by Jennie Lucas
Now Vin clawed his hand through his dark hair, thinking of the hours, money and effort that he and his team had spent, costing millions of dollars and thousands of hours, to put the deal together. This on top of the public debacle in New York of losing the Air Transatlantique deal. The snotty little assistant had been right. Vin’s rivals would start to smell blood in the water.
A stab went through him as he felt the cost of making his family the priority today. Twice now, his relationship with Scarlett had wrecked badly needed business deals. And now, just when he most needed his airline to succeed, for the sake of his family, for the sake of his son’s future legacy, he was facing another failure.
“It’ll be all right, boss.” Ernest looked at him nervously. “Plenty of other fish in the sea. Lots of ways to expand our airline. Right, Mr. Borgia?”
His executive assistant clearly expected reassurance, but Vin stared at him blankly.
For the first time ever, he didn’t know his next move.
Maybe this was what happened, Vin thought numbly. When you started choosing with your heart, instead of your head.
CHAPTER NINE
“CAN’T YOU GO SLOWER?” Scarlett pleaded.
“No.” Her husband sounded annoyed.
“Just a little—”
“Scarlett, this is Rome. If we go any slower, we’ll be run over.”
Sitting in the backseat of their brand-new Bentley SUV, she looked anxiously at their three-day-old baby quietly tucked in his baby seat beside her, looking up at her so trustingly, with those big dark eyes like Vin’s.
At least, she comforted herself, he hadn’t insisted on using the sports car. The two-seater had been professionally cleaned, and Vin had donated it to the highway police. “A little gift to say thanks,” he told her.
Scarlett was glad it had gone to a good home, and grateful to the kindhearted policeman who’d helped them get to the hospital so quickly.
She still remembered how terrified she’d been that day, and how awful labor had been. Her body had felt ripped apart. But already, that memory of pain was starting to fade every time she looked at her baby.
Scarlett was happy to be leaving the hospital. The hospital staff had been lovely, but she was ready to go home. Ready but also terrified. Because that meant there would no longer be medical professionals hovering to give quick advice if Nico couldn’t sleep at night or didn’t seem to be eating enough.
But at least Scarlett knew she had one person she could rely on. One person she could trust. The person who’d never left her side, not once, even though that choice had cost him dearly. And she loved him for it.
She loved Vin for that, and so much more.
She was totally, completely in love with him. There could no longer be any question. She’d known it when, after holding her hand uncomplainingly through long hours of labor, he’d tenderly placed their newborn baby in her arms.
“Look what you’ve created, Mrs. Borgia,” he’d said, looking down at her with a suspicious gleam in his black eyes. “You should be proud.”
“We created,” she’d corrected, looking up at him.
“We,” he’d whispered tenderly.
And that was that.
She loved Vin.
Another thing that thrilled her—and terrified her.
Heart in her throat, she looked at him, in the front seat beside their driver. Bodyguards were following in the black SUV. Vin had told her he wished to remain in Rome for the foreseeable future, in hopes of patching up the deal with Mediterranean Airlines. Scarlett had been delighted. She already adored this country, this city. How could she not?
But at the moment, her husband was looking back at her, his handsome face the picture of disbelief. “Are you sure you really want to do this?”
His tone implied she was crazy. He’d asked her the same question at least six times since their driver had picked them up from the hospital.
“I’m sure,” Scarlett said calmly.
“I have reservations at the best hotel in Rome. The royal suite. We’d have an entire floor to ourselves, in total luxury with an amazing view. Room service,” he added almost desperately.
Smiling, she shook her head. “That’s not what I want.”
Vin folded his arms, his expression disgruntled. “It’s a mistake.”
“It’s not a mistake to want our baby to have a real home, instead of living in some hotel. I don’t care how fancy it is.”
“You’ll care tonight, when there’s no hot water and the beds are lumpy. The roof probably leaks.”
“You’d really rather stay at a hotel than your own childhood home?”
