Harlequin Presents--April 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Dani Collins

  Her father’s very young widow was locked, groin to groin, with her elder brother, and raw, untamed desire blazed in both their eyes. Oh, she recognised that desire for what it was, because it was exactly what she had shared with Gian last night.

  But Dante and Mia?

  Her brother and her stepmother?

  ‘No!’ Her lungs and head shouted the denial, but the single word caught in her vocal cords and it came out a strained, husky bark. ‘He would never,’ she implored. ‘It’s been doctored, cropped...’

  ‘Ariana, the image is real. I called Dante just now and apologised that such an invasion of his privacy took place in my hotel. My legal team are onto it, as are my security team. We are doing all we can to stop the photo getting out and,’ he added darkly, ‘I shall discover the culprit.’

  But Ariana didn’t care who had taken the photo, only that this moment in time had ever existed.

  Oh, Papà!

  She wanted to weep at the insult to his memory. She wanted to hurl a thousand questions at her brother, who went through women like socks. Except surely this woman, the widow of his father, should have been out of bounds?

  ‘How long have they been together...?’ Her accusing eyes looked at Gian.

  ‘Ariana, you are asking the wrong person.’

  ‘I’m asking exactly the right person. You’re a who’s who of all the scandal in Rome!’ She wanted to claw the hair from her scalp. ‘Did. You. Know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He might as well have stabbed her for she put her hands to her chest and moaned exactly as if he had. ‘Traitor!’

  ‘Stop it.’ Dante pointed a warning finger and moved swiftly into damage control. But this time he was moving swiftly to protect not his hotel’s reputation but Ariana from the fallout that was surely to come. ‘Look at me,’ he said, and waited till finally she met his eyes. ‘It is not so terrible.’

  ‘But it is.’

  ‘Because you make it so! Remember how you accused me last night, how you said Mia and I were closer in age...?’

  She blinked as she replayed her own accusation.

  ‘Your brother is my age.’

  ‘She’s his stepmother...’

  ‘So will say the headlines, but that’s just click bait... Listen to me, Ariana.’ He could feel her calming just a touch. ‘Think of how Dante will be feeling right now.’

  She nodded, and looked down the barrel of recent weeks. ‘I knew something was wrong. I thought he was just missing Papà, not just...’

  ‘I know what you mean. Ariana, it must have been hell for him.’

  ‘I need to speak to him.’ Though still frantic, he could feel her calm beneath his touch. ‘Both of them...’

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed, ‘but without accusation. He and Mia have taken off to Luctano...’

  ‘You’ve spoken to him.’

  ‘Just now,’ Gian said.

  ‘Can you take me there?’

  ‘Of course. I’ll have Luna arrange the pilot. Go down to your suite and get dressed and I’ll meet you there.’

  She took the elevator down to the spa floor and then stepped out and took the guest elevator back up to her own. There she pulled on some underwear and a pretty dress. Gian’s calm manner was somehow infectious, for she even dried and styled her hair.

  But then her phone rang and she saw it was her mother, just back from her cruise.

  ‘How much more can I be shamed?’ her mamma shouted.

  ‘Mamma, please,’ Ariana attempted. ‘Maybe there is some explanation.’

  ‘Mia and Dante. My son!’

  ‘Mamma, you should surely hear what Dante has to say. They are closer in age...’ Ariana pleaded, repeating Gian’s words, but nothing would placate her.

  ‘That woman!’ she sobbed. ‘She has killed my family, my joy, my life. She takes and she takes and she leaves me with nothing.’

  ‘You have me,’ Ariana pleaded. ‘Mamma...’ But she had run out of excuses for Mia and Dante. ‘I’m going now to speak with him.’

  ‘Well, you know what to say from me.’

  If Ariana didn’t know, she was specifically told.

  ‘Okay?’ Gian checked as they headed up to the rooftop, except she barely heard him. All she could hear was her mamma’s acidic, angry words.

