Apricot Kisses by Winter Claudia

Author:Winter, Claudia [Winter, Claudia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AmazonCrossing
Published: 2015-12-01T08:00:00+00:00

Hanna

I prepared myself for all sorts of responses—anything from a one-minute laughing fit to a sermon. I even prepared myself for a torrent of French expletives. But I didn’t expect silence on the other end of the line.

“Claire, are you still there?” I whisper.

“Hm.”

“Is that all? You can’t come up with anything more than a lame ‘hm’?”

Silence again. In the background, I hear the sounds of a metropolis at night. How I’d love to be back in Berlin right now, sitting at my desk in the deserted office, listening to the clicking of my keyboard and the radio on low, while the muted sounds of cars and occasional honking come through the windows. A week ago, silly cow that I am, I had no idea that my life was so together.

“Oooh, I’m still sorting,” she finally says. An alarming word. She usually only says “sorting” when she’s talking about Jan’s socks.

“And how much longer do you need?” I ask.

“Hold on a moment. You don’t answer my calls for days. Then you call at one in the morning with a crazy love story and expect a coherent analysis from me? C’est impossible!” Claire starts laughing.

“What do you mean, ‘love story’?” I say, and she just laughs louder.

“First you have to toil in the kitchen so Fabrizio will take back his poor grandmother, who’s languishing in your underwear. Then he wants you to marry him so he’ll drop the suit. And now you—both of you—have to play the loving couple for his crazy family even though you aren’t in love. And on top of that, this Italian lord of the manor is not an obnoxious country boy, but an educated and extremely sexy man. So if you ask me, it definitely sounds like a love story. Actually, an amour fou, if you know what I mean—a tale of passion. Dime-novel writers would kill for that storyline.”

“But I don’t think Fabrizio is sexy at all.”

“Of course not,” Claire says. “Your nether regions have always been slower than your brain.”

I gasp. This conversation isn’t going the way I wanted it to. Whatever her reaction, I didn’t expect to be more confused after telling her everything.

“Claire, I know it’s a disaster. You don’t have to rub it in.”

“What do you want me to say?” Claire asks, and I can tell that she’s smiling. She drives me up the wall sometimes.

“What do you think? I want you to tell me how I can get out of this mess.”

“Pas du tout” is her prompt reply.

“What do you mean, ‘not at all’?”

“I mean absolutely not. There’s a reason you are where you are.” I can imagine her nonchalant shrug. “Make the best of it.”

Make the best of it? That’s easy for her to say. I close my eyes. “So you think I should actually marry him?” I say, even though the answer was obvious even before I called.

“What do you have to lose? Worst-case scenario, you can’t show your face in this Monte-whatever again. It seems like Signor Camini will keep his promise.

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