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  Letters to the Baumgartners © November 2011 by Selena Kitt

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  First Edition November 2011

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  Letters to the Baumgartners

  By Selena Kitt

  Danielle Stuart is spending a year abroad studying in Venice, but while she loves the romance of the language and the beauty of country, she finds herself more and more confused by her growing feelings for a gondolier named Nico and her now ex-husband, Mason, who has shown up on her doorstep looking to reconcile. Desperate Dani writes to the Baumgartners in hopes her former lovers might help her clarify her muddled emotions. Finding herself torn between the two men, she reveals her dizzying dilemma, only to discover, thanks to the Baumgartners’ insights and her own sense of sexual discovery, that she may not have to choose after all.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Bonus Excerpt!

  More Books by Selena Kitt

  More from Excessica

  Chapter One

  Dear Carrie and Doc,

  I cannot believe Janie is turning a year old in March! How is it even possible? I know you were so worried when she was born two months early—we all were—such a tiny baby in an incubator with all those tubes and feeds. Poor girl. But look at her now! The pictures you sent are tacked to a bulletin board in my little room at Cara Lucia’s. She exclaims over Janie’s picture every time she sees it—and inevitably asks me, “When are you getting married and having babies?” She either wants to feed you or marry you off. Of course, every old Italian woman in Venice seems to have the same goals for the younger ones. It’s all about unione e bambini!

  And yes, I’ve told her about Mason. And Isabella.

  In spite of what everyone seems to think, I didn’t come here to run away. You bring your problems with you anyway, right? That’s what they say. But I have no interest in marriage again, and having children seems like a distant dream.

  But you guys, I can’t tell you how glad I am that you have little Janie. You look so happy in the photos, I could just burst. I hope Janie has an amazing first birthday and she likes my gift. Cara Lucia made it, in case you thought I’d turned domestic or something. Isn’t it beautiful? She’ll look like an angel in it, I know. Send pictures! The women here can weave and knit faster than they can shear the sheep!

  I wish I could be there! In three more months, my student exchange will be up, and I’ll be looking for a job, most likely back in the states, unless I can get my visa extended. Maybe I can find something in Michigan, near you guys? Although the thought of being so close to Mason again makes my stomach go all fluttery. Is it wrong for me to miss him still? It’s not that I doubt my decision. He was clearly not ready to be a grown-up and have a grown-up relationship, and between his mother issues and his refusal to accept or support my coming to Italy, I know I did the right thing.

  But I loved him, and I still miss him.

  And I miss you guys too. So much. More than I could ever say. Even if I’m not interested in finding any long-term sort of relationship right now, I have to admit, I’m a little lonely. It’s just me and Jezebel against the world—and while I love my kitty and she’s great at keeping me warm at night, there’s still something missing…

  * * * *

  No one but tourists traveled in gondolas.

  I wouldn't have set foot in one under normal circumstances but I’d missed the water-bus and there wasn't a water-taxi in sight—they were all down near the Grand Canal waiting to take tourists from Carnavale to their dinner reservations after the festivities.

  I was desperate when I approached the gondolier who would change my life. He was stretched out in his gondola, which was tied to a post, wearing the usual gondolier uniform—a black and white horizontally striped long-sleeved shirt. It wasn’t warm, so he had a black down vest on over that, but the requisite flat, wide brimmed straw hat with a red sash tied around it was propped over his face against a dreary mid-day Italian drizzle. To me, he looked like an Amish referee.

  I didn't even warn him—I just stepped into the boat, kicking his calf as I took a seat to wake him up.

  “Eighty euro for forty minutes.” He spoke English in a thick Italian accent, but he didn’t move from his reclined position.

  “No need to give me the usual tourist crap.” My Italian was nearly perfect and the gondolier grunted fully awake, peering out at me from under the brim of his hat, his eyes hidden in shadow. “I just need a ride.”

  “Where to?” He spoke Italian with me now that it was clear I wasn't a tourist. “This isn't a taxi.”

  “If you hadn’t noticed, there aren't any.” I waved my hand toward the empty waterway. Practically everyone was down at the Piazza San Marco, enjoying the very last day of a two-week Carnavale celebration. I, for one, was glad it was finally over.

  “What's so important it can't wait?” he inquired, but he was already untying the gondola and pushing off. The initial rocking motion always made me momentarily woozy and I clutched the sides of the boat.

  “I just need to post something.” I patted my bag where both letter and package waited. The Italian mail service was unreliable and slow, and I’d already waited too long to send it because Cara Lucia insisted on adding a knitted cap to go with the sweater she’d made. It had to get to the states in time for my little goddaughter’s birthday just three weeks away.

