by Jane Porter
“Marcello told me you’re the smartest of them all, but they worry about you doing your own thing.”
“Because I don’t do things by consensus, I do what I think is best. They don’t like it—”
“Because you’re the youngest?”
“And because you’ve met them. You know how it is. Too much discussion. Too much tension. It’s a waste of time and energy. If something needs to be done, I’m going to do it. End of story.”
“You don’t feel isolated?”
“No. I love it. It’s far better now that they are out of the fields and winery, and they can focus on fashion, and merchandising.”
“And yet I saw the report Enzo had prepared for our meetings last August. Your wineries are outperforming, and outearning, what the three of them do...combined.”
“Now it does. It wasn’t always that way.”
“But you have to be pleased.”
“I’m not competitive, at least, not with them. I like to be successful, but not at their expense.” He glanced at her, black lashes framing those startling silver eyes. “They’re my older brothers and my sister. I look up to them. I respect them. I just want to do my part now—” He broke off, drew a breath, “It’s time to do my part, to ensure my family’s success.”
It wasn’t a villa, but a proper castle, she realized as they turned off the main road and began driving up a hill to the castle with a square tower in front of them, while tidy rows of grapes covered the hillsides.
“That’s your home,” she said, because it was the only building nearby, and what an impressive structure it was. The tower was made of stone, while the plastered walls were a soft creamy yellow, surrounded by tall stone exterior walls.
“It is,” he agreed.
The castello was positioned on a hill with sweeping views of Val di Greve, and with access to both Florence and Siena, it had most likely been a strategic stronghold for centuries.
“From the square tower, it must date back to the eleven hundreds.”
“There are some disagreements regarding the age of the castello itself, but historians all agree that the central tower is from the twelfth century. Some sources claim the castle as it is today dates from the early fourteen hundreds. We know from ancient records that the castello has been inhabited since 1456, and it was during that time period it earned its name, Castello Mare Scotti, for a descendent of the Medicis.”
“When did you buy the property?”
“It’s been almost ten years. The castle and grounds were a mess, in need of serious restoration, and while the vineyards were still producing grapes, they also needed to be replanted. Overhauling the orchards made sense—and those have become quite profitable. The restoration of the castello is more of a labor of love, an ode to Tuscany. I’ve lived many places now, but nowhere else is like this place. Chianti Valley is without a doubt home.”
“More so than Florence?”
“I enjoy Florence. It’s elegant and filled with art and history, but I’ve discovered I prefer the country over the city. My family had a big estate outside Florence when I was growing up, and my brothers have divided it between them, but that estate has never resonated with me, not the way Castello Marescotti resonates. From the first time I walked the property, I knew it was meant for me.” Brando flashed a wry smile. “The family said I was crazy. Livia emailed me a half-dozen listings of available properties featuring palaces and villas in excellent condition, many with land attached, but none of them were right. Marescotti was mine. I often spend weeks at a time here. One day soon I hope to live here full-time.”
“What about your house in Florence?”
“I’ll still go for a special night, or a weekend, but once I have children—” He broke off and shot her a meaningful glance as he slowed to pass through the ten-foot stone walls with the huge iron gate. “I’d like to raise them where there is space to run and play.”
Staff appeared as Brando parked. Someone claimed the luggage. Someone else took the car keys and then the car. A housekeeper ushered them through the front door, offering to show Charlotte to her room, but Brando said he’d take her himself.
Sunlight poured through the windows flanking the front door, and the staircase rose in the middle of the great hall, the staircase three levels of dark gleaming wood against pale yellow walls. Framed oil canvases hung on the walls while an enormous Venetian glass chandelier cast sparkling light everywhere.
She followed Brando up a flight of stairs to the second floor. They walked down the hall to the second door on the left. Her bedroom was luxurious as well as spacious, with plastered walls and thick dark beams set into the ceiling. The rose silk curtains framed tall windows, and the bed was covered with a matching silk coverlet. Fresh roses filled a vase next to the bed, and more roses nestled in a low bowl on the antique dressing table.
