‘Willow.’
The sound of his voice was unmistakable and her knees buckled, but even though his hand was instantly on her elbow and his strength seemed to flow straight into her, she shook herself free. Because she had to learn to live without him. She had to.
‘Dante,’ she said, but her voice sounded faint. ‘What are you doing here?’
His eyes were curious, but his tone was dry. ‘No ideas?’
She licked her lips. ‘You were in London?’
‘And happened to be passing? Yeah, you could say that.’ He gave a mirthless smile. ‘Is there anywhere quieter we can go to talk?’
She knew she should tell him that no, there wasn’t. She knew she ought to fetch her wrap and go outside to find a cab. Go home and forget she’d ever seen him. Her gaze travelled over his face and stayed fixed on the features she’d missed so much. His blue eyes. His sensual lips. The faint darkness which always lingered around his jaw. ‘There’s the hotel’s Garden Room,’ she croaked.
In silence they walked to the plant-filled bar, with its white baby grand piano tucked away in the corner. Dante immediately managed to commandeer a quiet table at the back of the room but Willow knew instantly that she’d made a mistake in her choice of venue. A big mistake. Because the air was filled with the scent of jasmine and gardenia—heady scent which seemed unbearably romantic, as did the soft music which the pianist was playing. And the flickering candlelight didn’t help. Maybe she could concentrate on her drink. Order some complicated cocktail with a cherry and an umbrella and give it her full attention.
But Dante waved the hovering waiter away and she guessed it was an indication of his charisma that he should be allowed to occupy the best table in the place without even ordering a drink.
She waited to hear what he would say and she tried to second-guess him, desperately trying to work out the right answers to whatever he was going to say. Trouble was, he asked the last question she wanted to hear. The one question she didn’t want to answer. She’d lied about this once before, but she had been stronger then. She’d been so certain it had been the right thing to do and she hadn’t been starved of his presence for almost five weeks, so that she could barely stop herself from reaching out to touch him.
‘Do you love me, Willow?’
She looked into his eyes—which were the colour of midnight in this candlelit room—and she opened her mouth to tell him no. But a rush of stupid tears filled her own eyes and prevented her from saying anything, and mutely, she found herself shaking her head.
‘Do you?’ he said again. ‘Just tell me, Willow. Say it out loud. That’s all I’m asking. Tell me you don’t love me and I’ll walk out of here and you’ll never see me again.’
She tried. For almost a minute she tried. Tried to force the words out of her mouth in the same way that you sometimes had to prise a stubborn Brazil nut from its shell. But the words wouldn’t come. They just wouldn’t come. At least, not the words she knew she should say. The other ones—the eager, greedy ones—they suddenly came pouring from her lips as if she had no control over them.
‘Yes,’ she burst out. ‘Yes, I love you. Of course I do. I didn’t want to. I still don’t want to. And I’m sorry. I don’t want to mess you around and I certainly don’t want to send out mixed messages. So it’s probably better if you forget everything I’ve just said. Because...because it can’t lead anywhere, Dante—it just can’t.’
His eyes narrowed, like someone who had just been presented with a locked room and was working out how best to open it without a key. ‘Do you want to tell me why?’
‘Because I can’t give you what you want,’ she whispered. ‘You told me you wanted marriage. And babies. Your grandfather told me that he longed for nothing more than to see the next generation of Di Siones.’
‘And?’
‘And I can’t promise you that. I had...’ She swallowed and licked her lips. ‘I had treatment for my illness before I started my periods and they said it’s possible—even likely—that I may not be able to have children.’
‘But you didn’t ever find out for sure?’
She shook her head. ‘No. I know it’s stupid, but I preferred to live in a state of not knowing. I guess I was too scared to confront it and I didn’t want yet another negative thing to define me. It seemed much easier to just bury my head in the sand.’ She shrugged and bit her lip. ‘But I suppose that’s difficult for you to understand.’
She didn’t know what she had expected but it hadn’t been for Dante to pick up her hand—her left hand—and to turn it over and study her palm as if he was able to read her future, before lifting his solemn gaze to hers.
‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s not difficult at all, because all of us are sometimes guilty of not facing a truth which is too hard to take. I did it with my own brother—refused to accept that my reluctance to share him was what lay at the root of our rift. But listen to me very carefully, Willow—because you’re not thinking logically.’
Her blurry gaze fixed on his stern features. ‘What do you mean?’
‘There is always the chance that you or I can’t have a baby. That applies to every couple in the world until they try themselves. Unless you’re advocating putting all prospective brides and grooms through some kind of fertility test before they’re allowed to marry?’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘I don’t think even royal families adopt that strategy any more.’
‘Dante...’
