really comfortable. I was wearing sexy tight white pants that made it hard to walk. I had on a white and blue striped t-shirt and wore the panama hat that usually brings me good luck.
Our rendezvous was at 5 p.m. at Jack. I had made a reservation, to avoid any risk of having to stand at the counter, squeezed in amongst the happy hour crowd. I thought to order champagne and enjoy the happiness in Niccolò’s eyes when he heard my great news.
We had been seeing each other for one year. A year of romantic dining, a lot of wine, films, concerts and great sex.
Every two weeks I happily caught a train to Milan to join my ideal man for the weekend. A few times he came to Venice, and we walked among the canals, kissing on every bridge like two adolescents. I felt we were going to become a real couple. During the week – when we didn’t see each other, we spent hours on Skype, talking about music and films, telling each other about our days and talking dreamily about the sex we’d had and imagining together the sex we would have in the future.
He introduced me to some of his friends and he met the closest friends of mine who had moved to Milan. Sometime we all had drinks together. He hugged me, kissed me and said to them with enthusiasm: “Aren’t we great together?”
One day we met his father by chance and Niccolò introduced me as ‘my friend Rebecca.’ At first I felt a little bit hurt. Then I understood this was a delicate matter. Parents are always sensitive about their children’s love life, and actually we were very good friends. I didn’t say anything. I just smiled and – although I had always hated the idea of marriage – for a moment I dreamed that his father would become my father-in-law.
It had been an intense year. We had arguments, misunderstandings, and even a brief estrangement. Niccolò was a passionate man, but also secretive, sensitive and very solitary. I had learned to give him space, to trust him. Rarely did I ask him what he did on the weekends we weren’t together. I didn’t want to seem controlling, insecure or jealous.
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