Marry Me in Italy

by Nicky Pellegrino

Genres: Women's Fiction; Contemporary Romance; Holiday Romance

Synopsis

It's the chance of a lifetime...

Skye has just discovered that her long-time love is cheating on her, so the last thing she's thinking about is a wedding! But when her husband Tim tells her that he's won an all-expenses paid wedding in idyllic Montenello, she can't help but think that a week in beautiful Italy could be just what she needs...

Anna is looking to make some big changes in her life now that she's hit the big 5-0. And so when she spots a rundown masseria for sale in a romantic Italian village, she jumps at the chance. But she certainly didn't expect to find such a handsome (and very distracting) neighbour in Dino!

One thing's for sure, this summer certainly has its surprises in store...

Release date: September 12, 2024

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 336

Sample

Augusto was sitting outside the bar in the main piazza of Montenello. He was wearing the sweater his daughter insisted he keep on unless the day was properly warm, and sipping the decaffeinated coffee his son said was best at his age. He did these things to make them happy, but very often the fuss seemed more exhausting than being elderly was.

While he tended not to think about his age very much, Augusto couldn’t deny he had been alive for many years, and all of them spent living here in this same hilltop town in Southern Italy.

Life moved slowly in Montenello and each day might seem almost the same as the last, but there was always something going on if you bothered to look for it. Settled at his favourite table, a little earlier than usual, Augusto surveyed the empty piazza. He could predict when his friend would roll up in the truck that he sold vegetables from. What time his daughter would open the trattoria next door to the bar. When the street-sweeper would arrive to start cleaning up confetti.

Not that the piazza needed sweeping quite so often nowadays. Augusto could remember a time when there seemed no end of brides and grooms emerging from the town hall in a flurry of confetti and standing beside the fountain posing for photographs. What had happened? Were fewer people getting married or were they choosing other places to exchange their vows?

If Italy’s most romantic town was falling out of fashion, then action must be taken. Livelihoods depended on the business the weddings brought in. How would the hotel survive without them?

Alone outside the bar, Augusto searched his mind for a solution, certain he could find one. Years ago, when he was working at the town hall, he had helped transform Montenello. It had been his idea to sell off its abandoned buildings for the bargain price of one euro. His scheme had been a great success and before long, rather than crumbling into ruins, the place began to thrive.

Augusto loved this town and the prospect of a reversal in its fortunes was unacceptable to him. Alone outside the bar, he thought long and hard about how he might be able to help.

Clearly what was needed was another bold scheme, one that that would draw publicity, and remind the world that Montenello existed. With its tangle of narrow streets, fresh mountain air and views across the valley below, it was as perfect for a wedding as any other place and likely more affordable. People only needed to hear about it. But how?

Half-closing his eyes, Augusto sensed an idea shimmering on the edges of his mind. He focused, thinking longer and harder, frowning with the effort of such concentration, before reaching for his smartphone. Smiling at the screen, he started to tap, quite slowly because he wanted to get this absolutely right. When he had finished, he had the wording of an advertisement that he hoped would run in magazines and newspapers, and be shared all over the internet, reaching people around the world, capturing their imaginations.

Win a dream wedding in Italy’s most romantic town

Every couple that books to marry in the picturesque hilltop town of Montenello this summer will receive a cash reward of 1,000 euro. And one lucky pair will win a dream wedding package, with everything they need to say ‘I do’ in style. So, if you are in love, why not marry in Montenello?

Reading over what he had composed, Augusto was certain this was the answer. A reward and a competition, what a good idea. Some people were bound to say the town couldn’t afford it, but he would explain they couldn’t afford not to. This new scheme was going to bring in more bookings and create excitement. In the end, it would be worth it.

Augusto still had some influence at the town hall, even though he was long retired. Almost every morning his friend the mayor was in the habit of meeting him at the bar so they could drink a coffee together. At times the mayor, a much younger man, might share a problem, and then Augusto would offer advice. It always pleased him to be able to do so.

Today by the time he appeared, Augusto was buzzing. He could hardly wait for his friend to settle down beside him.

‘Are you OK?’ asked the mayor, sensing the older man’s excitement. ‘Did they let you drink the real coffee for a change today?’

‘No, no I have come up with a plan.’ Augusto was impatient to share it. ‘It is a way to reinvigorate the town, bring in more business and revenue, and I am certain it can be done. Let me tell you all about it.’

The mayor nodded. From experience he knew that Augusto was always worth listening to. It was no exaggeration to say Salvio Valentini might not still be the mayor of Montenello, without him.

‘Va bene,’ he said. ‘Tell me.’