  ‘I wanted the ball to be perfect for Papà.’

  It was all Ariana said.

  Sitting in his helicopter, Gian looked from her pale face down to the rolling hills and the familiar lace of vines. Now they were deep into spring and the poppy fields were a blaze of red, and there was foliage on the once bare vines.

  He turned back to Ariana, who sat staring ahead with her headphones on, her leg bobbing up and down. He didn’t doubt that she was nervous to be facing her brother.

  Gian was sure that it would soon be sorted out. He knew how close the Romano siblings were. At least, they had been growing up. And surely even Ariana could understand that grief and comfort were a heady cocktail. Hell, she’d sought comfort herself on the night of the funeral after all.

  He spotted the lake and soon they were coming in to land. Only then did Gian wonder how it might look that he was arriving with Ariana.

  Would it be obvious they had spent the night together?

  Did it announce them as a couple?

  Gian was nowhere near ready for that. If anything, a couple of hours ago he’d been ready to end things, as was his usual way.

  But, as it turned out, Ariana wasn’t expecting anything from Gian, other than the equivalent of a rather luxurious taxi ride.

  ‘Wait there,’ she said, as she took her headphones off. ‘I shan’t be long.’

  ‘What?’ Gian checked, unsure what she meant.

  She was more than used to entering and exiting a helicopter, and the second it was safe to do so, the door opened and the steps lowered and Ariana ran down.

  ‘Wait...’ he called, and then looked in the direction she ran.

  Dante, even from this distance, looked seedy and was striding towards her, no doubt surprised by her unannounced arrival.

  If Gian had thought for a moment that Ariana Romano had finally grown up, he was about to be proven wrong, for she was back to the spoiled, selfish brat of old. Only, instead of being placed over her father’s knee, it was Ariana delivering the slaps.

  He watched her land a vicious hit on her brother’s cheek and then raise her other hand to do the same, but Dante caught it.

  The scene carried echoes of another world, one Gian had loathed—champagne bottles on the floor, fights, chaos, all he had sought to erase, and the scars on his psyche felt inflamed.

  Ariana heightened his senses. Gian was more than aware he had let down his steely guard in bed last night and it had shaken him. For a moment he had glimpsed how it felt to need another person, to rely on someone else, and that could never be.

  Right now, though, her actions plunged him straight back into a world that had spun out of control—the chaos and fights between his parents, finding his older brother unconscious on the floor and shouting frantically for help, and their smiles and the making up that came after, the promises made that were never, ever kept.

  Always they had taken things too far, and it was everything that he now lived to avoid.

  ‘Hey.’ He was speaking to the pilot, about to tell him to take off, for he wanted no part in this. Yet some odd sense of duty told him not to leave Ariana stranded, and so he sat, grim-faced, as a tearful Ariana ran her leggy way back to the helicopter and climbed in.

  ‘We can go now,’ Ariana said once her headphones and microphone were on. ‘I’m done.’

  And so too was he.

  And he told her so the minute they stood alone back on the roof of La Fiordelise.

  ‘You never cease to disappoint me, Ariana.’

  He wat
ched her tear-streaked, defiant face lift and her angry eyes met his as he gave her a well-deserved telling-off. ‘I thought you were going there to speak with your brother, to find out how he was...’

  ‘He shamed my mother!’ Ariana shouted. ‘She went on a cruise to get away from the ball and had to return to this!’

  ‘Ah, so it was your mother talking.’ He shook his head as he looked down at her, realising now what had happened between her leaving his suite and boarding the helicopter. ‘And there was me thinking you had a mind of your own. How dare you put me in the middle of this? I would never have offered to take you if I’d known your plan was to behave this way.’

  She had the gall to shrug. ‘You have no idea what she did to us.’

  ‘I have every idea!’ Gian retorted.

  ‘Meaning?’

  But Gian was not about to explain himself. ‘You know what, Ariana? I don’t need your drama.’

