by Costa, Bella
Still Falling
© 2012 Bella Costa
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
All Characters in this book are entirely fictional in both name and character.
First Printing, 2012
Bella Costa
11- WV10 8RJ
United Kingdom
[email protected]
Chapter one
“Serena’s Dress will never be part of the Spinozzi Label and I am not including it in the Line for Fashion Week or any other Line for that matter. Now take it to my office and leave the subject alone!”
Those words had haunted Serena Taylor for four years.
She stood barefoot now, on the cooling sand and breathed deeply, savouring the heavy salty air, as the last rays of the sun melted into the sea. Closing her eyes she let the gentle sound of the lapping water, the fresh sea air, and the soft caress of the breeze, sooth her soul. The water washed up on the beach, taking the sand from under feet with soothing rhythm.
Mmmmmmmm. I have soooooo needed this!
She had missed her daily walk to the beach. Recent weeks had proven to be the hardest. Serena and her mother had lived on the Tramonto Estate since her mother had taken on the job as housekeeper. Serena had been a cheeky, over confident, five year old at the time and she had won the hearts of her mother’s new employers.
The Spinozzi family had been good to her and her mother, giving Serena free run of the estate gardens and private beach on the South West corner of the Isola di Procida. Her Mother had tried to reign her in out of respect to her employers but somehow little Serena had always won over. She had loved coming down to the beach to admire the young Marco Spinozzi, only six years older than her, swimming in the surf or fishing on the rocks.
Marco was the family’s only child. As a young child, Serena had been drawn to him like a moth to light. The corners of her mouth tilted upward as she remembered the proper diva tantrums she would throw when he used his pet name for her. Pocco Zucco. How she looked anything like a little pumpkin was beyond her. Secretly though, the thought that he had spent time thinking up a nickname for her had made her melt inside. Knowing he thought of her at all was more than she could have asked for back then.
As she got older, her sunset walks to the beach had become more purposeful and without realising it, the evening constitutional had become a necessity. Sometimes it was to unwind, put life into perspective, muddle through a problem or just enjoy the moment. Whatever the reason, she always left the beach with her emotional batteries recharged and her mind reorganised. By the time Serena had grown up and finished her education, an early morning trip had been included in her daily routine.
She tensed now as the memories progressed naturally to that autumn, when Marco had dismissed her design so venomously, and ripped her world apart.
How could I have been so naive?
She shook off the uncomfortable memories, choosing rather to focus on the peace and serenity of the sunset, which the estate had been named after. Taking one last cleansing breath to boost her nerves she turned and headed up a flight of rough hewn, rock steps and around the edge of the estates gardens, to the housekeepers cottage. It was time to face her mother.
Chapter two
Marco stood on the grand piano sized, flat rock which formed a platform sixty feet above the small private cove. His heart squeezed tight in his chest as he watched the setting sun turn her auburn hair into a blaze. The effect was made all the more intense by the breeze waving tendrils around her face like flames. From up here she looked so thin and so fragile, yet still intensely beautiful. Her bronze skin looked a little paler than he remembered. He imagined this would only make the thick dark eyelashes frame her soft eyes even more sensually.
He remembered the first and last time they had made love. She had still been so young, trusting and innocent. His heart had melted at the knowledge that she was his to guide and teach. He was even more amazed at her serenity. She had trusted him completely. Serena had accepted him and loved him back in a way no other lover ever had.
They had known each other most of their young lives. He had longed to know her intimately for what seemed like a lifetime and then there she was. Ready. Wanting. His. And then a few hours later she ran.
He shook himself back to the present. Why had she come back? He knew he should walk away now. He was finally starting to move on.
He turned his head to watch the last cusp of the sun sinking below the horizon. Anger started to simmer up from deep inside.
“I will not let her do this to me.” He muttered in frustration. A glance back to the beach below told him she was gone.
Marco was already running the Italian office of the Roberto Spinozzi clothing label when Serena had finished school, and he had offered her an apprenticeship just in time to start working on the new wedding line for the Spring/Sumer collection. Much to his amusement, Serena couldn’t wait to prove herself. Between learning from the chief design teams, and acting as their general assistant, she had secretly created a design of her own and had managed to convince Gabrielle, Marco’s assistant, to include her dress on the rails with the other designs for his inspection. He had of course known all along. Nothing happened at the studio that he didn’t know about.
Having stood in for one of the models while still in school, Serena had known the routine. Marco would sit quietly, and view each creation being modelled. He would then ask the models to run through their routines again while Gabrielle announced which design team had created it and he would give Gabrielle instructions to pass back to them. Very occasionally, he would be happy with the design, he would simply nod. The design would be readied for show and that particular team could start on a new project. The teams with rejected designs had to go back to the drawing boards and pin cushions, following Marco’s direction. Gabrielle had warned him that Serena’s ‘secret creation’ would be on the rails that morning. He remembered his excited impatience to finally see the finished product.
