Chocolate Lovers

Romance with a soft centre

Alice looked up as a white Fiat pulled up outside the café. It was a quiet morning and she could do with some customers to distract her from nibbling the chocolates – not to mention take her mind off the solicitor’s letter that had come through her door that morning.

Of course, there was no guarantee that the driver was coming to the café. They may have stopped to visit her neighbours, the florist or the butcher – or just to admire the wide, sparkling pond on the far side of the road and the lush green common beyond.

Alice thought that was the case when a man with broad shoulders and glossy black hair stepped from the car and stood straight-backed, fists on hips, facing the picture postcard view.

Then he turned and struck the same ostentatious pose, facing her café.

With his chin thrust high in the air, his lips stretched wide over a pearly grin and his dark hair gleaming as brightly as his clingy white t-shirt, he reminded her of a rooster, showing off in a farmyard. With rooster-like movements, he grabbed a briefcase from his car and strutted towards the café, where he struck another dramatic pose in the doorway.

“What a beautiful spot!” he boomed in an Italian accent with an operatic ring. He thrust out an arm to indicate the vacant tables and chairs on the pavement under the window. “The perfect spot to enjoy the view with a crisp Italian wine!”

“I’m afraid we don’t sell wine,” Alice giggled.

“Then I have come to the right place!” He slapped his briefcase on the counter, snapped off the catches with a flourish, and pulled a bottle from the chilled interior. “The flavour of Eeeee-taly!” He declared. “As fresh as the dew on the grapes in my mama’s vineyard!”

He tugged a disposable cup from its cellophane and said, “One sip and you’ll buy every bottle I have in the car!”

“I’m sorry, I really can’t buy wine,” Alice protested. “I’m not licensed.”

“Try it anyway!” He popped the cork and glugged out a measure.

“Well, OK, thanks.” Alice blushed as she took a sip. The overpowering Italian really was quite a dish!

“Mm, that is nice,” she agreed. “But I’m sorry, I’m not in the market for–”

“Oh, what is a poor Italian wine seller to do? Nobody is buying today!” He threw up his arms in a theatrical display of despair. “Not to worry. I’ll have a cappuccino while I’m here.”

His phone rang and he pulled it from the back pocket of his stylish jeans.

“And now my mama is on my back! Excuse me.” Leaving his wine on the counter, he headed for the door talking in noisy, rapid-fire Italian.

Feeling like she’d been spun around by a whirlwind, Alice turned to her coffee machine. She was glad she’d invested in the best beans. As eccentric as the wine merchant was, a sip of his produce had left her in no doubt that he valued quality.

She wondered if she should buy a bottle for her own use. Not that she had anything to celebrate, but she supposed she could always drown her sorrows.

While the Italian sat at a pavement table, talking and gesticulating, Alice

He reminded her of a ROOSTER STRUTTING around in a FARMYARD

decorated his cappuccino with a chocolate powder smile.

She gazed at the selection of homemade chocolates that she always served with her coffees and wondered which one to give him. Dark chocolate almond with a crust of sea salt? No, too sophisticated – that wasn’t him at all. Peppermint truffle? Too fluffy. She settled on a cranberry heart wrapped in shiny red foil. He looked like an over expressive romantic, and she was suddenly feeling quite flirty herself.

Flipping the door sign to closed, Alice took out her phone to check the café’s Facebook page. There was a message from Giorgio Ferrelli, whose profile picture she recognised instantly.

I find you on Facebook! She could almost hear the wine seller’s exuberant accent as she read the comment. I come back next week. Your chocolate is the best in the world!

Thanks! She thumbed her reply. You can buy a bag to take with you.

She attached a photo of one of the little gift bags of six different chocolates that she’d started selling. They’d proved popular locally, although the truth was, she just liked making the fancy little treats – and eating them, too.

Giorgio replied instantly, I buy one for mean done to take home to Mama!

He added a string of a dozen emoji hearts, and Alice couldn’t help laughing.

Out of curiosity, she clicked on his profile and gazed at the cover photo of his tanned and grinning face, wine glass raised, with the Italian Alps in the background. His timeline was a succession of similar selfies in the towns across England and France that he visited on his travels.

His “friends” photos were a cluster of chic girls with black hair, olive complexions and names like Chiara.

