Narrowing her eyes, she shook her head with a sigh. Who cared about exotic locales or fairy-tale dreams? She was here for one reason: to try to keep her baby.
She had to convince them. She had to. Fiercely, Rosalie focused on the map on her phone. She left the crowds pushing south to Saint Mark’s Square, turning instead onto a quiet narrow street, then another. She followed the directions to the address from the contract, crossing a narrow bridge, far beyond the tourist hordes to the quiet Piazza di Falconeri.
With every step, she felt sweatier and more wrinkled. She’d only met Chiara Falconeri once at the clinic in California, and she’d never met the husband at all. But she knew there was no way that Alex Falconeri would call her bella as the other Italian man had. Not after Rosalie asked to take his son.
She stopped in front of a wrought-iron gate within a tall stone wall. Behind it, she could see a leafy green courtyard filled with plants and trees, and behind that, a discreet palazzo. This was it. For a second, her knees went weak beneath her. Then she thought of her desperation. Tugging her bag more firmly on her shoulder, she pressed the bell.
A cold voice came over the intercom. “Sì?”
Feeling awkward speaking to a stone wall, she said, “Um... I’d like to see—to speak to Mr. and Mrs. Falconeri, please.”
“Mr. Falconeri?” The man’s voice sounded scandalized, with an accent that reminded her of the English butler in Downton Abbey. “Do you have an appointment?”
“No, but they’ll wish to see me.” She hoped.
A sniff. “And who are you?”
“I’m—I’m Rosalie Brown. I’m their surrogate. I’m having their baby.”
Dead silence on the other end of the intercom.
“Hello?” she ventured finally. “Is anyone there?” Still no answer. “Please, I’ve come all the way from California. If you could just ask Mrs. Falconeri, she can explain—”
There was a buzzing sound, and the gate suddenly snapped open. With a gulp, she pushed inside.
The courtyard was shadowy, quiet and green, and seemed a world away from the rest of crowded, treeless Venice. She heard birdsong as she went through the small garden to an elaborate door. But even as she reached up to knock, the door opened in front of her hand. A supercilious white-haired man, who was bent over and looked as if he had to be at least a hundred and fifty years old, looked up at her.
“You may come in.” She recognized the quivery British voice. Beneath bushy white eyebrows, his gaze fell to her pregnant belly with a frown.
“Um... Thanks.” Nervously, Rosalie entered the foyer and felt the welcome relief of air-conditioning cooling her overheated skin. She bit her lip, then said hesitantly, “Are you Mr. Falconeri?”
“I?” The elderly man coughed. “I am Collins, the butler. The conte is my employer.”
“Conte?” she repeated, confused.
“Alexander Falconeri is the Conte di Rialto,” he replied pointedly. “Strange you do not know who he is, if you are having his baby.” His voice indicated how doubtful he was of that claim.
“Oh.” Great. So her baby’s father was apparently royalty of some kind. Like she needed to feel more insecure than she already did. Tilting back her head, Rosalie looked up at painted frescos of angels above the antique crystal chandelier soaring high overhead.
“This way, Miss Brown.” The butler led her past a sweeping staircase and down a wide hallway, then through double doors, ten feet high, into a gilded salon. She gaped, looking around her at the Louis XIV furniture, an oil portrait over the marble fireplace and large windows overlooking a canal. “Wait here, if you please.”
After he left, Rosalie paced nervously in the salon, uncertain where to stand or sit or look. A palace like this was totally foreign to her experience, nothing like the tiny apartment in San Francisco she’d shared with three other girls, or before that, her family’s farm in Northern California, with its hundred-year-old farmhouse, crammed to the gills with mismatched furniture.
All very flammable, as it turned out...
She felt queasiness rise inside her and pushed the thought away. She forced herself to focus only on the room around her. This furniture, too, looked as if it had been handed down through generations, but very differently than how her loving, lived-in family home had been. Every chair in here, every table, looked priceless, almost untouchable—she eyeballed a gilded antique settee—and very uncomfortable.
With a sigh, she looked up at the portrait above the marble fireplace. The man in the painting, no doubt some long-ago Falconeri ancestor, looked down at her even more scornfully than the butler had. You don’t belong here, the bewigged man’s sneer seemed to say to her. And shivering, she agreed with him. No. She didn’t. And neither did her baby.
There was no way she could allow her child to be raised in a museum like this. Rosalie gripped the leather strap of her bag. She’d recently discovered that surrogacy was illegal in Italy. A fact which Chiara and Alex Falconeri had obviously known when they’d decided to hire a surrogacy clinic in more lenient California.
But the thought of trying to use that to her advantage made her knees shake. No. She couldn’t. Could she? Absolutely not. She’d never threatened anyone in her life.
But to keep her baby—?
“Who are you and what do you want?”
Hearing the low growl behind her, Rosalie whirled to face the man who’d just entered the salon door.