by Maggie Cox
‘We’re good friends as well as colleagues.’ Her slightly husky tone was the epitome of reason and calmness, but Dante felt his insides twist with jealousy and frustration.
‘Good friends?’ he said mockingly, throwing his arms wide as he came to a stop in front of her again. ‘Isn’t the man capable of having a male friend for a confidant?’
‘Your tone suggests you think he might fancy me. Is that what’s bothering you, Dante?’
‘Can you blame me if it is?’
‘That sounds a little possessive to me, and I don’t like it. I want to be free to talk to who I like without you being suspicious of me. I do have integrity, you know, and if I give my word that something is true then you’d better believe it.’
‘If I’m concerned when you share confidences with a young, good-looking male it doesn’t mean I’m trying to control or possess you. It simply means that I’m the man who has your best interests at heart, and naturally I care about who you associate with. You’re the mother of my child, after all. That gives me certain rights whether you like it or not.’
Sighing, Anna fell silent for a moment, then got to her feet. ‘Rights to discuss what’s best for her as her father, yes,’ she said. ‘But those rights don’t include trying to control me.’
‘Il mio Dio!’ He stared at her in disbelief. ‘Did you not hear what I just said? I’m not trying to control you. Just because your father treated your mother like some—some possession he could do as he liked with, it doesn’t mean that I’m cut from the same poor-quality cloth! I understand how the possibility of me being like that might scare you, Anna.’ Moving closer to her, Dante slipped his hand onto her shoulder again, his heart pounding as though the starting pistol at a race had just cracked against his ear. ‘I know you have great integrity, and I do believe you when you tell me that Jason is just a friend.’ His lips stretched ruefully. ‘But I can’t help feeling a little jealous when I hear you being so animated on the phone with him.’
‘Well, there’s no need to be jealous.’
Her lustrous brown eyes had grown even darker, and her tone was soft, almost caressing. Now Dante’s heart pounded hard for another reason. Dared he trust what he thought he saw in those silky warm depths?
Anna sighed. ‘Jason told me that he’s found his soul-mate at last and he’s in love.’
‘Really?’ Relief was like a dam bursting inside him.
‘I was so happy for him, because he’d started to lose faith in finding the love of his life. I told him the perfect person was just waiting somewhere, and that when the time was right, they would appear. So all’s well that ends well, as they say.’
‘And do you believe that the perfect person is waiting for every one?’
‘I do.’
‘I didn’t realise you were such a romantic.’
‘There’s a lot of things you don’t realise about me, Dante!’
Now she had a maddeningly secret smile playing about her lips, and he was plunged into confusion again. If he lived to be a hundred he would never understand women…never! All she seemed to want to do was torment him.
‘Is there something else you have to tell me? If there is, for pity’s sake just come out and say it.’ He scowled at her.
‘First of all, Jason would never fancy me because I’m the wrong sex, and secondly…I’ve found my own perfect person. Yes, and he’s standing right here in front of me. So, Signor Romano…there wasn’t the remotest need for you to be jealous.’
Looping her arms around him, she planted an achingly moist and provocative kiss against his lips. Desire was like a thunderbolt flashing through him. Catching her by the waist, Dante impelled Anna urgently against his already hardening body. Beneath the ridiculously thin robe she wore an equally insubstantial nightgown with shoestring straps. He was already visualising tearing off both garments and having her firmly beneath him.
‘Marry me.’ His lips, tongue and teeth clashed voraciously with hers as heat, want and devastating need broke all their bounds. Breaking off the kiss with a harsh affected breath, he cupped her face to stare deeply into her eyes. ‘You have to marry me, Anna.’
‘Of course I do… That’s what I want too.’
Words failed him. All he could do right then was stare at her in wonder. Then, when he trusted he could speak, he raised his eyebrow and asked, ‘When did you decide that?’
