The Italian's Forbidden Virgin (Mills & Boon Modern) (Those Notorious Romanos, Book 2)

by Carol Marinelli

  ‘No, no...’ Luna said, and it dawned on her that she was not being sent to the Pianoforte Bar. Instead, Luna gently suggested that she freshen up and pointed her towards a powder room. ‘Still or sparkling?’ she asked.

  ‘Sorry?’ Ariana frowned.

  ‘Acqua,’ Luna said patiently. ‘Would you like still or sparkling?’

  She must thank Luna one day, Ariana thought as she splashed her face with water and ran a comb through her hair, because she still had a morsel of pride left, enough to know she had been saved from facing him looking so terrible.

  Terrible.

  Ariana hadn’t so much as glanced in a mirror since her confrontation with Nicki. It looked as if she’d rolled out of bed this morning and just pulled a dress on.

  She had.

  As if she hadn’t brushed her hair.

  She hadn’t.

  Her skin was all pale and blotchy, and her lips were swollen from crying so there was no point painting her usual red lipstick on. Still, she was grateful for the reprieve and the chance to freshen up somewhat, as Luna would no doubt have told him that yet another of his exes had shown up in a state of distress...

  No, not she!

  ‘I have Ariana Romano in Reception, asking to see you.’

  Gian was just packing up his laptop, about to head to Florence. He had no time for theatrics. And yet, with each day that passed, he found that he missed the colour she had brought to his world, the drama and emotion she always brought to his table, to his bed...

  He wanted them.

  It had been hell missing his friend’s wedding because, despite his supposed lack in the heart department, under any other circumstances he would have moved heaven and earth to have been there.

  ‘I can tell her that you are due to fly out—’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Gian cut in.

  ‘I should warn you then, Gian, she seems distressed...’

  ‘Was she short with you?’ Gian asked, almost hopefully, because if Ariana was throwing her weight around with his staff, he could at least be aggrieved, but Luna shook her head.

  ‘Of course not. Ariana is always polite with me.’ Luna suddenly laughed.

  ‘What’s so funny?’

  ‘Ariana always makes me smile,’ Luna said. ‘Anyway, I’m just letting you know that it looks as if she’s been crying.’

  He nodded and nudged a leather-covered box of tissues to her side of the desk in preparation for her arrival. ‘Send her through.’

  Gian was certain he knew what this would be about. It had been a few months since the funeral, and there had been the ball, and of course what had taken place in her kitchen. Whatever way he looked at it, Gian was sure he was about to be told he was to be a father.

  Yes, there were always consequences, and not once, but on three separate occasions he had not taken the level of care he usually would, relying on her to take the Pill. It was his own fault entirely and he would handle this with grace, even if a pregnancy was everything he had always dreaded.

  Gian did not know how he felt.

  When she arrived in his office, she was most un-Ariana-like.

  Her dress was crumpled, her espadrilles tied haphazardly, her hair, dared he say it, a day past needing a wash, and her make-up but a distant memory. And yet, to his eyes, this was the real Ariana, the one who shot straight to his heart. To see her so fragile and clearly distraught had him fighting not to go straight over and take her in his arms.

  Instead, for now, he kept his arms to himself.

  ‘Ariana.’ He rose to greet her and they did the kiss-kiss routine she had referred to so painfully in their last conversation. He gestured for her to take a seat as they both tried to go back to a world where they hadn’t done more. ‘Can I offer you some refreshments?’

  ‘No, no...’ She shook her head. ‘Thank you, though.’

  ‘Some champagne?’ Gian suggested. ‘A bottle this time.’

  But she did not smile at his little reference and instead shook her head. ‘No, thank you.’ She took a breath. It wasn’t just La Fiordelise and the oasis he made that calmed her; it was Gian himself.

  Despite there being so much on her mind, there was a chance to pause, to just sit in the calming low light of his office and take a moment.

  That was what he gave her.

  Always.

