A Dangerous Solace

by Lucy Ellis

  ‘Guess who spotted us on a celebrity gossip site on the internet? Guess?’

  He hadn’t seen this side of Ava since—well, since she’d been in his bed. All her fire had been directed one way, and now it was going another. He couldn’t say his life had been dull since her advent into it.

  ‘The Pope?’

  ‘My personal assistant! Do you know what this means? Everyone in the bloody office is talking about me and “the Italian Prince”—like I’m Mary Donaldson or something.’

  ‘Cosa?’

  She waved the phone again. ‘Mary Donaldson from Tasmania—married the Crown Prince of Denmark. Big wedding. He cried. Australia finally got itself a royal!’ Ava shook her head. ‘You really need to pay attention to the news.’

  Gianluca considered telling her he’d been at the wedding, but there were more important things under consideration.

  ‘You are unhappy because your employees know you have a personal life?’

  ‘This is hardly a personal life. Seedy is how it looks!’

  Gianluca stilled and looked at her. She stood with one hand on her hip. The white capri pants showed off her long legs. The pale blue T-shirt moulded to her like a second skin.

  It was impossible to imagine her in those ugly black trousers, that mumsy silk blouse, with her mouth drawn into a tight, suspicious line. Go away. I don’t want you.

  She might be steaming at him, but she seemed to be having a good time and she was undeniably sexy doing it.

  This thing between them had softened her, tempered her, and it had touched him too...

  He was happy, and he had no idea how it had happened.

  ‘You’ll have to fix this,’ she said imperiously.

  ‘Fix it?’

  ‘Yes—issue some sort of statement, make up a story like you said you would about us being related and it being some sort of trick of the photo...’

  Gianluca believed this was called being hoist with his own petard.

  He strode back to the car.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she called after him.

  He gunned the engine and Ava moved rapidamente, sliding in beside him. She barely had her seatbelt on when he took off, damn sure of one thing—this needed sorting out once and for all.

  * * *

  ‘What are we doing here?’

  Ava was aware her voice was a little shrill but she’d had a fright. The e-mail from PJ had shaken her. The knowledge that people were talking about her, that those photographs were floating around in the ether, had thrown her. She didn’t know why it bothered her so much, but suddenly what had seemed romantic felt entirely out of her control.

  She’d never had romance in her life, never allowed herself to be vulnerable enough to a man to let her guard down. Now she had and look what had happened—people were talking about her.

  She could guess what they were saying...that she was just the latest in a long line...

  It made her feel unimportant to him, and this less than what she’d thought it was.

  And, really, what was she doing with this man? Where did she think this was going?

  Ava, you need to be sensible.

  This last was the voice of her past. The little girl who’d had the responsibility for both her mother and her baby brother on her shoulders from far too young an age.

  Gianluca had her door open and he took her hand, none too gently.

  ‘Benedetti, I will not go any further until—’

  He almost yanked her off her feet and she had to struggle to keep up with him.

  The café he took her into was crowded. It was also terrifyingly elegant, and Ava felt under-dressed—especially as heads turned.

  ‘Gianluca, darling!’

  This seemed to come from a variety of women. Her already shaky confidence did a nosedive.

  ‘Where have you been, my friend?’

  A man rose from his table but Gianluca didn’t stop, didn’t deviate from his course.

  Ava tried to loosen his grip, but now he had a hand around her waist, was propelling her in front of him as they were shown by the busboy to a prominent table.

  He pulled out her chair.

  ‘Sit down, Ava.’

  She sat, too astonished to do anything else. She looked around and wished she hadn’t. People were staring at them. ‘How can you just walk in and get a table? Why are we here?’ she hissed, all the while trying to keep a social, nothing-to-see-here-people expression on her face.

  She tried not to react as she recognised a film director. Undeniably this was a glamorous crowd, out to be seen.

  Gianluca leaned across the table and took her hands.

