A Wedding in Italy: A feel good summer holiday romance (From Italy with Love Book 2) Read online

  A Wedding in Italy

  A feel good summer holiday romance

  Tilly Tennant

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  A Letter From Tilly

  Also By Tilly Tennant

  Rome is Where the Heart is

  The Little Village Bakery

  Christmas at The Little Village Bakery

  Acknowledgments

  This book is dedicated to some very special people, nominated by my readers. Here are their messages:

  To Jodie and Mark Rothman, thank you for all your support through everything. I love you both so much, I hope you will treasure this dedication to show that you mean the world to me, forever and always, love Mum xx

  To Emma Crowley, thanks for always being there even though you’ve already got a lot going on in your own life, from Sharon

  To Craig Weafer-Hand 11/01/2001 to 17/11/2006

  We miss you always, we will love you forever, the brightest smile in our lives, now the brightest star in the sky.

  Love always Mammy and Daddy

  My dedication is for my wonderful husband Richard Clark, who as well as being my soulmate is my absolute rock. His love and support gives me the strength to stay positive when dealing with difficulties

  To Hazel Budd, such a strong woman and a wonderful mum to all of us xx

  Chapter One

  Kate threw open the curtains and the morning sun washed the room in gold. It was winter in Rome, but that hadn’t diminished the brightness of the days. Nor had the constant drip of her kitchen tap, the fact that the lock of her front door got stuck from time to time, or that the electricity went down at the most inconvenient moments. Nothing could dampen her enthusiasm for her new home. Her neighbours complained of the cold, of how they wished that summer would hurry and return, but Kate, once she’d got the gist of the conversation (and it sometimes took a lot of effort with her still very rudimentary grasp of Italian), would smile and think to herself that if they’d ever suffered a winter in Manchester they’d count themselves very lucky to be basking in their current temperatures. Christmas was six weeks away and would mark a little less than six months since she’d first met the man of her dreams on a balmy evening at the Spanish Steps. Her journey to becoming a fully-fledged Italian citizen had been even more fraught than her journey to Alessandro’s heart, and it had taken her until late autumn to finally make the move, but now that she was here those troubles all seemed like a distant memory. The only thing that sometimes tugged her towards home was the fact that she hadn’t seen her sisters, Anna and Lily, since the move, and she missed them more than she’d thought she would.

  Alessandro smiled up at her from the pillows where he was currently propped. It was rare for him to spend the night at her flat – partly due to his largely antisocial duty shifts as a police officer and partly due to him wrestling with his good Catholic conscience. His sexual appetite was as healthy as the next man’s but he would often talk about his mother’s views on couples living together unmarried and how concerned she was that Kate and Alessandro would end up doing just that. She was equally concerned by Kate’s status as a Protestant and foreigner, though she was coming round to accepting that now, won over by Kate’s best efforts to charm her with a multitude of hand-sewn gifts, from cushion covers to dresses for church. Each new creation seemed to wear Signora Conti down a little more, and Kate was certain (as was Alessandro) that she would eventually forget Kate was British and a raging Church of England heathen at all.

  ‘Come back to bed,’ he said, patting the space beside him with a wicked grin. ‘You have time.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’ Kate tried to look stern but it was impossible. How could she look stern at such an invitation? ‘And you need to ask me in Italian. I need the practice. . . remember?’

  ‘If I ask in Italian you will pretend you do not understand and I will not get my Kate in these arms.’

  ‘I would never do that.’

  ‘Va bene. Torna a letto.’

  Kate gave him a shrug, accompanied by an impish smile. ‘Sorry . . . not a clue. I guess I’ll just have to go and make breakfast . . .’

  He leapt from the bed with astonishing speed, and Kate shrieked with laughter as she bolted from the room and he tore after her, catching her breathless in the living room and whipping her onto her back on the sofa. Closing in for a kiss, his hand found its way beneath her dressing gown and travelled up her thigh, causing her to shudder with pleasure. What this man could do to her. . . she didn’t think she could ever get enough. Even now, with a million jobs to think about in the day ahead, she was lost. It didn’t look as though she was getting breakfast any time soon.

  ‘You do know that your landlord speaks English?’ Alessandro raised his eyebrows over the top of his coffee cup as they sat at Kate’s tiny dining table.

  ‘He doesn’t speak very much. It’s hard to make him understand and he’s busy looking after so many tenants.’

  ‘He speaks it perfectly. He is trying to make you go away and it is working. If there are things wrong in your apartment, he must fix them . . .’ He placed the cup very deliberately back onto the saucer and looked up at Kate. ‘I will speak to him. There will be no misunderstanding then.’

  ‘No, you won’t. I don’t need you fighting all my battles.’

  ‘Then you must learn to fight them yourself.’

  ‘I do!’

  Alessandro said nothing, but he didn’t need to – the look on his face said it all.

  ‘I know I could be a bit more assertive, but I like it here and I like Salvatore, and I don’t want to upset him or he might decide to give me my marching orders.’