  This tiny chance to pause, and it was in that moment Ariana knew that she really did want things resolved between them. No matter her blushes, it was time to face things head on.

  ‘Before I say what I came to say—’ before he got angry about Nicki ‘—I just want to clear the air. I’m sorry for asking you to miss Dante’s wedding. It wasn’t fair of me to do that.’

  ‘There were extenuating circumstances and it was right that you did,’ Gian said. ‘I’m sure we’ll get to managing steely politeness at family gatherings soon.’

  ‘Yes!’ She shot out a laugh and tried to glimpse a time when she wouldn’t want him, but it was such an impossible thought that her smile slid away.

  ‘Dante understood,’ Gian said. ‘The wedding was at such short notice. He dropped by the other day, we had lunch, and he told me about the twins. So we’re all good...’ He was so certain that Ariana was here to tell him she was pregnant that he kindly gave her an opening. His eyes never left her face as he watched carefully for her reaction. ‘Twins must run in the family...’

  ‘Oh, please.’ Ariana gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Twins don’t run in my family, Gian. I assume my mother had more than one egg put back. Anything to keep up the charade!’

  ‘It wasn’t all a charade, Ariana.’

  ‘I know that now.’ She gave him a thin smile.

  ‘Are you talking?’

  ‘Of course we are,’ Ariana said. ‘I am hurt, yes, but I love her.’

  Lucky Angela, Gian thought, to have her Ariana’s unconditional love.

  A love he himself had discarded.

  ‘I have something for you,’ Ariana told him. ‘I’ve been sorting out some of my father’s things...’ She handed him a leather-bound book as she explained what she had done in recent days. ‘I’ve made one each for my brothers and one for my mother. The contents are different in each, of course...’ She was talking a little too fast, as she did when she was embarrassed, unsure if he would even want her gift.

  ‘An album?’

  ‘Yes, there were a lot of photos, and I thought you might like the ones you were in. But please don’t look at it now: that’s not what I’m here for...’ She took a breath. ‘Gian, there’s something I have to tell you. I wasn’t going to; I’ve tried to deal with it myself, but you do deserve to know...’

  Gian braced himself to hear the inevitable.

  ‘I’ve had my suspicions for a couple of weeks.’ Ariana’s voice was barely above a whisper, and she cleared her throat. ‘I should perhaps have come to you sooner but I wanted to be sure myself...’

  ‘You could have come to me,’ Gian said. ‘You can always come to me. You know that.’

  ‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘I just wanted to be very sure before I said anything, and so this afternoon I confronted her.’

  Gian frowned, not sure what Ariana meant by that. ‘Confronted...who?’ he asked, surprised. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’ve just come from speaking with Nicki.’ Ariana ran a shaking hand through her thick dark hair and then forced herself to look at Gian and simply say it. ‘It was Nicki who took the photo of Mia and Dante at the Romano Ball...’

  That was it?

  Ariana wasn’t here to tell him she was pregnant! Instead, she had found out who had sold the photos to the press! Gian waited to catch the smile of relief that should surely be spreading over his face.

  Except the smile didn’t come, and the anticipated relief didn’t course through his veins, as he looked at Ariana sitting te
nse and hurt, let down by a friend she had trusted.

  ‘You’re sure it was her?’ Gian checked.

  Ariana nodded. ‘At Dante’s wedding she was acting strangely, and when I got a chance I looked through her phone. I’m so sorry, Gian.’

  ‘You’re sorry?’

  ‘Nicki was my guest on the night of the ball. I know the photo caused problems for you—’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Gian cut in. ‘Well, it’s not, of course, but don’t worry about me.’ He wanted to go over and take her hands, which still twisted in her lap. ‘I’m sorry she let you down.’

  Ariana nodded.

  ‘Does Dante know?’

  ‘Not yet. It’s taken me a couple of weeks to get my head around it all, and I decided I would tell you first.’ She looked at the man she had always run to with troubles that seemed too big for this world. ‘I might leave it until after Stefano’s wedding. Really, I don’t think Dante will be too upset. After all, the photo forced things out into the open. I know it angered you, though, and that it was damaging for the reputation of the hotel.’