‘The first time we were together, of course—when I saw you sitting in the lounge bar looking so handsome, indomitable and fierce. I knew the intimidating facade you projected wasn’t the truth. Underneath I sensed you were hurting so bad you didn’t know where to go or what to do. I suppose I grew up having a finely tuned antenna for people’s pain. My mum’s marriage was so hurtful and destroying, how could I help it? ‘ Her eyes turned moist for a moment. ‘But she believed in true love. I don’t know how she held on to such a belief when she was married to a man like my father, yet she did. And she wanted the very best for me. She always told me that when I gave myself to a man it should be to the man I love. I want you to know that I do love you, Dante. I always have and always will.’
‘And you forgive me?’
‘For what? ‘
‘For not trying to contact you and then changing my name, not knowing or believing that you might want to contact me, or that you would even want to see me again after my telling you we could only have one night together?’
‘We’ve both made mistakes. If we can’t forgive each other and move on then it’s hopeless. That’s not a message I want to give our daughter—that if she makes a mistake there’ll be no forgiveness.’
‘Ti amo. ‘ Dante smiled, his lips visiting a series of heartfelt passionate little kisses on her eyelids, nose, cheeks and mouth. ‘I love you, Anna, with all my heart and soul. Sometimes I think love is not a strong enough word to express how I feel. That evening in the hotel bar I thought I was incapable of feeling anything remotely warm towards another human being again, but you proved me wrong. Yes…’ His voice grew tender. ‘You reached out to me so unselfishly, even accepting my little speech about not being able to offer you anything else but that one night. And then, like an idiot, I let you go. I’ve had to come to terms with some hard losses in my life, but if I lost you again. If I lost Tia now that I’ve discovered her…I don’t think I would ever recover.’
‘Well, you’re not going to lose either of us, my love.’
‘Is that a promise? ‘
With her heart in her eyes, Anna nodded. ‘I swear it.’
Leaving her for just a moment, Dante crossed the room to the panel beside the door and turned down the lights. A warm scented breeze blew in off the lake.
‘You can turn them off completely. There’s a ravishing full moon shining just outside the window. Didn’t you see it?’
Going to the balcony doors, Anna pushed them opened a little wider. For a few seconds she stepped outside to stare up at the moonlit sky. A sliver of white cloud was drifting lazily across the fiercely bright orb in the inky darkness, just as if some divine artist had painted it right there, right at that moment, for her to see. The illuminating and magical scene made her shiver with delicious anticipation.
Joining her, Dante urged her back against his warm hard chest. As Anna relaxed against him he undid the belt of her robe and slipped the garment from her shoulders. The robe was immediately cast aside onto a nearby wrought-iron chair. Then, through the paper-thin cotton of her nightdress, he cupped her breasts.
The heat from his hands, the perfect weight and shape of them against her most tender flesh, made Anna arch into his palms, her nipples puckering and hardening. Catching the rigid velvet tips between thumb and forefinger, he squeezed and tugged a little, arousing a volcanic need that poured into her centre like liquid honey heated over the hottest flame. Pressing himself against her bottom, Dante left her in no doubt he was as turned on by their arousing foreplay as she was.
Turning into his arms, Anna urgently tore at the buttons on his shir
t, making him smile as in her haste her fingers fumbled and missed the openings, causing her to curse softly beneath her breath.
‘What are you trying to do to me, my angel? ‘ he mocked gently, his hollowed out cheekbones emphasised even more by that devastatingly handsome smile.
‘I’m trying to get you naked! What do you think I’m trying to do?’
With one fluidly mesmerising movement, Dante ripped his hand down the centre of the fine linen material and made the buttons fly off into the unknown.
Face to face with his magnificent tanned chest, the ripple of smooth sculpted muscle over a strong defined ribcage, Anna pressed a slow, loving kiss onto the warm hard flesh matted softly with dark blond hair. Then his hands were entwined in her hair, and he lifted her head up so that he could once again claim her lips with a demanding, almost savagely passionate kiss of his own.
‘When you get me naked,’ he said, the timbre of his voice sounding as though it had rolled over sun-baked gravel, ‘what do you intend to do with me, innamorata?’
