“Do you like seafood?”
She bit down on her lip, trapping her smile, and nodded.
“I’m glad.” His finger lifted up and smudged her lower lip, then his hand dropped to the small of her back, guiding her away from his bike.
“Don’t you need to park that?”
“Valet will take care of it.”
She lifted her eyes heavenwards. “Right, of course.”
Ten stairs, carved from stone, led to the first cave, where a man was waiting to greet them.
“Ah, Signore Montebello, what a pleasure it is to have you back,” he spoke in Italian. Nico responded in English.
“Thanks. You’ve reserved a table?”
“Naturally, sir. This way.” He guided the way through the restaurant. Crisp, white-linen tablecloths were set with fine crystal stemware and highly-polished cutlery and at the centre of each table there was a candle, so the overall effect was that the restaurant glowed with a warm, calming gold. Beyond them, the ocean rolled, bringing towards them the fragrance of salt and the rhythm of the sea. Their table had to be beyond compare. At the furthermost point of the restaurant, it offered panoramic views and it had been set aside from the other tables sufficiently to ensure a degree of privacy during conversation.
“Can I get you a bottle of your usual, sir?”
Nico turned to Maddie. “Would you like to see the wine list?”
She was floored. It wasn’t fair to make comparisons between Nico and Michael, but at the same time, it was almost impossible not to. Where Michael had always ordered their drinks – and oftentimes their food – Nico instinctively consulted with her, asking for her preference. Maddie’s heart turned over in her chest and heady on the rush of power – which academically she knew to be normal rather than anything special, she nodded. “Please.”
A moment later, a book at least fifty pages thick was brought out. The names were all foreign to her, but she could read the euro signs well enough. The prices were exorbitant.
“I usually get the Chateaux Gaushaul,” he offered, after she’d spent a few minutes frowning at the wine list. “It’s earthy and rich without being overwhelming.”
She nodded. “That sounds…” her eyes caught the price and she jerked her gaze to his face. True, he was incredibly wealthy, but that didn’t mean she was comfortable with him ordering bottles of wine that cost more than a week’s rent. “Um, maybe just a mineral water for now.”
She caught the frown that flicked on his face and butterflies – not the good kind – spread through her belly. He was annoyed with her. Impatient.
“Sorry,” she offered. “I just didn’t want to take out a second mortgage for a drink.”
“Naturally, dinner’s on me.”
“That’s not necessary.”
At that, he laughed, just a soft sound accompanied by a small shake of his head. “You are unique, Maddie Gray, do you know that?”
She shifted her shoulders. “Why?”
“Because I invited you to dinner, I chose the restaurant, and because, frankly, I can afford to pay. Would you like a glass of the Gaushaul?”
She shook her head. “Really, I’m fine.”
He lifted his shoulders and turned his attention to the waiter. “Mineral water for two.”
“You don’t have to do that. Have whatever you usually do.”
“It’s fine.” He smiled, relaxing her immediately, so she wondered why she’d felt even a hint of anxiety. Nico wasn’t Michael. No one was. Besides, Michael was in another country, far across the ocean. He had no idea where she was. She was free.
She looked away, towards the sea, and her soul relaxed even further. “This place is like heaven on earth.”
“Or better?”
“Possibly,” her smile was crooked. “I take it you’re a regular here?”
“If I don’t feel like cooking,” he agreed.
“It’s kind of fancy for that.”
“Is it?”
She laughed. “Come on, you’re not that out of touch with the real world, are you?”
“It’s tables and chairs set up in a series of caves.”
“But the caves,” she lifted her hand and rubbed it over the wall beside them. It only came up to the same height as the tabletop; it was cold and uneven beneath her fingertips, and damp in that way stones by the sea always are. “Are spectacular.”
“The grotte have a long history,” he said with a nod. “There are dozens along the sea here. Some, further south, were used to shelter townspeople in the renaissance. They lead to a long rabbit warren of tunnels that cuts through the hillside. There’s an entrance to one in Monte Verde.”
“That’s miles away!”
“Nearly seven,” he nodded.
“Wow. Have you ever explored them?”
His smile cracked something inside of her. It shone with so much beauty and mystique. “As a boy, I spent as much time as I could losing myself here. I’ll never forget the first time I made it to the other side.”
“In one day? How old were you?”
“Eleven.”
She lifted her brows.
“I got to Monte Verde but didn’t make it home.” He grinned. “Someone called Yaya and told her they’d found me. I was grounded for a week.”
It was easy to return his smile. There was something contagious about his happiness, the ease with which he told his stories.
“My grandfather was proud though. He’d undertaken the same journey as a boy. I think he secretly saw it as a right of passage.”
“Surely he could have prevented you from being grounded?”
“He left Yaya to raise us,” Nico shrugged. “It wasn’t until we were older and he was preparing to pass the business on that he began to spend time with us. He wasn’t good with children, he used to say, but young adults he could tolerate.”
“Were you close to him?”
“Si.” Something shifted in his expression. “He might not have been able to tolerate us, as children, but we adored him.”