  It felt like a kind of relief that he could finally walk away without the painful struggle with his demons he had faced earlier when considering how to draw a line under all that had happened between them.

  Except Ariana Romano ran after him.

  He didn’t want to hear her sobbing or begging for forgiveness, except Gian received neither. Instead he was tapped smartly on the shoulder and was somewhat surprised by the calm stare that met him when he turned around.

  ‘You should be thanking me, Gian.’

  ‘Thanking you?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ she responded. ‘You were about to give me my marching orders this morning, and you were fumbling for an excuse. I handed you this on a plate.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘But I do.’ Ariana was certain, for she could clearly recall the heavy atmosphere and the absolute certainty that Gian had been about to end things. Well, she’d given him the perfect reason to now. ‘It isn’t a relationship you’re avoiding, Gian; it’s emotion.’

  Ariana struck like a cobra, right to the heart of his soul. He looked at her and all he could see was the chaos she left in her wake. He thought of the knife edge he had grown up on, the eternal threat of disaster that had hung over his family, and the eternal calm he now sought.

  ‘Don’t worry, Gian,’ she said to his silence. ‘I’m out of here. You keep your cold black heart and I’ll carry right on.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  IT WOULD BE NICE, Ariana thought early the next morning, to pull the covers over her head as she nursed her first ever broken heart.

  Officially broken.

  She knew that since they had first made love she had been holding onto a dream. The fantasy that Gian would bend his rules for her and decide it was time to give love a chance...

  Because it felt like love to Ariana.

  Now she had to let go of that dream. Her mother called and then called again, but Ariana ignored it.

  But then Stefano called and Ariana could never ignore a call from her twin...

  ‘There’s an extraordinary board meeting at nine,’ he told her.

  ‘Pass on my apologies,’ Ariana mumbled, but Stefano was having none of it. ‘We are to meet at the offices at eight,’ Stefano told her. ‘A driver has been ordered for you; he should be with you soon.’

  ‘Eight?’ Ariana checked.

  ‘Mamma wants to speak to the three of us before the board meeting.’

  ‘She’s coming to the offices?’ Ariana frowned. ‘But she hasn’t been there since...’

  Since the news of her father and Mia’s affair had broken.

  This was big, Ariana knew as she quickly showered, squeezing in eye drops to erase all evidence of tears. She selected a navy linen suit and ran the straightening iron through her hair, trying to look somewhat put-together while she pondered what was about to take place. Ariana arrived at Romano Holdings and took the elevator up to where her family were waiting for her.

  Her mamma was as pale as she had ever seen her, and Stefano looked grey. She could barely bring herself to look at Dante, but when she did she saw the bruise beneath his eye and felt sick that it had come from her own hand.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said to Dante. ‘I just...’

  ‘I get it,’ Dante said, and gave her a hug. ‘Ariana, I know how confusing this has all been, but there’s something you need to hear, both you and Stefano...’ He turned to their mother. ‘It’s time, Mamma,’ he said.

  * * *

  This was big.

  Gian knew that, because even as he tried to focus on his weekly planning meeting with Luna, little pings from his computer had him looking over. The press were gathered outside Romano Holdings, where an extraordinary meeting was being held, and in an unprecedented move Angela Romano was seen entering the building.

  Gian watched as Ariana duly arrived in a silver car and he scanned the short piece of footage for a clue, a glimpse, as to what lay behind the mask she most certainly wore.

  Her parting shot to him yesterday had seriously rattled him and he had spent most of the night simultaneously disregarding and dwelling on her words.

  You keep your cold black heart and I’ll carry right on.

  Yet he was struggling to carry on, knowing that Ariana must be suffering now. For the first time, Gian wanted more information on the details of a woman’s private life. He was fighting with himself not to call Ariana to see what was going on, how she was coping, what she knew...

  Her brief appearance told him nothing. She was immaculate. Ariana really should be on the stage, for there was no hint of tension in her body language.

