Second-Best Wife

by Rebecca Winters

  Praise for Rebecca Winters:

  “Talk about temptation … that heart-shaped mouth would drive a saint to commit the unforgivable.”

  Letter to Reader

  Title Page

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  EPILOGUE

  Copyright

  Praise for Rebecca Winters:

  Of THE BABY BUSINESS:

  “Rebecca Winters’ perfect portrayal of a noble and arousing Spaniard will have your heart racing.”

  —Romantic Times

  Of THE WRONG TWIN:

  “Rebecca Winters projects raw talent into the familiar twin theme, giving it a hard-hitting emotional impact.”

  —Romantic Times

  Of THE NUTCRACKER PRINCE:

  “Winters weaves a magical spell that is unforgettabe.”

  —Affaire du Coeur

  Of THE RANCHER AND THE REDHEAD:

  “Once again, Ms. Winters will delight readers with her unique storyline and strong, passionate characters in her newest tension-packed romance. One of our favorite authors…”

  —Romantic Times

  Of KIT AND THE COWBOY:

  “Rebecca Winters weaves suspense and intrigue into an innovative plot.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Talk about temptation … that heart-shaped mouth would drive a saint to commit the unforgivable.”

  Aching for his kiss, Gaby reached for him at once. Luke dosed his mouth over hers.

  She knew this was a momentary aberration on his part. When he had satisfied the desire that had temporarily flared out of control, he’d let her go, regretting his weakness. They would return to their separate countries, separate lives. And that was the problem….

  Over a century before, Gaby’s great-grandmother had lost her heart to a sweet-talking, penniless artist and followed him to the ends of the earth—Las Vegas, Nevada. After meeting Luke, Gaby was beginning to know exactly how that felt. But where Luke went Gaby couldn’t follow. She had no right to love him. The man she was holding on to she would have to let go. This moment would have to last her forever.

  Dear Reader,

  I find it absolutely amazing that it’s the fortieth anniversary of the Harlequin Romance line. In fact, it gives me thrilling chills just to contemplate that that dates back to the year 19571

  You see—in 1957 my best friend and I, at the tender, impressionable age of seventeen, left the desert of Salt Lake City, Utah, to travel to Lausanne, Switzerland, Heidi country, where we attended a French-speaking boarding school with girls from around the world.

  That was the year I was introduced to an entirely new world of people, languages, culture and travel. Little did I realize my mind was documenting every sight and sensation of that incredible experience for future use.

  So 1957 was not only the red-letter year Harlequin started its bestselling Romance line, but the year the seeds of the writer in me were born.

  Now it’s 1997, forty years later. With thirty-seven plus books behind me, I find that it is indeed a time to celebrate with my latest book, Second-Best Wife, a passionate story of forbidden love that takes place In romantic Italy, the perfect European setting for this kind of intense tale. Enjoy!

  Rebecca Winters

  Second-Best Wife

  Rebecca Winters

  TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

  AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

  STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN

  MADRID • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

  CHAPTER ONE

  “I’LL be with you in a moment, Giovanni!”

  The rap on Gaby Holt’s door was a prearranged signal she’d worked out with the polite, twenty-two- year-old Italian student who was employed at the ducal palace museum and spoke excellent English. They were the same age and had become good friends during her study-abroad program at the University of Urbino.

  Lately he’d had a habit of coming by the pensione after her evening meal. They’d walk to the main piazza in the warm summer night, talk about Italian art and history, and eat gelato.

  Gaby had fallen in love with Italian ice cream. She’d put on a few pounds since her arrival in Italy, which made her figure more voluptuous. In a few weeks, after she returned home to Las Vegas, Nevada, in the United States, she’d lose the extra weight naturally. With no more delicious Italian pasta, no cannelloni to eat, she’d probably starve to death.

  Giovanni thought she was perfect just the way she was and told her to stop worrying. Gaby smiled. She’d fast learned that unlike American men, the Italian male loved women of all ages, shapes and sizes. Fortunately, Giovanni was the non-leering, well-mannered type. A sweet, entertaining companion who made her laugh and was a big tease, there was no sexual attraction between them to complicate their friendship.

  If she had a problem with Giovanni, it was that he was only five feet nine inches, her exact height. Though he was strong and fit, she felt too big for him. To play down her appearance, she purposely wore flat leather sandals and kept her long, dark red hair confined in a braid.

  One look at her reflection in the mirror and she decided a brocade vest over her cream-colored cotton top and matching slacks was needed to camouflage her curves. After rummaging through the mess on her bed, she found the desired garment and hurriedly put it on before opening the door.

  “Ciao, Gaby.”

  “Buona sera, Giovanni,” she answered in her best beginner’s Italian. It was a beautiful language, but she had only learned the rudiments. Oh, to have the money to stay here for a year or two and really learn it! But at least she’d received a good start with her six-week language immersion program. Giovanni had been helping her learn her verbs. When she got back home, she’d take more Italian at the University of Nevada.

