Page 2 of Storm in a D Cup

And as I still lived outside of the Beautiful People Alliance, I often asked myself why two gorgeous and nice people who’d slept together, and decided to see more of each other, could let the relationship die. I mean, if the sex (cringe of jealousy) was great and conversation was brilliant, what could possibly go wrong in a relationship? What was it that constituted that special ingredient that you just couldn’t pluck out of thin air?

‘Only you could ask a question like that,’ Julian said with a chuckle. ‘When will you stop thinking it’s just about two bodies?’

‘Huh? It’s not?’

He caressed my cheek with his index, his eyes shining. ‘Of course not. It’s about communion. The kind that lasts beyond everything else.Ourkind of communion, Erica.’

Communion? Sure, Julian and I got along great, but what made him not look elsewhere in the times when we didn’t? Even you would wonder at it. I mean, he had plenty of choices, if our guests and his army of ex-flames visiting were anything to go by, including Polly Parker, a tap dancer, and Moira Mahoney, owner of at least a dozen fashion magazines and still ‘very fond’ of my husband. ‘Hang on to him, Erica,’ she’d warned me with a wink. ‘Watch out for the vultures.’ Meaning, first of all, her.

Don’t get me wrong. I know he loves me and all, but when I see all these classy women from his past sitting at my dinner table, all so cultured and glamorous and classy, all oh-so-put-together, I can’t help but wonder… why me? Why did he choose me, and not, say, the Nobel Prize winner? Why not the gold medalist? Why not the eminent surgeon? What could I possibly have that they don’t? It’s a question I have always asked myself and have yet to find an answer to. And it is the only fly in my champagne. I mean my lack of confidence is. Because God knows Julian has never given me a reason to doubt him or his love for me. So yes, it was all on me, and I would have to solve my issues on my own.

Sometimes I wondered how Julian managed to remain so down-to-earth with all the fame and connections. And his talent? Both Julian’s reader fans and baseball fans were waiting with bated breath. But I, his wife of five years, was allowed nowhere near the book – or even his study, for that matter, until it was finished.

That was the only thing I never liked about Julian being a writer. And the fact that to him running A Taste of Tuscany had become secondary. Not that he ever refused to collaborate or anything, but he was away a lot of the time, and although it had started out asmydream, I always hoped it could be his, too.

But, day by day, he’d carved his own parallel life outside our family routine, delegating his own chores on the property to our employees while concentrating more and more on his own craft. Which was his right, of course. But why did that make me feel excluded from his life? Weren’t couples supposed to have a sense of communion?

This had been a huge problem for us in the past. But I’d ultimately learned my lesson a few years ago when I was crazy jealous of his gorgeous publicist. After a rocky road that almost led to our big fat Italian break-up, we swore we’d never dothatagain, had managed to patch things up and soldiered on.

And despite all his sermons about beauty only being skin deep, yada yada, I still found it hard to believe that, in Julian’s loving eyes, my personality actually compensated for my looks.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not that ugly. At least I don’t think so. I’m just rather non-modelesque. Tall, I’m tall, and I could do with losing some weight. My curly brownish hair is always all over the place and I’m so insecure – and conscious of it – that I can sometimes come across as arrogant. But Julian knows that inside I’m pure mush.

‘Ah, Ameri-han men – no passion and verrry ambitious!’ Leonardo concluded for me. ‘Eri-ha, bemywoman and I treat you like a queen!’

Which I found very hard to believe, judging by his reputation. Leonardo Cortini lured the ladies, ‘loved’ them (as much as a misogynist could) and then left them hanging for all the time it took to make yet another full lap of the female population inhabiting the entire province of Siena, from the Val d’Orcia to Le Crete.

