‘Arianna’s mother didn’t change anything?’ she asked in surprise.
‘She was always too busy chasing her next high or she was in rehab or she was shopping,’ Raffaele said drily.
‘You really didn’t like your stepmother.’
‘There was nothing to like. She had no interest in the man she married, his son or even her own daughter. She wanted the money, the lifestyle, nothing else. I remember her screaming at my father that Arianna was a dreadful accident.’
Vivi grimaced and said nothing, registering, however, that Raffaele’s rich, privileged childhood had not been as idyllic as she had naively assumed. If he had made false assumptions about her, she acknowledged ruefully, she had been equally guilty of making similar assumptions about him based on superficialities like wealth and background.
‘Why didn’t he divorce her if she was so awful?’
‘He believed marriage was for ever, but I also suspect that he couldn’t bring himself to face the fact that he’d made a hideous mistake remarrying so quickly after my mother’s death. He was lonely, still grieving, not in the right state of mind to make such a major decision. I don’t think he even appreciated that women as corrupt as Arianna’s mother existed in the world. He’d married young, he couldn’t have been very experienced with women.’
‘So, I could make changes here if I wanted to?’ Vivi recapped.
‘Of course, it’s your new home. If you’re going to raise our family here, it has to be comfortable for you.’
‘Don’t put the cart in front of the horse,’ Vivi urged stiffly. ‘Sometimes, you are so pushy, Raffaele.’
‘And sometimes, you like that about me,’ Raffaele fielded, bending down to claim her parted lips with his, sending a dizzy spurt of pleasure travelling through her slender length.
Vivi rolled out of reach, not trusting him that close, not trusting herself either. ‘We may not work. We don’t have much in common.’
‘Incredible chemistry and a baby are a healthy start,’ Raffaele informed her with a sizzling smile.
‘All right, I’ll give it a go,’ Vivi told him grudgingly, sliding off the side of the bed at speed when he tried to reach for her again. ‘I’m going for a shower and then I want to eat. I’m ravenous.’
* * *
‘My foster mum was a darling but her husband was a drunk,’ Vivi volunteered ruefully. ‘And there were horrible violent scenes when he came home at night and he would beat her up. I’d be at the top of the stairs listening to him shout, praying he wouldn’t hurt her too much. And then one night he came into my room and sat down on my bed and told me I was a big girl...’
‘What age were you?’ Raffaele cut in rawly, incensed by what she had experienced while she was still a child.
‘Thirteen, not very developed either,’ she muttered with a shudder. ‘He tried to touch me and I screamed and his wife came in and, well, that was the end of that placement.’
‘I hope the next placement was happier for you,’ Raffaele breathed through gritted teeth, shocked against his will by what he was learning about the care system for orphaned kids.
He had also learned that the stepmother whom he had loathed had not been quite the nightmare he had believed her to be, certainly not when compared to some of the parenting figures Vivi had endured. His stepmother’s essential lack of interest in him and his father’s care had protected him from the worst of the older woman’s drug excesses. Separated from her sisters, however, because it was hard to find a single home willing to take all three girls, Vivi had been deprived of the family support she had relied on as a child.
‘That was the worst that ever happened to me and, to be honest, it wasn’t so bad. Zoe had it roughest of all of us. That’s why she is the way she is,’ Vivi told him ruefully, suddenly feeling uncomfortable because as a rule she was very private when it came to her childhood experiences. ‘How on earth did we get talking about this stuff?’
Raffaele hid a smile because he had learned how to draw Vivi out of her shell and he wasn’t about to share his secrets. Ironically it was new to him to wonder what made another human being tick. Beyond the business world where sizing up opponents was the norm, Raffaele never got close enough to people to care why they did what they did or why they thought a certain way. To date, Arianna was the sole exception to that rule and now Vivi was the second, and both of them were family, which put them in a different category, he reasoned. If only it were as easy to get Vivi to take his advice, actually listen to him, he conceded with considerably less assurance, because Vivi was as stubborn as a rock planted in concrete.
Over the past seven weeks, his bride had begun to look more noticeably pregnant, something which she complained about because apparently her sister had not shown the same signs at such an early stage. In addition, Vivi was as sick as a dog several times a day, something which she simply took in her stride and brushed off as an unalterable fact of pregnancy. She had yet to go near a doctor, had an innately practical attitude to her condition and saw no need for medical intervention. Raffaele had learned to hide his concern because she did, literally, consider her pregnancy to be none of his male business, but he had contrived one small achievement by persuading her to go for a scan that afternoon with a top-flight obstetrician in Florence. Luckily for him, Vivi wanted to see their baby and was willing to take advantage of that facility.
Feeling somnolent even in the shade, Vivi contemplated her rising stomach above her bikini pants with disfavour. She was blowing up like a balloon, just as Zoe had forecast, and there was nothing she could do about it. Vivi refused to let pregnancy get in her way of making the most of her enjoyable new life.
Enjoyable? She smiled at that disconcerting acknowledgement, gazing out at the beautiful sun-drenched gardens surrounding the private pool. The view beyond was of even more spectacular countryside, composed of rolling hills and vineyards and olive and orange orchards and, as far as the eye could see, it was all Mancini land. Slowly she had begun to understand that Raffaele lived like a feudal prince because his family had once been feudal rulers. His father had used his ducal title throughout his life but Raffaele didn’t use his, respecting that the Italian Republic no longer legally recognised the titles of the former nobility. Only the fact he didn’t use the title didn’t stop the staff routinely referring to him as Il Duca or to herself as La Duchessa, nor did it change the outlook of the many people who revered Raffaele for his pedigreed heritage. It no longer surprised her that Raffaele had that aristocratic cool and dignity that had once set her teeth on edge.
It was the weekend, which meant that Raffaele was at home, and she loved the weekends best when she generally had him all to herself. Possessive...much? Oh, yes, very possessive, she conceded ruefully. He ticked every box in the husband stakes, as if he had contrived to swallow some magic potion that endowed
him with perfection. No such thing as a perfect man, her hind brain reminded her, but if there had been, Raffaele would top the lists. Initially she had been shocked by how considerate he could be of her comfort.
She had changed stuff at the palazzo, stuff that had been set in stone for probably at least a hundred years, she thought wryly. They no longer ate in a giant dining room surrounded by staff. Now they dined in much more relaxed surroundings in a much smaller room. The menus had also become considerably less elaborate because they were both quite sparing eaters. She had banished dated practices like the staff lining up to greet Raffaele every time he came home and he hadn’t even noticed their absence. Piece by piece she was dragging daily life at the Palazzo Mancini into the modern world.
The biggest challenge, however, had initially been her need to find something to occupy herself while Raffaele was at the bank. She had been amazed to discover that the palazzo was opened to the public one day every week, a day when Raffaele had been routinely in the habit of removing himself to the family apartment in Florence for twenty-four hours. Although a very private man, Raffaele saw it as his bounden duty to open his ancestral home to tourists, and to architectural historians and interested conservationists. At the same time, Vivi had stayed home one week simply to see the entire process in operation and she had been appalled at the mess that was being made of the experience, with untrained staff struggling to cope with questions they couldn’t answer and poor Amedeo giving a very boring talk about the family.
Vivi had taken over by engaging a young historian to write up the Mancini family history and then hiring proper tour guides. She had plans for a shop and a café as well for the end of the tour because there was so much unused space in the palazzo. Those plans had kept her very busy. Surprisingly, Raffaele was content to allow her a completely free hand but worried that she was taking on too much of a burden, until it finally dawned on him that Vivi adored being busy and needed a purpose in life as much as he did.