The Perfect Audition by Kate Forster Read Free Book Online Page B

window. It was nine o’clock at night, but it seemed most people were only now going out for dinner. What the hell, she thought, I’m going out.
    Opening her wardrobe, she chose a pair of black vintage cigarette silk pants and teamed them with a floaty silver Catherine Malandrino camisole and pink Costume Nationale flat sandals. The hills of Perugia would murder her heels; flats were sensible and Calypso was always sensible, particularly when it came to looking after her clothes. Leaving her hair down, she grabbed a vintage beaded clutch and skipped through the door into the bustle outside.
    Wandering around the ancient city, the sound of smooth jazz came up a laneway and Calypso followed the music.
    She found herself in an elegant thoroughfare filled with laughing students from the university, families with sleeping children in strollers and tourists all mingling together in the warm evening.
    The cafés were filled with people who spilled out onto the stone ledges and steps, listening to the jazz. Calypso thought she knew the song from an old album her dad used to play. ‘There’s a somebody I’m longing to see, I hope that he turns out to be, someone who’ll watch over me,’ she sang quietly to herself.
    An older couple walked out in front of the band and started to dance to the old Gershwin classic and Calypso felt her eyes fill with tears as she saw the tenderness on the man’s face.
    It was an almost perfect moment except for the gnawing in Calypso’s stomach. I haven’t eaten in fourteen hours, she counted as she moved towards some bright lights in the side of a stone wall.
Sandri Pasticceria
it read. The window boasted some of the most delicious pastries Calypso had ever seen. Never would she allow herself something so fat-filled in LA but here, without the gaze of the paparazzi and her trainer, Calypso decided to live a little. Stepping inside the crowded shop, she was pushed forward by the crowd until she found herself at a stool at the marble bar.
    A red-coated waiter placed a chocolate-filled pastry with glazed berries on top of it in front of her with a cappuccino. ‘I didn’t order this,’ she said to the waiter who had already turned his back. She sat awkwardly, unsure of what to do.
    ‘I would just eat it,’ said a voice next to her over the din in the bar.
    Calypso turned and was faced with Eros himself. Impossibly handsome, with long, light brown hair loose and curling around his face. Smiling at Calypso, his teeth were the whitest and straightest that Calypso had ever seen, which was quite something, considering she lived in California, the state of orthodontists. ‘
Ciao, bella
,’ he said, his green eyes dancing as he took in her face.
    ‘Hello, gorgeous,’ said Calypso, doing her best Barbra Streisand impersonation.
    ‘I know that voice, that’s Barbra,
si
?’
    Calypso laughed, ‘Yes, that’s Barbra.’
    ‘
Mangia
,’ he said, gesturing.
    Calypso paused. It did look divine and saying a little prayer to the God of Cellulite to stay away, she took a bite.
    ‘Oh my God, it’s amazing.’ She sputtered pastry flakes across the table, not caring to wipe the chocolate cream from her mouth.
    The Italian watched her, amused. ‘You like?’
    ‘I like,’ said Calypso, her mouth full.
    ‘So, what is your name? Barbra?’
    ‘No,’ she laughed. ‘Calypso,’ she smiled shyly.
    ‘Beautiful name, the nymph of the sea,
si
? I am Marco. Lord of the planet Mars.’
    His bewitching accent and the way he looked so intently at her, as if wanting her approval was endearing. Calypso smiled. She had made her first Italian friend.

CHAPTER THREE
    Sapphira De Mont arrived in Italy courtesy of the film studio’s Gulfstream. She would have liked to have flown the plane herself but her instructor said she was not yet ready for such a large aircraft, much to Sapphira’s disappointment.
    She stretched her back like a cat as she unbuckled her seatbelt on the plane. Her skin across her shoulder