Alice was a typically pale and freckly English rose. She bet the flamboyant European had a girl in every town. Well, she had no intention of becoming

one of them. She did look forward to his return, though. He was such a ray of continental sunshine. He reminded her of carefree holidays.

At the very least, he took her mind off the fact that she might have to sell the café to give her ex his half of the business back.

Mmm, not bad!” The manager of the supermarket put his fingers to his lips to stop the crumbs of a lime and coconut ball from spilling out as he spoke.

Alice had expected someone older but the guy looked about ten years her junior, probably fresh out of uni.

They were standing at the customer services desk of her local supermarket, with a gift bag of chocolates open on the counter.

“Well, I like’ em,” said the curvy customer services assistant, as she swallowed the last of a white chocolate and pistachio square. “Would you mind if I try another?”

“They’ve been selling well at the café,” said Alice, her cheeks heating with embarrassment, “and I wondered if, well… perhaps…”

The truth was that she’d never once thought of selling her confectionery on a larger scale. Making it was just a hobby that she’d been refining since her teens, always trying out new flavours and decorating the chocolates with increasingly intricate designs.

Giorgio had convinced her it was time she shared her gift with the world. And the fact was that she needed an income source other than the café. Eventually, she’d decided that if her Italian friend could boldly walk into shops and sell wine, then she could do the same with her chocolates.

“What’s the worst they can do, throw you out?” he’d demanded, the last time he was in the café.

Well, that was exactly what Alice had feared they might do when, after four walks around the car park, she’d finally plucked up enough courage to slink shyly up to the customer service desk.

“You’re in luck,” the youthful manager said as he swallowed his treat. “Our regional buyer is in store at the moment. I’ll go and get him…”

How you get on? Giorgio messaged her from Cannes. Alice was sitting up in bed with her phone. Facebook chats with Giorgio had become part of her nightly routine. They talked about everything and anything, often during the day, too, brightening dull moments in the café with jokey exchanges punctuated with funny gifs, LOLs, smiley emojis and, from him, strings of red hearts.

She knew it was just a bit of banter to pass the time while he parked up before a sales appointment, or sat on the ferry heading back across the Channel, but she looked forward to checking her phone and seeing those little red notification symbols that said he’d sent a message.

She flopped into her pillow with a sigh and typed, It’ s more complicated than I’ d thought. They like th echo cs but said I’ d need a factory to make them. Proper packaging, market research, hygiene…

She added a teary-eyed emoji of despair and clicked send.

Of course you’ ll need a factory, Giorgio typed back. You can’t make them all in your kitchen LO L!

They gave me a list of factories that might handle small scale production, she typed. But I don’ t know where to start. A few minutes passed, then a message appeared… How about we go to factories together? Giorgio asked. I’ll be back in England in a couple of weeks. We gothen? Wouldyou? The thought of going into some business meetings with the handsome Giorgio at her side sent a thrill through her. We can be partners! He shot back. You make them, I sell them! Alice sent him a big heart. As she switched off her phone for the night, though, she couldn’t help thinking of her ex and wondering if history was repeating itself. The café had been Nathan’s idea; she’d just happened to like cooking. She’d never felt at home with the business side. Then again, she reminded herself as she clicked off the light, it was she, not Nathan, who had put in the hours to make the café work.

Ithink that’s the one for us!” Giorgio declared as they walked across the factory car park to his Fiat. “Good clean premises. Big brand clients. He likes the chocolates, too!”

Alice blew out her cheeks. She didn’t feel like her feet were touching the sunny tarmac. As they’d followed the factory owner on a guided tour of his steamy, sweetly scented building, passing automated biscuit-cutters, giant ovens and production line workers in floury overalls and hairnets, she’d felt like the most terrible fake.

Giorgio had filled the factory floor with his operatic tenor, overflowing with plans for “the best-selling chocolates England has ever seen!”

Alice, meanwhile, had slunk at his side and hoped the millionaire factory boss wouldn’t notice that she was a penniless café owner who only made chocolate fancies for fun.

“You’re forgetting the price of the minimum order,” she reminded Giorgio now they were alone. “Plus the cost of designing and printing the packaging. Then there’s marketing, advertising…”

Even if she sold the café – which she’d probably have to anyway – she wouldn’t come near to raising the upfront costs of starting a chocolate business.

