The Sweet Life (5 page)

His brow cleared. ‘Of course! It is wise of you to make the question. I am driver for the Australian Embassy. Celia Albright, she send me. She make the apology, but she has the urgent meeting. To do with the trade. Così – it is just I, Luca.’

Janey’s smile returned – though her heart was still thundering a little – which in turn made Luca smile.

‘It is okay now, to go?’ he asked, gesturing at the car.

‘It is very, um, okay,’ Janey replied with a grin that lit up her features.

Luca went to open the back door to allow Janey to sit in solitary splendour like a visiting head of state. ‘Oh, I’d much rather sit next to you,’ she said shyly. ‘If that’s okay. Then you can tell me about all the places we ’re passing so that I’ll remember everything exactly the way I saw it and be able to tell my friends.’

‘You ’ave never been to Roma?’ Luca asked with surprise as he clicked the boot shut and returned to open the front passenger door for her. Janey could tell from his expression that she was not his usual type of sophisticated passenger.

Janey shook her head. ‘I’ve never been anywhere. This is the first time I’ve ever been out of Australia. So I want to drink it all in, every last tree, building and, uh, traffic island.’

She felt her face flush an awful beetroot red.
If that didn’t
sound kooky and weird
, she thought, wishing her stupid tongue would fall out,
then nothing would
.

Luca just smiled. ‘Bene!’ he said as he dropped into the seat beside her and slid on his rock-and-roll blue-tinted aviators. ‘Then we will take the long way, no? And I will show you the places per i turisti
and
the secret places – where to get the good coffee, the gelato and the pasticcerie . . .’

And with that, Luca slid the large black car into gear and they were gunning down the motorway into Rome at a speed that took Janey’s breath away.

Luca was even better than his word.

As promised, he drove her past all the usual places, like the Colosseum and the Vatican, pointing out the smart shopping streets and telling her the best times to visit the crazy tourist haunts like Trevi Fountain and the Pantheon. But he also showed her the tiny side street that would take her to a shop that sold only toys made out of wood, and the store that made the most beautiful writing paper she’d ever seen. And not only that, he threw the car into a ridiculously tiny, totally illegal parking spot and took her down a winding cobbled lane that led to the best coffee in Rome made by the barista with the most attitude in Rome and bought her a macchiato (‘It is the only way to drink the coffee, signorina’). Then he urged her back into the car and whisked her up and down narrow laneways to point out the places where the gelato, pasta or pizza was good enough to cross town for, where to buy the best leather gloves in the world, the most high-fashion shoes for not-so-high-fashion prices.

‘Because I know about the women and the shoes,’ he said knowingly, which made Janey’s heart lurch in her chest as she wondered whether he had a girlfriend and how old he was, and how she was so not his type that she shouldn’t even be wondering about stupid stuff like that.

And then Luca double-parked outside an alimentari – or grocery shop – and conjured up a delicious lunch of things she’d never tried before: panino with bresaola and bocconcini, topped with a simple rocket and tomato salad, with takeaway cups of freshly squeezed lemon juice over ice. They ate perched on the side of a tumbling Renaissance fountain beneath shady trees in the gardens of the glorious Villa Borghese, and it felt to Janey as though she’d known Luca forever.

Usually she was a tongue-tied, blushing mess when it came to meeting boys, but somehow she found herself really
talking
to Luca. She’d even stopped stammering! It was a miracle. Janey told him all about her mum, her friends, herself and what she hoped for one day.

‘Em is a total movie buff,’ Janey said between sips of her deliciously sour drink. ‘She knows every frame of
La Dolce
Vita
like she shot it, instead of Fellini, and she can’t believe I’m
here
and
she’s
back in Australia trying to stay warm.’

For a second, Janey recalled the Fellini she’d met online, and she shot Luca a quick sidelong look. But nothing in the guy’s expression had changed at the mention of the famous director’s name. He just continued to look drop-dead gorgeous and, amazingly, interested in what she was saying. Janey relaxed a little more.

‘My other friend, Gabs, is a diva in waiting. The
good
kind! She has the biggest, brassiest singing voice you’ve ever heard. I really think she ’ll be world famous one day. And she’s so warm, and so – oh, I don’t know –
including
, that when she talks to you, it’s like she’s reached out and given you a hug. While Ness is just stunning. Blonde, tall, lean, beautiful inside and out, and she’s got the greenest green cat’s eyes you’ve ever seen and is so nice that she lent me all the clothes I’m wearing . . .’

Janey stopped speaking and blushed.
Now I’m going to
sound like a complete idiot who can’t even dress herself
. She self-consciously tucked a stray strand of wavy hair behind one ear.

‘You are lucky to have such friends! It says much about you,’ said Luca, which was the perfect thing to say and put Janey so much at ease that when Luca’s mobile phone rang and he commenced to bark into it in clipped Italian, she realised that it was now way past noon and Luca had a job to return to.

He flipped his mobile shut.

