Italian for Beginners by Kristin Harmel
Praise for Kristin Harmel’s books!
The Art of
FRENCH KISSING
“Overflowing with bubbly fun, filled with delicious romance and madcap adventures, and, toujours, intoxicating with the magic of Paris… Like a bottle of champagne… You’ll drink it down in one glamorous gulp.”
—Julia Holden, author of One Dance in Paris
“A sweet, funny tale about losing love and finding yourself. Set against the backdrop of the most romantic city on earth, The Art of French Kissing takes us on an exciting whirlwind of glitz, glamour, and celebrity scandals—with a side order of reinvention.”
—Johanna Edwards, author of The Next Big Thing
“I’m a big fan of Kristin Harmel, and The Art of French Kissing is my favorite of her novels.”
—Melissa Senate, author of See Jane Date and Love You to Death
“Très magnifique! I loved this book and you will, too!… A sweet and adorable page-turner that will make you long for the City of Light.” —Brenda Janowitz, author of Scot on the Rocks
“A fun, lively story that made me fall in love with Paris all over again.” —Lynda Curyn, author of Bombshell
“Harmel’s novel is a fun, high-spirited piece of chick lit.”
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews Magazine
“A sweet, surprisingly gentle story… I enjoyed it.”
—MrMedia.com
THE BLONDE THEORY
“Entertaining.” —London Free Press
“Rush out and pick this one up. You’ll be glad you did. So entertaining that I won’t be surprised if this one ends up on the big screen.” —NightsandWeekends.com
“With a smart heroine willing to date as a bona fide ditz, there are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments… the true joy comes when Harper drops the silly blonde act and gives the shallow men she meets a piece of her mind.”
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews Magazine
HOW TO SLEEP WITH A MOVIE STAR
“Hilarious.” —Cosmopolitan
“We recommend How to Sleep with a Movie Star.”
—New York Daily News
“Hilarious… deliciously entertaining.”
—Sarah Mlynowski, author of Milkrun and Monkey Business
“Kristin Harmel dishes with disarming honesty and delivers a sparkling, delightful story about the push and pull between being average and being a celebrity.”
—Laura Caldwell, author of The Year of Living Famously and The Night I Got Lucky
“Forget the movie star! For a really good time, take this hilarious book to bed instead.”
—Jennifer O’Connell, author of Dress Rehearsal and Insider Dating
Copyright
The events and characters in this book are fictitious. Certain real locations and public figures are mentioned, but all other characters and events described in the book are totally imaginary.
Copyright © 2009 by Kristin Harmel
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
5 Spot
Hachette Book Group
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New York, NY 10017
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5 Spot is an imprint of Grand Central Publishing.
The 5 Spot name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
First eBook Edition: August 2009
ISBN: 978-0-446-55066-6
Contents
Praise for Kristin Harmel’s books!
Copyright
Also by Kristin Harmel
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
About the Author
5 Recipes Inspired by Italian for Beginners
To all my wonderful friends, who have taught me volumes about love, trust, and faith just by being yourselves. Words can’t express how much you all mean to me or how lucky I feel to have you in my life.
ALSO BY KRISTIN HARMEL
How to Sleep with a Movie Star
The Blonde Theory
The Art of French Kissing
Acknowledgments
I feel like my life gets better and better each year because of all of the wonderful people in it. I’m so lucky to have so many great friends and loved ones.
A special thank-you to Amy Tangerine, whose creativity and kindness inspire me; Gillian Zucker, who keeps me grounded; Lauren Elkin, who broadens my world; Kara Brown, for all the smiles (and for being my Rome traveling partner); and Kristen Milan Bost, who can complete my sentences and whose wedding I was so honored to be a part of (congratulations!). Thanks also to my amazing mother, who gave me a solid foundation and continues to surround me with love; to my sister, Karen, and brother, David, who are two of my favorite people in the world; and to my dad, who I am glad to be getting to know better. I’m also fortunate to have a great extended family—especially my wonderful grandparents, Donna, Steve, Anne, Pat, Fred, Merri, Derek, Jessica, Gregory, and Janet.
Thanks to all those whom I have the pleasure of working with, especially my talented, insightful editor, Karen Kosztolnyik; my wonderful agent, Jenny Bent; the publicity team of Elly Weisenberg and Melissa Bullock; and the 360 Media team of Tara Murphy and Ashley Hesseltine. Thanks also to Michelle Rowell of Piper-Heidsieck, Katarina Maloney of Pierce Mattie, and Jessica Eule, Shauna Maher, and Mara Piazza of Mediabistro.com. Thanks to my film manager, Andy Cohen, who becomes a better and better friend each year (I owe you a burger at Barney’s!); my People magazine editors Nancy Jeffrey and Moira Bailey; my UK editors Cat Cobain and Sara Porter; and of course Caryn Karmatz Rudy, Celia Johnson, and Mari Okuda at Grand Central. And a huge thanks to the writers who have become my dear friends, especially Megan Crane, Liza Palmer, Jane Porter, Alison Pace, Sarah Mlynowski, Lynda Curnyn, Melissa Senate, Brenda Janowitz, Laura Caldwell, Lauren Myracle, E. Lockhart, Robin Palmer, William McKeen, and Lisa Daily.
