Full Moon in Florence (3 page)

She could sense that she was in the bed alone, that Colin—her green-eyed angel—had left in the night. She rolled over and saw, on the pillow beside her, the red rose he had presented to her yesterday. Tied to the stem was an email address scrawled on a little slip of paper.

Laine wiggled her bare toes; she had managed to kick off her shoes in the night. They were somewhere under the covers. She didn’t need them now, not in this moment, but she knew she would again. Because she was full of desires, and determined to fulfill them. She decided to add a new item to her bucket list, something involving Florence, Italy and red shoes.

THE END of PART I

THREE MONTHS LATER...

Part II:

FULL MOON IN FLORENCE

Laine Dixon sat at her desk in the administrative offices of San Francisco’s Coalition of Fine Arts attempting to compose one of the hardest emails she’d ever tried to write.

Dear Colin
.

No. She backspaced. Maybe just,

Colin
.

Direct, upbeat.

Delete.

A simple
C
?

She shook her head. Too casual for someone she hardly knew.

Laine sighed and looked out her window. She hardly knew him and yet he’d already seen her naked.

Dear Colin.

Remember me?

Three months ago in Paris…

“I bet I can guess what you’re daydreaming about,” said Tina, slipping through Laine’s partially open door and dropping some papers on her desk before perching on its corner.

Laine’s dreamy gaze sharpened back to focus on reality. “Bet you can’t.”

Tina smiled. “Heaps of fresh pasta, freshly grated parmesan cheese, tiramisu, Chianti. Mmmmm.”

Laine laughed as she sorted the new papers. “Wrong.”

“That’s what I would be dreaming about if I was on my way to Italy next week,” said Tina, crossing her arms and watching Laine closely.

Tina’s obsession with good food was not obvious when you looked at her, perhaps because her obsession with going to the gym was just slightly more intense.

“The whole office is so jealous, I’d be careful walking down the hall on your way out today,” continued Tina. “Though it’s really no surprise Mark tapped you for the task.”

“Oh no. Those rumours aren’t spreading again are they?”

Tina shrugged. “We’re low on gossip in the outer office.”

“You know there’s nothing going on between us. Never has. Never will. I wish people would pay attention to their own lives instead of making stuff up about mine.”

“Aw that’s no fun. Besides, everyone loves to live vicariously. Beautiful single woman jetting off to Florence on her boss’s dime? And, the strangest coincidence. Mark’s taking next week off, too.”

“What? He didn’t tell me that.”

Tina raised an eyebrow. “So that’s not what you were daydreaming about? That would have been my second guess.”

Laine whacked Tina on her bare knee. “I don’t know what Mark is up to but he’s not coming with me to pick up the painting.”

“So then what’s got you all starry-eyed?” said Tina, glancing at Laine’s computer screen a split second before she put it to sleep.

“The sexy Brit? Ooh.” Tina waggled her eyebrows. “Thinking of a side trip are we?”

Laine shook her head. “It’s nothing. I can’t even bring myself to write the darn email.”

Tina twisted off the desk and hovered over Laine’s shoulder. “What have you got so far?”

Laine and Tina stared at the blinking curser on the blank page. “Nothing?”

“I delete everything I write.”

“Show me the last email exchange. We’ll go from there.”

“There isn’t one.”
With one arm on the back of Laine’s chair and the other leaning on her desk, Tina had Laine practically pinned where she was, so she swiveled the chair slightly towards her until their eyes lined up and she stared intently into them.

“You’re telling me that you had a mind-blowing one night stand with this guy, who left you his email address tied to a red rose on the pillow beside you, and in the three months since then you have
never
written to him?”

Laine shook her head sheepishly. “I could never figure out what to say.”

Tina closed her eyes briefly and sighed. Her disappoint was obvious.

“Laine, I’m your assistant, and even more than that, your friend. You told me how much this guy meant to you after Richard jilted you last December. He was your green-eyed angel in Paris, remember?”

“I know, I know, but it was a perfect night. You can’t recreate something like that.”
“Maybe not, but you can move forward and create new, wonderful things. Do you think he would have left you his email address if he hadn’t wanted to hear from you?”

