Italy's Most Scandalous Virgin

by Carol Marinelli

  ‘Many things...things that I shall regret for ever. But then anger left and we sat at the table. He cried and cried, because in every other way I think your father did love me, at least back then.’

  ‘Why did you stay?’

  ‘What choice did I have? I could not divorce him. Could you imagine our families? We were married with a child. Somehow we had to make it work. And so we talked, and we talked, and we agreed to try IVF. We bought an apartment here and I would stay in Rome for my treatments. I suppose we were happy then, Dante. I got pregnant with the twins and the business took off even more. I would come to Rome at weekends to see my son. I would watch your sport, and I met David.’

  ‘Does he know about my father?’

  ‘Yes,’ Angela said. ‘I told you, we have no secrets. Dante, I had a life here. I buried myself in my children, in charities, in functions. Your father was happier too, and no more so than when he met Roberto...’

  ‘How long were they together?’

  ‘Fifteen years. More than most marriages, and they would have been together for many more had your father not got ill, although the truth was starting to come out.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘The press has always had an interest in the Romanos, as you well know.’ She gave a tired shake of her head. ‘A couple of years ago, there were some rumours. Your father and Roberto had been seen in a restaurant in Florence and also dining at La Fiordelise a couple of times. I couldn’t bear it, Dante. I told him to stop the rumours in their tracks. As well as that, David told me he could no longer stay on the sidelines; he wanted marriage too...’

  Dante frowned as his mother continued.

  ‘My children were grown and I decided it was time for me, so I told your father I wanted a divorce. I asked him to lie one more time for me, to take the blame, but in a more familiar way...’

  ‘An affair with his PA?’

  She nodded. ‘I did not know, because he kept so much from me, that at the time your father was undergoing tests. He had found out he was dying. Had I waited, we could have avoided so much humiliation with the divorce, so much drama—’ She stopped herself from what she was about to say, but it was the same words that had been said on the day Rafael had died.

  And Dante could well guess what she meant. ‘Had you waited, you would have been his widow?’

  He thought of his mother fighting to still be allowed to attend the ball, of her asking the judge to be allowed to still keep the Romano name.

  At the time he had thought it was because she’d wanted the same name as her children, but he had never dwelled on it.

  ‘I don’t doubt that it was hell for you and my father, and that you had many reasons to stay and for the marriage to appear to work. But those reasons surely ended close to a decade ago...’

  ‘The arrangement worked,’ Angela maintained. ‘Until David insisted on marriage and brought things to a head.’

  ‘Yet you and Signor Thomas still haven’t married,’ Dante pointed out, and watched as his mother pressed her lips together, possibly glad now her son had suggested that David leave as he made a very pertinent point. ‘The fact is that you love being a Romano and you didn’t want it to end.’

  ‘I earned that name!’ Angela snarled.

  And all the trappings and kudos that came with it, he reflected. Oh, his father might not have loved her in the traditional sense but he had assured Angela an extremely prominent and privileged life.

  Dante had always thought it would be Mia clinging to every contested detail of the divorce settlement, but he could see now that it was more likely that it had been his mother. He had often wondered if guilt had made his father so generous; now he was sure that was the case. And he wondered too how life might have been if his mother had been prepared to break the status quo once her children were grown, end the marriage, and let his father live his true life.

  While he doubted he would ever get those answers from his mother, who loved to put herself in a flattering light, there was one more thing he badly needed to know. ‘How did he get Mia to agree?’

  ‘Money,’ Angela said, as if the answer was an obvious one, and Dante’s jaw tightened. He loved his mother, but she had an arrogant air to her. He did not like that part of her, and he saw it far more clearly at this moment.

  ‘How did he get her to agree?’

  ‘She was desperate,’ Angela said. ‘About to lose her job, but you know your father, he would always fall for a sob story...’

  ‘Stop!’ Dante said. ‘Stop being so cruel when you speak about her. I mean it. I will call you out on it every time. I don’t give a damn if my father was gay, and I don’t care if you slept with every tutor in my school, but I will not let you speak about her like that again in my presence. You might feel that disparaging her is part of the act, but to me that was unnecessary and cruel...’ He took a breath to calm himself for there was more he needed to know. ‘And what do you mean, a sob story?’ It was just so unlike the Mia he knew.

  ‘She told him how her parents had just been killed...’ Dante frowned. From the way Mia had carried herself, as awful as it was, he had assumed it had happened years ago, but his curiosity turned to horror as his mother spoke on. ‘She told him that her brother had spinal injuries and had had no travel insurance...’

  ‘Her brother has spinal injuries?’

  ‘Yes, she had just got him back to the UK from the States. Your father said he would speak to her manager and say that she should keep her job, but Mia admitted she could not do it any more. She could not hold down a job. She was having nightmares after being trapped in the car with their bodies...’

  Dante went cold. ‘Mia was in the accident that killed her parents?’ The mere glimpse Mia had been trapped in a car with her family appalled him.

  He thought of her standing in the yard, pleading with him not to leave her alone, and it made him glance out to the black night sky. He stood abruptly.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Angela asked.

