Italy's Most Scandalous Virgin

by Carol Marinelli

His mother was due back from her cruise today.

  Indeed, all roads led to Rome.

  He would not be driving, though. Dante called Sarah, asking her to send his helicopter, right now, this minute, to return him to Rome.

  ‘There are storms forecast,’ Sarah said, though Dante didn’t want to hear it. But then Dante, who had never known fear, felt its sudden arrival at speed, for as he drove, he caught a glimpse of a rider in his fields, and slowing down he saw that it was Mia, riding Massimo. Through the poppy fields she cantered and the pair of them looked stunning, the black horse gleaming against the red poppies and a thundery navy sky. But though Mia appeared to be handling him with ease, the fact was she was pregnant.

  He halted the car in the middle of the road and climbed out. He could hear his heart pounding in his chest, and feel the sudden dryness of his mouth. Suddenly his fear was laced with fury.

  How dared she risk it?

  If she fell and the horse bolted, it would take for ever to find her, assuming she wasn’t trampled.

  He wanted to press on the horn, but he did not want to startle Massimo, and anyway it appeared as if she was heading back to the stables.

  Well, Dante would be there to meet her.

  As Mia came into the yard she was tired in that nice physical way, but her head was no clearer and she had no idea how to deal with Dante’s questions.

  She felt better now, though, and Massimo had ridden like a dream. She praised him as they came into the yard. ‘There’s no slowing you down, is there, boy?’

  She was just getting her breath back, a little elated, and looking around for the stablehand because it was awfully quiet, when she saw Dante come round the corner. She was suddenly breathless again because his face was as thunderous as the sky.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ he asked, and he took the reins.

  ‘What does it look like?’

  ‘Don’t be facetious,’ he said. ‘Get down.’

  Mia ignored him and cast her eyes around the yard. ‘Where is everyone?’

  ‘I have given the staff the rest of the day and night off, so we can have some decent time to ourselves.’ He got back to the issue of her riding. ‘What the hell were you thinking, riding Massimo?’

  ‘Dante, I don’t know what you’re making such a fuss about. My mother rode until two weeks before she had me. I even checked that it was okay with the doctor...’

  ‘You didn’t check with my doctor,’ he snarled.

  ‘Thank goodness for choice, then.’

  ‘Get down, Mia.’

  He would not be argued with, and she had the awful feeling he was going to come and fetch her himself, so she took her right foot out of the stirrup and went to dismount. It was a manoeuvre she had made hundreds if not thousands of times, but she had never been more aware of her movements.

  Dante was too.

  Relief was seeping into him that she was back at the yard and safe, yet it was tempered with anger. Those thousands of questions he’d had were fading with the ache of distraction as she went to dismount.

  Mia held Massimo’s mane with her left hand and swung her leg over, taking the cantle of the saddle with her right. It was going to be a very long, slow slide to the ground with Dante’s eyes trained on her.

  Her breathing was difficult but for very different reasons now and when his hands came to her hips, instead of guiding her down, he held her there, suspended.

  In fact, he took all of her weight and held her with strong hands that seemed to burn through her. It felt electric, it felt like something she had never known, and her eyes screwed closed.

  He lowered her down very slowly and with such utter precision that had they not been completely dressed she might have been forgiven for imagining he was lowering her onto him. A jolt shot through her as her boots hit the stone ground, and there she remained.

  His hands were still hot on her hips and pressing in and she did not know how she could go from defensive and defiant to wanting to fold over and be taken, but then slowly he turned her round.

  ‘You are pregnant,’ Dante stated, although she took it to be a question.

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘So there is to be no more riding.’

  ‘You can’t stop me, Dante.’

  ‘Actually...’ he smiled that black smile ‘...I can and I will have the horses moved this afternoon unless you give me your word that you won’t ride again.’

  ‘Very well,’ Mia said. ‘While I’m staying here, I shan’t ride. However,’ she added, ‘if you question this pregnancy again, I’ll walk. It took enough guts to tell you without you accusing me of making it up.’