“Then we go to the bank and

He had CONVINCED her it was time to SHARE her gift with the WORLD

How WONDERFUL to leave her CARES behind for four days of ROMANCE

borrow!” Giorgio said confidently. “But first,” he touched her chin and gently lifted her face towards him. “First we have dinner, my little sugar mouse.”

Her heart quickening, Alice wondered if she should mix business with pleasure. It hadn’t worked with Nathan. But as she gazed into the depths of Giorgio’s chocolate swirl eyes, she wondered if she’d be able to stop herself.

Over the next month, Alice learned that chocolates were not the way to a bank manager’s heart.

One after another, the men and women in suits chewed on a gourmet chocolate, politely listened to their hopes and dreams – and just as politely said “no”.

Even with Giorgio throwing in his savings, no one wanted to back them.

As they slumped together on a pavement bench outside the latest bank to turn them down,

Alice wondered if it was for the best. For a while she’d caught Giorgio’s excitement, but she didn’t feel like a high-flying business woman inside.

“There’s only one person left to ask,” Giorgio announced, as he chewed thoughtfully on a coffee and orange creme. “Mama!”

Alice looked at him with trepidation. Giorgio’s animated phone calls with his mother suggested a combative relationship, although she guessed that might just be the way Italians expressed themselves.

The vineyard’s matriarch certainly cut a forbidding figure on the wine company’s website.

Widowed young, Signora Ferrelli had devoted her life to raising six children and establishing one of the most respected vineyards in Lombardy. Tanned, statuesque and unsmiling in elegant all-black clothes, she wasn’t the sort of woman Alice would ever have fancied asking for a loan.

“You’ll have to come to Italy with me,” said Giorgio. “Mama only does business face to face.”

They made love in Paris, in a hotel room facing the Eiffel Tower, and in a chateau in the snowy Alps. How could they not have, in such beautiful and romantic locations?

It was the road trip of a lifetime and Alice knew she would treasure it forever, whatever the outcome. How wonderful it felt to leave her cares behind for four days of sightseeing and romance.

Even the long hours driving were blissful, with Giorgio at the wheel, chatting away non-stop, one tanned hand waving expressively out of the open window as they discussed their hopes and plans.

On the final leg of their journey, however, as they drove past lakes and mountains on their way to the Ferrelli vineyard, even Giorgio grew quiet, perhaps wondering how his mother would greet their request.

Alice felt her stomach tightening too. Giorgio was a charmer, and she couldn’t help wondering how many other women he charmed on his travels. Did any of it mean anything to him, deep down?

She wouldn’t have changed a thing, but she knew she had to guard her heart against wanting more and getting hurt in the future.

His mother was waiting for them in the courtyard of her sun-bleached villa. She looked every bit as intimidating as Alice feared. She welcomed the English woman with a tight hug, a kiss on each cheek, murmured, “Call me Juliana.”

That evening, Juliana served them a feast on the kitchen table. Alice reckoned the Italian beauty was some kind of superwoman.

Over wine and meatballs, Giorgio began to set out his proposal, lapsing into Italian as he did so. Juliana questioned him sharply in the same language. Alice guessed it was more comfortable for them, although she felt shut out when she realised they were discussing her.

Eventually, Giorgio said in English, “So, whaddya say?”

The pause that followed was so long, and Juliana’s eyes so narrow, that Alice thought she would die.

Eventually, Juliana said in heavily accented English, “I don’t like it.” Her face cracked into a grin as she added, “I love it! The chocolates are the perfect complement to our dessert wine.

“We will be partners,” Juliana went on. “Business,” she pointed to herself. “Sales,” she pointed to Giorgio. “And chocolate maker,” she pointed at Alice.”

“Like the three musketeers!” Giorgio crowed happily.

“The three chocolatiers!” Alice corrected. “And what a great name for the brand!”

For a moment Alice almost thought she was Italian as they all hugged, kissed, cried and laughed at the same time.

“I’m proud of you for finding this enterprising English woman, Giorgio,” Juliana declared.

“I’m glad you like her,” said Giorgio, “Because I have another proposal to make…” He turned to face Alice solemnly and said, “My sugar mouse, will you marry me?”

It was Alice’s turn to keep him waiting as she put her hands over her mouth and tried to hold in her tears.

“I don’t like it,” she stammered, then quickly added, “I love it!”

Suddenly the three chocolatiers were all hugging each other again.