Chapter 1

Laura Kinkaid was delighted to be in Italy, the land of romance and fine food.

She had decided it would be better to get all the romance she could possibly consume and to lay off the pasta because she was already a bit plump according to modern day standards and she had no intention of gaining any weight until she was safely married and then it wouldn’t make any difference because she would be having babies and it would all happen as fate decided.

It was no coincidence that she had memorized the Italian words for “salads” and for “fish” and practiced saying them over and over because she had found that by sticking to the salads without the cheese or dressing added and getting the fish cooked any way except frying was the best way to keep her weight down in the land of pasta. She had pizza on the mind but her father had informed her that the only pizza they had in Italy was imported from the good old USA and they absolutely hated it when Americans ordered it in one of their restaurants.

Her parents had been divorced ever since she was twelve years old and now at the ripe old age of nineteen she was ready to live with her father for the first time in several years. Her mother could care less because she was into one of those yoga inspired retreats up in the forests of Monterey leaving her lonely in the Hollywood duplex her mother had gotten in the divorce settlement. She still had a year and a half to go before she would have enough credits to graduate but it was a good time to take a gap year break to join her father at the Embassy in Rome, Italy where he had just recently been appointed as the Ambassador by the incoming President.

Of course, the primary motivation for her sudden move overseas was the depressing breakup with her fiancée of the past two years due to his decision to take up with an older divorced woman with oodles of money and a luxury condo up in the foothills with a pool and an entourage of servants to keep things orderly and clean. She had given Bruce her standard cherry, her anal cherry and had given him numerous oral sessions that left her gagging and wondering if this would continue in their married life. He had repaid her by cheating with Monique something or other with her bottomless cash reserves and the sports car she gifted him for moving in with her and taking orders like a good little boy.

The betrayal by Bruce was enough to cause her to consider committing suicide but her urge to get revenge pushed that silly thought from her mind. She didn’t know how to even start such a program of pay back but at least it was nice to consider it in the back of her mind as she rearranged her life to her new direction.

Her studies seemed almost nonsensical now that she had lost her motivation to continue in the same field of Psychology as her ex-boyfriend and she had decided to change her major to Political Science like her brother who was already on the staff of a congresswoman with committee status. Her father’s appointment cemented her decision and she looked forward to the year in Italy and learning how an American Embassy functioned doing the people’s business.

She already had her passport in order and she had packed and repacked twice already because she was nervous about what to take with her on the airplane with the new travel regulations and the limitation on weight. In fact she was more worried about the weight of her silly baggage than she was with the few extra pounds she had accumulated over the winter with Bruce encouraging her to always get dessert because he felt a meal wasn’t a meal without dessert. She had made a solemn vow that in the post-Bruce period she would not eat another dessert unless there was some mandatory celebration that demanded it by protocol.

She arranged for the Duplex to be professionally managed in her absence because there was no indication her mother would be returning from the Monterey area anytime soon.

Laura suspected her mom was fooling around with the yoga instructor up there at the Institute but that was really her business and she felt guilty about prying into her mother’s personal life because she had respected her own mistake with Bruce without making any snide comments. The guy was actually only a few years older than Laura but these days such things were not as important as they were just a generation ago and if husbands could find young replacement wives, why not put the shoe on the other foot and go for broke. Her mom was certainly still attractive in her subdued damsel in distress persona and she probably had a much more successful sex life than the unhappy Laura.

The airline was experiencing a distressing strike that grounded a lot of flights at the height of the season. Laura was ready to book a hotel room near the airport when she got a cable from her father that told her to take a taxi to the Air Force base and she would get a ride on one of the military flights into Rome as part of the NATO logistical command. Apparently, her father’s credentials were enough to warrant that sort of treatment and all she had to do was show up two hours before the flight and check in her luggage.

The aircraft was clearly not intended for comfortable passenger travel but the seats were just fine and there were uniformed attendants to give her food and drink and show her where the restrooms were located in the forward section. Some of the other passengers were wearing civilian clothes and she discovered they were being rotated into support jobs with the different agencies that handled the State Department and the Defense Department business in Rome. In some cases, the passengers were transferring to other military flights or commercial flights from Rome to other major countries in Europe and destinations further east. Several of the Air Force enlisted personnel were taking ground transportation to Aviano Airforce Base to take flights into the Middle East because sometimes direct flights from the US were not feasible with the current situation.

She felt a little out of place but nobody questioned her right to be there and they all seemed to be as friendly as one could expect under the circumstances. The man sitting in the seat next to her was in a Marine Major’s uniform. He tried to let her have her privacy but introduced himself as Major Mike Nickels and that he was headed to the Embassy as well to join the “Country Team”. He didn’t explain that to her and she didn’t want to sound stupid by asking so she just smiled and told him her father was the Ambassador and he pretty much kept quiet the rest of the flight.