Looking straight into his moonlit blue-grey eyes, Anna smiled. ‘I’m going to keep you awake until the early hours of the morning…and I should tell you that I’ve got an extremely vivid imagination. How do you like the sound of that? ‘
Dante nodded. ‘I like it very much, you little witch. As long as you don’t fall asleep on me when I take you on the little outing I have planned for us tomorrow.’
‘Oh? Where would that be?’
‘I’m taking you to see my mother’s house.’
‘You are?’
‘I want to show you what I’ve done with it…the new use I’ve put it to.’
‘I’m intrigued. I would love to see where your mother lived, Dante…to get a sense of the person she was. I know she meant the world to you.’
‘Well, tomorrow you will. But right now…’ He fixed her with the most meltingly wicked gleam she’d ever seen. Then he scooped one strong arm under her bottom, another round her waist, and lifted her high into his arms, so that she was suddenly on even more intimate terms with his eye-catching masculine chest and his drugging male heat. ‘Right now I am taking you to bed…any objections? ‘
Anna gulped, her heart drumming hard. ‘No…I can honestly say I’ve no objections at all, Signor Romano.’
Brimming with anticipation, along with a genuine sense of excitement, Dante hoped that Anna and Tia would enjoy the visit he had planned to the villa on the other side of the lake.
The house he had brought them to, across the water in a luxurious motorboat, sat almost majestically back from the lakeshore, its frontage a long verdant garden that ran down to its own landing stage. He was about to reveal something about himself that he had revealed to less than a handful of friends and acquaintances, and he wanted Anna to love it. Apart from fathering his lovely daughter, it was the achievement he was most proud of.
‘This was where your mother lived?’ Anna commented interestedly as he helped first Tia then her out of the boat. ‘It’s got to be one of the prettiest villas I’ve seen since I’ve been here.’
And it was, Dante silently acknowledged with pride, letting his gaze travel over the ancient olive trees and tubs of glorious red, white and pink bougainvillaea dotted all around. His loving glance strayed helplessly to his bewitching wife-to-be, with her dazzling copper hair, and his lovely daughter, with her sunlit blond curls, and he knew he was the luckiest man in the world.
He pocketed the motorboat key and reached for Anna’s and Tia’s hands. ‘Let’s go and take a look inside, shall we?’
‘Do you have someone looking after the place? ‘
‘Wait and see,’ he answered mysteriously, urging them cheerfully onwards.
A young woman who looked like some avant garde artist, with wild dark hair, kohl-lined eyes and row of hooped gold earrings dangling from each ear, opened the door to them with a sweet-faced baby on her hip. A burst of animated Italian issued immediately when she recognised Dante, and she flung her arms around him with obvious affection and delight.
Fielding the little stab of jealousy that pricked her, Anna strove to hold on to the ready smile she’d adopted in anticipation of meeting whoever lived in the house now. Dante made the introductions, and the young woman who went by the enchanting name of Consolata hugged Anna and Tia in turn, making much of both Anna’s and her daughter’s eye-catching hair. Anna’s anxiety dissipated.
‘Come in…yes, you must come inside,’ the girl urged in enthusiastic halting English.
They stepped into the most stunning glass-roofed vestibule. It reminded Anna of one of the greenhouses for exotic and tropical plants at Kew Gardens. It was so unique and beautiful that for a few moments she didn’t know what to say. What was this place? And who was Consolata?
Glancing at Tia, whose hand was being firmly held by her handsome father, she smiled reassuringly. But her amazingly relaxed daughter was taking everything in her stride, glancing round the glass-roofed vestibule with wonder in her big blue-grey eyes, clearly loving every second of her visit already.
A warm kiss at the side of her cheek, an intoxicating drift of musky aftershave and Dante captured Anna’s hand as well. ‘My mother loved this place,’ he explained softly. ‘See that portrait over the marble fireplace? That’s a picture of her that I had commissioned when she turned sixty. She was still very beautiful.’
‘I can see that,’ Anna murmured, gazing up at the stunning oil painting of a woman easily as bewitching as Sophia Loren—in fact, she didn’t look dissimilar.