“It wasn’t particularly great then, and I’m sure it’s worse now.” He turned away as the driver drove them deeper into the city. “I’ve rented it out for the last twenty years, and from what my staff has told me, the tenant didn’t exactly improve the situation.”
“Oh, come on,” Scarlett said with a laugh, rolling her eyes. “It’s a villa in Rome. How bad could it be?”
The answer to that question came soon, as she gingerly entered the faded, dilapidated eighteenth-century villa, set behind a tall gate with a guardhouse and a private cobblestoned drive.
Holding the baby carrier carefully in her arms—she’d refused all offers from bodyguards and her husband to carry it, as her baby’s eight pounds was precious cargo to her—Scarlett went through the enormous front door into the foyer. Stepping over the crumpled trash on the floor, she went farther into the villa.
On the high ceiling of the great room, a disco ball gleamed dully in the shadows. She stopped.
Black leather furniture, zebra and leopard print pillows, strobe lights and multiple bowls of overflowing cigarette butts decorated the room. In front of the enormous marble fireplace was a bearskin rug stained with red wine...at least she hoped it was wine. Empty liquor bottles littered every corner.
Wide-eyed, Scarlett turned to her husband, who was watching her with amusement. “I told you.”
“Was your tenant a playboy?” she said faintly. “From the early seventies?”
“Styles change. People don’t always change with them.” Vin’s lips quirked. “Luigi did live here a long time. He was quite the ladies’ man, for eighty-five.”
“Eighty-five! So did he move, or...?” She paused delicately.
Vin shook his head with a grin. “Decided he was finally ready to settle down. Moved to Verona and married his childhood sweetheart.”
“Wow,” Scarlett breathed. “Getting married. At eighty-five.”
“Just goes to show it’s never too late to change your life.” His sensual lips lifted to a grin. “He only moved out last week. So this place hasn’t been remodeled yet.” He tilted his head. “The suite at the hotel is still available...”
Scarlett shook her head. “No hotels. When I was young, we didn’t live in any house long enough to make memories, good or bad. Don’t worry,” she said brightly. “We’ll make this the home of our dreams!”
He snorted. “Dream—or nightmare?”
“This house has good bones,” she said with desperate hope. “Wait and see.”
Later, Scarlett looked back and thought the next two months of remodeling the Villa Orsini were some of the happiest of her life.
Their first night was admittedly a little rough. The bodyguards brought in the necessary supplies, then hastily decamped to a neighboring three-star hotel. Only the bodyguard who’d lost the coin toss was forced to remain, and he chose to sleep on a cot in the foyer rather than face the rats’ nests of bedrooms upstairs.
So it was just Vin and Scarlett and their baby sleeping in the great room, where the black leather sectional sofas were in decent repair, that first night.
She and Vin heated water themselves on the old stove for the baby’s first sponge bath. It was almost like camping. There were no servants hovering. No phones ringing incessantly. No television or computers, even. They just shared a takeaway picnic dinner on a blanket on the
floor, then played an old board game that Vin found in a closet upstairs, before they both crashed on the sofa, with Nico tucked warmly into his portable baby car seat next to her.
Her husband was protective, insisting that Scarlett take the most comfortable spot on the sofa, offering to get her anything she needed at any moment. When the baby woke her up at two in the morning to nurse, Vin woke up as well and tucked a pillow under her aching arm that held the baby’s head.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“It is nothing, cara.” His eyes glowed in the darkness. “You are the hero.”
Just the two of them, she thought drowsily, regular first-time parents, a married couple in love, with each other and with their newborn baby.
The next morning, the hiring began, of designers and architects and a construction crew to start the remodel. No expense would be spared. “If you’re determined to live here,” Vin told her firmly, “we’ll get it done as soon as possible.”
As the villa was cleared out, cleaned, and slowly began to take shape, Vin suggested that they bring in permanent house staff. He wanted two full-time nannies—one for day, one for night—and a butler, housekeeper, gardeners. After their blissful night alone together, Scarlett had been crestfallen. She’d tried to convince Vin that she could take care of the villa herself. He’d laughed.
