He had loved his first wife so much that he still mourned her. No other woman could take her place in his heart. She knew all that, and had accepted it because there was no other option. But that didn’t mean she could go through a wedding ceremony, stand exactly where his beloved lost Flavia had stood, and know that when he looked at her he would be remembering the one and only love of his life and making bitter comparisons.
‘Perhaps we should get back into the sunlight.’ She gave a tiny manufactured shiver, flashed him a smile that was so bright it hurt, and walked to the door with her head held high.
She couldn’t afford to let him see how she really felt about him. He would hate it. As far as he was concerned their marriage would be nothing more than a legal contract, with duty on his side and compliance to the family will on hers.
Marriage to a clinging, love-sick loon would be the very last thing he wanted!
‘Slow down!’ He caught up with her as she stumbled down the steps, taking her hand. ‘There is a good alimentari on the opposite side of the square—we will take food with us into the hills. You would like that?’
A disarmingly charismatic smile lit his staggeringly handsome features. Portia had never seen him look this relaxed and, yes, happy. The important banker-man on a rare holiday, she divined, melting at once, instinctively giving in to the need to please the man she loved, even if knowledge of that state of affairs was to be kept well away from him.
‘Sounds good!’ she said, with another sunny smile—one she kept firmly in place as they crossed the square.
Lucenzo paused to exchange a few words with the old women who sat sewing on their doorsteps. They addressed him as padrone, grinning and talking so rapidly that Portia, with her beginner’s tenuous grasp of the language, could barely understand one word in a hundred.
Standing by while a round little man kept up a joyful running commentary as he filled Lucenzo’s order, breathing in the smell of freshly baked bread, coffee beans, cheese and garlic, Portia heard her stomach grumble at an embarrassing volume. Lucenzo’s dark eyes met hers, smiling eyes, and she knew his thoughts were the same as hers.
They had both been too preoccupied to eat supper last night, and she wasn’t sure about him, but she hadn’t touched breakfast, other than a sip of scalding coffee.
It was a moment of intimacy she thought she might remember for ever, and something ached inside her that had nothing at all to do with lack of food.
Half an hour later Lucenzo pulled the car off the narrow twisting road and Portia, entranced, breathed, ‘Oh, Lucenzo—how lovely!’
High meadows overlooked cypress-covered hills, and further down the valley vineyards swept to the edge of the river.
‘We will walk a little way.’ Lucenzo’s arm rested on the back of her seat, and the yearning to lean back, turn her head and taste the tanned, hair-roughened skin of his forearm, was pretty well unendurable.
Her eyes must have given her away, because he gave her a slow, sleepy, incredibly sexy smile and murmured, ‘Later. First we walk and then we eat and then…’ His eloquent shrug said it all. ‘And then we will see.’
High heels weren’t the ideal footwear for walking through the long flowering grasses, Portia thought. Or perhaps her knees were still shaking with the effects of what he’d said, the way he’d looked at her, his eyes intent on her face, drifting from feature to feature for long moments, then narrowing as his gaze slid down to rest on the evidence of breasts that were peaking with tingling anticipation against the thin silky fabric of her scarlet shirt.
The second time she stumbled Lucenzo swept her laughingly into his arms and manoeuvred the bulky carrier of food onto her tummy. ‘Your legs are too pretty to break, cara.’ He placed a swift, all-too-brief kiss on lips that were still parted with the surprise of being swept off her feet. ‘It is a pity no one ever comes here, not even the most intrepid tourist, to see how manfully I play the hero!’
This unprecedented playful mood made him totally irresistible, so Portia didn’t even try. One hand was clutching the carrier, but the other was free to loop around his neck, to drag his head down to claim a kiss that was far from brief this time.
Portia was still breathless and trying to recover from the after-effects when Lucenzo sank bonelessly down in a grassy hollow and held her firmly on his lap. One hand curved round the tight fullness of her breast, the other wound the silky fall of her hair around his wrist, keeping her captive to demands that were made explicit when he fluidly rolled her over and crushed her soft mouth with driven hunger.