  ‘To Luctano,’ Dante said. ‘To Mia.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  IT WAS A hellish flight back to Luctano and though the pilot dodged the storm cells it was very turbulent.

  But it was not the rain or the heavy clouds that had his stomach lurching, it was his own self-castigation. His own impatience and assumptions. He had assumed her brother had not come to the funeral because Mia had secrets she didn’t want shared. Just as he had decided her marriage to his father had been for selfish gain.

  Mia was right, Dante realised. He did not know her.

  But he wanted to.

  He did not really know the depth of his feelings for her, just that he had to get back to Luctano and make sure she was okay.

  The rain was torrential and falling sideways as he dashed from the chopper to the house and he ran through it, calling out her name.

  ‘Mia!’

  There was no sign of her, except that all the lights were on, and he marched up the stairs. ‘Mia.’ He came to her bedroom door and knocked loudly. ‘It’s me, Dante. Can I come in?’

  ‘Give me a moment...’ came her hoarse reply, but Dante did not have a moment in him left to give and opened the door to the Suite al Limone, and what he saw hollowed him.

  Mia, always in control, always so together and composed, was sitting on the floor, bedraggled and wet in her coral robe and hugging her knees, her face bleached white as she looked up at him. A drape was billowing and there were tears streaming from her eyes as she shouted at him to get out. Dante knew this was a private side to Mia that she would prefer no one saw, yet as he witnessed pure terror, he wanted no secrets between them.

  Secrets had caused enough damage; secrets were what had brought them to this point.

  ‘God, Mia.’ He was appalled at what he had done. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Get out,’ she screeched.

  Bu
t Dante refused to leave her. ‘It’s okay, Mia.’

  ‘It’s not okay,’ she shouted, and yelled accusingly, ‘You left me here and you sent away all the staff...’ Her voice was rising, the terrible panic that had floored her when she’d stepped out of the shower was now tinged with relief that he was back, but also loaded with anger. ‘How could you leave me here?’ she shouted. ‘How dared you bring me here just to leave me alone?’

  Finally she felt it was safe to be angry.

  Dante was across the room in seconds, stunned and horrified to see the pent-up woman finally unleash.

  She was ranting about ghosts, about graves, about her brother, and the bastard who had brought her to a house where she didn’t want to be, and had then left her all alone.

  Dante crouched on the floor and he took her damp, shaking body in his arms. ‘You’re okay now, you are safe,’ he told her over and over.

  ‘But I’m not.’

  ‘You are.’ And he sounded so convincing that she almost believed him.

  ‘I’m going mad,’ she told him. ‘How can I be a mother when I’m like this?’

  ‘You’ll be the best mother in the world,’ he told her.

  Which only made her cry.

  ‘Mia, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘I’m terrified of ghosts...’

  ‘There are no ghosts,’ Dante said.

  ‘But there are.’

  ‘There are no ghosts,’ he insisted, and even tried a joke to haul her out of her fear. ‘It’s just the skeletons in my family closet that are rattling.’ But that only made her cry all the more. But her tears didn’t daunt Dante; in fact, there was an odd relief to meet the real Mia after all this time. ‘There’s no such thing as ghosts.’

  ‘My mother spoke to me, though.’

  To hear this very private woman admit to something so bizarre deserved more than cold common sense and a quick dismissal.

  ‘Come,’ he said, and helped her to stand, not knowing quite what to do with her when she was so upset. He did what he could and helped Mia over to the bed. ‘Have some water.’

  ‘You don’t believe me.’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ Dante said, as he helped her into bed. ‘I’m not getting in,’ he said, and lay on top of the bed and pulled her into him. ‘I know about the accident and your brother,’ Dante admitted. ‘I just found out and I am so very sorry. Now tell me about your mother. Is she talking to you now?’

  ‘I’m not hearing voices, Dante.’

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘So tell me.’

  ‘I don’t know how.’

  ‘Just say what happened, whatever way you can.’

  It all came out then, in a back-to-front way—being trapped with her parents and her injured brother—and Dante listened, aghast at what she had been through. He held her and could feel the frantic hammering of her heart, close to the beat of his own.

  ‘I told my father not to drive. I mean, what was he thinking, driving in a city on the other side of the road?’

  ‘People do it all the time,’ Dante said.

  ‘And why the hell didn’t Michael get travel insurance? How could he be so damned selfish and reckless?’

  ‘It was a mistake,’ Dante said, ‘with appalling consequences. Perhaps go easy on him. I am sure he is beating himself up enough without—’

  ‘I could never say all this to him.’ Mia almost sat up in an effort to explain, but Dante pulled her back down. ‘I’m only saying it to you!’

  ‘Keep going, then,’ Dante said. Finally he understood her better; understood that the anger she’d felt had had nowhere to go, for her parents were dead and her brother needed her support, despite her own devastation at the consequences of his one simple mistake.

  ‘When I came to, I knew straight away that things were bad. I thought I was the only person to have made it, but then I heard my mother speak. She said to hold on, that the ambulance would be on its way, that help would arrive and that she loved me. I heard her, Dante.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘But when the report came back it said that she’d been killed instantly. Yet I heard her speaking to me.’