“You want to spend your every waking hour scrubbing floors? No. Leave that to others.” He kissed her. “You have a far more important job.”
“Taking care of Nico?” she guessed.
His dark eyes became tender. “Being the heart of our home.” She melted a little inside. Then his smile lifted to an ironic grin. “You’ve got your work cut out for you, married to a ruthless bastard like me.”
He was joking, of course, she thought loyally. Vin wasn’t a ruthless bastard. He was a good man, and in spite of his tyrannical instincts, she knew he saw her as an equal partner. After all, he’d let her make the decisions about driving instead of flying, about remodeling the villa rather than enjoying the comfort of a hotel. And most of all, he had married her without a pre-nup. As partners, they had a chance to be happy in this marriage, she thought, really happy, for the rest of their lives.
The days passed, turned to weeks. November became December. Scarlett had pictured the Eternal City as a place of eternal sunshine, but to her surprise, winter descended on Rome.
The villa had become livable. Tacky old furnishings were removed, and the walls and floors of ten bedrooms were redone. The kitchen was expanded and modernized. Bathrooms were scrapped and remodeled, and one of the extra rooms was turned into a master en suite bathroom with walk-in closet. Vin had wanted to fly in the interior designer who’d decorated his New York penthouse, but remembering the stark black-and-gray décor from the single night she’d spent there, Scarlett had refused. She wanted to make the villa warm and bright and, above all, comfortable. She’d do the decorating herself.
She loved every minute. Each morning when the baby woke her up to be fed, Scarlett woke up with a smile on her face, stretching happily in the enormous bed. She didn’t get much sleep, with the baby waking her through the night, but in spite of feeling tired, Scarlett had never been so happy. Joy washed over her like sunshine.
She had the home she’d always dreamed of. The family she’d always dreamed of. The husband she’d always dreamed of. She had everything she’d ever wanted, except one thing.
Vin hadn’t told her he loved her.
But soon. Soon, she told herself hopefully. In the meantime, the villa was larger than she’d imagined her home could be, so she brought it down to size. Made it homey and inviting for family and friends.
She carefully began to add household staff. Wilhelmina Stone was the first person she hired, luring her away from Switzerland as housekeeper by doubling her salary.
“You don’t need to pay me so much,” Wilhelmina had grumbled. “We’re practically family.”
“Which is why I insist,” Scarlett replied happily.
Then a few other employees were added, two maids and a gardener, but Scarlett flatly refused the idea of a butler and two full-time nannies. Instead, the kind, fiercely loyal housekeeper soon became a second grandmother to Nico.
When the guest rooms became habitable, the baby’s actual grandparents, Giuseppe and Joanne, came down from Tuscany for a visit in December, bringing Maria and Luca with them. They all enjoyed a weekend of sightseeing, which was ostensibly to “show the baby the sights of Rome”—as if a five-week-old in a stroller who couldn’t yet sit upright would appreciate the Colosseum, the Pantheon and the Trevi Fountain.
“Of course he appreciates them,” Giuseppe said expressively, using his hands. “He is my grandson! It is in his blood!”
“He can’t even taste gelato yet,” Vin pointed out, rather peevishly, she thought.
It was the only discordant note to the joyful melody of Scarlett’s life. Vin seemed strangely uncomfortable around his family, and the more loving they were, the more he seemed to flee. Thirty minutes into their sightseeing tour, he abruptly announced an emergency at the Rome office that seemed like an excuse to leave. But Scarlett must be mistaken, because why would he want to flee his family, who loved him so?
In spite of that small flaw, Scarlett was happy and proud to share their newly beautiful home with the family that had been so kind to her. The best moment was when Maria and Luca announced they’d picked a wedding date: the second week of January, in Rome.
“A winter wedding, in Rome,” Maria had beamed, holding her fiancé’s hand. “It’ll be so romantic.”
“You are romantic,” Luca had said rapturously and kissed her.
