The Italian's Runaway Princess. Andrea Bolter

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СКАЧАТЬ far less than she had estimated for the first piece. She knew now that this trip would have to be on more of a budget than she’d originally envisioned.

      That didn’t matter. At least she was here.

      “I’ll need to sell more of my jewels.”

      “More of them? Does that mean you have already sold some?”

      Yes, but she didn’t need to tell that to Gio.

      “I had tried at a shop near the train station. That’s where those boys began following me.”

      “Florence is a big city with people both opulent and poor, honest and not. You should watch out at every turn.”

      Luciana was already learning that the hard way. But as they turned a corner into a piazza, a public square, her troubles receded and the widest of smiles swept across her face. Here it was. The Florence she’d seen in movies and travel websites, and read about in books. Firenze, the central city of Tuscany, with its centuries of trade and finance, art and medicine, religion and politics.

      People moved across the piazza in every different direction. Fashionable girls giggled as they snapped selfies of themselves. A tour group of older travelers dutifully stopped so that their guide could point out landmarks. Four men stood in front of a shop arguing, their loud voices and hand gestures marking them as uniquely Italian. A flock of children chased pigeons, their overjoyed faces bursting with surprise every time one of the birds made an unexpected escape. Two lovers sat close on a bench while they shared a fresh orange, the woman holding the peel in her hand.

      Every which way, people wove in between each other to get to where they were going. It was everything the princess had imagined it would be, alive and magnificent under the autumn of the Tuscan sky. She placed her hand over her mouth as she took it all in.

      This was what Luciana came to see. To be a part of this city that had always held her fascination, if only for a stolen moment of her lifetime. She drew in a slow breath. The air wasn’t as thick and pure as it was in pristine Izerote. Florence had a particular fragrance, one she suspected it had for centuries.

      It smelled like free will.

      Which she had never inhaled before.

      As if the panorama of all these people and their doings and their businesses and their architecture and their dogs wasn’t enough, Luciana stood witnessing it in the company of a chivalrous, and she had to acknowledge gorgeous, Italian man.

      For the first time she took notice of what Giovanni Grassi was wearing. A tweed blazer with a pink button-down shirt and tan tie, jeans with a brown belt and brown oxford shoes. All of impeccable quality. He looked perhaps like a young professor, the type schoolgirls would giggle around but loved to gape at as he explained the important trigonometry equation on a chalkboard behind him. Reluctant hottie. That was the moniker the celebrity websites used for his type.

      Hottie, for sure. Reluctant, she didn’t know yet.

      “Ah yes, Firenze,” Gio chimed in. “There’s nowhere like it in the world. Some things change, others remain the same as they have for centuries.”

      Nothing ever changed in Izerote, Luciana reflected. It lagged far behind the rest of the world in technology and culture and commerce. Her father, King Mario, and his father before him were not forward-thinking rulers like some royal families were. The price they’d paid for the lack of progress was steep, as many residents or their adult children were leaving the island.

      However, Princess Luciana was not in Florence to solve the issues of her island, although she didn’t doubt that in this great city of thought and industry many dilemmas of the world had been debated.

      “Here’s my situation, Gio,” Luciana started, not knowing what to do about her predicament. One way or another, this trip would come to an end. Either she’d have her three weeks here before she returned to Izerote to marry King Agustin and produce his heirs. Or her father would send someone to hunt after her and her visit would be cut short. Either way, now was all there was, so she had better make every second count. “I have no money. That’s why I need to sell some of my jewels, in order to pay for a hotel room.”

      “Sell your jewels. That sounds so positively archaic. You may have noticed this is modern day where people pay for goods and services with credit cards or through apps on their phone,” he said with a cute chuckle that sent a tingle down her spine. What a strange reaction she was having to this total stranger.

      She couldn’t explain to him that while she did carry credit cards, she couldn’t use them because they were traceable. That’s why she needed to obtain cash for the trip. “I know, it does sound rather medieval.”

      “Have you traveled forward in time? What era are you from?”

      “You have no idea how right you are.”

      “Are you running from something?”

      “You could say that.”

      “A mystery woman.”

      “You could say that, too.”

      “All right, Signorina Luci, if that’s really your name. For how long do you need a hotel room?”

      “Three weeks,” she answered with ease. Because it was exactly three weeks and one day until she was to marry. Three weeks. That’s how long she hoped to stay in Florence. If she had her druthers, she’d stay until the last possible minute and arrive back in Izerote just in time to be pinned into her wedding gown. The gown that had already been chosen for her, a chaste lacy puffball with a high neck and long sleeves that was as tight and confining as her impending marriage. Nothing like what she’d wear if the choice was up to her. If, for example, she was to be getting married of her own volition to a tall attractive man with sparkling blue eyes and golden curly hair.

      “Three weeks,” he repeated. “And how much do you expect to garner from the sale of those jewels?”

      Nowhere near what she thought she might, Luciana mused. So, realistically, considering the price she’d fetched in Barcelona, she quoted Gio a figure. Still unsure if she should be confiding her financial woes to him.

      “Twenty-one nights...”

      “Twenty-one,” she confirmed knowing that she wouldn’t need a hotel room in Florence on the twenty-second, after her wedding. She winced at the thought of her wedding night and what would be expected of her from King Agustin, a widower who presumably had more experience in the matrimonial bed than she did. Hopefully he’d be patient and compassionate toward her when the time came.

      “Then here is how much you’d have to spend each day.” Gio performed a mental calculation and gave her a number that was far less than the rate of the hotels she had been looking at online.

      “Do you think I could get a hotel room for that price? It doesn’t need to be fancy, only clean.”

      “Luci, for that money I don’t think you could find anything suitable, clean or safe.”

      He glanced at his watch.

      It wasn’t right to detain this man any longer, despite the fear that was returning in her.

      “I’ll figure something out. Thank you again for your assistance.”

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