Breathing Room
- Author: Susan Elizabeth Phillips
- Publisher: Avon paperback
- Year: 2002 hardback; 2003 paperback
- Setting: Italy.
- Amazon Listing - Breathing Room
Isabel Favor's self-help empire falls apart when her accountant runs off with her money and her fiance leaves her for his pregnant girlfriend. To recoup she accepts the offer of a Tuscan farmhouse for the summer. While in Florence she has an unsuccessful one-night stand (she asks her "gigolo" to use two condoms and then leaves throwing money at him). When she arrives at the farmhouse she finds that not only is her landlord the gigolo, he is really Lorenzo Gage, a bad-boy movie star known for playing the villains. He is also seeking a retreat from the public eye while preparing for a new movie and wants nothing to do with high-maintenance Dr. Isabel. Not to mention the local villagers who also seem to want both of them gone, and Gage's pregnant ex-wife, her three children and current husband.