Scarlett had looked at Vin, but he’d avoided her gaze.
Since his parents’ visit, he’d seemed even more strangely distant, spending all his time at the office, where his company was trying to devise a new offer to interest Mediterranean Airlines’ CEO, Salvatore Calabrese. But the man flatly refused to have anything to do with Vin now. It made Scarlett indignant, but she knew her husband would wear him down. No one could resist Vin for long. Scarlett knew this personally.
Except she hadn’t had to resist him at all lately. At least not personally.
He hadn’t touched Scarlett in bed since their baby was born. It had been two months now since they’d last made love. At first, healing from the birth and exhausted from waking up with their baby, sex had been the last thing on Scarlett’s mind. But now her body was starting to feel normal again, though she hadn’t quite lost all the baby weight, and her breasts were still very full. Did he not find her attractive anymore?
She tried to ignore the feelings of rejection. She focused on the baby, who was growing chubby and starting to babble and coo. She made friends with her neighbors and started private Italian lessons with Mrs. Spinoza, a kindly widow who lived down the street. But it hurt.
Then one day while she was despondently surfing the internet, she had an idea about how to bring them close again.
According to what she read, men’s needs were simple. Food. Home. Sex.
All she had to do was turn herself into the perfect wife.
Step one. Food. A man’s heart was through his stomach, according to what she read online. So Scarlett learned how to cook. She started with boiling water, but within a week, she’d graduated to simple, fresh pasta dishes, which Wilhelmina tasted and pronounced, with some surprise, to be “delicious.”
Vin didn’t notice, of course. He generally got home late at night and would eat whatever wrapped dinner plate he found in the fridge, by the light of his computer at the dining table at midnight, usually long after Scarlett had gone to bed. But she learned new skills when he wasn’t looking.
Step two. Home. A man’s house was his castle. Make it warm and comfortable, and he’d never want to leave it. She looked around their newly remodeled, redecorated home. Check.
Step three. Sex.
For Scarlett, this was the hardest thing of all.
; But on Christmas Eve morning, she woke up knowing that it was now or never. Today was the day.
She felt like Vin had barely talked to her in weeks. He always made an effort to play with the baby right before work, but all Scarlett seemed to get from him were cold lectures when she evaded her security detail or told her assigned bodyguard, Larson, he didn’t need to follow her. Which was exactly what she was getting this morning, too.
“Stop it.” Vin glowered at her, coldly handsome in his suit and tie. “I specifically assigned Larson to keep you safe. Don’t make it so hard for him to do his job.”
Still wearing her nightshirt and white fluffy robe, Scarlett rolled her eyes. “You seriously think I’m going to be attacked on the streets of Rome in broad daylight while I’m pushing the stroller to Mrs. Spinoza’s apartment? It’s silly! How am I supposed to practice my Italian with Larson glaring at her through his sunglasses? He makes her so nervous she stutters!”
“I mean it, Scarlett,” Vin replied. “Either do what I tell you and let him do his job, or...”
“Or what?”
His jaw was tight. “I can’t answer for the consequences.”
Then he coldly left the villa, briefcase in hand. Without so much as a goodbye kiss!
She prayed her outrageous plan would solve everything. Otherwise, she was about to make a horrible fool of herself. But she had to take the chance. As her father had always said, if you want things to change, change yourself.
The moment Vin left the villa for work, Scarlett got to work, too. The enormous tree was delivered to the great hall, along with boxes of beautiful decorations. She sent the last members of the household staff on surprise vacation, leaving Scarlett and the baby alone in the villa, with her bodyguard, Larson, at the tiny gatehouse across their private cobblestoned drive.
Holding Nico on her hip, Scarlett decorated the tree herself, talking happily to her baby, singing him Christmas songs, including one in Italian. Later, she started a roaring fire in the enormous fireplace and prepared a dinner she thought Vin would love. Leaving the sauce simmering on the stove as evening started to fall, she gave her sleepy baby his dinner and bath, changed him into his footsie pajamas and tucked him into the nursery.