  ‘Your marching orders? What does that mean?’

  ‘He might tell me to leave the apartment so he can rent it out to somebody else.’

  ‘He would not do that; I would speak to him—’

  ‘And here we go again,’ Kate interrupted. ‘You can’t be seen to be using your position of authority in that way.’

  ‘I would speak to him as a citizen of Rome, not as a policeman.’

  ‘But it might be viewed that way if Salvatore chose to take offence. I’d never forgive myself if it got you into hot water and I’d rather not take the chance.’

  ‘Hot water is what you are not into right now. That is why we are having this conversation.’

  Kate couldn’t help a grin. Alessandro’s English had been pretty perfect before, but the nuances of conversation with an actual English person, complete with jokes and sarcasm and wordplay, had been lost to him. Since they’d started to spend all their free time together he was slipping into those idiosyncrasies with ease and at times sounded almost like a native Mancunian. There were phrases she often had to explain to him despite this, but his grasp of English was certainly developing a lot faster than her grasp of Italian. She had asked him and his family to speak to her in Italian often so she would be forced to learn it, but the process of any conversation had be
en so slow and painful that they often just reverted to English so they could say what they needed to and get on with their lives. Which wasn’t particularly helpful in terms of Kate’s education, but she could understand their frustrations nonetheless. Only Alessandro’s mother persevered with her native tongue when addressing Kate, but that was because her English was even worse than Kate’s Italian. It made for very long and laborious conversations, with quite bit of inadvertent charades thrown in.

  ‘What time did you say you’d go to help with the wedding preparations?’ Kate asked, very deliberately changing the subject to that of his sister Lucetta’s impending nuptials to her long-term and hopelessly enamoured boyfriend, Gian.

  He glanced up at the clock. ‘I have an hour, maybe a little less. Why do you ask? Do you want me to come back to bed again?’ He waggled an eyebrow at her, and she threw the teacloth she was wiping the table with at his head.

  ‘No, I do not!’ she laughed. ‘But I am nervous as hell about all those new family members to meet.’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s not so many.’

  ‘You’ve got twenty cousins arriving to help decorate this hall and you don’t think that’s many? I’d call that quite a few! And that’s without all the aunts, uncles and second cousins due tomorrow at the wedding! It’s alright for you to be chilled about it, but you know them all and you have no need to make a good impression.’

  ‘Neither do you. My family will love you just as you are.’

  ‘Try telling that to your mother,’ she replied darkly. ‘I think she’s been studying that family tree pretty hard to see which cousins might be removed enough for you to marry.’

  ‘She would not do that. Mamma knows that we are in love.’

  ‘That wouldn’t stop her from trying to tempt you away if she thought she could. We both know that she tolerates me but she still doesn’t think I’m suitable marriage material . . .’ She held up a hand to silence any argument that might arise. ‘And before you make some flippant remark about how we’re not getting married yet, you know full well that ultimately we’ll have to make a decision on that, and it won’t ever be soon enough for your mother, who seems to think that if you’re not married by the time you’re thirty-one you’ll turn into a vampire or something.’

  ‘She wants to see me make a good marriage before she dies.’

  ‘Your mother will live forever; she’ll certainly outlive both of us!’

  Alessandro raised an amused eyebrow. ‘You are full of fire this morning.’

  ‘I’m full of nerves. It always brings out my neurotic side.’

  He pushed himself up from the table and two strides saw him at her side, where he took her into his arms. ‘Ti amo troppo . . .’ he said, and kissed her tenderly. ‘It does not matter what anyone else wants, only what you and I want.’

  ‘I know what I want,’ Kate said, melting into his embrace. ‘You.’

  ‘And I want you, so we have nothing to fear from a thousand cousins at the wedding, not even if they came with the biggest dowries in Italy.’

  Kate gave a playful frown. ‘I have to pay a dowry to marry you? Suddenly I’m not quite so keen.’

  He laughed and tapped the tabletop with a knuckle. ‘This will do just fine.’

  ‘Ah, well, in that case. . .’ Kate reached to kiss him again, ‘I’m all yours. . .’

  Alessandro had gone off to the wedding venue, taking along a few police colleagues to meet with the cousins who were waiting there for them, having also agreed to lay out chairs, decorate the marquee and help with all the other preparations for the reception. That left Kate with plans to go to his mother’s house and assist three of Alessandro’s sisters – Lucetta, Abelie and Maria – with the packing of sugared almonds into delicate muslin bags as favours, binding floral arrangements and writing out place cards. Not that she was brilliant at any of those things, but Lucetta seemed to be labouring under the illusion that being able to sew meant Kate was good at everything remotely creative, and Kate hadn’t been able to say no when asked. She was also shrewd enough to realise that saying no would have won her no favour with the family anyway, and she needed all the help she could get. Despite this, Kate wasn’t exactly enamoured by the prospect of a day with Alessandro’s oldest sister, Maria, who still hadn’t quite forgiven her for scuppering the union she’d clearly hoped for between her only brother and her friend, Orazia. Of all the resistance their relationship had encountered from the Conti family, Maria’s was perhaps the greatest. If Kate had announced today that she was packing up and moving back to England, she was quite sure Maria would have been throwing the party to end all parties. It wasn’t all-out hatred, but it was sniping comments and filthy looks when she thought nobody else was looking, and any excuse to show Kate in a bad light she grabbed gleefully with both hands.

