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1
Molly
The Day It All Started
“Where the hell is the tour guide?” I muttered to myself.
I’d been pacing around the hotel lobby for twenty minutes. The tour guide was supposed to meet mehere, inside the lobby. Part of me was afraid I had missed him, but I had come down early just to avoid that possibility. He was late.
After an eight-hour flight to Italy, I was anxious to get out there and see the city. I didn’t want to wait anymore!
I walked by the concierge desk, but nobody was there. I could hear him in the back room, fervently discussing something in Italian with the other hotel employees. There was some new flu strain here in Europe, apparently. I saw a news bulletin about it while waiting for my luggage in the airport, but of course it was in Italian so I could barely understand what was going on.
I paced across the lobby, turned around, then paced back. The whole point of me flying to Rome a day before my girlfriends was to do some sight-seeing alone. The Colosseum, the Roman Forum, the Trevi Fountain, and the Spanish Steps.
Don’t get me wrong: my girlfriends were great. I loved them. But they were a lot to handle. They wanted to guzzle wine and flirt with every sexy Italian man they came across. To them, the ancient history of Rome was just that: ancient history.
But me? I actuallylikedhistory. I wanted to go on tours and listen to what the tour guide explained! If I could do that once by myself, then I would be fine with letting loose with the girls when they arrived.
If my tour guide ever showed up…
I scanned the lobby. The Residencia Al Gladiatore hotel was older than most American cities. The lobby had marble floors and white columns, with a fountain in the middle of the room that gently poured water from a Roman statue. The ceiling was domed, with plenty of glass to let in natural light. It was beautiful and ornate, and most importantly: it was just two blocks from the Colosseum itself.
There were only three other people in the lobby. An older couple was standing by the entrance with their luggage, waiting on a taxi to take them to the airport. Then there was a guy sitting in a chair by the front door. He looked like your stereotypical Italian hunk: olive skin, thick black hair, the right amount of scruff along his jaw. A chest that was broad enough to eat dinner on.
Too sexy to be my tour guide, I thought. Tour guides were always nerdy, or perky, or nerdyandperky. This guy had a dark, brooding look about him.
The man’s shoulder and arm muscles pressed tightly against his polo shirt as he glanced at his watch. Then he saw me looking at him. He smiled briefly before returning to whatever he was reading on his phone.
Nope. Definitely not the guide.
I looked at my watch and tried to relax. Maybe the tour was running late. It was a walking tour, after all, and they probably had to stop at every hotel along the way to pick up the other tour members.
After a few more minutes of pacing, I rang the bell at the concierge desk. He emerged from the back room looking flustered. “Yes, miss?” he asked in a thick Italian accent.
“Have you seen my tour guide? He was supposed to meet me in the lobby half an hour ago.”
He gave me an apologetic look. “I am so sorry, we do not have any contact with the guides. Please call them directly if you have any concerns.”
He hurried into the back room, then began shouting at someone in Italian. There was a lot of commotion, with several voices chiming in, the tones tense and sentences short. They sounded afraid.
I pulled out my phone and went through my contacts, then stopped myself. Even now, it was as automatic as breathing: when something was wrong, I called my mom. But I couldn’t call her now, no matter how much I wanted to.
Instead, I did as the concierge suggested: I looked up the tour phone number and called them. A woman answered in Italian.
“Parla inglese?” I asked. “Do you speak English?”
“No,” the woman replied. Hold music took over the line.
I tapped my foot while listening. I was tired. I was jet-lagged from the overnight flight. I hadn’t showered or fixed my hair, because I didn’t think I had enough time before the tour.
I wanted to see the city, damnit!
“Hi, hello?”a man answered. “I am to speak the English with you now?”
“Yes! Hi!” I replied. “My name’s Molly Carter, and I’m waiting at the Residencia Al Gladiatore hotel for my tour guide. He was supposed to be here thirty minutes ago.”
“Yes, I am so sorry, yes, please wait. I am looking the records now. Ah. Yes! Your guide is there now! He is waiting for you!”