‘Mi dispiace,’ he said regretfully, ‘but I am shortly expected at the Ministero della Difesa Aeronautica and I will be late if we do not go now.’

Luca guided Janey out of the gardens and back to the car. A moment later he was navigating the crazy traffic on the Corso Italia as though he had a death wish.

He saw Janey clutch the edges of her seat from the corner of his eye and laughed out loud.

‘What can I say?’ he shrugged as he slid his sunglasses back on and overtook two speeding trucks and a merging van. ‘It is Italy, it is the way we drive, the way we are.’

Janey smiled back weakly and wished the road to Celia’s place would last forever, even if she wasn’t sure she’d make it there in one piece.

A short time later, Luca guided the black car into an impossibly tight parking spot in front of an elegant 1920s villa that housed some of the senior staff of the Australian Embassy. The villa was in a graceful suburb located just north of the towering ancient city walls that surround the historical centre of Rome and its legendary seven hills.

‘We are here,’ Luca said, releasing Janey’s seatbelt with a flourish. He sprang out of the car and opened her door. ‘Signora Albright and her daughter occupy Appartamento 2C. You ascend there, and then press the security, you understand?’

Janey nodded. ‘Well, goodbye, and, um, thank you,’ she said, wondering whether she’d ever see him again.

Luca, already on his mobile speaking Italian to somebody else, retrieved Janey’s suitcase and placed the handle in her hand.

It had to be a woman
, thought Janey with a twinge as Luca jumped back into the car, still talking and smiling,
to have
him looking like that
.

With a last wave that she wasn’t sure he’d even registered, Janey paused beneath the grand front portico of the villa, her heart in her mouth as she watched Luca’s death-defying u-turn.

He’s total heart attack material
, she thought.
But in
such
a
good way
.

The entrance to the villa was blocked by wrought iron security doors that were at least three metres high. Janey scanned the keypad on the wall and pressed the button for 2C.

‘Pronto?’ purred a young female voice over the intercom.

Janey wondered if she had arrived at the right place. ‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised. ‘I’m looking for Celia Albright.’ She suddenly realised how tired she was. Being with Luca had masked it, but now it seemed almost too much of an effort to stand upright.

There was a long pause, during which Janey thought the girl might have hung up or walked away.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ the voice finally drawled through the speaker in lightly accented English. ‘You’re
late
.’

The security doors clicked open, and Janey found herself standing in front of the kind of black, wrought iron, vintage cage lift that she’d only seen in movies starring Audrey Hepburn.

She pressed the button for the second floor. The villa had three floors with several apartments on each one. As the lift ascended, Janey glimpsed the first landing through the bars of the lift. It was decorated in subtle shades of cream, muted green and gold, with tasteful urns, paintings and antiques placed about the communal hallway.

As the lift doors opened onto the second floor, Janey found herself face to face with a girl about her age, who did a visible double take before her face resumed a pleasant half smile.

The girl possessed the kind of dark Italian beauty that turns heads. She had long waving black hair, tanned skin, liquid brown eyes and carmine lips. She was also effortlessly glamorous in a floaty baby-doll tunic, skinny jeans and a pair of camel wedge sandals with impossibly high heels.

Janey was so tired that it took her a long moment to register that the girl was
not
Celia Albright. ‘I’m sorry, you are . . . ?’ She hesitated.

‘I could ask you the same question!’ the girl replied, smiling. ‘But I wouldn’t have to.’ She gestured for Janey to follow her through the ornate doorway of 2C. ‘I’ve been expecting you for
hours
, darling. You’re lucky to even make it inside, because I was about to give up and head out for lunch with my friends and
you’ve
got no key. I was afraid it was going to be ships passing in the night.’

She gave a little laugh, breezing ahead of Janey without bothering to introduce herself or to give a tour of the glorious, high-ceilinged apartment they were walking through, as though Janey had seen it all before. Janey had to remind herself to close her mouth.
This was home for the next two weeks?

‘This is your room,’ the girl indicated. ‘Bathroom’s over there.’

She sailed out again and left Janey to look around the bedroom, which contained a beautiful antique bed piled high with pillows and ivory linen, a lovely old bedside table with a pile of classic Australian novels on it, and a battered leather armchair. The room was probably one of the apartment’s smaller ones, with a view over a busy street corner into several other graceful old apartment buildings, rather than the internal courtyard garden in which fountains played. But Janey loved every bit of it.

While she was unpacking her clothes into the built-in wardrobe with sliding mirrored doors that took up one whole wall, she heard the buzzer sound several times, followed by different voices breaking into Italian.

Heading out to the bathroom to put down her toiletry bag, Janey was waylaid by the girl and four of her friends, two other girls and two boys.

‘This is her,’ the girl smiled. Pointing a finger at each of the teenagers, she said for Janey’s benefit, ‘Paolo, Brandon, Minka and Luz.’ Janey nodded as she found herself at the receiving end of several interested stares.