“It’s probably not even a real one.”

Tina threw up her hands. “If the outer office crew knew how shy and timid you really are there’d be no fantasizing about you and the boss or you and some hot Italian Ferrari-driving dude. You really make me work too hard to keep up your reputation.”

“I don’t want that kind of reputation.”

“You’re like a prude librarian shut up in this place. I thought something had changed when you dashed off to Paris a few months ago. When you told me about your one night stand, I thought, good on her, she’s finally seizing the juicy fruits in life. Colin’s one of them.”

Tina stared at Laine’s computer screen. “Move over.” She hip-checked Laine’s office chair and it rolled to the side. Positioning her fingers over Laine’s keyboard, Tina spoke out loud as she tapped.

“Colin Baby. Haven’t stopped thinking about you since our perfect night of sex.”

“I’m not writing that.”

“You were so hot, I’ve been masturbating to those memories ever since.”
“I’m definitely not writing that.’
“But it’s true isn’t it?” Tina focused on the screen and kept typing. “I bet you’ve been jacking off, too – oh wait, the Brits say wanking, don’t they?”

Laine got out of her chair and physically removed Tina from her computer, hitting delete in the process.

“As an assistant and a friend you’ve gone a bit too far,” said Laine, but she couldn’t keep from smiling at Tina’s efforts to embolden her a little.

“I memorized his email address. I’m going to write to him if you don’t,” Tina threatened.

“I will.”

“Tell him to meet you in Florence. There are all those cheap flights from London. It won’t take long to pick up the painting, you’ll have days and days to indulge in wild passionate sex.”

“Reality check, Tina. He’s probably forgotten me, or he’s with someone else, or not interested. Or, most likely, it’s a bogus email.”

Tina frowned. Laine had wrestled her to the threshold of her office door, where she held her ground for one last challenge.

“Reality is a drag,” whined Tina. “That’s why we work in the arts, isn’t it? But if you’re so keen on reality, at least find out what’s
real
. Write to him, Laine. You’ve got nothing to lose.”

“Back to work,” said Laine, pushing Tina out the door. “I promise I’ll send him a bland, tasteful email by the end of the work day.”

“CC me on it, okay?” said Tina.

“No way.”

Laine returned to her desk, thinking about what Tina had said about having nothing to lose. But she did. She had her hope.

After Richard had dumped her just before last Christmas, and then was seen with someone else by New Years, to whom he planned to propose on Valentine’s Day, which made Laine, impulsively and uncharacteristically, book a last minute trip to Paris, where she literally quite accidentally met Colin Ellington on the Daru staircase in the Louvre, which lead to a night of steamy hot sex, Laine had finally felt hope bloom in her heart once again.

That hope had been sustaining her for the past three months, not masturbation, as Tina had implied (or at least not only that). So reaching out to Colin actually did mean a lot, and she did have something to lose, because if he had forgotten her, or didn’t care, or had given her a false email, then that tender hope that had been ballooning inside her would pop and she’d be left with the reality that her life might simply be that of a dour and dull librarian despite being surrounded by the beauty of art. She didn’t know if she’d be able to bear the disappointment. And that’s why she’d put off trying to contact him for so long.

But Tina was right, too. A beautiful hope wasn’t enough to subsist on. A delicious memory was still just a memory. If she wanted more from life she’d have to take some risks. Like sending an email to a stranger. Was it really such a risk? It seemed so silly to be afraid of writing down a few words, of reaching out, of asking for an answer to her wondering.

She would do it. She had to, because even if she had something more than nothing to lose, she would never gain anything new if she didn’t buck up her courage and try.

First she had to send her boss, Mark her latest report on the Italian acquisition. It was highly unusual that she would get to pick this one up in person. Everything was professionally shipped or handled by international physical couriers usually, but the Italian estate donating the painting (a small, obscure Botticelli) had been adamant about meeting a museum coalition representative in person before making the donation. Laine thought for sure Mark would go, but he’d tapped her instead. She felt so lucky. She wrote him a quick email, including a little thanks at the bottom for his faith in her as rep for the coalition, and then she attached the report file. She waited for the whooshing sound to confirm it had sent but she didn’t hear it. She realized the sound was off. She turned it back on and then clicked on her sent file to make sure it had gone through. She saw Mark Foster at the top of the list. Then her eyes bugged and she choked on her own inbreath. The name Colin Ellington was second on the list.

