The Italian's Forbidden Virgin (Mills & Boon Modern) (Those Notorious Romanos, Book 2)

by Carol Marinelli

‘Dante is...’ Ariana let out a long sigh. ‘I don’t know. He’s just been so focused on the funeral. I think it will all hit him afterwards. He and my father were close.’

  ‘Yes,’ Gian agreed.

  ‘Well, they were until Mia came along.’

  ‘They grew close again, once your father became ill,’ Gian pointed out. ‘And Stefano?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ Ariana said tightly. ‘You would have to ask Eloa.’ She heard the bitterness in her own voice and screwed her eyes closed, because she had told no one, not even Nicki, how left out she felt. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘Yes, you did,’ Gian said gently. ‘I know the two of you are close.’

  ‘Were close,’ she corrected. ‘I know it sounds childish, but we used to speak every day. Now he calls Eloa, and that’s correct, of course, and how it should be; they’re getting married in May. However...’ She didn’t know how best to describe the loneliness that had descended almost the moment Eloa had been introduced to her and Ariana had felt shut out.

  ‘You miss him?’

  ‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘And especially now.’

  ‘Since your father died?’

  ‘Before that,’ Ariana admitted. She looked at the moon lighting up the square. If ever there was a time for honesty it was tonight. ‘When our parents broke up it was Stefano I turned to. Papà had eyes only for Mia; he didn’t want me around so much...’

  Gian stayed silent, for he knew that wasn’t quite the case. Rafael had found out he was dying and wanted his final years to be spent in peace with Roberto; Mia had been a front of respectability. Of course he could not reveal that and just listened as she continued. ‘But Stefano met Eloa around then,’ Ariana said. ‘I just felt as if everyone I was close to disappeared. I know I have Dante, but he is so much older...’

  ‘Ancient,’ Gian agreed drily, for he and Dante were the same age.

  ‘I have Mamma, of course, but...’ She wished he would interrupt, or finish her sentence for her, because it was perhaps not something she should say out loud, yet his continued silence compelled her to speak. ‘I have Mamma, though only on her terms, and it can be a little stifling at times.’

  Still he remained silent as they walked.

  ‘And a little solitary at others,’ Ariana admitted. ‘I thought things were different with Stefano. He’s my twin; I’m used to him being there and I thought, no matter what, we’d still be in each other’s lives. I’m happy for him, I honestly am. I’m just not so happy for me. I’m being selfish, I know. Childish...’

  ‘Ariana.’ Gian thought for a moment and then decided he could be honest about this much at least. ‘For what it’s worth, I think Stefano is wrong to shut you out.’

  Her head turned towards him, her eyes wide with surprise. She’d expected to be scolded or told she was being petty or jealous. Instead he seemed like he was on her side. ‘Really?’

  ‘From everything I can observe, since Eloa came along he’s dropped everyone and everything. I didn’t realise until today that that also extended to you. Don’t you and Eloa get on?’

  ‘That’s the ridiculous part,’ Ariana said, relieved to speak about something other than death, and also relieved to share what had been eating at her for months. ‘I like Eloa, I really do. They just don’t seem to want to spend any real time with me.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ She gave a tight shrug, at first closing the conversation but then opening it up in a way he had not anticipated. ‘Were you close to your brother...’ She had to think for a second to recall his name. ‘Eduardo?’

  ‘No,’ Gian said. At first his answer was final, but she had shared so much with him that he felt it right to share a little more. ‘We were for a while.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘For a long while I looked up to him. Admired him...’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then I didn’t.’

  He gave her no more.

  ‘Wait there,’ Gian said. She assumed he had to make a call, perhaps to Svetlana... Maybe he was bored already with the company he had chosen tonight.

  Alone for the first time that day, Ariana quietly admitted her deep feelings for him.

  Ariana wanted more of Gian.

  She wanted to know his kiss. She wanted...more.

  More than his kiss...

  To know his touch...

  To sit holding hands at his table...