  “So you don’t want the usual tour?” He spoke casual Italian with me and I smiled inwardly, proud. I’d been studying the language for years, but it had taken my immersion into the lifestyle and culture to really make me fluent. With my dark hair and eyes, I could probably pass for Italian, rather than the Midwest white bread mongrel breed I really was.

  “No, grazie.” I huddled at the end of the gondola, wishing for the canopy of a water-taxi. The weather was more mist than rain. February in Italy was capricious. It could rain, or snow, or be sunny—all in one day.

  I grabbed the sides of the boat as the gondolier reached under one of the seats, making the gondola rock gently as we slid through the water. I
should have been used to all the jostling after living in Venice for eight months, but the fact that every time I wanted to travel anywhere, I had to use a mode of transportation that required me to move off of solid land, still made me nervous.

  “Siete freddi,” he said, handing me a blanket. It was knitted—probably by his Italian mother or aunt, I guessed—quite beautiful, in fact.

  “No, I’m not cold,” I lied, continuing in Italian, trying not to let my teeth clatter together.

  The gondolier raised an eyebrow but didn’t call me on my bluff, putting the blanket down on the seat in front of me, taking a step back and then hopping up onto the front edge of the gondola. The whole boat tilted with the motion and I gasped, clutching the sides, gritting my teeth as he used his long pole, back and forth, to steer us through the current.

  “Be careful up there!” I remarked, watching as he took a wide stance, balanced at the very end of the gondola. I never understood how they could do that.

  “This isn’t the city for a woman afraid of water,” he remarked, grinning when I rolled my eyes in his direction. He was the youngest gondolier I’d ever seen, probably my age, his dark hair curling under the lip of his hat, his full lips parted in a smile.

  “I’m not afraid of water,” I protested. “I just… don’t like it.”

  “Like a cat.” He laughed. “You can swim, but you’d rather not?”

  “Something like that.”

  “A pretty girl like you should be down in the Piazza, dressed up for Carnavale.”

  I rolled my eyes and tried to make myself smaller against the other side of the gondola. “I don’t like parties either.”

  “What do you like?”

  I glared at him. “Gondoliers who mind their own business.”

  He staggered, his hand over his heart, groaning as if he were in a great deal of pain. The dramatic gesture made the boat rock and I gasped, hanging on.

  “Hey!” I protested. “Don’t do that!”

  “You break-a my heart.” He said this in English, like a typical Italian, and it made me laugh out loud in spite of myself. His switch back to Italian made my stomach flutter. Hearing the language spoken—especially by someone decidedly tall, dark and handsome—still made me kind of swoon a little. “That’s better. You’re a true beauty when you smile.”

  “Flattery will get you nowhere.” So I lied.

  “What will get me somewhere?” The mischievous glint in his eyes made my stomach do another little flip. There were plenty of men in Italy, some of them very nice-looking, all of them, young and old, flirtatious and outgoing—but so far, I’d stayed immune to charm of Italian men. Mostly by sheer will, I had to admit.

  “Not rocking the boat,” I retorted, sticking my tongue out at him.

  He laughed, shifting his hip, making the gondola see-saw on the water. “Ah, but I like to ‘rock the boat.’ Isn’t that what you Americans say?”

  I frowned. “How did you know I was American?”

  “I didn’t.” His grin stretched ear-to-ear. “But I do now.”

  I couldn’t help smiling at him. “That wasn’t very nice.”

  “I’m not a nice man.” His eyebrows knitted and he scowled in my direction. “In fact, I’m a very bad, bad man.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Then that bright smile was back again. “But don’t American women like ‘bad boys?’”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “American television of course.”

  I snorted. “Of course.”

  “So it’s not true?”

  “Oh it’s true.” I nodded sagely. “All American woman like bad boys. And men in uniforms. And men with big bank accounts. And great big…”

  I let my sentence trail off, looking sideways at him.

  “Well one out of four isn’t bad, eh?” He shrugged, using his long pole—no metaphor there, I thought wryly—to steer us through the waterways of Venice.

  “Are you going to make me guess which one?” I teased. I knew I was flirting with him, encouraging him, in fact. What was wrong with me today?

  “No, I would never make you guess.” He met my eyes, his look quite serious. I felt my cheeks flush and was glad for the chill in the air. The rain had finally stopped, and although the water was choppy, it reflected a bit of hazy sun trying to make its way through the clouds.

  “So what are you doing here in Italia, Americano?” He changed the subject as smoothly as he navigated his boat through the water.

  “I’m in an exchange program. Studying Italian.”