Chapter three
Walking slowly, Serena knew she would have to allow the unpleasant memory which was driving her to distraction, to play out so that for tonight at least, she could put it to bed.
For the thousandth time since leaving four years ago she replayed the day in her head. Serena had been taking five in the coffee room, flushing in the afterglow of her unusual breakfast tread earlier that morning. She remembered her added excitement when Gabrielle had phoned, her asking her to come over to the inspection room as her wedding dress would shortly be viewed.
She had put her heart and soul into that design and had been so certain Marco would love the dress. It had been a hectic morning as it was a big day for the design teams and as their run around assistant, Serena had been sent on a thousand errands.
Running late, she’d arrived at the door just in time to hear Marco slamming her design. She had never heard him talk like before. The tone of his voice was like acid. Was she really that bad? Perhaps this morning when they had made love for the first time, he had been disappointed by her lack of experience. Did he dislike her that much? Had Marco offered her the job out of pity? Perhaps as an act of charity, for the ‘poor Housekeepers daughter’?
Maybe it had all been about getting into her panties and now that he had, his true feelings were showing!
Using the wall as support, she had stood outside the door, trying to gather her battered emotions and tame the terror that threatened to overwhelm her. For what seemed like ages the world had stopped turning. People moved around her like shadows. Voices and background noise blurred into a single, indescribable, mean
ingless sound that competed only with the sound of her heart, pounding out of control. As the world came back into focus, Serena had turned and run, unnoticed by the preoccupied teams waiting for their turn to be slaughtered by Marco.
Against her mother’s wishes, and desperately not wanting to face Marco again, she had packed up that night and moved to Milan. She knew her mother would not interfere or discuss Serena’s whereabouts with Marco and she knew Marco would not ask the hired help. It had not been difficult to take up an apprenticeship, with a smaller design house, which had approached her a few months earlier and she had become really close friends with the owner, Josephine.
Josephine and the Revel label are two very good things to come out of this.
As she neared the housekeepers cottage that had been her childhood home, Serena wondered what state her mother would be in. By skirting the large landscaped garden, she hoped to avoid being seen from the main house, but it meant stumbling through the semi-dark, along the uneven, rocky path. She failed to notice the figure in the shadows, quietly watching her progress.
She had phoned home earlier that day to warn her mother of her arrival, but needing to compose herself before seeing her mother, she had headed straight for the beach instead. The timing had been perfectly arranged to fit in with her favourite time of the day.
Serena hadn’t yet figured out how to tell her mother she was ill, but she knew her mother would suspect something was wrong, the minute she walked through the door. Taking yet another deep breath as if all her strength lay at the bottom of her lungs, Serena opened the door to the Housekeepers Cottage and walked in. Her mother was cooking. No surprise there.
She always cooked when either very happy or very upset, and judging by the volumes of food already prepared, Serena’s visit home had really got her started. Serena cringed inwardly hoping there would be enough ingredients left in the cupboard, to keep her mother in cooking therapy after Serena broke the bad news.
“There you are! At last!” cried her mother, waving her hands as if conducting an orchestra. “I was beginning to think there more important things than visiting your Mama.”
“Mama, please! You saw me just two weeks ago.”
“Yes, but in four years it has always been your Mama who has had to travel to where air is bad and people are too busy to say hello, just to see her little girl. For once you are visiting your Mama.”
“Mama, you love Milan, and you know it. You know I don’t have much time with all the travel.”
“Always excuses. Sit down at the table child and you can tell me all the latest news over some soup.”
Serena sat down at the worn oak table as her mother placed a steaming bowl of Tomato and Basil soup in front of her. It smelt delicious. Her mother sat opposite Serena, hands folded expectantly in front of her. She waited until Serena had swallowed at least four spoonfuls of soup before pressing her further.
“Well?”
“Well what?
“Well two weeks ago you said you would not be able to visit until Christmas.”
“Oh! I can go back to Milan if you want?” smiled Serena coyly, winding her mother up gently.
“Child one day you will try my patience too far! Now get serious and tell me what is going on. You are shrinking into nothing and you are too pale! Out with it!”
At first Serena claimed there was nothing much to tell, claiming to just need a break and come for a visit. Mrs Taylor, still beautiful despite her age, was having none of it. Eventually Serena told her about feeling under the weather for a while, and the battery of tests she had undergone before the doctors had broken the news that she was in the early stages of stomach cancer and how she had started treatment which made her feel worse than the illness ever had.
Her mother had taken it surprisingly well. After many questions, her mother had come to the conclusion that Serena would get better, but only if she moved back home, where she could be fed properly, and get plenty of fresh air. Serena only half agreed. It was why she had come home.
