Swept Away by the Venetian Millionaire

Vito said he saw strength in her. He’d challenged her when she questioned it. In response, she’d snapped at him and stormed out with barely a thank-you for all his efforts to help her. Now that she thought about it all, it hadn’t been her proudest moment.

Maya sighed in resignation and slowly sat up in bed. It was no use. She wasn’t going to get any sleep no matter how hard she tried.

In any case, she needed to update the folks back home about the loss of her phone and credit cards. Hopefully, the correspondence wouldn’t lead to further questions about Matt. With no small amount of resignation, Maya propped open her laptop and logged into the hotel Wi-Fi network. After summarizing the essentials in a group email to her family and letting them know they’d only be able to contact her via email for a few days, she fired off a quick message to her bank explaining the loss of her credit cards. Then she called up the browser to do a quick check on various US news sites.

An email alert popped up immediately on her screen before she’d had so much as a chance to click on the appropriate icon. Her aunt. Maya should have known. The woman was constantly connected, mostly because she was constantly working. No real surprise there.

You lost your most essential belongings on the second day?

She’d included a laughing emoji but Maya had no doubt the response held a heavy dose of derision. Her aunt and cousins would never have been careless enough to let such a thing happen to them. Maya was the only one who had her head in the clouds. She no doubt owed it to her mother’s genes. The woman had been a true free spirit, constantly in pursuit of one artistic endeavor or another. Her father had indulged his wife’s less-than-stable career choices. Her aunt, uncle and cousins were much more practical. Bad enough they’d been burdened with the awkward and shy newly orphaned preteen. They’d been good to her; they really had. Still, she’d never felt the sense that she’d actually really fit in.

Maya typed out a quick response.

It’s an amusing story. Will tell you all about it sometime.

She hadn’t had a chance to hit Send before her aunt sent another message.

I’m sure Matt can bring a replacement phone and funds once he arrives. Honestly, Maya. How would you manage without him? When are you expecting him, anyway? We can’t seem to get a hold of him.

Hah! She’d just bet Matt wasn’t making himself available to her family these days. And Maya would have to discover quickly just how she’d manage without Matt by her side. To think, all these years she’d tried so hard to avoid letting her aunt and uncle down. Not to mention her two cousins. And now she was going to have to disappoint them about a broken engagement.

Maya wanted to slam the laptop shut and launch it across the room. As much as she hated to lie to her aunt yet again, her shattered relationship wasn’t the type of news one delivered via email from half a world away. The only thing to do was to ignore her aunt’s question for the time being. Though Maya knew the older woman wouldn’t let her get away with it for long.

Clicking back to the news sites, Maya worked to distract herself from all the jumbled thoughts scrambling through her brain. No wonder she was suffering from insomnia.

But that endeavor proved futile, as well. After a quick check on the Sox, her mind wandered back to the afternoon. More specifically, her thoughts returned to the man she’d spent it with. An image of the picture he’d sketched flashed through her mind. The idea that she might never see it again sent a surprising surge of sadness through her. She should have asked to keep it. As a way to remember all of this. A way to remember him.

But the whole notion was silly. It had been a simple impromptu lunch with a man she’d probably never lay eyes on again. Even if she did manage to somehow run into him before leaving Venice, they were from two different continents. Given the way she couldn’t stop thinking about him tonight, she wouldn’t need anything physical to provide memories of Vito Rameri.

Who was he, exactly? Any kind of artist prominent enough to have a studio in Venice had to be fairly successful. The flashing cursor on the search engine’s query bar was practically winking at her, daring her to do something to find out. Without giving herself a chance to think, she pulled the laptop close once more and typed in his name with the word “art.”