  “Of course.” He nodded, as if he’d guessed. He probably had—there were plenty of foreign exchange students in Italy, although most were undergraduates, still in their college partying days, spending long hours drinking wine in the cafés during the day when they weren’t in class and dancing at clubs into the wee hours of the night. I was a graduate student, far more serious about my studies and the time I spent in Italy, since I had to finish my thesis in just one year.

  “Do you need a study partner?” he asked, flirting again.

  I didn’t rebuff him. “Are you offering your services?”

  “In any way I can assist you.” He swept his hat off his head and bowed low. His balance up there on the edge of the gondola took my breath away.

  “Do you think I need practice?” I protested.

  “Your Italian is good,” he admitted. “But practice makes perfect, eh? Isn’t that what Americans say?”

  “Oh look, yet another masked man.” I pointed toward the shore where someone was dressed up in costume. They were everywhere I turned this week, men, women and children all made up in masks and feathers, satin and lace. “I feel like I’m in an episode of The Lone Ranger.”

  The Italian blinked at me. “The Lone…what?”

  “I thought you watched American TV.” I smiled. “It’s an old television show.”

  “How can you come to Italy and not attend Carnavale?” He looked genuinely puzzled by my lack of interest.

  “It’s just a big Mardi Gras, right?” I shrugged. “You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.”

  “There is nothing like Carnavale!” the Italian man protested.

  “Yes there is. We celebrate it in New Orleans just like you do here. Parades and costumes. Well, we’re a little more crude about it I guess. Women flash their breasts for some beads and baubles. Typical Americans, eh?”

  “I like this custom.” He grinned.

  “I’m not religious,” I admitted. “So I don’t give up anything for Lent or do much on Fat Tuesday.”

  “Not Catholic?”

  I shook my head.

  “My mother is crossing herself and saying a prayer for you right now.” He winked. “So what do you Americans do on this ‘Fat Tuesday?’”

  “Well, in America, mostly people go to work and eat Paczkis.”

  “Paczkis. Aren’t those Polish donuts?”

  “Indeed they are,” I agreed. “About five hundred calories a piece.”

  He smirked. “Sounds delightful.”

  “Now you start to understand why I’m in Italy instead of the states.”

  “But you’re not at Carnavale!”

  I glanced up at him, shading my eyes, the sun finally making a full appearance. “Neither are you.”

  “Ah, true, but a man has to earn his bread.”

  I looked around the empty canal. There were a few boats docked and some people on the streets, but most of them were at the Piazza. “You do a lot of gondola rides during Carnavale?”

  “Yes, it’s our busiest week in the winter, although I thought about taking today off and attending the festivities. The last day of Carnavale is always the grandest.” He smiled down at me. “But now I’m glad I didn’t.”

  “Do you own your own boat?” I asked, trying to change the subject, nowhere near as smooth as he was. Going to post a letter usually took me ten minutes via the waterways, tops, but taking a gondola was slowing down the whole process
considerably.

  “I do,” he said. “My boat, my business. I like to be in control.”

  My breath went away at his words, my mouth dry. I looked away from him, not able to meet his gaze, grabbing the blanket he’d left and pulling it over my knees.

  “I think the whole Carnavale thing is overrated. It’s all for tourists.” I made another attempt to steer the conversation elsewhere. “It’s been costumes everywhere I go for the past two weeks. Too much noise, too many crowds.”

  “Ah, but bella, the food alone is worth the crowds on the streets!” His eyes rolled back and he rubbed his belly, smacking his lips as if he could taste some delicacy on his tongue. Italians were always so overly demonstrative—that was one stereotype that had proved to be true.

  “Is it good?” I found myself thinking of the bread, cheese and fruit I had left for dinner back at my flat.

  “Good?” His eyes snapped open and he threw his arms wide, nearly losing his pole. “Mio Dio! It’s to die for! Isn’t that what you Americans say when it’s too good for words?”

  I smiled. “Yes, that’s what we Americans say.”

  “You should come to dinner with me at least.” He concentrated now on steering the long boat down another narrow canal—we were almost to the post office.

  I quickly made excuses. “Oh, I really don’t feel like going out, not with all the people…”

  “Not out.” He slowed the boat using his long pole. “To my home. Come see how we really do Shrove Tuesday in Venice. You’ll leave so full I’ll have to carry you home.”

  “Is that your evil plan, bad boy?” I teased as the gondola came to a stop. He used a rope around a post to pull the boat in closer to the shore.

  He laughed. “Yes, that’s my evil plan. Are you a willing victim?”

  “I don’t even know your name,” I reminded him.

  “Nico Bianchi.” He held out his hand and I shook it, feeling the warm press of his palm against mine.

  “Dani,” I replied. “Danielle Stuart.”

  He nodded, satisfied. “See, now we are not strangers.”