  The more she admitted to herself, the more honest her admissions became...

  She wanted Gian to hold her and she wanted to know how it felt to be made love to by him.

  For Gian De Luca to be her first...

  It was a reckless thought, though, for by his own admission Gian came with a warning.

  But since when had Ariana heeded warnings?

  She stared up at Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi—the Fountain of Four Rivers, said to be the most complex of the many fountains in Rome. She looked at the four river gods and then up, ever up, to the tall obelisk that topped it. Her feelings were spinning in her mind as the crush she had on Gian transformed into need.

  She loathed being twenty-five with barely a kiss to her name.

  Yet while kisses did not excite her, the mere thought of Gian’s kiss did.

  ‘Here.’ His voice startled her and she looked at the paper cone filled with hot chestnuts that he held out. ‘You looked cold.’

  ‘You got these for me?’ Gian watched as her pale face broke into a smile, and her eyes shone as if he were handing her a purse of gold. ‘Thank you.’

  Hot chestnuts on a cold night had never tasted so good as they sat at the base of the fountain, biting into the salty treats. ‘These are the best I have tasted,’ Ariana said, every single time she ate one.

  ‘They’re just chestnuts.’ Gian did not really get her enthusiasm for such a familiar winter treat. ‘I used to come down here at night as a child and buy these.’

  ‘You would sneak out?’ she nudged.

  ‘No sneaking required.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Just that...’ Gian said, and he looked at Ariana, quietly watching the world go by. He knew why he had not left her alone tonight. He knew better than anyone how it felt to be alone in Rome after dark, that frantic search for company, any company, that compelled you to speak to a stranger or hang out with a wayward friend, anything other than return to your room and lie there alone. ‘So...’ he changed the subject and looked over at the stunning Palazzo Pamphili, where the wedding was to be held ‘...you arranged the wedding reception.’

  ‘I managed to secure the venue,’ Ariana corrected.

  ‘Good for you.’ He smiled.

  His smile was like being handed the earth.

  ‘Come on,’ he suggested, when they had finished eating, ‘let’s walk.’

  They passed the impressive building where a few months from now the wedding would take place. It seemed so wrong that such a celebration would take place and their father would not be there.

  ‘Are you going?’ she asked, because the idea of him being there really helped. She was so out of the wedding loop she had no real idea if he’d been invited, let alone responded.

  ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘It’s the weekend of the opening of my Florence hotel so I shall be sending my apologies. I am sure I shan’t be missed.’

  You shall be missed, she wanted to say, but did not know how. ‘I’m kind of dreading it,’ she said, hinting a little that his presence might help.

  ‘You’ll be just fine,’ Gian said assuredly, and gave her hand a squeeze, yet her fingers were cold beneath his so he held onto them as they walked.

  Gian did not do hand-holding.

  Ever.

  Yet tonight he did.

  For a second, Ariana felt as if she were walking in the Tus
can fields in the middle of summer, not sad and frozen in Rome. But then she remembered the reason for his kindness this night, and wondered how it had been for him. ‘You must miss your parents...’ she ventured, though immediately knew she had said the wrong thing for he dropped her hand like a hot coal.

  ‘I didn’t know them enough to miss them,’ he said, but Ariana refused to be fobbed off.

  ‘What about your brother?’ she probed, but he was equally unforthcoming.

  ‘Leave it, Ariana.’

  She refused. ‘How did you find out about the...?’ She hesitated, unsure what to call a raging fire on a yacht in the middle of the ocean. ‘The accident?’ she settled for.

  ‘Hardly an accident,’ Gian retorted, and she heard a trace of bitterness to his tone. ‘With the amount of alcohol and class-A drugs my family consumed, I think it could be called inevitable.’

  Ariana was stunned.

  She had heard whispers, of course, like little jigsaw pieces of scandal that had been gathered together over dinners and parties, but all too soon scooped up and put away. But now it was Gian himself putting the pieces together and giving her a glimpse.

  ‘They were renewing their wedding vows?’ Ariana checked.