“You spent a lot of time with him?”
“We lived with Yaya and Gianfelice until we went away to school.” Something inside of her bristled – a warning flag. She knew school to have been where he met Michael. The subject immediately felt dangerous, like volcanic lava she was best avoiding.
“Why? Where were you parents?”
“In Spain.” A hint of derision curled his lips, though it was smothered quickly enough.
“In Spain?”
The waiter appeared with a small platter of amuse bouche. “Are you ready to order?”
“I haven’t even looked,” she apologised.
“A few more minutes.” Nico was relaxed, no hint of the sharp emotion she’d seen in his face when he’d mentioned his parents.
The waiter left them alone once more and Maddie made a concerted effort of opening the menu and scanning the dishes. “Would you prefer to see it in English?”
“On the contrary – I told myself I’d be partway fluent in Italian by the time I leave Ondechiara. I’m taking every opportunity to practice.”
“So I should be speaking to you in my language?” He asked in Italian. It took her a moment to decode the words but not because they were beyond her, so much as hearing his tones in his own tongue was musical and addictive. She dug her fingernails into her palms in an attempt to curb the rush of her desire.
“Yes, absolutely.” But her own response was husky, imbued with sensual need, and he heard it. She saw the way his eyes widened a little, his gaze dropping to her lips, and her stomach punched.
“So Spain?”
He made a noise of agreement. “They have a house just outside Barcelona.”
“But you didn’t live there?”
“We moved to live with Yaya when I was four.”
“So little?” She frowned. “Was your mother ill?”
He laughed softly. “She is the picture of health.”
“Then why…?”
�
�My parents were not particularly interested in being parents. We lacked structure and routine to our lives and our grandfather was old fashioned. He felt our childhood was predisposing us to become lazy, happy to live off the family fortune without any goals and ambitions of our own. He wanted to make sure we didn’t turn out as his sons had.”
“Why? What’s wrong with them?”
“Nothing,” Nico’s expression showed a hint of consternation. “How come I find myself wanting to tell you things I’ve never told another soul?”
She dipped her head to hide her smile but he reached over and pressed a finger to her chin, lifting her eyes to his.
It was clear he was expecting an answer, but she had none. She couldn’t explain it, just like she couldn’t explain the way she felt safe with him when she barely knew him. It was all so out of character, especially for two people who claimed to be lacking in trust.
“Growing up knowing your birth right is an enormous trust fund is demotivating. Neither my father nor uncle ever had any interest in working, and as a result of that, they never learned what they enjoyed, what they were good at, besides attending parties and enjoying life.”
“But that can’t be so unusual, with people like you?”
“People like me?”
She pulled her lips to the side thoughtfully. “Seriously filthy rich people, yeah.”
His words held a suppressed laugh. “Oh, that’s what I am, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“And I guess a lot of people like you grow up not wanting to work, not needing to earn their keep.”
“True,” he murmured. “But not us. Gianfelice blamed himself for how his children had turned out – he swore we wouldn’t be the same. His father’s legacy was to be protected, not squandered away by heirs who didn’t know how to tie their own shoes.”
She mulled this over. “Still, for your parents to have agreed…I mean, you were so young. That must have been very hard on you, hard on your mother?” Inwardly, she couldn’t believe any mother could willingly give up their children! And a four year old, little more than a baby. How difficult that must have been for both of them, but especially for the boy Nico had been.
His eyes moved out to sea but she saw the way his facial features tightened, as though he was fighting a war within himself.
“It was hard. In the beginning, I missed my parents, but I had my cousins and brothers and Yaya wrapped us in so much love it was, at times, almost suffocating. And as I grew older, I understood.”
“Understood what?”
“They’d wanted their trust funds more than they’d wanted us.”
She gasped. “He bribed them?”
“He forced them to make a choice. Join the company and start working, contributing – and raise us – or take the trust fund and live as they had been, but surrender parental rights to him.”
She sipped her water, her eyes huge in her face. “That sounds a little…extreme.”
“You don’t build an empire like ours without being a little extreme,” Nico pointed out. “Gianfelice was determined we would grow up to be entirely different to our fathers. And we are.”
She swallowed, the truth of this hard to conceptualise. “Still, that must have been hard.”
“My parents devote their lives to enjoyment. My mom still doesn’t think it’s a party without a couple of rows of cocaine. Gianfelice did what he knew we needed.”
Maddie contemplated that, nodding slowly. “At least you got to grow up surrounded by brothers and cousins. It must have been fun?”
“It was noisy,” he grinned. “And rough.” He reached for his shirt, lifting it up a little to reveal his eight pack of an abdomen, pointing to a scar she’d obliquely noticed the other night – but been far too carried away by sensation to comment on. “This I got as an eight year old. Gabe, my brother, pushed me and I fell, landing on a sharp rock.”
She winced.
“Were you badly hurt?” Her fingertips ached to reach across the table and drag over the scar, over his chest, over him.