  There was cinnamon on the air as Abelie opened the door of the Conti home to admit Kate, warm and welcoming. If only it reflected the welcome Kate would get once she was inside. Abelie kissed her on the cheek.

  ‘Ciao, Kate. Come va?’

  ‘Sì. . .’ Kate replied with a stiff nod. ‘Grazie.’

  Abelie frowned and stepped back to appraise Kate more fully. ‘I do not think you are telling the truth. You seem troubled.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Kate said hurriedly. ‘A little tired.’

  Abelie raised her eyebrows. ‘Alessandro was at your house all night? Do not tell Mamma you are tired. . .’

  ‘I won’t,’ Kate said, laughing despite her anxieties. Alessandro’s sisters were surprisingly open about their love lives, and they had no qualms at all in sharing conjecture about Alessandro’s either, even if that was with Kate herself. Signora Conti, however, was a different matter entirely.

  ‘So there is nothing else to worry you?’ Abelie asked. She lowered her voice as she glanced down the hallway and then back to Kate. ‘Mamma has said that Maria must not be rude to you today, because you are a guest and you are kind enough to help us with the wedding.’

  Kate wondered if Signora Conti had had the same conversation with herself. Although it wasn’t exactly rudeness that bothered Kate in that quarter – more her ongoing covert operation to find Alessandro alternative marriage material, while simultaneously engaging in pleasantries to Kate’s face. To her, Kate was like a bout of chicken pox that her son had been unfortunate enough to catch, meaning she was faced with no alternative but to patiently suffer the spots until it passed. That said, she was a sweet lady who didn’t have it in her to be overtly mean to anyone, but it was no secret that she didn’t think Kate was the woman for her only son and was keeping a keen eye out for a replacement model – preferably Italian. If she could have Catholic, well-off, respected old family, good childbearing hips and still a virgin into the bargain, then all the better. There were regular conversations over meals about this person’s daughter, or that person’s sister, or somebody else’s granddaughter – on the surface innocent enough but obviously meant to pique Alessandro’s interest. They were often in Italian, and perhaps Signora Conti thought Kate wouldn’t cotton on, but she had picked up enough now to get the gist, even though Alessandro would deny it afterwards in a gallant bid to protect Kate’s feelings.

  She gave Abelie a grateful smile. ‘There was really no need on my account. I know it will take time to get to know you all properly, and some people take longer than others to feel comfortable with a newcomer.’

  That reply was as diplomatic as she could manage. The truth was that on occasion she had been sorely tempted to shove Maria’s head into one of Signora Conti’s tureens of tortellini broth. But the broth was so very good, and it seemed a shame to ruin it with something that would leave such a bitter taste.

  ‘But you are Alessandro’s choice,’ Abelie said stubbornly. ‘We all respect that, apart from—’

  Her sentence was cut short by Signora Conti hailing them from the end of the hall.

  ‘Ciao, Kate,’ she said and smiled as she stepped forward to kiss her on the cheek. To a cas
ual observer they could have been best friends. The fact was, it was difficult to be annoyed at Alessandro’s mother, despite her meddling, because she was so bloody nice.

  Abelie gave a tiny shrug and an apologetic smile as Signora Conti beckoned Kate to follow her down the hall. Kate returned it with a small smile of her own. At least she had some allies in the camp, and she was grateful for them.

  ‘Any luck on the job front?’ Abelie asked as they reached the living room and Signora Conti, signalling that they should wait, went into the kitchen. It looked as though Kate had arrived earlier than Maria, and as Lucetta was also missing she wondered whether they’d gone out together to fetch some last-minute supplies.

  ‘Not yet,’ she replied. Before her move to Italy, many people had offered to speak to this contact or that friend to try and get her some work before she arrived. But despite their best intentions and promises, they had all come to nothing and Kate was having to do the legwork herself. ‘It’s very hard to convince people that it’s a good idea to hire me. I mean, I can wait tables and serve English-speaking customers, but I’m not going to do so well communicating with people from other countries who don’t speak English. But I have sold two dresses, so that’s a start on the business front.’

  ‘You have?’ Abelie clapped her hands together. ‘But that is wonderful!’

  ‘I had to do a discount, of course, because they were for my landlord’s wife. . .’

  Abelie’s expression darkened. ‘Why a discount? He has plenty of money.’

  ‘I don’t think he has quite as much as you imagine. He said—’

  ‘Does he give you cut price on your rent?’ Abelie demanded.

  ‘Well, no, but—’

  ‘If he wants you to pay all the rent, he must pay you full price for dresses!’ She stamped her foot in a manner that was so petulant it was almost comical. ‘I will speak to him!’