  ‘The only reputation that has been damaged is Nicki’s,’ Gian said kindly. ‘What did she say when you confronted her?’

  Ariana let out a pained, mirthless laugh. ‘Plenty.’

  He saw a fresh batch of tears flash in her eyes and knew that the confrontation hadn’t been pleasant and so he asked again. ‘What did Nicki say?’

  ‘That it was my fault. That I treated her poorly and always made her feel second best...’

  ‘No.’

  But his words couldn’t comfort her now. She was still shaking from the recent encounter with someone she had considered to be her friend, someone she had defended so often to this man.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Gian said.

  ‘I know you never liked her.’

  ‘I mean, I’m sorry you had to go through that.’

  ‘I should have listened to you in the first place. In fact, I’m starting to think you might be right...about the value of not letting people get too close.’

  ‘Never take relationship advice from me,’ Gian said. ‘As you have undoubtedly seen, I am not particularly good at them.’

  ‘I don’t know about that.’ Ariana smiled. ‘You made me feel pretty wonderful, at least for a while.’ But she hadn’t come here to discuss her time with Gian. She’d said what she’d come to say. ‘Anyway, thank you for being so gracious. I just thought it was something you should know. I don’t know if Nicki will have the audacity to come here again...’

  ‘It’ll be fine. I’ll let my security team know.’ He looked at her swollen eyes and knew Nicki had said plenty more. ‘What else did she say?’ Gian asked.

  Ariana was rarely silent.

  ‘Tell me,’ he pushed.

  ‘That I’m spoiled...’

  ‘You deserve to be spoiled.’

  ‘You do too, Gian.’

  ‘What do you mean? I have everything I could possibly want or need.’

  ‘You really don’t get it, do you?’ He was so self-assured and yet so remote, just so impossible to reach. She ached, literally ached, to shower him with kisses, to bring him ice cream in bed, to be there at the beginning and the end of his day... ‘It’s not about the best bits, Gian.’ He just stared back at her, nonplussed.

  It was time to let go of her fantasy that he would change his mind, that he would see her as anything more. It was time to go.

  She stood to leave, but it was Gian who delayed her. ‘Are you ready for the wedding tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He wanted her to elaborate, as she usually did. Gian wanted to know if she was dreading tomorrow, if she was speaking with Mia, and lots more besides, but it would seem he had lost his front row seat to her thoughts.

  ‘Good luck with the opening,’ Ariana said.

  ‘Thank you. Enjoy the wedding.’

  ‘I intend to.’

  This really was it, Gian realised.

  The tears she had shed and her sudden appearance hadn’t been about him. It had been about Nicki and a friendship lost.

  There was no baby, no emotional issues to deal with, it really was just time to move on.

  Gian was usually very good at that. So why did he feel this way?

  The opening of La Fiordelise Florence was a tremendous success and on the Saturday night esteemed guests mingled and celebrated. While he should be quietly congratulating himself, he had never felt more alone in a crowded room.

  The best food, the best champagne, and if it was sex he wanted, well, there would be no shortage there, for there were beautiful women vying for his attention.

  The problem was him, because instead of enjoying the spoils of his own success Gian found himself slipping away not long after dinner, sitting in his impressive suite leafing through a leather-bound book... There were several pictures of him fishing or riding with Dante and later with the twins. There was one of a teenage Gian rolling his eyes while Dante kicked a stone to Stefano as a very spoiled Ariana sat on a fat little pony, the absolute apple of her parents’ eyes.

  But then Ariana faded from the images as life took its twists and turns and he had headed to university. There were a couple of years without any images while the disasters that had unfolded back then had played out.

  He had never really likedAngela Romano, but there was a picture of him smiling at her the night La Fiordelise had been saved. Angela was dripping jewels and being her usual affected self, as she stood with her husband and Gian.

