Liz Fielding: Italian Escape

Minty shot him a limpid glance. ‘Typical male exaggeration. These heels are three inches at the most, but we’ll call it seven if it pleases you.’ She squealed as Luca swung her round, pulling her hard against him.

‘You seemed satisfied earlier.’

His mouth hovered temptingly above hers. Minty stood on her tiptoes, trying to reach it, but he moved it fractionally away, tantalisingly out of her reach. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, trying to look contrite. ‘You are of course magnificent in every way. A love machine of the highest order.’

Luca quirked an eyebrow at her. ‘Seven inches doesn’t even begin to do justice,’ she continued, trying to look serious, her smirk threatening to break out any second. She made her eyes big, pleading. ‘Please say you forgive me?’

His mouth descended onto hers and for the next few moments all Minty was aware of was him. The bunch of his muscles under her roaming hands, the hardness of his mouth, the way he felt, smelt, overloaded all her senses. The sound of teasing voices brought her out of her sensual stupor. She pulled back.

‘Not in the street! You, at least, were brought up much better than that.’

‘We could go back to yours?’ he suggested, his eyes molten gold with desire.

Minty shook her head. ‘Magdalena will be back. Besides, you promised me a promenade, and a promenade is what I want.’

‘Then a promenade you shall have,’ Luca promised.

* * *

‘You don’t know this city at all,’ she accused Luca with a grin when he took them the wrong way for the third time.

‘Maybe I just want to get you alone in a dark alleyway,’ he suggested.

‘Good try. Come on, I told you it was this way.’

‘I never come here as a tourist,’ he explained. ‘I stay at the conte’s villa, which is outside the city. We are driven to parties and restaurants. Obviously I have been inside every museum, every church, every park, but I’ve never had the freedom to walk around like this.’

‘Not even with Francesca?’ Minty asked, wishing she’d not spoken the moment she’d done so. She sounded dangerously like a jealous girlfriend, which she wasn’t—jealous, or indeed a girlfriend.

He laughed. ‘Francesca? Wander round the streets without a purpose or someone to impress? No, she would have made me stay at that gala until the last moment, and then escort the conte home so she could be seen leaving with him.’

‘I like him,’ Minty said, wanting to change the subject. ‘Your grandfather, I mean. And I think...’ She cast about for the right words but ended up saying baldy, ‘I think he is really proud of you.’

‘You got all that from a five-minute conversation?’ Luca sounded sceptical.

‘I got that from five minutes of him singing your praises. Did you know that your gelato is the most authentic mass-produced product he has ever tasted?’

‘It’s traditionally made, not mass-produced—’ Luca stopped mid-speech. ‘The conte said that?’

Minty nodded. ‘And much, much more, but I’d hate for you to get big-headed. Aha! I told you this was the way.’

They were at the entrance to a large square, a fountain in the middle. Along one side was a two-storey building with a series of steps leading to the pillared terrace. At the back of the shallow terrace was a wall with heavy-looking doors interspersed at intervals. The pillars were impressively carved with round medallion-style decorations, a picture of a baby on each one.

‘The hospital of the innocents,’ Minty said softly. ‘I used to come here most days, trying to imagine what it was like to know you had been literally posted into an orphanage. I wonder if it was better to grow up never knowing who your parents were or to know why you were here. Or—and spot the melodrama of a teenager here—was it worse to have parents who took no notice of you at all? These children had no expectations, no obligations; they were free...’

‘Free to be foundlings, paupers and servants,’ Luca said wryly. He put an arm around her. ‘Is this what you did when you lived in Florence, mooched dreamily around here?’

Minty nestled into his embrace. ‘I promenaded and flirted with dangerously attractive Italian boys.’ She looked up at him provocatively. ‘A habit I don’t seem to have lost.’ Luca’s arm tightened round her shoulders. ‘I went to every museum at least once and what felt like every church. I saw more depictions of the Madonna and Child than anybody could cope with and realised an art history degree wasn’t for me, despite its royal connections!’

‘What did you do instead?’

‘Well, I did get engaged twice before I was twenty-one,’ she pointed out. ‘That took up some time.’

‘And the boat to Australia,’ he said.

‘That came afterwards. I was running away from the fallout with Spike.’ She sighed. ‘I do seem to run away a lot.’ She straightened up, moving out of his embrace. ‘I shouldn’t have brought you here; it always makes me sombre. Come on, I want gelato. Does anywhere round here stock yours?’ She smiled at him. ‘Ours, I should say.’

She grabbed his hand and pulled him along, away from the square and the gloomy thoughts it always evoked. ‘All the really good gelato shops in Florence make their own,’ Luca said. ‘And they are all worth trying.’ He flashed her a dangerously sexy grin. ‘I’m not so vain that I can’t appreciate somebody else’s artisanship.’

Another couple of moments and they were outside one of the city’s most popular gelaterias. The glass windows showcased the long counters filled with over one hundred vibrantly coloured ice creams.

‘Cone or a cup?’

Minty gave Luca a withering glance. ‘Oh, I know you purists are all about the cup, but I, my friend, am English and we eat our ice cream out of a cone. But,’ she added cautiously, ‘I am a sophisticated type and I only like sugar cones.’

‘And which flavours would the beautiful signorina like in her sugar cone?’

‘All of them,’ she said, her nose pressed up against the glass like a starving Victorian waif. ‘How can I choose?’

‘Let’s go in and decide,’ Luca suggested. ‘Or we could just stand here and look...’

It only took ten minutes for Minty to choose, which, as she explained to Luca, was pretty good, considering she had been in Italy for no more than a couple of weeks and had yet to enter a gelateria.

‘You have been to my factory shop, like clockwork, every afternoon break,’ Luca said indignantly.

‘It’s not the same,’ Minty tried to explain.

‘And yet with all this choice you go for a frutti di bosco and a lemon,’ he said. Luca had spent some time trying to persuade Minty to be more exotic in her choice.

‘It’s a classic,’ she said. ‘I’m sure mint liquorice and coffee makes a great combination but I wanted something more subtle. And yes,’ she added as she saw the glint in his eye, ‘I can be subtle. Just look at me tonight.’

‘You are beautiful tonight,’ he said. ‘I didn’t forget to tell you that, did I?’

‘You have only mentioned it ten or so times but I’ll forgive you.’ Normally Minty liked to live up to her public image and dress accordingly. She eschewed the fake tan and barely-there clothes of other party girls, preferring to stay at the cutting edge of fashion and to be a little less obvious.

Tonight, however, she had decided against avant garde design and had chosen something appropriate for a charity gala dinner, a soft dress of midnight-blue. The material was clingy and deceptively demure, high-necked and calf-length with chiffon shoulder straps. Not only did it cling to Minty’s torso like a second skin, until the waist where it flared out into a ballerina skirt, but both the neckline and from the mid-thigh down were made of a thinner, almost transparent material, showcasing her legs and cleavage whilst covering them. She’d teamed it with a silver velvet wrap for outside and silver star earrings.