  God, she was persistent. Perhaps it was the emotion of the day, but he found that tonight he didn’t mind. ‘Yes. It sounds romantic, doesn’t it, like the Duke and Fiordelise, but the truth is it was an excuse for a party. They renewed their vows every couple of years,’ Gian said drily. ‘They would fight, they would make up, they would say never again... I got off the hamster wheel and left before then. I was at university, studying architecture. I was asleep in the residences...’

  ‘You didn’t live at La Fiordelise then?’

  ‘God, no.’ He gave a hollow laugh. ‘I was more than happy to leave it all behind. Luna came with the police and woke me...’

  ‘Luna worked for your parents?’

  ‘She was actually working her notice,’ Gian said. ‘They had been late again paying her and she had resigned, but after they died Luna said she would stay until things were more stable.’ Gian gave her a tight smile. ‘Fifteen years later, she still reminds me on occasion that she is working her notice.’ He shook his head and closed the subject.

  Except Ariana wanted to prise it back open. ‘Tell me...’

  ‘Tell you what?’

  ‘How you felt when they died?’

  ‘As I told you, I barely knew them.’

  ‘They were your parents, your brother...’

  ‘Just leave it,’ he warned. ‘Ariana, I respect your boundaries. Why can’t you respect mine?’

  ‘Because I want to know you some more...’

  He kept right on walking, though a little faster than before. ‘Wait...’ Ariana said, and grabbed his coat to slow him down, except her hand found its way back into his. ‘I’m sorry for pushing. I just wonder...’ she didn’t know how best to say it ‘...when the grief goes?’

  ‘I can’t answer that,’ Gian admitted. ‘I grieved for them long before they died.’ He should close it there, but her hand was warm and he sensed she would walk for ever just to hear some more. ‘Eduardo and I were both repulsed by their ways. He was older, the one who would look out for me when I was small, make sure my nanny was paid, that sort of thing...’

  She stayed silent in the hope he would continue and her reward was great, for he revealed more.

  ‘Then he took up their ways and I ended up looking out for him.’

  Still she stayed silent but she felt the grip of his hand tighten and it seemed like the darkness of his truth guided her through her own pain.

  ‘I found Eduardo one morning; I thought he was dead. I couldn’t rouse my parents. The hotel doctor came and for all the hell of that morning, by that evening the incident was forgotten.’

  Now she spoke. ‘Not by you.’

  ‘Never by me,’ Gian said. ‘It happened several times again. I said to Eduardo one day, “I won’t always be there to save you.” And it was then that I stopped...’

  ‘Stopped what?’ Ariana asked.

  ‘I can’t answer that,’ Gian admitted. ‘And I’m not being evasive, I just...’ He shrugged. ‘Stopped.’

  Ariana stopped asking, which he was grateful for, because revelations like these were hard.

  He had stopped...not loving, not caring, just stopped all feelings.

  Stopped hoping for change.

  Stopped trying to control their chaos.

  ‘I like order,’ he admitted, and looked over at her. ‘Why do you smile?’

  ‘Because it’s hardly a revelation. I know you like order, Gian.’

  ‘You know too much,’ he said, and dropped a kiss on the top of her head as they walked.

  It was a tiny kiss, but when it came from Gian, it felt as if he had just picked her up and carried her.

  It felt so perfect that she actually let out a little laugh and touched her head to feel where his lips had just pressed, for her scalp tingled. ‘You’re crazy, Ariana,’ he told her.

  ‘A bit.’

  It was unexpected bliss on the saddest of nights, to be walking on a cold Rome night, hand in hand, along Piazza d’Arecoli, their breaths blowing white in the night air. Ariana had run out of words, and she was terrified that he might drop her hand.

  His hand was warm and it was so unexpected and so nice and just everything she needed tonight.

  Gian too was pondering the light weight of her fingers that wrapped around his and how, on the near-empty street, when they could easily walk apart, they were strolling like this.

