''I Do''...Take Two! by Merline Lovelace Page B

signora. When Giuseppe Cipriani, who owns Harry’s Bar, combines sweet peach nectar with the wine, he says the color is the same as that of a saint’s robe in a famous painting by Giovanni Bellini. So he names his creation in honor of this great artist.”
    Tucking his tray under his arm, the man beamed with local pride. “If you wish to see this painting, it hangs in the Doge’s Palace. You plan to visit the palace, yes?”
    â€œWe do. Sometime later today, hopefully.”
    â€œIt becomes very crowded,” he said, echoing Travis’s earlier warning. “But the hotel can arrange a tour so you do not have to stand in long lines. Shall I call down to the concierge and see what times may be available?”
    â€œThat would be wonderful.”
    She smiled her thanks but hooked a skeptical brow when the waiter departed. “The lines in Venice can’t be any longer than the ones in Rome.”
    â€œGuess again. The major tourist sights in Rome are spread out. Here, they’re pretty much concentrated around St. Mark’s Square and the Rialto Bridge.”
    * * *
    Kate acknowledged the point but remained dubious until the hotel’s private vaporetto delivered them to St. Mark’s Square for a one o’clock VIP tour of the pink-and-white Palazzo Ducale. The Doge’s Palace had served as the residence of the supreme ruler of the Venetian republic since the eleventh century.
    â€œOh my god! I don’t believe this crowd.”
    Grasping Travis’s hand, Kate stepped off the boat’s gleaming gunwale onto the pier and descended into a teeming sea of humanity. Tourists of every age and nationality jammed the square. The lines that snaked toward the entrance of the cathedral and the palace were epic.
    Yet somehow the cheerful throng only added to Venice’s nowhere-else-in-the-world ambience. There was no pushing, no shoving, and hundreds of kiosks lined the broad walkway in front of the palazzo. Their colorful offerings ranged from inexpensive carnival masks to gondoliers’ straw boaters to lace parasols and every conceivable variation of I Love Venice T-shirts.
    Their concierge had worked magic. Either that or the name of the hotel he worked for did the trick. Kate felt guilty bypassing the long lines at the Doge’s Palace. Not guilty enough to forfeit their VIP tickets, however.
    The palace was as magnificent as the guidebooks advertised. Okay, maybe a little overwhelming. It contained so many opulent rooms filled with so many priceless masterpieces that Kate went into overload two-thirds of the way through the tour. She was as relieved as Travis when they escaped into the bright afternoon sunshine...and thoroughly enchanted when he guided her through the crowd to an outside table at a restaurant in St. Mark’s Square.
    The restaurant was one of several housed in the elegant arcade that surrounded the square on three sides. Each restaurant featured regimented rows of outdoor tables with different-colored chairs. To Kate’s delight, each also offered its own orchestra mounted on a platform under gaily striped awnings. The orchestras took turns entertaining the tourists thronging the square as well as the customers willing to pay astronomical menu prices in exchange for a table.
    Kate’s residency in Washington, DC, had exposed her to the world of outrageously expensive dinners and drinks. Still, she blinked at prices on the tasseled menu. She was mentally converting the cost of a glass of red wine from euros to dollars for the third time when Travis’s cell phone buzzed.
    â€œIt’s Brian Ellis,” he announced after a glance at the digital display. “I left him a message earlier, asking for a return call.”
    â€œYou’re going to tell him you want the VP job?”
    â€œI am.”
    â€œMake sure he understands it’s contingent on giving me a better understanding of what you’ll be doing. I want