Page 94 of Sinful Temptations

“Is the foal okay?” Lydia asked. The beautiful Italian woman was seated in the front row. Her cheeks glowed with youthful excitement.

“How bad was she hurt?” Simone, the only American female on this tour, asked.

Roman squeezed past me. “Go on, tell them.” He slipped into his seat and shut the door.

I inhaled, long and steady, and reached for the microphone but paused. Dozens of images of what my hands had done in the past hour flashed across my eyes, and I pumped out a few squirts of hand sanitizer instead. It wasn’t enough. I could still smell Luca. And the dampness between my legs added to my squirming.

With the sanitizer rubbed in, I grabbed the microphone. “Good morning, everyone.” It was hard to believe it was still morning. “Let’s give Roman a round of applause for looking after you all in my absence.”

While I waited for the clapping to die down, I pieced together a story.

“So, as Roman mentioned, Luca asked me to help withMon Petit Chou,or Little Cream Puff,for those who don’t speak French.”The more I spoke, the easier the lie became. Fortunately, I could rely on the details of looking after her last month for most of my retelling.

A few of the women asked questions about the foal and Wild Fire, but nobody asked about Luca. Maybe I was the only one who’d actually noticed the stud riding the stallion.

Within a few minutes, I turned their attention away from what I’d been doing and onto what they’d been doing. With that little transition, I was back in my comfort zone, regalingthem with all the wonderful facts about Château de Fontainebleauthat Roman probably would have omitted.

After informing them of our next destination and recording their meal orders forLe Pailleronrestaurant in Lyon, I hung up the microphone and flopped into my seat.

I was absolutely exhausted. My bones felt like Jell-O, but it was my mind that was mush. It was like I’d run a marathon while simultaneously reciting all the countries in the world and their capital cities.

I huffed out a huge sigh that had my lips wobbling.

“You okay?”

“Couldn’t be better,” I lied again. Maybe this lying thing was easy after all. God knew I’d been on the receiving end of it often enough.

The momentum of the coach and my weary body soon had sleep beckoning. But I wasn’t treated to wonderful dreams.

Instead, my mind dwelled on the greatest lie I’d ever had to deal with.

That I wasn’t falling in love with Roman.

ChapterTwenty

Acouple of days later, after passing through Pisa and helping all my tourists take the obligatory photograph of them pretending to hold up the leaning tower, we cruised into Florence just after lunchtime.

We had a two-night stay in Florence. Day one we offered the optional winery tour of the Tuscan region. Day two’s optional tour was exploring the medieval city’s cathedrals, bridges, and museums, and of course the famous statue of David. I always did the day two tour. The winery tour, not so much.

After dealing with the drunk tourists in my early days with the European Dreamz tour, I’d left these tours with the driver and the lovely winery staff.

Today though, with that ticking clock booming loud and clear in my head, I am going to revisit the winery tour. I might even try a few of the wines.

As Roman guided the bus up the sweeping road toward the walled hamlet of Volpaia, high on a Chianti hill, I plucked a large A4 photo from my folder and grabbed the microphone. “Okay, who knows about the legend of the blackrooster?” I pointed at the photo of a wine bottle with theChianti Classicoseal emblem on it.

As expected, nobody raised their hands. It always saddened me that the young Italian tourists never seemed to know this interesting slice of our past. Then again, learning history was why many of them came on this tour. When they weren’t here for the sex, that is.

“Wine has been produced in the Chianti region dating as far back as 1398. The legend of the rooster stems from medieval times when Florence and Siena, two towns that are situated about one hundred miles apart, were at war with each other over this wine-growing region. But they came up with an ingenious idea for defining the boundary. It was decided that two knights would depart from their hometowns at sunrise and ride their horses as fast as they could toward the opposing town. Where the two riders met would be the boundary point for each district. So, you can imagine there was a lot riding on these horses, right? Literally.”

I chuckled at my own pun. But nobody else did, so I trudged on.

“But they didn’t have clocks back then, so how do you think they worked out when it was sunrise?”

“The sun,” Thomas, the rugged Australian up the back, responded with a waggle of his head and a smug grin.

“No. Being a hilly area, sunrise differed for each town. So, they used a rooster to crow at dawn. Like a starter gun, so to speak. In Siena, they chose a white rooster. The Florentines chose a black one.” I waved the photo. “Which one do you think won?”

“The black one,” Lydia said. Being an Italian, I was surprised that she wasn’t aware of this story. Then again, it was a bit of a legend in these parts, but perhaps not in southern Italy.

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