What could have been hours or days later, she watched him from beneath eyelids that had suddenly become alarmingly heavy. His breathing was as raggedy as her own and his heart was beating wildly beneath the palm of her hand.
His eyes were liquid with unashamed hunger as his fingers lifted to the buttons on her shirt. They worked deftly, those long, lean fingers, and he was removing the third from its moorings when a terrible feeling of loss overwhelmed her. This was all wrong for her! She pushed his hand away and blurted out feverishly, ‘No, Lucenzo!’ Looking for something to say to explain her sudden rejection, she added dully, ‘I’m hungry.’
‘Ah.’ He gave her a wry smile, immediately lifting himself off the elbow he’d been leaning on, then turning to hold out his hands and haul her into a sitting position. ‘So am I, bella, so am I. But my appetite will wait until after we’ve eaten.’
Sex for the sake of it, she thought dolefully as he reached for the forgotten carrier. ‘Appetite’ summed it up exactly. Something to be forgotten once it was assuaged. She had imagined she could live with that. It was part of the bargain after all. But now she wasn’t so sure. She wasn’t sure at all.
Making love with him was more wonderful than she’d dreamed possible, and she wanted him with a desperation that sometimes frightened her. And the wanting would last because she loved him. But he craved her body full-stop. If someone craved cream cakes and gorged on them they would soon be sickened and fancy something else.
Loving him made her too vulnerable to view that situation with anything but dread.
‘You said you were hungry.’ His darkly probing eyes were intent on her troubled little face and Portia blinked, only now aware that he was holding out a small pancake covered with creamy cheese and a slice of home-cured ham.
She took it because she had to, but she didn’t think she could eat, not while her stomach was clenched tight with misery. Somehow she’d gone from one impossible situation to another, and now she was the victim of her own needy love for this man, of her fierce maternal desire to do the very best for her son.
Lucenzo reached out and touched the side of her face, a gesture so tender it made her want to cry because it hadn’t stemmed from love. He wanted sex with her. That was what this was about.
‘Portia, what’s troubling you?’
Her eyes lifted unwillingly to his. There was definitely something wry about the smile that hovered around his sensational mouth. He’d brought her here to have sex with her, away from prying eyes and clacking tongues back at the villa. That was all she was good for, apart from satisfying his family honour.
And now he would think she was behaving like a sulky, temperamental child, denying him what she had so freely offered last night.
Her sigh came up from the soles of her feet. She laid the unwanted food on the paper napkin Lucenzo had provided and pushed her hair away from her face with the back of her hand.
‘I feel trapped,’ she told him honestly, and if this was the beginning of a conversation that would lead to him freeing her from her promise to marry him, then so be it, she decided fatalistically. ‘I feel like a puppet. People are pulling strings and I’m making the right movements because I don’t have any choice in the matter.’
‘You are no wooden doll, Portia.’ His voice was an unashamedly sexy purr. ‘You are a warm, flesh and blood woman and you give me much pleasure!’
‘Sex!’ she snapped, tugging out clumps of grass w
ithout being aware of what she was doing. Sometimes he got her so angry!
She was angrier still when he came back with that lazy, heart-breaking grin of his. ‘And what’s wrong with that? I think you enjoy it, and I know I do!’
She pulled her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around them, giving him a sideways glare.
‘Do you always take people this seriously?’ she enquired with a bite of sarcasm. ‘Or is it only me?’ She could strangle him sometimes, she really could!
‘Ah,’ he intoned slowly. ‘Right.’ He reached out his hand and gently touched hers. ‘I’m sorry,’ he told her seriously. ‘Tell me why you think you’re being manipulated. Who is pulling your strings? I want you to be honest about your feelings.’
Portia immediately felt weary and tearful. When he looked at her with such kindness in his dark, liquid eyes it did her head in and just made her love him all the more. It was far easier to be angry with him.