  There was a sudden lull in conversation at the tables around them.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  He gave her a warm smile. ‘If I kiss you now, Ava, it will mean we are an item. Everyone will be talking about us—all of Roman society. You will be the girl who has taken Prince Benedetti’s heart. So think carefully before you answer me. We can have a drink together, some food, and nothing needs to change. Do you understand?’

  She found herself nodding, then shaking her head. What was he saying?

  ‘But I would like to kiss you, Ava mio, if you would let me.’

  She understood that bit.

  And, gazing into his eyes, she began to understand the rest.

  Almost as if in a dream she moistened her lips, dropped her lashes, softened her mouth in readiness.

  She felt his smile as one hand curled around the back of her head and his mouth met hers in a kiss so tender, so sincere, she could only read it as a pledge.

  A light smattering of applause broke out at the tables around them.

  ‘Now you are mine,’ he said, with his smile against her lips.

  * * *

  He showed her Rome.

  He introduced her to his home, his friends, his life.

  He took her to restaurants, to theatres, to parties.

  They ate together, slept together, and made love as if they’d just discovered the newness of the world and wanted to celebrate creation.

  What did it mean?

  Ava didn’t know and it was killing her—the sense that around the corner waited something large and ferocious, something she couldn’t define or defeat.

  She stood now in the studio of one of Rome’s leading couturiers, being fitted into a strapless midnight blue gown of such sumptuous scale Ava couldn’t imagine an event grand enough as its backdrop. But she had trusted Gianluca when he’d explained the Black & White Ball, this year in aid of a breast cancer charity, was one of the highlights of the social calendar. It was an international affair and ballgowns were a requirement.

  This dress was certainly going to make a statement. She only hoped the right kind.

  She nervously voiced her fears to the three women circling her.

  The seamstress at her feet looked up through the folds of satin and said, ‘This is a fantasy dress, signorina. All you need is the confidence to carry it off.’

  ‘You have the height,’ said one of the others.

  Ava translated the fulsome gesture from the third towards her breasts with her schoolgirl Italian. ‘And the necessary va-voom.’

  As she stepped out into the street in her civvies she wanted to pinch herself. These had been the most magical, wonderful, inspiring four weeks of her life. If nothing ever happened to her again half as good she would treasure this time, keep it locked up in her heart always against the hard winter when she didn’t have love in her life.

  Because she suspected it was love. As she slid into the plush confines of the limo Gianluca had put at her disposal she acknowledged the truth. She might not have had much of it in her life, but she knew what it looked like when it arrived.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ACROSS TOWN, GIANLUCA was in the elegantly appointed offices of Benedetti International from where he ran the world, as Ava put it.

  He only half listened to his lawyer on the other end of the line as he sto
od at the window, looking down on the busy square below.

  Everywhere he looked there were couples, old and young. Even the pigeons roosting outside the window came in a pair.

  Two generations ago his family’s marriages were still being arranged. It was different now. His father had chosen his mother of his own free will—the beautiful Sicilian model Maria Trigoni, who at that time had had her own small moment of fame in a Fellini film. Fidelity had not been high on either of his parents’ minds when they made that merger. Prince Ludovico had wanted a beautiful woman on his arm and Maria had liked the title.

  At thirty, Gianluca was very accustomed to women who liked the title. They liked the idea of having Principessa dangling in front of their name. They saw the palazzo in the middle of Rome, the house in Regent’s Park, London, the Manhattan apartment, and started ordering monogrammed napkins for the wedding.

  All his life he had imagined that when he came to choose a wife his choices would be constrained by the world in which he moved. Watching his parents tear each other apart had not encouraged him to look beyond the highly stratified and stage-managed relationships he’d engaged in all of his life.

  Until now.

  In Positano they had discussed their work lives—his offices in Rome, New York and London. The deals that put him over the edge, the rush of trade that she so well understood. Ava had spoken about her difficulties with clients—a mining magnate who’d insisted on meeting with her when he came to Sydney at his gym, so she ended up on a stationary cycle talking about his hedge fund. Worse, he was competitive and had insisted she match his rpm.