“It was a deep cut.”
“And was he grounded?” She couldn’t resist teasing.
“We both were. Yaya had told us not to play outside – it was dark and she knew what we were like.”
“She must be a strong woman to have raised so many children. So many boys.”
Something flicked in his expression for a moment. “She had a daughter, as well.”
“Oh. I thought you said ‘brothers’.”
“Mmm. My aunt and grandparents didn’t see eye to eye. She left home at sixteen and was never welcome back.”
“Talk about Shakespearean-level drama,” Maddie said on a small sound of surprise. “Do you speak to her?”
“Unfortunately, my aunt passed away a few years ago.”
“And no one in your family had ever reconnected to her?”
“No.” His expression was tight. There was true regret on his face and she had no way of easing it, because she couldn’t imagine that kind of feud tearing through a family.
“She must have done something terrible, to be exiled from your family like that.”
“She fell in love,” Nico offered, but there was cynicism in his voice, a cynicism she understood, given her latest experience with relationships. “With a man my grandparents didn’t approve of. She married him, and they cut her off.”
Maddie shivered, the brutal coldness of that moving inside of her. Then again, perhaps there was something reassuring about coldness, about the capacity to act in opposition to feeling. Was it insurance against being hurt? A way to inure your heart against whatever life may throw at it? Maddie closed her eyes and imagined that for a moment – imagined being able to be cold and certain, instead of feeling everything so deeply, but it ran contrary to all her usual instincts.
She looked at Nico, an unconscious frown tugging at her lips. Because Nico wasn’t cold either. He had been black and white about what he wanted from her, but in a way that was reassuring, especially after Michael, who’d made deception an art form. But beneath that was a passion and warmth that was burning her in the nicest way possible.
The waiter reappeared and Maddie placed her order in halting Italian.
“Your accent is excellent,” Nico complimented seriously, when they were alone again.
“Thank you.” She leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially. “I spend a lot of time eavesdropping in local cafes so it should be.”
His brows lifted. “Writer slash spy?”
“Absolutely. Just waiting to earn my double ‘0’.”
He grinned. “Well, you did a pretty good job of sneaking up on my place the other day.”
“I did not sneak!” Mock indignation coloured her voice. “The place was wide open.” She sipped her sparkling water. “I’m surprised by that, to be honest.”
He was quiet so she elaborated. “I mean, you’re filthy rich, remember?”
At that, he laughed. “What’s your point?”
“That you must be a target for…I don’t know. Kidnapping?”
“You think anyone could kidnap me?” His tone was sceptical.
She dragged her gaze over his figure, all six and a half feet of spectacularly muscled him, and shook her head. “I suppose not.” Her bangles made a wind chime noise as she moved her hands around. “But you know what I mean. I would have thought you’d have bodyguard upon bodyguard.”
“I have some security measures.” Something shifted in his expression and she understood it. He wished he didn’t need to. He wasn’t a man who willingly submitted to anyone’s protection. “A few guards who do regular perimeter checks of my place here, and state of the art security monitoring systems at my other homes.”
“Other homes? Where else do you live?” She leaned in, propping her elbows on the table top and watching him from wide eyes. “I spend a lot of time in Rome, but I oversee our North American operations which requires me to travel to New York frequently. Then there’s Aspen, Lo
ndon, Paris, Doha.”
Her smile was one of disbelief. “You must feel discombobulated a lot of the time.”
He lifted his shoulders. “Every house is set up to be almost identical. Same clothes, crockery, similar layout. It helps.”
“I can’t even imagine.”
“Why not?”
“I guess because I’m a home body.”
“A home body?”
“You know, I’m at my happiest when I’m at home.”
“Ah. And yet you’re here?”
It was the wrong thing for him to say, because it brought her sharply back to her reasons for escaping to Italy, for escaping her home.
“Here is home, for now.” She turned to look out towards the sea, thinking of England, of London, of the flat where Michael had lived, and she knew she didn’t want to be anywhere else. Nor did she want to be with anyone else – for the moment, sitting in a cave with Nico Montebello was Maddie’s idea of bliss.
Chapter 6
“NOW YOU’RE JUST SHOWING off.” She arched a brow as she turned to look at Nico, but her mouth went dry at the sheer sight of him. He was wearing a pair of pale blue board shorts, and nothing else. Beyond him, the Mediterranean sparkled almost the exact same shade of blue, and the depth of his tan was in stark contrast to the gleaming white of his yacht.
“You don’t like it?” He walked towards her with a slow, sensual purpose and her pulse began to race.
“On the contrary, I think I could get used to this.” She lifted her arms above her head, her cheeks glowing pink at the way his eyes dropped to survey her body. She was wearing a simple, flowing dress, crisp white, but that didn’t stop his possessive, obsessive inspection. “But who wouldn’t?” She added, shrugging her shoulders as she dropped her arms. He brought his body directly in front of hers and heat flared in her belly.
Just This One Summer: A billionaire forbidden love romance... (The Montebellos Book 2) Page 7