Whoooo! The steam engine purred, billowing viscous gray smoke as it throttled down the rusted tracks of of the Tuscan countryside. When Ariana Hart took a job overseas, she never expected anything like this, especially as a young and spry librarian, straight outta' college. In the heart of Rome at that!
Ari, as her friends called her, adjusted her mousy glasses above her nose, admiring the creamy orange sunset descending upon the rolling hillside, longing for something more...or someone more to enjoy it with, as she sat in the empty train car....for not much longer.
The door behind her clacked open, as a slender man in a trench coat scurried in, bearing a brown leather briefcase, tightly in his hand. The man's eyes darted back and forth throughout the train as he slinked throughout the car, settling down upon a seat somewhere behind her, on the other side of the aisle. The man choked a phlegm filled cough out, and rattled the seats on the train as he shuffled about.
This was not the company Ari had hoped for. She slumped back into her seat, and closed her tattered copy of 'Under the Tuscan Sun'. Embarrassing, for sure, but she couldn't help but love the story, especially so when actually under the Tuscan sun. She'd always dreamed of meeting a handsome stranger on a train, and being whisked up and away into some magical love story...but this...this was not it. She removed her glasses, and rubbed the bridge of her nose as a migraine set in, brushing an amber strand of hair away from her face.
That strand of hair revealed the door ahead of her sliding open to unveil the definition of tall, dark, and handsome, as he stepped through the precipice in a fitted gray suit, and sauntered to a seat right across from Ari, before effortlessly gliding onto its cushion. He sent her a warm smile.
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Ari blushed, and returned the gesture. She couldn't believe what she'd manifested. Maybe the power of imagination that Reading Rainbow had talked about so much wasn't nonsense after all! She couldn't wait to berate her old roommate and oft nemesis, Collette, about that one.
The fine trim along his suit jacket revealed a muscular figure that pressed against the miniature black lines almost defiantly throughout his fashionable attire. Ari assumed he was Italian. As she should, she laughed internally...being in Italy of course. Not something always easily detected, but she wondered if his luscious tan was certainly a factor. Maybe it was time for her to even test out her spoken Italian skills.
The handsome man's eyes narrowed, however, as he looked past Ari, towards the back of the car. His eyes widened as he pushed a gentle finger up to his lip, beckoning silence, and unbuttoned his jacket, salaciously.
Ari dabbed her now sweating brow with the back of her demure tan sweater's sleeve, and averted her gaze outside the window, trying not to linger on the man anymore. However, her eyes found themselves upon him again, as he reached in past his toned pecs bulging against his shirt and removed something else from the inside of his jacket. It was a long. slender piece of silver with delicately polished steel.
It was time to stop narrating my own story though, as I spotted an aggressive pair of eyes slanted from behind me, reflecting off the metal and piercing my soul, while I watched the thin man pop open his briefcase with malicious thoughts. What caught my eye most though, was still in front of me, something I'd never once seen in person, and really wished I hadn't right now. The handsome man grinned mischievously, as I felt a bead of sweat trickle down my brow.
No...that can't be...a gun?!