  ‘I did not accuse you. In fact, I can see now that there are changes.’

  He could see the swell of her bust in her T-shirt, and now he held her in his hands he could feel a fleshiness to her hips. It was turning him the hell on.

  She was flushed in the face and he wanted to claim that pouting mouth, to slide down the zipper of her jodhpurs and feel her heat, but there was just one thing stopping him: now, when he had her, right in his arms, with her face staring up at his, he would test her reaction and he would get to the truth.

  And then he would explore those changes.

  ‘I just came from Roberto,’ Dante said.

  ‘Did he tell you to arrange a DNA test?’ She gave a mirthless laugh, while still wanting his kiss. ‘You’re all so predictable.’

  ‘No, no,’ Dante said. ‘Roberto said there was no way you could be pregnant. In fact, he was most insistent.’

  ‘Dante...’ She was getting annoyed, and was about to brush off his hands but stilled when he spoke next.

  ‘You see, he did not know then that I was telling him the baby was mine. He did not know you were just three months pregnant; he did not know anything, in fact, except he stated that the baby could not be my father’s.’

  ‘I don’t see where you’re going with this...’ Mia swallowed, and he watched her carefully; he saw too the wary dart in those gorgeous blue eyes as she tried to come up with a response. ‘Clearly Roberto knew that the marriage was...’ her voice trailed off.

  ‘Was what?’ he persisted.

  ‘For money.’

  ‘Why, though?’ Dante pushed. ‘I don’t doubt you were in it to make a quick buck, and I accept that my father was ill, and might have been unable...’ He still could not go there either in conversation or in his head. ‘But what I don’t get is why his lawyer would know that.’

  She was struggling to breathe and again she thought of that childhood game as Dante veered closer to the truth.

  How hot you are, how hot you are...

  He loomed over her with the sun behind him, the devil in black, but even as he neared the truth she did her best to divert him ‘Perhaps Roberto had to know what might happen if I were to get pregnant. It would have been a messy estate indeed, as we both know.’

  ‘Mia, you’re lying to me,’ Dante said. ‘Over and over you lie to me, and you’re doing it again.’

  ‘Dante...’ She loathed that she had no choice but to lie. ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Then why is your pulse racing beneath my fingers?’ he said. ‘Why are you trembling, Mia? And not in the way you were a few moments ago?’

  ‘I’m not,’ she said again, not knowing what to say to him.

  ‘Will you tell me what you know?’

  Mia wanted to.

  Oh, how she wanted to, but promises had been made and paid for, and what she knew might well blow this family apart.

  ‘Mia,’ Dante said again, his voice low with threat, ‘will you please tell me what the hell went on between you and my father?’

  ‘No!’ she said, her voice choked with the threat of sudden tears, for she did not know how she could carry this secret and forge any chance of a future with Dante at the same time.
/>   And it was there, at that very moment, that Mia knew a future with Dante was what she wanted.

  She loved him.

  Not that she could tell him that, for she had to work out what to do with this wretched secret first.

  But Dante’s patience had long since run out. He would not be waiting for Mia to gather her thoughts, for he could hear his helicopter making its approach. ‘If you won’t tell me, then I shall find out for myself.’ He dropped contact then, turned on his smart heels and stormed off across the yard.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she shouted.

  ‘I don’t have to tell you things either,’ Dante retorted over his shoulder.

  ‘Dante, please...’ She was running after him, suddenly frantic. ‘Don’t leave me here...’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ He shrugged her off. ‘We’re not joined at the hip.’

  ‘But you don’t understand,’ she begged. ‘I don’t want to be here at night on my own.’ But either Dante didn’t hear her or he ignored her, for he was already gunning the car towards the helipad.

  A few minutes later Dante’s helicopter lifted off, and Mia was alone, with no staff, and no idea when Dante would be back.

  If at all.