Everything about that day seemed the same as the hundreds that had gone before. There was no warning, no hint at all, that at precisely 11.58 a.m. the life Ana loved would be snatched away. All she had built and nurtured, almost everything she cared about – gone just like that. Perhaps she ought to have seen it coming, but if there were any warning signs, Ana had managed to miss them.

That morning she had woken at dawn as always, done twenty minutes of stretching exercises, drunk her coffee and spent a few moments arranging her platinum blonde hair into a chignon. Then she had dressed in tailored charcoal trousers and a matching fitted shirt and, after peering out of the window, added a rain jacket. Walking to work through the parks, whether it was wet or dry, was an important part of her routine. Ana liked routines. With her schedule rigorously planned, her mind felt free to focus on other, more creative, things.

She was thinking about Christmas as she walked through Kensington Gardens, even though it was still early April. That was the thing about working on a food magazine, you were always planning months ahead and focusing on warming soups and stews, when all you actually wanted to eat was refreshing salads. Ana had been the editor of Culinaria magazine for more than two decades. She had steered it through issue after issue, so to think about wintry plum puddings just as spring’s daffodils and crocuses were pushing their bright heads out of the ground, didn’t seem unusual.

The Christmas issue was always a particular challenge. How to make it traditional enough to please the readers and yet sufficiently different to all the festive editions that had gone before. That was what Ana was considering, as she skirted the Round Pond and headed towards the Peter Pan statue.

Culinaria’s office was in Mayfair and Ana’s habit was to walk there briskly, without checking her phone, even if she heard it ring or messages coming through. Nothing was so urgent that it couldn’t wait until she reached her desk, where her assistant would have left the latest editions of other glossy magazines carefully fanned out beside her primrose-coloured Moleskine diary with all the day’s appointments written in.

Once in the office Ana swapped her trainers for heels, checked that her chignon remained in place and reddened her lips with MAC Ruby Woo before settling down to work. From that moment on she would be busy non-stop but so long as she had managed a morning walk to clear her mind, she could cope with whatever the job threw at her. At least so Ana had always imagined.

Every day, no matter how much there was to do, she made a point of wandering through Culinaria’s offices, checking in with the salespeople, exchanging a few words with her editorial team, spending time in the test kitchen to taste whatever recipes they happened to be trialling. She did this partly to keep the staff on their toes – they never knew quite when she might appear – but also because she loved it, seeing all those people working away, cogs in the efficient machine that every single month produced Britain’s most-loved food publication.

That April morning there was a three-hour planning meeting in her diary, and afterwards lunch at Scott’s with some advertising clients, then page proofs to clear for the next issue. A normal day, perhaps even a slightly dull one.

The planning meeting tried Ana’s patience. What everyone wanted for the front cover of the Christmas issue was a spectacular cake but nobody could agree on what it should look like. They were still arguing when Lucy, her assistant, put her head around the door and caught her attention.

Ana assumed she must be running late for her lunch. ‘I’ll have to leave you with this for now,’ she said, already on her feet and glancing at the Hermès Tank watch that had been a gift to herself eight years ago for her fiftieth birthday.

Lucy’s complexion was pinker than usual. ‘Your lunch has been cancelled,’ she said, as Ana hurried out of the room. ‘They want to see you upstairs, on the fifth floor.’

‘Who wants to see me?’ Ana hated plans being changed at the last minute.

‘Mr Verhoeven.’

‘I thought he was in the States?’ Ana glanced at Lucy. ‘We had a meeting scheduled for next week, didn’t we? What’s this about?’

‘I don’t really know, but I think it might have something to do with the website.’ Lucy was Ana’s eyes and ears in the office. If there was a rumour, she would hear it. She was plugged into a network of personal assistants.

‘Oh right, the website.’ Far too much of Ana’s time had gone into that already. It had badly needed a refresh but as far as she was concerned, she was finished with it. They had a really good digital editor onboard now, so shouldn’t she be taking care of things?

‘I need two minutes,’ she told Lucy. ‘Tell him I’m on my way.’

In the bathroom she reapplied her MAC Ruby Woo lipstick, the shade she had worn every single working day since 1999. She smoothed her hair and took a couple of deep breaths. Whatever the problem with the website might be, she would deal with it then get back to her magazine, which was what she really cared about.

The fifth-floor offices always felt slightly too air conditioned and yet somehow still stifling. Ana’s heels sank into the deep carpet as she walked towards Christopher Verhoeven’s office.

It was his father Paul who had hired her back in the late eighties. He had recognised Ana’s talent and promoted her upwards, rung by rung, until she won the most glittering prize, editorship of Culinaria. Paul had died two years ago, felled by a heart attack, and privately Ana thought his son had been out of his depth ever since.