Thanks to my many wonderful, amazing, talented, kind friends, including: Scott Moore, Lisa Wilkes, Courtney Spanjers, Ryan Newell, Kendra Williams, Wendy Jo Moyer, Elizabeth Rivera, Chris Loomis, Leonard Holman, Megan Combs, Amber Draus, Willow Shambeck, Melixa Carbonell, Julie Walbroel, Sanjeev “Jeeves” Sirpal, Trish Stefonek, Krista Mettler, Don Clemence, Michelle Tauber, Christina Sivrich, Zena Polin, Wendy Chioji, Courtney Jaye, Ryan Dean, Ben Bledsoe, Lana Cabrera, Pat Cash, Courtney Harmel, Janine Harmel, Megan McDermott Lewis, Ryan Moore, the real Marco Cassan, Evan Lowenstein, Kate Atwood, Samantha Phillips, Steve Tran, the Rock Boat Girls (Maite, Amanda, Gail, and Michelle), Barry Cleveland, Michael Ghegan, Denny Hamlin, Steve Helling, Vanessa Parise, Amy Green, Ashley Tedder, and the Pearson family: Susan, Carleigh, Cole, and Luke.
To Amy, Courtney, and Gillian: May our TIC-TAC adventures continue as we raise a Harmtini, a Tangerinetini, a Courtini, and a Gilli-tini to our friendship at Katsuya! And of course to the Kristin Convention.
&n
And to all of you whose belief in love has been tested: hold tight to the belief that things work out the way they’re supposed to in the long run, even when life gets in the way. So just be you, treat others the way you’d want to be treated, and enjoy all the adventures along the way to your happily ever after.
Chapter One
It all began with a wedding.
My little sister, Becky, and I, along with a few cousins and friends, had been brushed, buffed, and polished to perfection that morning at our favorite salon on the Upper East Side. Vows had been written and rehearsed, something blue had been borrowed, and as I stood on the altar, watching my baby sister prepare to promise forever to a man she’d known for a year, I couldn’t help feeling a bit like I was the something old to her something new.
“Rebecca, do you take Jay to be your lawful husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and health, until death do you part?” asked the priest, gazing down at my sister.
“I do,” she said softly.
Her fiancé, Jay, echoed her vows as he looked at my redheaded sister, whose pale, freckled skin looked perfect swathed in the silk of her ivory Carolina Herrera dress.
Just as the priest was moving on to his next line, something serious about the vow of forever, I heard a low mumbling from the front row of the church. I tried to tune it out, knowing full well what it was. Not now, I thought. Please, not now.
But the mumbling got louder.
And then it took on the distinctively raspy Irish brogue of my grandmother.
“What’s this?” she asked loudly as my dad tried in vain to shush her. “Is that little Rebecca getting married?”
Another mumble ran through the church as my grandmother’s voice rose and floated through the congregation. Becky turned around, glanced at Grandma, and then looked at me in horror. I shrugged, helpless. What could I do? I was standing at the altar, several long yards away from the front row of pews. And clearly, Dad wasn’t having much luck shushing her.
“Mum!” I heard my father whisper desperately. “Shhhh! It’s Rebecca’s wedding!”
“Rebecca, you say?” demanded my grandmother loudly, her Irish brogue sharpened around the edges by a lifetime of smoking addiction. She coughed to punctuate her question. “Rebecca? But Rebecca’s the younger one! What about Cat?”
I closed my eyes briefly, hoping that perhaps my father would have the good sense to drag his mother from the church. But of course this was an Irish Catholic wedding—a wedding in our large Connelly clan, no less—and what good would it be without a little disruption from my grandmother?
“Yes, Mum, Rebecca’s the younger one,” Dad whispered soothingly. “You know that. Let’s talk about it after the ceremony, okay?”
There was silence for a second, and I thought with a little slice of hope that Grandma had agreed to delay their little chat. Slowly, I let out my breath, and I could hear a small swoosh of others throughout the church doing the same. Becky shot me a look of tentative relief and turned back to Jay.
The priest had just opened his mouth to speak when Grandma piped up again, her loud, raspy voice punctuating the still, musty air of the church.
“But where’s Cat?” she asked. I glanced around nervously, wondering if I should respond. “Where’s Cat?” she repeated, more loudly this time.
“She’s just there, Mum,” my father said. I could hear the weariness in his voice.
“Where?” Grandma demanded. “Not the one in the white dress, then?”
“No, Mum, that’s Rebecca,” Dad said as Grandma continued to scan the church wildly.
I looked from side to side nervously. Perhaps if I ignored her, she’d just disappear. I held my breath and tried counting backward from ten, a trick that had often worked to calm me down when I was a little girl. Please God, I prayed, please make Grandma stop talking. After all, this was a church. He had to listen to me here, didn’t He?