  ‘Do I look like a cyclist?’ she’d asked.

  ‘You, cara, you look like a goddess.’

  But now they were in Rome, spending all their time together, and the conversations were deepening. Last night in bed he’d told her about his childhood fascination with flight, his godfather’s encouragement, his father’s impatience. Deeply private things.

  ‘He didn’t want you to fly?’

  Ava had been propped up in his arms, her head beside his. She’d been wearing that little ice-blue lace thing he’d bought her.

  ‘My father wanted me to come into the family business—the banking group. It was all he wanted for me. He saw the planes as a hobby, at worst, a distraction.’

  ‘But it was your passion.’

  ‘It meant nothing,’ he said bluntly. ‘My entire upbringing was based on discipline—being tough, being a man. What I wanted didn’t much come into it.’

  ‘Yet you pushed for it? For what you wanted?’

  ‘Si.’ He had noticed how fierce Ava looked in that moment. ‘You had to fight for something too, Ava mio?’

  ‘Working class girl, left school at fifteen,’ she’d said, lifting that stubborn chin of hers. ‘Damn right I did.’

  He’d kissed her then, and made love to her until the memory of how hard he’d had to push for what he wanted and the consequences of that had been wiped out by a deep sense of having something special at last within his grasp. Something far more important than his passion for flight, his ability with the stock market, all the decisions right or wrong that he’d taken in life. Something that had nothing to do with duty or the family name.

  Lying in his arms afterwards, she’d told him more about her business back home—a firm that turned over multi-million-dollar accounts—and how she’d drudged full-time to put herself through university in a variety of jobs, the three years she’d worked for other companies as a broker, setting up her connections as ruthlessly as a Roman emperor assembling legions, until at the incredibly tender age of twenty-eight she’d taken the plunge and set up her own firm.

  He had told her in turn one of his other secrets—the breaks he took in Anguilla in the Caribbean, at the place he owned down there, the hideaway nobody knew about. And once he’d told her he’d found himself wanting to show it to her. When he’d asked her if she had somewhere she went to drop out of sight for a time she’d admitted it had been a while since she’d been on a holiday.

  ‘Define “a while”?’ he’d teased, kissing her neck.

  ‘Never.’

  ‘You’ve never been on a holiday?’

  ‘I’m here now, and I came here for Josh’s wedding. I’ve travelled for business, but just for me, getting away from it all—no.’

  She’d looked embarrassed, but also defiant, as if daring him to pass comment.

  A knot had formed at the base of his throat.

  That knot was still there now.

  His lawyer said intrusively, ‘If we move now we’ll have them over a barrel.’

  He flicked his thoughts back to the present. ‘Then we move. Let me know when it’s done.’

  He turned away from the window and the display of happy couples everywhere.

  Thinking about Ava, he focussed not on the future but on the now, where he was most comfortable—on the rather narrow, unrelieved tedium she’d described—and it galvanised him.

  Certamente he’d take her to Anguilla. He’d take her around the world if her heart desired it. But right now he wanted to play hooky with her. Take the day off. Stand on top of the world.

  But first he had an important errand to run. He got his assistant on the line and asked her to notify the bank that he’d be paying a visit to the vault in around half an hour.

  * * *

  He picked her up in the Aventador and headed for Palatine Hill.

  They took a picnic with them and in the late afternoon climbed through the ruins of the imperial palace complex, looking down over the Circus Maximus.

  Ava had fallen quiet when they’d first arrived. It wasn’t the spot they’d come to seven years ago, but there was the same view of the city, the long grass, the pencil pines. Not that he was in a hurry to rake over those coals. Whenever he remembered waking that morning to reach for her, only to grasp emptiness, anger rolled through him—and he didn’t want to be angry with her.

  Not today.

