‘Older, wiser, plied an innocent with wine…’ Vito traded, condemning himself for his crime for her ears alone. ‘But if I had the chance to go back I would still do it again.’
Encountering a lingering sidewise glance from black-fringed dark golden eyes, Holly felt heat lick through her pelvis as she took a seat and cuddled Angelo. For possibly the first time since she had conceived she looked back at that night in the cottage without guilt and regret. No, on that score Vito had hit a bullseye. Given the chance, in spite of the moments of heartache and stress along the way, she would also still have done the same thing again.
And if Vito could be that honest, why shouldn’t she match him? Tell him about the phone call she had overheard Apollo making? She would pick her moment, she decided ruefully, and she would ask if he had ever thought of their marriage as a sham and if she had anything to worry about.
Angelo was asleep by the time they landed in Italy. Holly had freshened up, noting with disappointment that her outfit hadn’t travelled very well. The fashion stylist had tried to persuade her to buy a whole host of clothes but with Vito already paying for the wedding and her gown she hadn’t felt right about allowing him to pay for anything else before they were married. She had teamed an elegant navy-and-white skirt with a matching top but her get-up had creased horribly and looked as though she had worn it for a week rather than only a few hours. Straightening it as best she could, she wondered if Vito would even notice.
Holly was enchanted by the wonderful scenery that enfolded as the four-wheel drive moved deeper into the countryside. Charming low hills rolled across a landscape peacefully dotted with cypresses, serrated lines of fresh green vines and silvery olive groves. Medieval villages slumbered on hilltops while ancient bell towers soared into the cloudless blue sky. Occasionally she caught a glimpse of beautiful, weathered old farmhouses nestling among the greenery and the wild flowers and she wondered if Vito’s home resembled them.
‘There it is…the Castello Zaffari,’ Vito announced with pride as the car began to climb a steep ribbon of road. Dead ahead Holly glimpsed a building so vast it covered the whole hilltop like a village while elaborate gardens decorated the slopes below it. She froze, convinced that that could not possibly be his home because it was a palace, not a mere dwelling. A giant domed portico denoted the front entrance where the car came to a halt.
‘Is this it? Is this where you live?’ Holly asked in a small voice, wondering crazily if she could hide in the car and refuse to emerge until he admitted that the palace wasn’t really his and he had only been joking. It had to be a joke, she thought fearfully, because no ordinary woman could possibly learn to live in the midst of such medieval splendour.
Vito picked up on the edge in her voice and frowned at her. ‘Yes. What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ she said hurriedly as she took Angelo to allow the nanny to climb out.
‘Don’t you like it?’
‘Of course I like it,’ Holly lied in a rush, utterly overpowered by the huge building as she accompanied Vito into a massive marble-floored hall studded with matching lines of columns. ‘But you could’ve at least hinted that you lived like royalty.’
‘I don’t,’ Vito incised in firm rebuttal. ‘I live in a historic building that has belonged to my family for centuries. I live a very average, normal life here…’
Please tell me he didn’t say that, Holly argued with herself as they rounded the gigantic centrepiece of a winding stone staircase and were faced with a long assembled row of what could only have been household staff all dressed up in uniform as though they had strayed off the set for Downton Abbey. Average? Normal? On what planet was Vito living?
Sick with the nervous unease of someone totally out of their comfort zone, Holly fixed a smile to her stiff face while Vito conducted introductions. There was a great deal of billing and cooing over Angelo and Vito’s own former nanny, Serafina, surged forward to take the baby. Apart from her, Silvestro was the head honcho in the household and little giggly Natalia, it turned out, was Holly’s English-speaking maid. With great difficulty Holly kept her face straight at the prospect of having a maid and watched while the two nannies carried Angelo off upstairs.
‘Natalia will show you to our room,’ Vito informed her at the foot of the stairs and then he paused, a frown etching between his level brows, his dark eyes semi-concealed by his ridiculous lashes as he murmured, ‘I should have asked you—do you object to sharing a room?’
The planet he was on was definitely far, far from the moon, Holly thought crazily as she raised her brows. ‘Where else would I sleep?’
‘Obviously you could have your own room,’ Vito told her valiantly.
And Holly almost burst out laughing because Vito was being his extraordinarily polite self and going against his own instincts. She could see it in the tension etched in his lean, darkly handsome face, hear it in the edge roughening his dark, deep drawl. He really, really didn’t want her to choose a separate bedroom and she wondered why on earth he had made the offer. ‘No…’ Holly reached for his clenched hand. ‘You’re not getting rid of me that easily,’ she teased.