  As they walked down the hall she stole a glance at him. Where did he get the suit he was wearing? He had no money. “You’re all dressed up. How come?”

  His warm, smiling brown eyes were the same color as his smooth cap of hair. “Since you will be leaving Urbino day after tomorrow, I thought I’d take you someplace special where they serve the best food in all Italy.”

  It sounded like he was planning to pay. She couldn’t let him do that when he worked so hard for every lira. “I’ve already eaten, and I’m not dressed for anything special.”

  “You look perfect, and I know for a fact that you can always eat dessert.”

  She chuckled. “You’re right about that.”

  “Then we will go. The macchina is parked behind the pensione.”

  She blinked. A macchina was a car. “I didn’t know you had access to one.”

  They had reached the main floor of the boarding house where he ushered her past other students milling about until they arrived at the back entrance.

  “Only on very special occasions. Tonight I thought we’d save ourselves some time by driving.”

  His reasoning made perfect sense. On this particular weekend, Urbino was swarming with tourists who’d come from all over Europe for a two-day Renaissance Fair. Held the last weekend of August, the beautiful, mountain town in the Marches region, a two-hour drive north of Rome, had become a mecca for lovers of Renaissance history and tradition.

  For Gaby, the fair represented the culmination of her studies in a country which had taken her heart by storm. The thought of going home to a boring desert of one hundred and five degree heat was killing her, but she had no choice. She’d run out of money and couldn’t ask her parents for a loan when they were
overextended financially as it was. Six children to feed and educate was no small task.

  This had been her idea, her project. She’d earned the money for it. Meeting Giovanni had made the whole experience even more enriching, but it was fast coming to an end and she had to face up to her disappointment. Today her studies were completed. Tonight she determined to savor the activities and not think about leaving this paradise any sooner than she had to.

  As they stepped out the back door, an elegant black sedan parked in the minuscule alley filled her vision. This was the first time Giovanni had ever provided them with any sort of transportation.

  She turned to ask him what was going on when she saw motion out of the corner of her eye. Because of the angle of the auto, she hadn’t realized that there was a chauffeur at the wheel.

  In an economy of movement, the man in the driver’s seat levered himself from the car. The moment passed in a flash, but it gave her enough time to sense that he was a powerful male, hard and lean, considerably taller than Giovanni.

  The shadowy light prevented her from making out details, though she could tell he had black hair and was dressed in dark clothing.

  “Gaby, allow me to present my elder brother, Luca Francesco della Provere, who is home from Rome for the festival.”

  His brother?

  Gaby knew Giovanni had family, but she hadn’t paid much attention because they were always so busy talking about their studies and interests.

  Closer now, she could see a slight resemblance through the bone structure. But where there was softness in the angles of Giovanni’s countenance, lines of experience had hardened his brother’s aquiline features, and there was none of Giovanni’s innocence in that brooding regard.

  Those black eyes continued to appraise her, but his expression conveyed nothing of what he might be thinking. For an unknown reason, she shivered.

  “You have a last name, signorina?” His deep voice revealed a less-marked Italian accent than Giovanni’s. If his perfect English was anything to go by, he, too, appeared to have received the best kind of education.

  “I—it’s Holt,” she stammered like a foolish schoolgirl. “How do you do?”

  She would have put out her hand, but she had the oddest premonition that he wouldn’t have reciprocated, so it remained at her side.

  Gaby’s European tour director, Gina, had warned her that because she was an attractive American on her own, she was a target for those Latin males who prowled for women with grotto-blue eyes and flawless creamy skin like Gaby’s.

  According to Gina, no Italian man could be trusted because they possessed an appeal and cunning all their own and represented danger to any woman whether she be nine or ninety-nine. Since they were master seducers, Gaby was to avoid them like the plague.

  Gina had a rule of thumb. Never look any of her countrymen in the eye, never listen to their tragic, ridiculous stories meant to entrap you, always walk with a purpose. In most cases, the blatantly obvious, hopeful suitors would do nothing more than stare in adoration and eventually leave you alone.

  At the Trevi fountain in Rome, where the local male inhabitants assembled in droves to watch the female tourists taking pictures of the statuary and then follow them around, Gina’s advice had worked like a charm.

  Gaby had managed to elude the most ardent admirers, specifically her Neapolitan bus driver who, though married with two children, flirted with Gaby every chance he got.

  Oddly enough, the Provere brothers weren’t anything like the men Gina had been talking about. Giovanni had never once come across as a man with a secret agenda. Nor had he pressed for a physical relationship with her. Initially, that was the reason why she’d allowed herself to become friendly with him at all.

  As for his brother, who looked closer to thirty and was probably married, he didn’t resemble the thousands of hot-blooded, working class, southern European males who conducted the local tours and waited tables.

  On the contrary, there was an aloofness about him, an aura of wealth and refinement. The kind bred into his bones, which put him in an entirely different strata of man.