  With rising panic, Mia dealt with Massimo and the rest of the horses, and then on legs that felt like jelly she headed back to the house, starting to run as she saw the darkening sky.

  It felt as if shadows were chasing her and all bravado left when she saw that the little car belonging to Sylvia and her husband wasn’t there. They must have taken the unexpected night off as a chance to go out.

  She really was alone.

  ‘Get a grip, Mia,’ she told herself as she went in, flicking on lights and closing the drapes. She had to get over this fear because soon she’d be a mother; soon it would be her chasing away shadows and things, as Dante would say, that went bump in the night.

  Except there was nothing soothing about Suite al Limone just before a storm. She stripped off her riding clothes and stood in the shower, willing the water to warm her, yet she felt chilled to the bone.

  And as she stepped out of the shower and pulled on her robe, birds were screeching as they came home to roost and to hide from the storm. It was then that a window blew open.

  It was the wind, of course it was the wind, but, instead of closing it, Mia gave in to her fear and sank to her knees.

  She had never been more terrified in her life.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  DANTE ARRIVED AT his mother’s apartment, this time without warning.

  His pilot had skilfully dodged the storm and it was a surprisingly sunny Rome evening that Dante looked out on as a driver took him to his mother’s apartment. Less of a surprise were the reporters and photographers across the street, waiting for the reappearance of the errant Romano son.

  ‘Hey, Dante!’ they called as they snapped away with their cameras. ‘Where’s Mia?’

  ‘How did you get the bruise, Dante?’

  But Dante turned angry eyes straight at them and the questions rapidly faded.

  His mother, though, wasn’t daunted by his brooding and was suitably furious! Fresh from her cruise but less than relaxed, she hurled open the door.

  ‘Dante, how could you?’ she shouted. ‘I have the press outside, reporters calling, and you are all over the papers with her. She ruined my life, Dante! How the hell could you do this to me?’

  Dante responded by greeting her lover. ‘Signor Thomas,’ he said, ‘would you excuse us, please?’

  Signor Thomas stood tall, but far less imposing than he had appeared to Dante a couple of decades ago, and Angela was adamant that he remain.

  ‘He is to stay. We both want to hear how you defend your actions with the woman who wrecked my marriage.’

  When she offered a rather choice word, the bear had been poked enough, and though Dante did not growl, his voice held an unmistakable threat. ‘Never, and I mean never, speak of Mia that way again,’ he warned, and then pulled his mother aside and spoke only for her ears. ‘Know this—if he does stay, I shall not be moderating my questions to suit the audience.’

  ‘David and I don’t have secrets.’

  ‘You mean he just blindly believes every word that you say?’

  His mother took in a breath and, Dante noticed, was not quite so much on her high horse as she had always been before. She walked over to her lover.

  ‘David,’ she purred. ‘Would you leave us, please?’

  ‘Very well,’ said Signor Thomas. ‘But, Angela, please call me when you have finished speaking with Dante.’ He kissed her cheek and gave her arm a squeeze and then, having nodded to Dante, walked out.

  Dante waited until the door had closed, but Angela did not. ‘What on earth were you doing with Mia?’

  ‘Exactly what it looks like,’ Dante said, refusing to lie. ‘But I am here to ask about you and Signor Thomas. You didn’t just bump into him after the divorce, did you?’

  ‘Dante, stop.’

  ‘No,’ he said belligerently. ‘I remember he was here once when I came home. He said he was dropping off schoolwork...’ He gave a scoffing laugh. ‘It was you who broke up the marriage, wasn’t it?’

  His mother had the look of a deer caught in the headlights. ‘Dante, let things rest.’

  ‘Lies never rest,’ Dante said. ‘They wait and regroup and return. You were having an affair all along, weren’t you?’

  ‘I don’t have to answer to you!’

  ‘Then I’ll draw my own conclusion. You have the audacity to judge me, to judge Mia, to drag Ariana into your hate fest of negativity, when all along you were the one having the affair.’