  ‘When my grandparents were courting they came up here,’ he said. ‘My grandmother was an archaeologist and very much obsessed with this place.’ He found himself adding, ‘It was a love match, not at all arranged.’

  ‘Does that make a difference?’ asked Ava, picking her way over the rocky ground.

  ‘If it had been arranged there would have been respectful afternoons at one another’s parents’ houses, chaperoned trips to the opera and summer on the coast where the two families would discuss terms.’

  ‘All so two strangers could marry?’

  ‘Not strangers, cara. All the families knew one another. I should add that my grandmother came from another old family, so it wasn’t a difficult concept for the two sets of parents to accept.’

  Ava didn’t say anything.

  He cleared his throat. ‘It’s somewhat different now.’

  ‘I guess Josh came as a bit of a shock, then,’ she said out of the blue.

  Josh who? His normally razor-sharp brain took a few seconds to register the name.

  ‘Your brother,’ he concluded reluctantly, aware that the afternoon was going places he hadn’t intended it to. ‘I won’t lie and say there was universal joy, but that had less to do with him not being Italian and more to do with his ability to provide for Alessia.’

  ‘Provide for her?’ Ava gave a nervous laugh. ‘Last time I looked this was the twenty-first century, Benedetti, or hadn’t you noticed?’

  Si, he’d noticed. If it wasn’t she’d be over his shoulder and halfway back to the palazzo, where she’d stay locked up.

  ‘I forgot...’ she glanced back at him over her shoulder ‘—you live in a cave.’

  ‘A palazzo,’ he drawled, ‘but close.’

  She needed to accept he was a man who would look after her, that he was not one of these excuses for men she had been putting up with—this brother of hers, who clearly had so little regard for his sister that this was the first time in seven years she had been mentioned. Her ex-boyfriend, whom Gianluca hoped o
ne day to cross paths with. The man who had left her fearful of intimacy—so fearful, in fact, that she’d fought him like a wildcat all the way down that mountain at Positano.

  His woman now. She would never be that woman again.

  He followed the sway of her hips as she stepped carefully over the broken ground.

  He heard himself say, ‘Look around you, Ava. There have been people living on the Palatino for a thousand years, and I’m sure back then, as now, a man’s worth could be judged on his ability to protect his family.’

  Ava stopped and drew herself tall, but didn’t turn around. ‘A woman protects her family too.’

  ‘Naturally.’ He stepped up close behind her. ‘You protected your brother all his life. But at some point he had to stand on his own two feet, Ava.’

  ‘How do you know I protected him?’

  ‘You told me here, on that night, about your mother’s fragile mental health. How you worried for her, how you’d had to puzzle out the best care for her as she lay dying, how guilty you felt, how alone. And I remember wondering why you didn’t have any help.’

  Ava’s turned around, her face pale.

  ‘I had no idea you were the groom’s sister. If I’d known I would have sorted him out for you.’

  ‘Sorted him out?’

  ‘Reorganised his priorities. A man should be responsible for his mother and sister.’

  Her mouth formed a tight line. ‘I don’t need anyone to be responsible for me, Benedetti.’

  He understood her resistance. She wouldn’t be Ava if she didn’t struggle against any incursion on her independence. He understood that too.

  ‘I get it. You don’t like my brother. You think he’s beneath your high-and-mighty family. Well, newsflash—I wasn’t happy about the damn wedding either. I did my best to talk him out of it. I told him he was making a big mistake. Alessia was far too young, and so was he, and I knew your family didn’t approve. Your mother—’ She broke off, pursing her lips.

  ‘My mother was most vocal, I understand. I suspect she was not kind to you.’

  She turned away. ‘I don’t wish to say anything critical about your mother.’

  ‘Then allow me.’ He turned her in his arms. ‘She’s a manipulative woman who likes everything to revolve around her. She is also highly emotional and not above using a little blackmail to get what she wants. My sisters act as her ladies-in-waiting, so I imagine the women of my family made your life miserable.’