There was no way she could be completely honest and tell him how deeply she loved him, but she could tell him something. ‘Vito knew all the right strings to pull. And my parents—they made it as good as impossible for me to refuse your father’s invitation to bring Sam out here. And your father himself—he doesn’t mean to put pressure on me to stay, but my knowing how besotted with Sam he is, how much happier and stronger he’s getting, does it for him. And then—’ she shot him a baleful glare ‘—there’s you. With all those sensible reasons why we should marry. If that’s not manipulation, I don’t know what is!’
Her voice had risen to a wail and a solitary tear glistened on her cheek. Lucenzo wiped it away with the ball of his thumb. ‘You could have refused me,’ he pointed out gently. ‘You had that choice.’
‘Some choice!’ Portia retorted fiercely. ‘The choice between my baby being brought up back in England—merely surviving, as you pointed out yourself, around grandparents who regret his very existence—or being here, with everyone doting on him, having every possible advantage. What kind of choice is that?’ she demanded chokily, then lowered her head in abject misery as she confessed sorrowfully, ‘As usual, I took the coward’s way out.’
Lucenzo closed his eyes. Crunch time. He could truthfully tell her that if she opted to return to England, taking Sam with her, then of course both of them would be handsomely provided for. The Verdi family took care of its own.
But surely she would be happier here. Eduardo loved her like a daughter, and he would miss her and his grandson so much that his excellent progress might be reversed. That was as good a reason for her continued presence as anything he could think of.
And, he admitted, registering a peculiar lurch in the region of his heart, he’d got quite used to the idea of remarriage. Especially when his future wife was so warm and sexy. He quickly dismissed his lustful motives. In any case, she needed to be grounded, to have someone responsible to look out for her.
Her heart was definitely in the right place, but she was inclined to be a little scatty, not to mention impulsive. The combination might be oddly endearing, but it could also lead to unscrupulous people—like Vittorio, for example—taking advantage of her.
No, she definitely needed looking after. And he was the man to do it.
He said, not quite levelly, ‘You made your choice and it was a courageous one. You agreed to spend the rest of your life with me for your son’s sake, when for all you know I could be a wife-beater, unfaithful and neglectful.’
He took both her hands in his and lifted them to his mouth, kissing the backs of her slender fingers. ‘I give you my solemn promise that you will never regret our marriage. I will be loyal throughout our lives, and while I draw breath nothing will harm you. Cara, I care about you—’ His voice broke as the knowledge hit him like a ton of bricks. Madre di Dios—he loved her!
After what had happened to Flavia he had vowed he’d never leave himself open to such hurt again. But it had happened. He loved everything about this woman. The beauty of her smile, the way she had of putting others’ needs before her own, the sweet vulnerability that lit such an unquenchable spark inside him, her open, generous nature.
He felt his body tremble, his heart open and flower. Taking her hands, he looped them around his neck and cupped her sweet face with his own slightly unsteady fingers.
It would be a mistake to tell her how he felt. She wouldn’t want the responsibility, the burden of his love, when there was so much else for her to come to terms with.
But he could, in time, teach her to love him. This wasn’t about his father’s or her child’s best interests. It was about what he felt for her. And he could tell her, with almost vehement sincerity, ‘Trust me, Portia. It will be all right. It will be perfect, I promise you.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘WHICH one suits me best, Nonna?’
Portia, her cheeks the colour of pink roses, her grey eyes sparkling, made a stately perambulation of her sitting room.
‘This, or one of the others? Goodness,’ she giggled, ‘I feel like a professional model prancing down the catwalk—though I guess I don’t look like one! Do I look too bosomy?’
‘That one,’ Lorna piped up in the background.
Lucenzo’s grandmother put her aristocratic head on one side and said, ‘I agree. That is perfect.’ Then she clapped her hands together. ‘You are perfect. Oh, I do love weddings!’
‘Si, si! Bella, bella!’ Assunta cried, and even little Sam, jiggling in her arms, gave a crow of excitement.
At nearly four months he was developing quickly. Portia gave him a love-drenched smile. In one week she would be marrying to secure his future and there were no regrets.