  ‘Your father and I came to an arrangement a long time ago,’ Angela said.

  ‘Why involve Mia?’ Dante shot out, because he still didn’t get it.

  ‘Our marriage was over long before Mia.’

  ‘Did you ever love him?’

  ‘Dante, please...’

  ‘Do you even miss him, or was it all just an act?’ He looked at his mother, tanned from her cruise, dressed in the latest fashions with made-up eyes, and then he thought of Mia, who had admitted the marriage had been for money and been hot in his arms, and everywhere he looked his father’s memory felt besmirched. ‘The only one who actually misses the guy is...’ Dante halted.

  An impossible thought had occurred in a mind going at a million miles an hour as he thought of the endless orchid pots on Roberto’s porch and the sweet scent of the arrangement at the hospital...

  Mia, shaking and close to fainting, as she threw an orchid into his grave.

  The family lawyer by his father’s bedside when he passed, as his new wife walked in the hospital grounds.

  And Roberto, who had not missed a Romano ball since its inception, too ill that year to attend.

  Depressed, the doctor had said.

  Or had he been grief-stricken?

  A million tiny pieces flew together and made a star then exploded again as the revelation hit. He thought of Roberto’s whisky breath and his sudden frailty, he thought of the tears in his eyes and the unkempt home.

  Roberto was the only one grieving as a lover surely would.

  Just when he’d thought his father could no longer surprise him, well, it would seem Rafael still could...

  ‘My father was gay, wasn’t he?’

  Silence was his answer.

  ‘Wasn’t he?’ Dante persisted.

  ‘He was my Rock Hudson, Dante.’ Angela started to cry and finally he had his confirmation.

  His head was reeling, but there was also a certain calm, for all his life he had felt he’d been lied to.

  And as it turned out, he’d been right.

  ‘Why couldn’t he tell me?’ It was the question that first came to mind.

  ‘Dante?’ His
mother helplessly shrugged.

  ‘Why couldn’t he tell me?’ Dante rasped. ‘I thought we were close...’

  ‘You were.’

  ‘Then why?’

  ‘Because I begged him not to. I didn’t want anyone to know that our marriage was all a charade and that Rafael could only ever try to love me.’

  ‘Is he even my father?’ Dante asked, while knowing it was the most ridiculous question, for they’d had the same build, the same eyes, the same dark humour.

  ‘Of course he’s your father. Dante, I am not going to take you into our marriage—’

  ‘Well, I’m very sorry to tell you,’ Dante said, cutting her off, ‘but I think you have to, because Stefano and Ariana will have the same questions as me.’

  ‘They must never know.’

  ‘Of course they have to know. When did you find out?’

  ‘He told me...’ Angela said, and she sat down on the edge of a plump sofa, clearly shaken.

  ‘Tell me,’ Dante implored, for he needed the truth.

  She pointed to the decanter. He poured her a brandy and he watched as she took a sip and composed herself for a moment. ‘Please,’ Dante said, and finally she nodded.

  ‘The Romano brothers were the ones all the women wanted,’ Angela started in a shaken voice, but then she gave a bitter laugh. ‘I was thrilled when my mother said Rafael was to marry me. The Romano brothers were so handsome and everyone knew they were going places. His father, your nonno, felt that Rafael needed a wife. And we were okay at first—well, sort of—but I had nothing with which to compare...’

  Dante joined her on the sofa, knowing this was difficult for her, and he took his mother’s hand.

  ‘I remember having coffee and biscotti with my friend and she said you have to do it at least once a week to keep a husband happy. I was lost as to what to say. We barely...’ Angela swallowed. ‘I did get pregnant with you, Dante, but that was it. I was too naïve to even have my suspicions; I was just angry and cross and felt unwanted. We would fight a lot, but then when you were five I screamed at your father that I wanted more babies and finally he told me why he could not give them to me.’

  Dante was aching and hurting for his parents and all they had dealt with, yet still curious to know more. ‘What did you say to him?’