  She was aware of an indolent ease in his demeanor which had probably been learned from the cradle because he’d been born privileged and cherished. Gaby had only had occasional glimpses of such men during early morning rush-hour traffic in the bustling cities of Rome and Florence.

  They would alight from their Lamborghinis or Maseratis to enter their places of business. At the end of the day, she’d watch them whiz away into the twilight and wonder which palazzo they called home.

  She could easily imagine this man returning to his fabulous family villa in Rome or, like several she’d glimpsed, hugging the mountainsides in this region of Italy.

  If she were being fanciful, she could be forgiven. As Giovanni helped her inside the back seat of the plush automobile, which felt more like a dignitary’s limousine, she noticed the ornament on the hood of the car which represented a crest of some kind with a coat of arms.

  She couldn’t imagine what it all meant and wanted to ask Giovanni. To her dismay, his brother had taken his place behind the wheel and started up the motor, which purred like an expensive German-made car. There would be no privacy now.

  In any case, Giovanni had struck up a conversation with his enigmatic brother who drove to the end of the alley bordered by the bricked walls of centuries’ old buildings. With several honks of the horn, he forced the holidaymakers to clear a path so the car could proceed.

  While the latter made an occasional response, Giovanni, with his natural enthusiasm, did most of the talking. Except for a word here and there, the Italian flowed too fast for her to follow.

  Giovanni acted happier than Gaby had seen him before. If the same dynamics applied in his family as in hers, the younger brother hero-worshipped the oldest one.

  “Where are we going, Giovanni?”

  She’d known him for six weeks, but this was the first time she had an uneasy feeling being in his company.

  Except that Giovanni wasn’t the one contributing to her distress.

  The man studying her features through the rearview mirror was responsible for the trembling of her body. She’d become unbearably aware of him as a man, a brand new feeling for her. She didn’t know how to begin to deal with it.

  “Home,” Giovanni answered, oblivious to the tension-fraught atmosphere in the car. “I’ve wanted you to meet my family for a long time.”

  “I’d like to meet them,” came the automatic response, but she could scarcely concentrate. After being around so many olive-skinned, dark-haired European men, what mortified Gaby was to be caught staring at Giovanni’s brother like she’d never seen the male gender before. So much for her tour guide’s warning.

  This wholly feminine reaction took Gaby by surprise. She averted her eyes and moved next to the door, away from his brother’s line of vision.

  “Where is home?” she asked in a quiet voice, hoping the other man couldn’t hear her words.

  In a surprise move, Giovanni shifted closer. “You know where I work,” he whispered near her ear.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “That’s my home.” He gave her cheek a kiss, then he sat back as they slowly made their way through the streets swarming with tourists.

  Giovanni’s behavior was totally foreign to her. Alarm bells went off in her head. The ducal palace?

  “Be serious, Giovanni.”

  “I’m being very serious. Luca—” he called to his brother, giving the other man’s broad shoulder a friendly squeeze. “Tell Gaby where I live. She does not seem to believe me.”

  “Stop teasing, please.”

  “What do you wish to know, signorina?” Giovanni’s brother didn’t sound as if he particularly cared one way or the other. “His home is at the palace, just as he said.”

  She stared at Giovanni in exasperation. This was no longer funny. “My brother enjoys a good joke once in a while. Is that what this is all about? A Renaissance custom
? Like being at a masked ball, only you’ve decided to throw away your mask?”

  Giovanni looked wounded. “On occasion I have been known to tease. But Luca never jokes about anything, do you, fratello?”

  The word meant brother. Giovanni appeared to enjoy ribbing his elder sibling. Theirs was a strange relationship. She felt undercurrents but didn’t understand them. Until the car stopped, she had no choice but to go along with their charade.

  Her pensione was situated on the outskirts of Urbino. Slowly the car made its way into the center. In the off-season, it would have taken five minutes at most to reach the walled, ancient inner city. But due to the crowds out for the celebration, fifteen minutes passed before Giovanni’s brother was able to maneuver them from the more-modern area to its Medieval heart.

  Soon Gaby’s attention fastened compulsively on the rounded towers which formed the perimeters of the ducal estate. The fading light of the hot summer evening glinted from its recessed windows and brought out the mellow pink rose color of its crenelated walls.

  They didn’t stop at a side entrance used by the tour buses to gain entrance to the part housing the museum. Gaby had known they wouldn’t. The men were playing a game.

  She started to tell Giovanni that she hadn’t fallen for his trickery when the car unexpectedly turned and followed a mazelike path. It led to an inner courtyard of the castle and ultimately a covered archway, taking her back to a time in the fifteenth century when the awesome beauty of the Renaissance camouflaged secrets, intrigue and treachery.

  “You are cold?” Their driver’s low voice grated on her nerves. He’d seen her body quiver in response to her surroundings and made no apology for watching the two of them through the mirror.