The Liberation of Alice Love - Abby McDonald [79]
“Oh.” Natasha closed her eyes for a moment as she breathed the deep, luxurious scent. Alice watched a rapturous expression drift across her face, then she blinked, looking at Alice with a new softness. “Yes,” she told her. “This one’s just right. It’s for special occasions.” Natasha held the bottle almost reverently. “For only the most important people.”
She never smelled her mother wearing that perfume again, but it didn’t strike Alice until she was older that whatever those wonderful occasions, and whoever the important people were, they did not include her. From the way the bottle sat, untouched, on the dressing table until the day Natasha packed her things for good, Alice guessed that no other day in Sussex lived up to the precious contents either. But to Alice, it didn’t matter. That scent was a moment they’d shared—something she had chosen just right—and just the faint aroma made her feel the way she had in the bedroom that day: teetering on the edge of glamour and adventure and other impossibly adult pursuits.
“Signora? You like?”
The woman’s thickly accented voice brought Alice back to the present and the gleaming little shop in the center of Rome. She blinked.
“The perfume? Oh, yes.” She breathed again, the faint echo of jasmine and dark spices drifting around her in a cloud of luxury. “This is perfect.”
The woman gave a satisfied smile. “I know it.”
She poured the mixture into a fresh vial, screwing a gold cap on tightly and laying it gently with the stopper in a slim box, surrounded by wafts of tissue paper and padding. The box itself, she wrapped with more paper, and fastened with a thick velvet ribbon before presenting it, ceremoniously, to Alice. She didn’t look at the price as she scribbled her signature on the debit slip; nor, she decided, would she gasp at it later, when it appeared on her statement. Striding out of the shop with a lightness in her gait and a contented smile on her face, Alice breathed in and remembered.
Chapter Eighteen
The lobby was deserted when she returned to the hotel, so Alice delayed her plans for investigation and rested instead, drifting into a light sleep with the balcony doors thrown wide and a cool breeze slipping over her naked body. It might have been the satin-soft touch of the linens, or the intoxicating breath of perfume, but for some reason, her dreams were shockingly erotic, and when Alice woke, possibility was thick in her veins.
She felt different.
Older, somehow, but freer too. She studied her reflection in the mirror as if seeing someone else. Her body seemed lush and vivid, backlit by the burn of sunset, framed by dark, rich fabrics. And, Alice thought for the first time, perfect.
She dressed slowly, in the delicate lace lingerie that had only that month begun to fill her wardrobe—following the example of Ella’s receipts. Spritzing her bare wrists and neck with another light cloud of scent, Alice carefully applied her makeup, leaning over the mirror with the windows still wide, and the drapes drawn fully back. Somebody could easily see her, from another building across the courtyard or even the street beyond, but Alice found that she didn’t care. She slicked on a layer of lipstick, arching her back as she met her own gaze, deliberate in the polished glass.
Yes, she felt different.
The dress was bright red silk, another of Ella’s excellent selections. As Alice skipped lightly down the hotel steps and hailed a convenient taxi, she saw an adolescent boy in the street stop to blink at her, his ice cream, momentarily forgotten, dripping dangerously low. She laughed, blowing him an impulsive kiss, and slid into the car. “Via Veneto, Per Sempre,” she declared, naming a new bar she’d overheard two glossy-haired shoppers discuss. It was apparently the most stylish, exclusive spot in the city, and Alice felt it a crime to waste her new dress on anywhere less.
***
“Martini, per favore,” Alice decided, perusing the elegant script of the cocktail menu just a short