‘No,’ he said. ‘You’ve had your say and now I’m having mine. Understand?’
Pressing her lips in on themselves, she nodded.
‘I love you,’ he said simply. ‘And the past few weeks have made me realise how much. Time spent away from you has only increased the certainty that I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and only you.’ He placed a warning finger over her lips as they began to open. ‘With or without children of our own. Because children aren’t a deal-breaker. You not loving me would be the only deal-breaker. That’s the only thing which would stop me from wanting to marry you, and I’m afraid you’ve just signed your own fate by telling me that you do love me.’
Dazed, she stared at him. ‘Am I allowed to say anything yet?’
‘Only if you’re prepared to see sense and accept my proposal—unless you want me to go down on one knee in this very public place and ask you all over again, despite the fact that you’ve already auctioned off the first ring I gave you?’
‘No! No, please don’t do that. Don’t you dare do that.’
‘So you will marry me?’
‘It seems I have no choice!’
She was laughing but somehow she seemed to be crying at the same time and Dante was standing up and pulling her into his arms and wiping her tears away with his fingers, before kissing her in a way that made the last of her reservations melt away.
And when the picture of that ecstatic kiss made its way into the gossip columns of next day’s newspapers—with the headline Society Girl to Wed Notorious Playboy—Willow didn’t care. Because now she realised what mattered—the only thing which mattered. She was going to focus on what was truly important, and that was yet another thing Dante had taught her.
He’d taught her that love made you strong enough to overcome anything.
So she threw the newspaper down onto the carpet and turned to look at him, running her fingers over his olive skin and thinking how magnificent he looked in her bed.
Sleepily, he opened his eyes and gave a huge yawn as he glanced down at the bare hand which was currently inching its way up his thigh. ‘I guess we’d better go out and buy you another ring. Would you like that?’
‘I’d like that very much.’
‘But not a diamond.’ He smiled. ‘A rare grey pearl, I think.’
‘Mmm... That sounds perfect.’ She moved over him, skin against skin, mouth against mouth
—and ripples of desire shivered over her as she felt his hardness pressing against her. ‘Just not now,’ she whispered indistinctly. ‘The ring can wait. But this can’t.’
EPILOGUE
‘COME AND SIT in the shade,’ Dante said lazily. ‘I don’t want you getting burned.’
Willow pushed her straw hat back and smiled up into her husband’s face. ‘I’m unlikely to burn when you insist on applying factor fifty to my skin at every opportunity, am I?’
‘True. In fact, I think you need another application right now,’ he murmured, rising to his feet and standing over her. ‘Come here.’
‘That sounds like another excuse for you to start rubbing cream into my body.’
‘You really think I need an excuse, Mrs Di Sione?’ he growled, lifting her off the sun lounger and leading her inside to the air-conditioned cool of their beachside house.
Willow bit her lip with sheer pleasure as she felt his lips whisper over her throat, thinking she couldn’t remember ever feeling so happy. Or lucky. So very lucky. For the past month they’d been honeymooning in a Caribbean beach house, while nearby the crystal waters lapped contentedly against sugar-fine sands. They swam in the mornings, napped in the afternoons and took lazy days out on the Di Sione boat, which had been sailed from New York and was now anchored off the island.
They had married quietly in the small church built in the grounds of her parents’ house and the building had been transformed for the occasion, discreetly bankrolled by her future husband. The badly repaired hole in the ceiling had been miraculously fixed and the air was scented with gardenias and jasmine similar to those which had perfumed the Garden Room at the Granchester on the night Dante had asked her to marry him.
‘Did you like our wedding?’ she questioned softly.
‘I loved it. Every second.’
‘You didn’t think it was too quiet?’
‘No. It was perfect. Just like you.’ Dante unclipped her bikini top and began to skate his fingertips over her nipples. He had wanted a quiet wedding. There had still been so much stuff going on about Giovanni’s Lost Mistresses—with his brothers and his sisters all over the place trying to find random pieces of jewellery and other stuff which had once belonged to his grandfather, and nothing completely resolved. The uncertainty about who would be able to attend and who wouldn’t had made Dante decide to have the smallest of weddings, with only his brother Dario in attendance as his best man. He told Willow he planned for them to visit the Long Island estate during the forthcoming holidays, where they would have a big post-wedding party.
But he’d known all along that he didn’t need pomp, or ceremony. If it could have been just him and Willow, he wouldn’t have complained. In the end, he was the one who badly wanted to place a gold ring on her finger and make her his. He’d wanted to marry her more than he could ever remember wanting anything. Because she gave him everything he needed—and more.