  ‘Okay,’ Dante said, and he thought for a long moment. ‘What if it wasn’t as instant as they said in the report? I mean, I appreciate science and everything, but they weren’t actually there.’

  He made her smile just a little. With his arms around her, and his arrogant authority, Dante made her smile about a subject she had never thought she would smile about.

  And though he believed his own theory he gave it more thought. ‘What if she used her dying breaths to speak to you?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Mia had thought of that, but she liked hearing it from him.

  ‘Or what if you were semi-conscious and imagined what you most needed to hear?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ She shook her head and then sighed as she conceded, ‘But...it’s possible.’

  ‘Or,’ Dante said—and he put logic aside for Mia—‘what if there is something that we cannot explain, and she somehow managed to be with you for a little while, even if she was gone?’

  She looked up. ‘Like her spirit?’

  ‘I guess.’ Dante looked down and smiled. ‘And, even if—and I am suspending my beliefs here—but even if there are ghosts, surely she wouldn’t want to hurt you?’

  ‘No.’

  She felt calmer for finally sharing with someone the hell of what had happened.

  With him.

  ‘Did my father know all this?’ Dante asked.

  ‘Some,’ Mia said. ‘Most of it, though not the ghost part, but he knew about Michael’s injuries and the bills for treatment and how we lost everything getting him home.’

  No wonder he had been haemorrhaging money on her, Dante thought, angry with himself again at his own assumptions.

  ‘I wish you could have told me this.’

  ‘You don’t think I’m mad?’

  ‘A little bit mad,’ Dante said, and he gave her that smile that chased cares away, at least for a little while. ‘Mia, you and my father—’

  ‘Please, Dante.’ She cut him off. There was more to be said, Mia knew that, though she could not face it now. ‘No more questions. At least not tonight. I know we have to speak, I’m just too tired now...’ She felt so depleted, yet so oddly calm in his arms, that she could not bear to break the gentle peace.

  ‘No more questions,’ Dante agreed, and he lay on the bed with her in his arms. He’d never thought he could be pleased that Mia had been married to his father but, yes, Dante was glad that his father had been able to help when she had needed it so badly. And he was glad, too, that she’d had the benefits of this gorgeous house, and Sylvia, and the horses and things as she’d recovered from a most terrible experience. ‘You can ride Massimo,’ Dante suddenly said. ‘If the doctor says that you can and it helps you relax.’

  She laughed at his huge concession. She looked up from his chest into dark eyes and then blushed, though not in the way she usually tended to when she looked into his eyes. ‘I’m embarrassed you saw me like that,’ Mia admitted.

  ‘Don’t be. I’m glad you finally told me what has been scaring you.’

  ‘Really?’

  He nodded and then came the balmy comfort of his mouth slow and soft on hers. His clothes were damp from the rain. It was the first time she’d noticed, but as he pulled her into him, she felt that he was damp, and his hair in her hands was wet too.

  But it was his mouth, his mouth that brought both comfort and need, and the scratch of his jaw a sublime tiny hurt that chased bigger hurts away.

  Until he halted them and moved his face back from hers.

  ‘Don’t stop.’

  ‘I am stopping,’ Dante said. ‘I am not going to be accused of taking advantage...’

  ‘You’re not,’ Mia grumbled, movi
ng back in for a kiss, but Dante peeled her from him. ‘No, I don’t want you regretting me in the morning. We still have a lot to sort out and you might not want me any more when you hear what I have to say.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m going to be in the baby’s life, Mia. I loved my father very much, but really I only saw him in the summer. I don’t want that with my child.’

  Mia might not want questions but she had plenty for him. ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘What about you stay here?’ Dante said. ‘You were happy here. Of course I would have to sort out...’ He nodded his head towards the window.

  ‘You can’t exhume him!’ she said in horror.

  ‘No, but I’d think of something and you’d have a nanny and things.’

  ‘Where would you live?’

  ‘Rome,’ Dante said, as if it was obvious.

  And to Dante it was. ‘Half an hour away in the helicopter, so we wouldn’t get under each other’s feet.’

  He offered a very practical, very good solution, but he broke her heart with his absolute refusal to consider the possibility of them.

  ‘Under your feet?’

  ‘Yes.’ He was unapologetic. ‘I’m not relationship material, Mia. Surely to God you know that about me?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘So, just think about living here,’ Dante said, ‘but not now. You need to get some sleep.’

  And even with her breaking heart, he could still make her laugh as he checked behind the drapes. ‘Nothing hiding there,’ he said, and he even checked the dressing room. ‘No monsters there...’

  ‘Stop it,’ she said. She lay there in bed, thinking how honest and how wretched he was, to simply dismiss any possibility of them out of hand. And also just how gorgeous he was, and how he could make her smile, and just how much better things were when he was near. He was kind, but so cruel too, because he tucked the bedding in around her and was a complete gentleman when she didn’t want him to be.

  ‘Goodnight,’ he said, but as he opened the door to step out, he added, ‘And for the record, Mia, if there was a ghost, I really don’t think my father would be rattling around this house. I rather think he’d be over at Roberto’s.’