Vito laughed and smiled almost simultaneously and all the tension vanished. Silly, silly man, she thought warmly as she followed Natalia up the stairs. Why had he even given her a choice? Separate bedrooms? Was that how husband and wife normally lived in such a gigantic house? How his parents and grandparents had lived? Well, from here on in Vito was going to have to learn how a normal, average couple lived, and having shared a bed with him once had only made her all the keener to repeat the experience, she acknowledged, her colour rising. But there was just no way of denying that the most unbearable hunger clenched her deep down inside when she looked at Vito.
Months had passed since that night in the cottage but she had learned a lot about herself after that first educational experience. Other men hadn’t tempted her the way Vito had and she had always assumed that that’d meant she wasn’t a very sensual person. Vito, however, had unleashed her newly discovered appetite for intimacy and taught her differently. He was definitely the right man for her. She could only hope that she would prove to be the right woman for him.
Natalia opened the doors of what had to be the most drop-dead ugly bedroom Holly had ever seen. It was truly hideous. Heavy dark drapes shut out most of the light and made the vast room gloomy. A material that looked and felt like dark red leather covered the walls and every other surface from the high, elaborately moulded and domed ceiling to the furniture, which was heavily gilded in gold. Holly swallowed hard. It looked as though it hadn’t been decorated in at least a hundred years and it was very possible that the weird paper was antique like the furniture.
Well, Holly thought as her maid cast open the doors to show her around what appeared to be an entire suite of rooms for their use, she might be keen to share a bedroom with Vito but he might have to move the location of the shared bedroom to make her happy. Natalia beamed and showed her into a large room walled with closets, which she swept open to display the contents.
‘Who does all this belong to?’ Holly asked, recoiling while wondering if all the garment-bag-enclosed items of clothing had been left behind by Vito’s former fiancée, Marzia.
‘Is your gift…is new,’ the brunette stressed while showing off a still-attached label to what appeared to be a hand-embroidered ballgown of such over-the-top glamour that it took Holly’s breath away.
A gift that could only be from Vito. The gift of an entire wardrobe of clothes? Holly fingered through drawers packed with lingerie and nightwear in little decorative bags and stared at the racks of shoes and accessories Natalia was eager for her to see and appreciate. It was a mind-blowing collection and it was just way too much altogether for Holly, after the wedding, the massive palace Vito lived in and his revealing query about whether or not she was willing to share a bedroom with him. What on earth? What on earth kind of marriage was she in that he had told her so little about his life and yet bought her so much? Did he think flashing around his money made up for his failure to explain all the other stuff?
Catching a glimpse of her creased and tousled reflection in one of the many mirrors in the dressing room, Holly almost groaned. She didn’t want to get tricked out in fancy clothes, she simply wanted comfort, and as Natalia opened Holly’s single case on the now seemingly pitiful assortment of clothing that had been her lot pre-Vito, Holly bent down to scoop out her one extravagance: a shimmering maxi dress with an iridescent sheen that skimmed her every curve with a flattering fit. She was relieved to see that while the bedroom belonged to a bygone age, the en-suite bathroom, while palatial, was contemporary. Stepping into a wonderful walled rain-forest shower, she rinsed away the tired stickiness of travel and tried to let her anxieties float off down the drain with the soapy water.
A marriage was what you made of it and she had no intention of underestimating the challenge ahead. They had married for Angelo’s benefit but their son could only enjoy a happy home life if his parents established a good relationship. Holly’s childhood had been damaged by her mother’s neglect and self-indulgence, Vito’s by his father’s indifference. He should’ve warned her about the giant historic house and the extravagant new wardrobe, but she could no more shout at him for being richer and more pedigreed than she had estimated than she could shout at him for his unvarnished generosity.
Dressed, her black hair tumbling freely round her shoulders, Holl
y explored the connecting rooms Natalia had briefly walked her through earlier. A door stood ajar on the balcony that led off the sitting room and she strolled out, watching the sun go down over the stunning landscape and the manicured gardens below and slowly veil them in peach, gold and terracotta splendour. Sounds in the room she had vacated alerted her to the arrival of a trolley, and the rattle of cutlery fired her appetite and drew her back indoors.
Vito was framed by a doorway at the far end of the room, his suit abandoned in favour of jeans and a white shirt open at his strong brown throat. Her tummy was awash with butterflies as she instinctively drew in a deep breath and savoured her view of him. He stood there, so tall and dark and devastatingly handsome, watching her with the assessing eyes of a hawk.