Glancing at her watch, before pushing open the door of his office, she saw that it wasn’t yet midday. ‘Good morning,’ she called, striding in and Christopher seemed almost startled as he looked up from his computer screen.

Ana prided herself on being able to speak to anyone but sitting down opposite him, there was an unusually awkward silence.

‘The website,’ she said, taking charge. ‘I was just looking at it and I’m very happy with the refresh. There are a couple of things that need fine-tuning but on the whole, I think it’s working well.’

The old Culinaria website had been clunky and outdated. It was Ana who had pushed for a relaunch and hired the young digital editor then schooled her in all of the magazine’s most important brand values.

‘Tammy Wong is doing a good job, I think,’ she said to Christopher now, as he stared at her. Paul had possessed a rakish charm and way too much self-confidence; his son always seemed to look half-terrified.

Ana was going to get this meeting over with and treat herself to lunch, she decided. There was a little place in Soho doing a truffled macaroni cheese toasted sandwich that she had been meaning to try for ages. She wasn’t sorry that the lunch at Scott’s had been cancelled. It would be nice to have a little time completely to herself in the middle of the day.

‘You’re happy with the job that Tammy is doing?’ she asked, crisply. ‘The website is getting good feedback?’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Christopher, filling a water glass for her from a jug on his desk. Ana noticed that it had slices of fresh lemon floating in it. She hated the bitter tang of lemony water, nevertheless she took a sip, politely.

‘We couldn’t be more excited about the new website,’ Christopher continued, as if reading from a script. ‘It’s helping us to reach our readers in a more relevant way. We’re covering more categories, connecting with them like never before and they are loving the access to daily content.’

‘That’s great,’ said Ana, wondering if she should just eat a light salad for lunch as, later this evening, she was meant to be attending a degustation dinner.

‘We’re excited about the growth and opportunity this brings,’ Christopher continued. ‘We love the printed magazine, of course, but paper costs are up, advertising revenue is down, and so the timing seems right.’

‘I’m sorry, the timing for what?’ asked Ana, wondering if she had missed something important when her attention had wandered.

‘To stop publishing the monthly magazine,’ he said, slowly and carefully.

‘I’m sorry?’ Ana asked again, assuming she must have misheard.

‘We’re going to stop printing physical copies of Culinaria and focus all our resources on developing the website,’ Christopher confirmed.

‘You can’t do that,’ she said, and her voice sounded odd, far away and very faint.

‘The decision has been made.’

‘But readers love Culinaria.’ She was outraged. ‘It’s been publishing for over ninety years, it didn’t even miss an issue during the Second World War.’

‘Times are changing and we have to move with them. The future is digital.’

Ana wasn’t prepared to accept that. ‘The magazine is still making money, isn’t it?’

‘For now, yes.’ Christopher sat back in his chair and gave a resigned shrug. ‘But the projected figures aren’t good.’

‘What if I bought it from you?’ As she said the words, Ana was already thinking about how she might pull that off.

Christopher was quick to dash any hopes. ‘It’s not for sale. As I said, we’re committed to the website.’

‘You’ll be keeping staff on … the test kitchen crew, the sub-editors, designers?’

He shook his head. ‘Almost everyone will go, aside from a very small digital team that Tammy Wong will lead.’

‘You’re firing me too,’ Ana realised, so shocked that the words came out as a whisper.

‘Not firing,’ Christopher said. ‘You’re hugely valued by this company but unfortunately there isn’t a role here for you anymore so it’s time for you to pursue other opportunities.’

‘When … when do you intend to do this?’ Ana managed to stammer.

‘The change is effective immediately.’

‘But we’re about to go to press with the next issue,’ Ana told him.

‘Any material from that can be passed on to the website team. There won’t be another magazine.’

‘But …’ she tried to object.

‘The rest of your staff should stop work,’ he said firmly. ‘Right away.’

The most recent edition of Culinaria was on his desk, a glorious springtime issue with a bouquet of white asparagus and purple chive flowers on the cover. Ana stared at it; the last magazine ever; it seemed impossible.

‘I’m sending out a company-wide email at 1 p.m. but thought you’d want the chance to tell the team yourself,’ Christopher continued.

Ana closed her eyes for a few seconds, and focused on her breathing. When she opened them again, it was to find Christopher on his feet, a signal that it was time for her to leave. She wanted to scream, to sweep everything from his oversized desk and onto the floor, to slap his face. Tempting as it was, she didn’t do any of those things.

‘For what it’s worth, I think you’ll regret this,’ she said calmly, before walking out of the room and wading through the too-soft carpet towards the lifts.