  She wore a navy linen suit and her hair was smooth and tied back in a slick ponytail. She even paused and smiled her gorgeous red-lipped smile for the cameras.

  ‘This can wait,’ he told Luna, and wrapped up their morning meeting so he could focus on the news. ‘If you could just bring coffee.’

  ‘Of course.’

  * * *

  Throughout the morning, the little pings became more and more frequent for there was drama aplenty. Dante Romano and Mia were engaged to be married! Gian could not imagine that going down well with a certain hot-headed lady, but there Ariana was, still smiling for the cameras as she left the building and climbed into a car.

  Ariana would come to him.

  Of that Gian was certain.

  Despite their exchange yesterday, Gian was quietly confident that Ariana would arrive in his office, because whenever there was drama in Ariana Romano’s life, inevitably Luna announced she was at his door and a mini-tornado would burst in.

  ‘Any messages from Ariana Romano?’ he checked with Luna.

  ‘None.’

  ‘If she arrives here,’ Gian said, ‘please send her straight through.’

  * * *

  Ariana did not arrive, though, for she refused to run to him.

  The car was mercifully cool and, rather than stare ahead, Ariana looked out of the window and smiled at the cameras as if the drama surrounding Dante and Mia hadn’t affected her in the slightest. In fact, their engagement was the merest tip of an iceberg that had just been exposed to her in all its blinding glory. Ariana was having trouble taking it all in.

  ‘Home?’ the driver checked.

  ‘No...’ She hesitated, not quite ready for the emptiness of her apartment and the noise of her own thoughts. ‘Just drive, please.’

  She took a gulp of water from a chilled bottle the driver handed to her and tried to come to terms with the fact that her life, her childhood—in fact, all she had ever known—had been built on a lie. Her parents’ marriage, of which she’d been so proud, had been a sham. They’d both had other partners and the marriage had been in name only, so much so that she and Stefano had been IVF babies.

  It felt as if she was the very last to know.

  They drove for ages. It was rush hour in Rome, all the workers spilling out, so
me rushing for transport, others taking their time for a coffee, or to sit in a bar.

  She felt like an alien.

  A stranger in her own body.

  As they passed La Fiordelise she had never been more tempted to ask the driver to pull in, to push through the brass doors and escape to the cool calmness of Gian’s office and unburden herself, as she would usually do. Except, thanks to their argument yesterday, that refuge was denied her now.

  Instead, Ariana asked to be dropped off where they had walked that lonely night. She wandered there, too shocked and stunned for tears. It was a sticky late spring day and she drifted a while, ignoring the buzz of her phone.

  Finally she glanced at the endless missed calls.

  He came first and last.

  Gian.

  Mamma.

  Gian.

  Gian.

  Mamma.

  Gian.

  Stefano.

  Gian.

  She had nothing to say to any of them, at least not until she had gathered her thoughts. Eventually, drained from walking and with a headache creating a pulse of its own, she wandered listlessly home.

  ‘Hey,’ she said to the doorman, who was dozing behind his cap. She took the elevator up, jolting when she saw a very familiar face. Gian was leaning against the wall, but came to his full height as she approached.

  Her heart did not lurch in hope or relief. In fact, it sank, for right now Gian felt like another problem to deal with, another person to hide her true self from.

  For her true self was hurting and dreadfully so—and her emotions were clearly too much for him.

  ‘What are you doing here, Gian?’

  ‘You didn’t respond to my calls...’

  ‘No.’ She didn’t even look at him. ‘Because I was not in the mood to speak to anyone. How did you get up here?’ She let out a mirthless laugh as she answered her own question. ‘I really am going to fire that doorman.’

  ‘I told him we were friends.’

  ‘Friends.’ She let out a mirthless laugh at his description of them. ‘Well, however you described yourself, the doorman shouldn’t have let you up.’ She opened her door and her words dripped sarcasm as she invited him in. ‘Come through, friend.’