I can assure you it would take even Leonardo Cortini quite a while to exhaust the area, all the while, mind you, keeping telephone contact with his previous victims, promising to return. And when he completed the rounds (and got his ass kicked by some angry husbands in the process) hedidreturn, just in time to find the damsel in distress oh-so-grateful that he actually had kept his promise. Of course he would. Where else was he going to go? Because Leonardo Cortini had never, get this, been outside of Italy, can you believe it? With all his money and his fast cars, he never actuallytraveledanywhere.

Can you imagine actually sitting home and waiting for someone like that to call you on a Friday night? Come to think of it, that was beginning to sound likemyrelationship with Julian, minus the other women.

Because I knew lots of women who had their claws into married men and when someone began sniffing around, I kept a close (but silent) eye on my own guy. You wouldn’t believe the stuff I had to put up with even in broad daylight. Endless (and that’s a mouthful for a population of barely five thousand people) females parading themselves for Julian’s benefit at the market, on parents’ night or even in the piazza during our Sunday morning cappuccino.

Even the waiter at Nando’s, our favorite café, gave him the coy smile. From the morning when we went into town to run our errands, be it to get fresh milk (we had chickens for eggs but as far as farm animals were concerned I drew the line at cows) to our weekend strolls through the streets of Castellino or Cortona or Anghiari, we were always admired. Well, he was admired and I was envied.

Just to prove to you that I’m not imagining it, whenever we went to a shop or an eatery, I’d try to get the attention of the person at the counter, but they would ignore me. Until Julian walked in to see what was keeping me. And instantly the people in charge, mainly women, would turn to him, eager to please.

OK, I know he’s a heart-stopper, but are there really no other good-looking men available that they have to prey on mine? I worked hard to find him, ladies, and at the end of a twelve-year slog, karma finally decided to cut me some slack. So please leave my guy alone and go get your own, thank you very much. Why do people not behave themselves or remember their place?

Like this idiot following me home now, getting a clear, unobstructed view of my oversized derrière.

‘My husband will be back very soon,’ I bit off as Leonardo got out of his car, now towering over me.

‘Come home with me foraperitivi. I make you fantasticbruschette! And then, we’ll see what happens,sì?’ said the Big Bad Wolf to not-so-little old me as, with a sudden yank, he hefted my bike out of my hands. If this was his seduction technique, I wondered how he managed to pull anything more than a muscle. Again I gave him my world-famous hairy eyeball.

‘Uh, no, thanks,’ I assured him.

That’s when, smiling his expensive, fake-tanned smile, he put his hand on my arm. And I realized that we were in the middle of the infinite green and yellow countryside, where there were no proper main roads, let alone traffic whatsoever, particularly at this time of year. The wheat was still maturing in the fields, gently swaying, green over hill and dale, and so were the olives in their vast groves, and the grapes still clung lovingly to their vines. Nothing was ready to be reaped, much less me.

In the golden rays of the sinking sun, and the russet reflections reverberating from the fields, I looked at him and, despite my big, strong body, trembled with apprehension. He was much bigger than me. I swallowed, trying to gauge the seriousness of his intentions by the glint in his eye. And let me tell you – it wasn’t looking good.

‘Come on, Eri-ha,’ he whispered, now running his index finger up my arm. ‘I trrreat you verrry good.’

OhGodohGodohGod.I tried to catch my breath, to get some oxygen into my system to prepare for a damn good fight. If I struck out, I’d escalate this thing to a new level, which is something you don’t want to do, right? You hope the guy calms down. That is, if you can’t outrun him. Outrun a guy in a Ferrari? I tried to swallow but it wasn’t working. I could barely breathe.

‘She alreadyhassomeone treating her good,’ came my neighbor’s voice, thank you God, from out of the blue.

Marco, big, tall, cute in a very boyish, wholesome farmer way, and good as gold. I sagged in relief, so deep had my terror been that I hadn’t heard him coming. Marco and his wife Renata lived a mile down the road and had adopted us from Day One when we had arrived totally clueless and with a container full of furniture, home design magazines and a whole lot of dreams. Besides our real estate agents and notary public, they had been the first people we’d met in Castellino.

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