In the few moments it took to reach Culinaria’s floor, Ana tried to gather her thoughts. She had an hour to break the news, to call any members of staff who were off sick or on maternity leave, to decide what to say to them. An hour was all the notice Christopher Verhoeven had thought it worth giving her. As the lift doors opened, she struggled to contain her fury.

Striding out, deep in thought, she almost walked right into Sara the Art Director, who was pacing the corridor, a folder clutched to her chest.

‘Oh, Ana good, you’re still here,’ she said, thrusting a piece of A4 paper towards her. ‘This is our Christmas cover. It’s elegant but still festive enough; I know it will work.’

Ana found herself examining an image of an elaborate cake, automatically giving it her careful consideration, before realising with a jolt that it didn’t matter anymore because there wasn’t going to be a Christmas issue.

‘It was created by The Lost Cakery,’ continued Sara. ‘This woman in deepest Somerset that I’ve discovered. She’s a genius and I’d love to highlight her work.’

‘Forget the cake,’ Ana told her. ‘I want to see everyone in the test kitchen. Ask Lucy to help you round them up.’

‘What, all of us?’ Sarah sounded taken aback.

‘Anyone who works for Culinaria yes, come to the test kitchen, immediately.’

The kitchen was at the heart of the magazine, where every single recipe they published was trialled over and over again until it was foolproof and perfect. It was like an ordinary home kitchen, only bigger, and there was almost always a smell of warm sugar and melting butter wafting from its open door and down the hallways.

If you were having a bad day you came to the kitchen. If you were hungry or sad, stressed or tired you found refuge there, knowing they would give you something good to eat, fresh baking or runny cheese, perhaps even pour you a glass of wine.

As Ana strode in the cooks barely looked up. They were used to her appearing without any warning.

‘Everybody, can I have your attention,’ she called. ‘Stop what you’re doing. Put your tools down, turn the ovens off.’

They looked surprised, but no one argued, not even Tessa the usually stroppy food editor. There must have been something about Ana’s face or in her tone of voice. Then the rest of the staff started filing in and before long the room was crammed with people, all of them silent, all of them waiting.

Ana opened her mouth and heard her own voice, steadier now, authoritative even.

‘It is with a very heavy heart that I have to pass on some bad news that I have literally only just heard myself. A decision has been made to stop publishing Culinaria magazine. Only the website will remain. As of today, the rest of us are finishing work.’

Several voices gasped ‘No’ and ‘What?’. Somebody let out a cry of distress. Ana waited for them to settle.

‘This has come as a huge shock. I’m devastated for all of us and for our readers. It makes no sense to me at all, but there’s nothing I can do. Mr Verhoeven has said that he will be letting the whole company know very shortly and I’m sure afterwards Human Resources will be available to answer any questions.’ Ana stared at them all, at their pale faces and wide eyes. ‘For now, I don’t know what else to say. This is … this is …’

Her assistant touched her shoulder and Ana realised that her cheeks were wet with tears. As Lucy steered her towards a chair, people’s voices rose around her. Why was this happening? How could it be? When was such a thing decided? Ana had no answers.

She watched as the wine editor unlocked the walk-in cupboard that served as a cellar and started pulling out bottles. Tessa and her team handed out glasses and soon everyone had a full one in their hand and they were opening the fridges, emptying them of anything that was ready to eat, their faces growing redder and voices louder as they repeated over and over again that they couldn’t believe this was happening.

‘Ana, I’m so sorry.’ It was Tammy Wong, the digital editor she had gone to such lengths to encourage and train.

‘You already knew,’ Ana realised. ‘He told you before me.’

Tammy screwed up her face. ‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated.

‘I can’t imagine that it’s going to be much fun, your job now,’ Ana couldn’t resist saying. ‘Just a lot of hard work.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ said Tammy. ‘You had the best of it – the lunches and the events, the travel.’

‘I did,’ Ana agreed, looking round the room at her team, all handpicked, many that she counted as good friends as well as colleagues.

‘When will you be leaving?’ Tammy wanted to know.

‘You know what …’ Ana took a sip of her wine, dimly registering that it was something special. ‘I have absolutely no idea.’

Once they had drunk every drop of wine in the cellar, her staff decided to move on to the pub. Ana didn’t go with them in case her being there made everyone feel awkward. Instead, she stayed in the office as small groups of them left. When it had emptied out completely, she went through, looking at abandoned desks cluttered with cookery books, at scrawled Post-it notes reminding people of the things they had needed to do, at banks of computers with darkened screens. She looked at her world, the place she had been happy to come to every single working day since her career began. It almost broke her.