She had finished her second session of Chemotherapy a couple of days ago and although the worst of the effects had passed. She was still feeling rough and down. She needed her mother close by.
Josephine had demanded she take indefinite leave on full pay, only if Serena promised to come back healthy and full spirits. The problem was she didn’t have the strength to deal with Marco, so she had planned on renting a small flat above the small marina on the other side of the island.
“Don’t be silly child! You will stay right here. Marco is hardly around these days and sooner or later you will have to make peace with him anyway.” Her mother had declared, horrified at the thought of her daughter alone in some rented room, feeling ill.
Fatigue was setting in, and rather than argue with her mother, Serena put the conversation on hold and crept off to bed, leaving her mother to cook up another storm. Someone would be eating well tomorrow.
Chapter four
The perfume stuck in the back of his throat as he entered the living room. Magda lay seductively across a pair of sheep skin rugs in front of the fire. Her lace undergarments did little to hide the prominent hip bones which cradled her sunken belly, or her tiny breasts resting on salient ribs. Marco had invited Magda here for the weekend as a distraction from the loneliness of the huge empty house.
The tall Dutch blonde had made it clear from the day he employed her as an in-house model that she was more than willing if he ever needed her to work overtime on extra activities. She smiled coyly, patting the empty space next to her. Right now this was the last thing he needed or wanted. He continued to gaze at the anorexic minx lying willing and eager in his living room, his own private plaything for the weekend. Suddenly he didn’t feel so good.
“Something’s come up. I’ll have my driver take you back to the marina and arrange transport to the main land and then to Milan.” He left the room without waiting for her sulky protests.
Marco had spent many long hours, alone in the huge, six bedroom mansion, trying to analyse the moments they had spent together, leading up the minute security had recorded her leaving the building. He couldn’t understand what had happened. There was nothing he could remember saying or doing that could have caused her to leave the way she did. He had even gone so far as to interrogate the majority of his staff thinking perhaps someone else had said or done something unspeakable.
It had only taken two days for him to find out that she had moved from Napoli to Milan and was working for Josephine Rapisarda at Revel.
Not finding the answers he needed, he had turned all his energy and focus into the business. Shamefully, he now realised how painful he must have been as a boss that first year. As the years passed though, it got a little easier.
Marco locked himself in his study and sank back into the deep Audi, bucket seat that his father had salvaged from a Rally crash. It always amazed him how comfortable and snug the converted seat was as an office chair.
His father had loved cars, and many items dotted around the study were automobile related. A signed photo, of his father, with Raffaele ‘Lele’ Pinto, who had won his first Rally, in Portugal in 1974. The Spare steering wheel, from the Alfa Romeo, Formula One car, that won Giuseppe Farina the first Grand Prix in 1950. A small petrol engine, cleaned and varnished sat in the middle of the large room with a clear sheet of glass mounted on top to form a coffee table.
To the right a small stone fireplace with a cast iron wood stove at its heart was lined on either side with deep polished teak wood shelves. The shelves were full to capacity with books, manuals, and catalogues and framed pictures related to his father’s experiences, acquaintances and interests in the motor industry. It was a standing joke in the household that his father had made the wrong career choice by getting into fashion.
“The one thing I like more than a good looking car is a good looking woman, and I plan on making sure there are a lot more good looking women out there.” Would be his standard reply.
Wh
ile Marco appreciated a good car, no matter what its age, he didn’t share the same passion as his father, but loved this room and refused to change it. It was his only real link now to his father.
The distraction the study gave him was short lived. It was in this room. This room, when she had bound in to ask for a lift to the studio. Serena and run through the door like a day old foal. All legs and spirit. She had tripped and fallen into his arms. It was then that he realised that in his arms was exactly where she belonged. It was here that he had finally gathered the courage to kiss her.
His heart had filled with relief and his loins with desire when her tongue met his and invited him to deepen the kiss. He remembered breaking away from her, breathless, and wanting. Her eyes had blazed back at him with fear and longing. He had held her gaze, searching for permission, encouragement.......something. When she pulled his head back down and kissed him, it had been his undoing.
“Are you sure?” He had murmured against her lips.
“Don’t let me think.”
“You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to do this.”
“I think I have an idea.” She had smiled shyly.
He broke off their kiss and took her next door to the sun room.
What the hell went wrong?
Chapter five
Serena woke to the sun warming her face through the window. She felt better now than she had felt in a long time, but she knew it wouldn’t last. She ate a small portion of the massive breakfast her mother had left her and decided on a quick walk down to the beach, before embarking on her search for a room at the marina.
The air was very still this morning and the silence that accompanied it was welcoming. The water was glass smooth as she settled down onto the sand to rest a moment. She didn’t remember the short five minute walk being so exhausting before. She was definitely not as fit as she used to be.