Her husband-to-be didn’t love her, of course, but she could live with that because she knew without a question of doubt that he really cared about her. Hadn’t he said so? Promised to be faithful to her? And the way he’d made love to her, that day in the high meadow, had even transcended the wild passion of the night before. It had seemed deeper, more meaningful.
Realising her flush was deepening to a vivid blush, she returned to the mirror. Lucenzo had arranged for a selection of wedding gowns to be flown in from Milan, and although they were all lovely, and she really was spoiled for choice, she had to agree that this one made her look like a fairy-tale bride.
Fashioned of ivory-coloured wild silk, the bodice fitted like a second skin. The deep neckline showed a discreet amount of cleavage, and the rustling silk skirts flowed down from her tiny waist. The long, narrow sleeves, which were fashioned from delicately embroidered lace, echoed the filmy veil.
‘I have something for you,’ Nonna said, hauling a velvet-covered box from beneath the chair she was occupying and opening it to display a glittering diamond-encrusted tiara resting against dark blue satin. ‘It belonged to my great-grandmother and has been worn by Verdi brides ever since. Perhaps you would try it now? And then we will have Ugo lock it in the safe until your wedding day.’
Portia’s eyes went very wide as she gazed at the incredibly delicate jewels. ‘Are the stones real?’ Goodness, what a responsibility if they were!
‘But of course.’ Just for a moment aristocratic haughtiness looked out of her eyes, centuries of breeding. ‘Verdis do not wear paste.’ Then she smiled impishly. ‘My great-grandfather bought it for his bride-to-be in St Petersburg. It was already very old. He was a man of great good taste.’
‘I was a Verdi bride,’ Lorna pronounced sulkily as Portia gingerly fixed the glittering tiara. ‘How come I didn’t get to wear it?’
‘Because, my dear—’ the old lady’s level look was not unkind ‘—yours was not a true love match. Anyone with a grain of sense could see that. And I have more sense than most and a nose for such matters. The Verdi men have always married for love. In the case of your marriage to Vittorio the wearing of such a love token seemed inappropriate.’
Portia gazed at the starry glitter on her head and was swamped with guilt.
Her Verdi man wasn’t marrying her for love. Surely
if Nonna had ‘a nose for such matters’ she must see that? Or had her venerable age robbed her of her judgement?
With such an apparently long tradition behind the tiara she would feel a fraud if she wore it. With trembling fingers she laid it back in its box, hoping that when the big day came Nonna would forget all about it and leave it safely locked away until it could grace the head of a Verdi bride who was truly loved.
‘Shall we sit awhile?’ There was a stone seat in the shade just inside the enclosed garden, where old roses bloomed in a wild and perfumed tangle, their exuberance grounded by the formality of pencil-slim cypress trees.
‘Oh, Eduardo—have we walked too far?’ Portia shot him a worried glance. ‘Are you exhausted?’
‘Not a bit of it—don’t fuss! I want to talk to you, that is all.’
‘Right.’ Portia angled the buggy further into the shade. Sam was blissfully asleep and would probably stay that way for another hour. A quiet few minutes in this beautiful place before they headed back to the villa through the gardens was just what she needed.
Eduardo was wearing a battered panama, a straw-coloured linen jacket and he looked as fit as a fiddle. So she really shouldn’t worry about getting him overtired. Since Lucenzo had told him of his marriage plans three weeks ago his progress back to full health had been remarkable.
‘Everything is in hand for the big day?’ he asked as Portia settled beside him. ‘And the marquee is going up tomorrow? Is that woman Lucenzo hired to organise everything doing her job properly?’
Portia gave him a beaming smile. He was such an old darling! He knew the answers to all his questions before he asked them. He and Nonna had demanded to be kept abreast of every tiny detail from day one.
But she was happy to humour him. Talking about the wedding made it seem more real. Mostly, she felt as if she were living in a dream. ‘Signora Zanichelli’s doing a brilliant job. The flowers, the music, the caterers—everything is arranged. And all the people on the guest list you and Nonna gave her have replied in the affirmative.’
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