Ana blinked and shook her head. Then she eased off her heels and laced up her trainers, before leaving the building with only the briefest backwards glance and walking through the parks, past the Peter Pan statue and the Round Pond, just as she had a few hours earlier when this day had seemed set to be the same as any other.

Sometimes it feels like I’m made of sugar. Like it’s filling my lungs and my veins, seeping out of my pores, and I might just dissolve into a sticky, syrupy puddle of it. So much sugar. Powder fine icing sugar for glazes and creamy fillings, soft dark brown for caramels, caster for light cakes, coconut for the illusion of health. I tell myself that it’s an act of love baking all these sweet treats which are mostly for people I’ll never meet.

I’ve always been a baker. As a little kid I made apple pies and Victoria sponges with my nana and in my teens I made tray-loads of biscuits for school fairs and village fetes. Later, working in an office, I was always the one bringing in home-made treats. And after I had kids, I got into cake decorating and became the mum who made amazing creations every birthday.

It was because of Tim that I turned my hobby into a career. I’m no entrepreneur; he is the one with the bold visions. We wouldn’t be here now, living in Lost Cottage, if he hadn’t fallen in love with the little cedar house in a clearing on the edge of a woodland. I might have been deterred by practicalities – the size of the mortgage, the secluded location – but once Tim had seen Lost Cottage we absolutely had to have it, even if the conservatory was shabby and the garage in bad shape.

‘We’ll borrow more money, extend the conservatory, turn the garage into an annexe,’ said Tim, already envisaging what it would look like. As usual he was unstoppable.

To make extra cash, I started taking commissions for celebration cakes, mostly from friends and other mums at Becky and Josh’s school. All my weekends and evenings were spent in the kitchen but I loved to see the joy on people’s faces when I delivered a towering wedding cake covered in rosebuds or a pink unicorn cake for a little girl. And it satisfied this urge to be creative that I’d always had.

I wasn’t prepared for how quickly things grew. People shared photos of my cake creations on their social media pages and the orders doubled, then tripled. I used up all my annual leave and when that ran out, I had to take sick days to meet all my commitments.

Tim did some sums and worked out that if I became a full-time baker, and turned the annexe into a commercial kitchen, there was the potential to make more than I could in my job.

And so, the Lost Cakery was launched and my little business flourished just as Tim had promised it would. To begin with I tried to do everything myself, until unsurprisingly I burnt out completely. That’s when I hired Meera to help.

She turned up to an interview and the very first thing she said was, ‘I hate cakes.’

‘What, all cakes?’ I asked, looking at this apparition covered in flower tattoos and diamond studs.

‘I don’t eat sugar at all,’ she told me. ‘I think it’s toxic.’

‘You don’t have to eat the cakes you just have to help me make and deliver them. Would that be a problem?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘And you might not want to mention the whole sugar-is-toxic thing to customers,’ I said, pretty sure that Meera wasn’t the right person for the job, but forced to hire her anyway because she was the only one who had bothered applying.

Sometimes now I wake up in the night and panic about what I’ll do when Meera leaves me. She does more than help bake cakes and deliver them. She keeps me sane.

It can get lonely here at Lost Cottage when the kids are at school or off with their friends, and Tim is caught up in whatever his latest obsession might be. For a while it was pottery and we still have a kiln and potter’s wheel stored in one of the sheds. There’s a sailing dinghy in the other and the spare room has been taken over by a screen-printing press. I wouldn’t mind having some of that space for storage and Tim keeps promising a clear out but it never happens.

Meera can’t stand Tim, which is odd because he’s one of those people that everybody tends to love, a life-and-soul-of-the-party type. She took a strong dislike to him the very first time they met. I think he’d tried to explain something to her, a theory about recycling the cake boxes that was entirely impractical and would have created more work. Tim has lots of ideas and not all of them are good ones. Meera doesn’t have any time for him at all. Whenever he’s around, she tends to stay quiet. But if we’re alone, she’ll chat as we’re working and tell me about whatever guy or girl she’s dating, or a new tattoo she’s thinking of having, or her father’s distress that she isn’t ever planning on returning to her law degree.

Then Meera will disappear with a tray of passionfruit cupcakes for a café in Clifton or a fudge brownie cake shaped like a spaceship for some little boy’s birthday and I’ll be on my own with my view of the trees and strangers walking their dogs or riding horses along the bridle path behind the willow fence that skirts our property.

If they happen to glance through the lace of branches, and their eyes drift across the wildflower meadow and beyond the cottage garden, they might glimpse me red-faced and wearing the mesh hairnet I keep on at all times for hygie. . .