But instead of quieting down, Grandma began insistently repeating my name. “Cat?” she asked raspily, her voice rising. “Cat? Where’s Cat? Cat, dear?”
Gradually, her words drowned out Dad’s protests. I squeezed my eyes shut, wishing for the deluge of words to stop. When I cracked them open a few seconds later, Becky was staring down at me, her cheeks flushed with color.
“Do something!” she whispered urgently. “Please?”
I braced myself, took a deep breath, and turned around.
“I’m here, Grandma,” I croaked. My voice seemed to echo off the cold stone of the altar.
“Cat, dear!” Grandma exclaimed, her face lighting up. “I hardly recognized you, love! You’re wearing a dress! And you’ve done your hair!”
A small ripple of laughter ran through the church.
“Er, yes,” I said. “Listen, do you think we could discuss this later, possibly? Rebecca’s in the middle of getting married, and we’re causing a bit of a disruption.”
“But that’s what I wanted to talk to you about, dear!” Grandma exclaimed, coughing once again to punctuate her words. One slim, bony hand flew to cover her mouth, and the other smoothed down her kelly green dress, the one she wore to every family wedding, despite the fact that it had gone out of style approximately fifty years ago.
I glanced at my father. Dad, towering over his mother at six foot one, was staring at me helplessly with eyes full of apology.
“Everything’s fine, Grandma,” I soothed. “Let’s talk later.”
“But, Cat!” Grandma exclaimed. She paused to cough violently while Dad rapped on her back. “Cat, dear!” she resumed, after the coughing fit. “Your sister is much younger than you! And now she’s getting married? What about that nice young man you were dating, dear? Keith was it? Did you screw it up?”
A fresh wave of snickers ran through the church. I felt my mouth dry out, as if someone had filled it with a handful of cotton balls. The room began to swirl around me—just a little, not as if I was about to pass out, but the way it does sometimes when you’re dreaming.
That’s it! Perhaps this was all a dream. Of course it was! I mean, in what kind of twisted world did a thirty-four-year-old woman attend her twenty-nine-year-old sister’s wedding and have her grandmother ridicule her in front of 120 friends and family members? Obviously, this was some sort of devious trick on the part of my overactive imagination.
Just to be sure, I pinched myself. Hard.
Ouch.
Right. Well. Evidently, this was a deep sort of dream, the kind in which a pinch didn’t always work. So I pinched harder. Still nothing. I turned to glance at Rebecca.
“This isn’t really happening, is it?” I whispered. “I mean, this is obviously some kind of nightmare brought on by my subconscious reaction to you getting married before me, which, by the way, I’m very happy about. Right?”
Becky looked at me strangely. “Noooo,” she said slowly. “We’re all very much awake. Now, please, Cat! Do something!”
“Right,” I muttered, horror finally beginning to set in. “Um, Grandma,” I said gently. “Let’s talk after the ceremony, okay? I promise we can have a full discussion about just how grandly I’ve screwed up my life. Okay?”
My father was bent toward Grandma, trying to shush her, but it was clearly too late. She had something to say, and she was going to say it.
“I just don’t understand, dear!” she said loudly, pushing my father away with surprising strength. “You’re not ugly.”
“Thanks,” I said, glancing around at the faces of the congregation, some amused, some horrified.
“You’re not a dimwit,” Grandma continued.
“Thanks,” I repeated through clenched teeth.
“I’m sure you’ve held on to you
“Errrr,” I said, my face turning bright red. The snickers in the church seemed to get even louder, and Father Murphy cleared his throat. I closed my eyes for a moment, wondering about the odds of spontaneous combustion, which sounded like a lovely plan at the moment.
“So what’s the problem?” Grandma demanded after I had not, in fact, burst into flames on the spot. I glanced from side to side, seeking some escape, but of course there was none.
“Um,” I began again.
“You’re nearly an old maid, dear!” Grandma chirped as I contemplated how nice it would be to simply die on the spot at that very moment. She paused. “You’re running out of time!” she shrieked, flapping her arms suddenly above her head like a demented bird. And then, just as quickly, she sat down in the pew, smiled sweetly at me, and waved, as if we hadn’t just had a lengthy, revealing exchange in front of all my sister’s wedding guests. “Hello, dear!” she said brightly after a moment. “When did you get here?”
The congregation sat in stunned silence for a moment until Father Murphy cleared his throat.
“Um, right, then,” he said awkwardly. “That was, um, enlightening. Now if we could just return to the wedding?”
Becky glanced down at me with concern in her eyes and mouthed, “Are you okay?”
I nodded and forced a smile. “Of course!”
But the truth was that I was mortified, disgraced, and humiliated. But I’d felt that way before Grandma even opened her mouth. After all, when you’re six weeks away from turning thirty-five and your little sister has found the man of her dreams while you’re remaining steadfastly single after yet another emotionless breakup, it’s difficult not to feel like a failure. Even when you’re so happy for her that you could burst, there’s always a little voice in the back of your head that sounds suspiciously like your grandmother, asking, “What’s wrong with you? Why doesn’t anyone love you?”