  It was Ariana Romano.

  She’s a friend, he told himself.

  He was simply doing what any friend would.

  Except he did not have friendships of this type.

  And he never confided in anyone, yet he just had.

  Still holding hands, they took the stairs and there before them, ever beautiful, was the Altar of the Fatherland. Soldiers stood guarding the tomb of the unknown soldier and Ariana knew she should guard her own heart with the same attention and care.

  ‘Oh,’ she gasped as they took in the altar of the goddess of Rome.

  His stomach growled and he turned her to face him. There were tired streaks of mascara, like delicate lace, smudged on her cheeks. Her mouth, rarely devoid of lipstick, was swollen from days of tears. She smiled briefly and it lit up her face for a moment. He wanted to capture it, to frame it and hold onto it—and he did so with his hands.

  She felt the brush of his fingers on her cheeks and then the soft pressure as he held her face. Surely the eternal flame flared, because something lit the sky and seared her as his lips made first contact.

  Just the gentlest brush at first then soft and slow and exploring.

  His kiss made her slightly giddy in a way no other had. His touch was both tender and firm and she felt she could fall right now and be caught, even though his hands barely held her.

  Only once did she peek. Ariana opened her eyes, while praying that she wouldn’t be caught, for she did not want to break this spell. Gian’s eyes were closed, though, as if savouring the most exquisite wine. He continued to hold her cheeks, so firmly now that her head could not move. He kissed her thoroughly and his lips were like velvet, his tongue so shockingly intimate it felt charged as each stroke shot volts of ecstasy to her own. His hand moved into her hair, holding the back of her head and knotting into her scalp as his tongue danced with hers.

  A craving for more built in her but he pulled back. Gian looked at her wet lips and dilated pupils and the frantic, somewhat startled look and he tried to rein in his usual common sense. ‘I should get you home...’

  ‘Please,’ Ariana said, but her voice was low and husky and told them both what she wanted.

  Ariana’s decision was made.

  Gian De Luca
would be her first.

  Perhaps that was the reason she had held on for so long, because there was no one else who held a candle to him. No one who made her shiver, even without touching her, no one who made her mouth want to know his kiss...

  ‘Ariana.’ His voice was gruff. ‘When I said home, I meant to your door.’ Gian was serious. A kiss was one thing, but bedding her was out of the question. ‘If we were so much as seen out together...’

  ‘That would get them talking.’ Ariana smiled as Gian clearly hated the thought. ‘Mamma would have us married in a moment if she knew her virgin daughter was out with the Duke...’ Her voice trailed off, unsure how Gian would receive the news of her inexperience, but he gave a low laugh.

  Ariana was not, he knew, dropping in his title; instead she was capturing her mother’s thought process and agreeing with exactly how it would be if they were seen. ‘Exactly. Though,’ he added, ‘I’m sure all mothers think their daughters are virgins.’

  ‘But I am one.’

  He almost laughed again, and then realised she wasn’t laughing. He almost hauled her off him, but decided that reaction might be a bit extreme and so instead he offered her his smile.

  His duty smile, which she determinedly ignored.

  ‘Let’s get you home...’ Gian said.

  ‘Yes,’ Ariana agreed. ‘Take me to bed.’

  ‘Absolutely not.’

  And he meant it, for he was headed down the steps. Ariana did not quite know what she’d done wrong, just that everything had changed.

  ‘Gian.’ Now she really did have to practically run to keep up with him. ‘Why are you being like this? Didn’t you like our kiss?’

  ‘It was a kiss,’ Gian snapped, ‘not an open invitation.’

  But Ariana would not relent. She had made up her mind and was all too used to getting her own way. ‘I want my first to be you.’

  ‘Well, it won’t be. If we are even as much as seen, people will talk and it will be...’ He had to be cruel to be kind. ‘They will turn it into something bigger than it is.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘Do you?’ Gian checked. ‘Do you understand that I don’t do relationships? That the very last thing I want is to be involved in someone else’s life?’