  This really was a gift without an agenda, Gian knew, for there was even a picture of Gian standing with the Romano family on the night Ariana had attended her first ball. He knew Ariana had made this album purely for his benefit because she would prefer that this picture of herself be relegated to burn in a fire for she looked scowling and awkward.

  It was a slice of time he had forgotten.

  Even now, as he looked at the photo, there was no flash of memory.

  He would have been in his mid-twenties then, and Ariana at that awkward age of fifteen, her hair done in a way that now looked very much of its time, and she had been wearing too much make-up.

  They had all been there for him throughout his life, and he couldn’t help but wonder what each of the Romanos was doing now.

  How Ariana was coping with the nuptials.

  He turned back the pages and looked again at a podgy little Ariana sitting on a podgy little pony, only he saw it differently this time... Not the pony, or the pampered heiress, just the absolute adoration on her face as she smiled at her parents and pleaded with them, with her eyes, to be loved, loved, loved...

  It could have been a cone full of chestnuts they had given her; it wasn’t the pony she had craved, it had been attention and love.

  Gian went out onto the balcony and gazed on the Ponte Vecchio, the gorgeous old bridge that was the soul of Florence, and sung about in ‘O Mio Babbino Caro’.

  Yet it was not the music that filled his soul tonight, for he would never look at this bridge and not think of her.

  Ariana.

  Yes, he was proud of his new hotel, but tonight his heart was in Rome.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ‘COLOUR,’ ELOA HAD SAID.

  A Brazilian wedding was a colourful affair, and that was evident even before the nuptials had started. Even though Gian was not in Rome this weekend, he had ensured La Fiordelise was at their disposal. The reception area was a blaze of colour and forbidden perfume, Ariana noticed as she walked through Reception and headed up to her suite to get changed.

  Ariana would have preferred to wear black, as she had to the Romano Ball, to denote that she was in mourning. For her father, of course, but the end of a relationship also felt a whole lot like grief. She awoke with a weight of sadness in her chest that never quite left, and she felt Gian’s presen
ce beside each and every thought. Yet she must push it all aside today, so she chose a dress as red as her signature lipstick. She wore her jet-black hair up, teased, with a few stray curls snaking down, meaning that she looked far more vibrant than she felt.

  As Stefano fiddled with his tie, Ariana stepped out for a moment onto the balcony and looked down at the square beneath and remembered the night of her father’s funeral, that desperately lonely night made so much better by Gian.

  Why had she insisted that he stay away, when the truth was that she missed him already?

  Half the congregation were clipping their way across the square to the venue and Ariana watched the colourful display from the balcony of Stefano’s suite. The sun seemed at odds with the greyness of her world, and the flowers looked like placards from angry protesters to her tired eyes, yet they waved their petals and demanded she sparkle.

  And so Ariana put on her best smile and stepped back inside. ‘We should head over soon,’ she told him.

  ‘Before we do, there’s something I want to say,’ Stefano said. ‘Ariana, I’m sorry for shutting you out.’

  ‘Stefano, we don’t need to do this now. It’s your wedding day...’

  ‘And I want it to be perfect,’ he said. ‘I want the air to be cleared between us. Gian suggested—’

  ‘Gian?’ Ariana frowned.

  ‘He called me this morning to wish me well and apologise for not being here. We got to talking...’ He took a breath.

  Even though he wasn’t physically here, Gian was still looking out for her, Ariana realised. He was still fixing the pieces of her life that he could, and she was so grateful to him as Stefano spoke on and finally gave her his reasons for keeping his distance. ‘You see, I knew Mamma was having an affair, and I was having suspicions about Pa and Roberto. I was worried I might let things slip when I spoke to you and so I stayed away as much as I could. I was wrong...’

  ‘No,’ Ariana corrected. ‘You did what you thought best at the time, and the air is clear now.’ Clear, if a little thick with unshed tears when she thought of Gian and this moment he had created to bring her and her twin back together.