And if she’d questioned him over and over about his need for children, he had reassured her with a certainty which went bone-deep. He’d told her that there were lots of possibilities open to them if they couldn’t conceive. Like he’d said, it wasn’t a deal-breaker. Until one day she’d started believing him and never mentioned it again. And if either of them had been able to see into the future, they would have seen Willow Di Sione holding two baby girls—beautiful, blue-eyed twins, just like their daddy.
Dante gave a contented sigh as he remembered back to their wedding day. Without a doubt she had made the most exquisite bride in the history of the world—with a veil which had been worn by her grandmother, held in place with the glittering tiara of white diamonds and emeralds as green as new leaves. Dario had offered her use of the matching earrings, but although Willow had been very grateful, she had declined the offer. ‘A woman can wear too much jewellery, you know,’ she’d whispered to her prospective husband—and Dante had laughed with a feeling of pure pleasure.
Her slender figure had been showcased by a pale, gauzy dress, beneath which she’d sported a garter embroidered with dramatic flames of yellow and red. And when slowly he’d been removing it on their wedding night, his hand had lingered on the raised surface of vibrant hues, which she’d so lovingly stitched.
‘Flames?’ he questioned with a frown.
‘As a kind of homage to an earlier Dante and his famous inferno.’ She smiled. ‘But mainly because my life would be hell without you.’
He smiled back. ‘Interesting. But I thought brides were traditionally supposed to have something blue?’
And that was when her fingertips reached up to trace over his cheeks with the most gentle touch he had ever known. A touch which had made him shiver with pleasure and count his blessings.
‘Your eyes are the bluest thing I’ve ever seen, Dante Di Sione.’ Her voice had been low and trembling. ‘I’ll settle for those.’
* * * * *
If you enjoyed this book, look out for the next instalment of THE BILLIONAIRE’S LEGACY:
A DI SIONE FOR THE GREEK’S PLEASURE by Kate Hewitt.
Coming next month.
Keep reading for an excerpt from THE ITALIAN’S CHRISTMAS CHILD by Lynne Graham.
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The Italian’s Christmas Child
by Lynne Graham
CHAPTER ONE
THE MOORLAND LANDSCAPE on Dartmoor was cold and crisp with ice. As the four-wheel drive turned off the road onto a rough lane, Vito saw the picturesque cottage sheltering behind winter-bare trees with graceful frosted branches. His lean, strong face grim with exhaustion, he got out of the car ahead of his driver, only tensing as he heard the sound of yet another text hitting his phone. Ignoring it, he walked into the property while the driver emptied the car.
Instant warmth greeted him and he raked a weary hand through the dense blue-black hair that the breeze had whipped across his brow. There was a welcome blaze in the brick inglenook fireplace and he fought the sense of relief threatening to engulf him. He was not a coward. He had not run away as his ex-fiancée had accused him of doing. He would have stood his ground and stayed in Florence had he not finally appreciated that the pursuit of the paparazzi and outrageous headlines were only being fuelled by his continuing presence.
&nbs
p; He had grudgingly followed his best friend Apollo’s advice and had removed himself from the scene, recognising that his mother had quite enough to deal with when her husband was in hospital following a serious heart attack without also having to suffer the embarrassment of her son’s newly acquired notoriety. Undeniably, his friend had much more experience than Vito had of handling scandals and bad publicity. The Greek playboy had led a far less restricted life than Vito, who had known from an early age that he would become the next CEO of the Zaffari Bank. His grandfather had steeped him in the history and traditions of a family that could trace its beginnings back to the Middle Ages when the Zaffari name had stood shoulder to shoulder with words like honour and principle. No more, Vito reflected wryly. Now he would be famous for ever as the banker who had indulged in drugs and strippers.
Not his style, not his style at all, Vito ruminated ruefully, breaking free of his thoughts to lavishly tip his driver and thank him. When it came to the drug allegations, he could only suppress a groan. One of his closest friends at school had taken something that had killed him at a party and Vito had never been tempted by illegal substances. And the whores? In truth Vito could barely remember when he had last had sex. Although he had been engaged until a week earlier, Marzia had always been cool in that department.
‘She’s a lady to her backbone.’ His grandfather had sighed approvingly, shortly before his passing. ‘A Ravello with the right background and breeding. She will make a superb hostess and future mother for your children.’
Not now, though, Vito thought, glancing at his phone to discover that his ex had sent him yet another text. Dio mio, what did she want from him now? He had perfectly understood her decision to break off their engagement and he had wasted no time in putting the house she had been furnishing for their future occupation back on the market. That, however, had proved to be a move that had evidently rankled, even though he had assured Marzia that she was welcome to keep every stick of furniture in the place.
Di Sione's Virgin Mistress Page 15