‘When I returned to Italy, almost a year after her funeral, I had it in my mind to do something in memory of her—something that she would have been proud to be a part of. I spoke with Giovanna, and she told me of the problem of some of her daughter Ester’s friends who are all single mothers. She then introduced me to Consolata, and some of the other young women who are struggling to raise children on their own. I donated the house to them, so that they could all live here and raise their babies knowing they were somewhere safe and secure that wouldn’t be taken away from them. Giovanna manages the place, and the children and the mothers adore her. As well as five self-contained apartments in the building, there’s a communal area and two large playrooms. All the women have access to local advisory and support services. Shall we go and meet some of them?’
All Anna could do was nod dumbly. Inside, she was deluged with so much pride and joy that she could scarcely contain it. She’d always suspected that the man she loved had the biggest heart, but nothing could have prepared her for this. What an amazing, wonderful and generous gift! What mother wouldn’t be bursting with pride at having such a son? He had honoured his mother’s memory in the most touching and incredible way.
Having experienced the challenges of single parenthood, Anna guessed how much such a place like this must mean to all those mothers. It also told her how deeply Dante must have been affected by his own experience of being the son of a mother who had struggled to raise him alone. But now the man had turned his childhood adversity into something positive and inspirational for the good of others.
Curling her hand more deeply into the curve of his palm, she knew what she was feeling blazed from her eyes as she gazed back at him. Instead of fearing that marriage might mean a loss of her independence and autonomy she was now actively looking forward to joining her life with this man. And when the time came to say her vows at their wedding she would utter them with absolute conviction and love…
Leaving the yacht in the harbour, the small group of well-wishers dressed in all their finery, including a couple of professional photographers, joyfully followed the bride-to-be and her groom on foot through a small network of cobbled streets to the plain whitewashed church on the hill, with its simple wooden cross.
Halfway there Anna laughingly took off her ludicrously expensive designer shoes, because the heels kept getting stuck between the cobblestones. But she didn’t mind one bit. The sun was shining and the cloudless sky was a majestic
azure blue—the kind of sky you dreamed of having on your wedding day. Everything was a good omen today. She couldn’t have found a bad one if she’d tried.
With the straps of her cream-coloured shoes swinging from her fingers as they mounted the stone steps to the church, Anna glanced round at her daughter. Tia was holding on to the delicate tulle train of her mother’s medieval-style ivory wedding dress as though guarding it from thieves or marauders intent on snatching it away from her. The expression on her angelic little face was one of intense concentration.
They stopped for a few moments on the steps as Dante gently but firmly pulled Anna into his side. On this, their wedding day, the mere sight of her husband-to-be stalled her heart. His suit was ivory-coloured linen, and beneath it his shirt was pristine white. Pushing aside some floppily perfect sun-kissed blond hair from his brow, Anna briefly bit down on her lip, then smiled. Today his amazing eyes weren’t the colour of winter. Instead they had the hue of a calm blue lake in midsummer, and here and there the glint of dazzling diamonds shone from their depths.
‘You take my breath away, Dante Romano, and it’s not just because you look good enough to eat.’
He brought her hand up to his lips and kissed it, avidly observing her from beneath his lashes. ‘And I am in awe of your beauty and goodness, Anna mine. Today really is the best day of my life…so far—because from here on in it can only get better and better.’
A couple of camera flashes went off, and Grant Cathcart—bowled over by Anna’s request for him to stand as father of the bride and give her away—called out, ‘Hey, you two. The kissing’s meant to happen after the wedding…not before it! ‘
‘Yes, Mummy and Daddy—didn’t you even know that?’ Hand on hip, Tia let go of the train of Anna’s dress for a moment and affected exasperation. As her parents and guests laughed, her look of exasperation was quickly replaced by one of horror as she saw the ivory train trailing over the stone steps. She grabbed it up again. ‘I hope this hasn’t got dirty—because if it has then I shall be very cross with both of you!’ she declared.