Panicking, Laine clicked on the sent message and saw what she feared: Tina’s partially composed message to ‘Colin Baby’.

Oh god.

Ohgodohgodohgodohgod
.

Laine frantically hit New Message, put OMG in the subject line, and composed the second hardest email she’d ever tried to write as fast as her fingers could fly.

Colin

“Bollocks,” said Colin seeing his dart hit the rim of the board and fall to the floor.

“Twenty quid, Ellington,” said Rudi.

Colin shoved his hand in his pocket and pulled out a note. He chucked it over to Rudi.

“Winner buys the loser a pint, remember.” Rudi nodded and headed toward the bar.

Colin checked his phone. Work had been slow the last few months. His collectors were getting more picky, but he’d recently heard about a few estate collections getting ready to go to auction, which might mean he’d be traveling again soon. Since Paris, he’d been to Greece, Turkey, Budapest and Dublin but only managed to secure two new pieces for his main buyer, Mihail Coone. He was courting a new buyer now, a recent widow whose wealthy husband had favored real estate over art but now that he was gone, Lady Madeline Allbright, was free to spend his money as she pleased, and art was her pleasure. Colin was waiting to hear back from her assistant to see if they wanted him to broker for them at auctions and private estate sales.

“Got a new tail to shake?” said Rudi nodding to Colin’s phone as he sloshed two pints on the already sticky table.

“It’s work, Mate. Got no time for play.”

“Bollocks to that. What about that Grecian goddess in Athens?”

Colin had made that one up, for Rudi’s sake. Actually, he hadn’t made her up entirely. She existed. They’d kissed, he’d pawed her small breasts, but he hadn’t felt the urge to take things further. Truth was, he hadn’t been himself since Paris. Since the American. He felt like a fool now. He’d left her his email address but she’d never written. He’d unlocked his spam folder and everything, just so he wouldn’t accidentally miss a missive, and for three months he’d been fielding relentless ads for cock rings and timeshares in India. At first he’d given her three days to make contact, and then three weeks, and then, for his own sake, to keep his own hope afloat, he’d extended the deadline for three months, in which time he’d actually bought a cock ring (still unwrapped and tucked in a drawer in his flat) and was dangerously close to signing up for a timeshare in Goa. Tomorrow, May fifteenth, marked the end of the three month period. He checked his email hopefully, feeling the hopelessness sitting at the sidelines waiting to move in.

“Yes,” he muttered triumphantly when he saw the email from Lady Allbright’s assistant, Keenan. The subject line, “It’s a go”, was all he needed to see.

“Looks I’ll be going to Italy next week,” he said to Rudi as the other emails loaded.

“Oh, dude. Italian tits are priceless.”

Colin glanced around. “Watch your language, Mate.”

A couple of legal assistant types had wandered into the pub and ordered two glasses of white wine. It was the after-work cocktail hour and the bars were filling up with the young, hip, and single of Shoreditch.

“And for that, I’m glad,” said Rudi, surveying the two wine-sipping lasses. “I can be couth when called for,” he added. “Especially if it can get me under those tight skirts.” He slurped suggestively on his lager.

Colin rolled his eyes at his friend. Habitually, he cast an appraising gaze at the ladies’ long legs until his phone dinged to say the final emails had downloaded.

He sat forward, alert, when he saw not one, but two emails from [email protected] The buzz of the pub faded into the background…

The first email, seemingly unfinished, got his heart beating erratically. The second made him smile.

Colin, if this reaches you, I want to say sorry for the previous email. It was a joke. I mean, not from me. My assistant — my friend — Tina did that. It wasn’t me. I’ve been meaning to write and I just… Well, I just hadn’t gotten around to it.

This part made Colin frown. Hadn’t gotten around to it? That made him feel like chopped liver. Those blasted Americans always made themselves seem so busy. As if that’s what made them important.

I really wanted to. Don’t get me wrong.