“Would you like a brief tour of the house and gardens?” Brando asked. “Or are you too tired?”
“Not too tired. I’d love to see your place. I heard so much about it last fall.”
They exited her bedroom, stepping back into the hallway, which was sunny and bright thanks to a trio of tall windows lining the wall. The windows overlooked fertile vineyards and tidy orchards.
“How much of this land is yours?” she asked, pausing at one of the hall windows.
“Almost everything you can see from this spot.” He pointed to a distant hill topped with another castle. “See that castello? That is my nearest neighbor, and his property starts at the bottom of his hill and continues for one hundred and ten acres that way. Everything from here, to that hill, is mine.”
“How many acres do you have?”
“A little over two thousand, but it’s in chunks and clusters as I’ve purchased available property in the valley.”
Her eyebrows arched. “That is significant land for this area, isn’t it?”
“I’ve been buying land when I can. Most of it is devoted to grapes, but not all. I also have a large olive orchard, and we have bees, and produce honey, too.”
He led her back downstairs through the reception rooms and grand salons and smaller sitting rooms, as well as through the dining room, and the kitchen staffed with a head chef and an assistant. They walked through kitchen gardens, their shoes crunching the gravel paths, before entering a small orchard with fruit trees. At the back of the fruit orchard were the beehives, and they found one of Brando’s gardeners, who also was the chief beekeeper, just finishing repairing the rain cover on one of the hives. Brando greeted him warmly and introduced Charlotte before they continued, returning to the path with the worn tiles. The smooth red-tiled path led them away from the house to a small chapel with its own square bell tower. They peeked into the chapel with its stained glass and dark wooden pews, before he led her back down the path, cutting through rose gardens and a topiary garden to end up at an enormous infinity pool with a jaw-dropping view of the valley. Elegant wrought iron loungers lined one side of the pool while a fountain happily splashed away in a far corner, creating tinkling sounds.
The valley was that of dark green rolling hills and picturesque villages and grapes. The terrain was more rugged than Napa, with high mountains in the distance. “You have a bit of paradise here,” she said.
“I’m quite partial to it. I focus well here. In fact, I enjoy my work so much that it doesn’t feel like work.”
“That’s the best sort of work, when it feels more like a passion.”
“Do you feel that way about your work?”
“Sometimes. It depends on the clients. And the crisis.” She flashed a smile. “Sometimes the crisis element overwhelms everything else and all I feel is adrenaline.”
“Did you feel that way working with my family?”
“No. The Riccis are pragmatic. None of you liked the bad press, and you were able to come together to downplay the succession issue.”
She made a face. “Not that the issue has gone away. It’s just smoothed over for the time being.”
“I think we’ve at least begun to whittle away at the issue. We aren’t burying our heads in the sand anywhere. Something has to be done.”
“But you personally don’t think Enzo’s son is the one to lead the Ricci company in the future.”
“I think he should be involved in management, but Antonio isn’t a visionary, and he’s overly cautious, which leads to a fear of making decisions. You can’t have your CEO afraid to make a decision.”
“And what of Marcello’s and Livia’s kids? Anyone there look promising?”
“Livia’s daughter, Adriana, is brilliant. She’s strategic and has this rather dazzling ability to ‘see’ the future while very much coping with issues of today. My vote would be for Adriana, but that won’t be popular with my brothers. They both have sons and they’re both grooming their sons to head the company.” He paused and looked down at her. “And who knows what our child’s strengths will be, but I’m hopeful he or she will also embrace the family, as loud and fierce and complicated as we are.”
“Yet you all love each other,” she said after a moment. “I think that is the thing that struck me most. You quarrel rather passionately, but that’s because you all care so much.” Her family was the opposite. The quarreling wasn’t warm and loving. The quarreling was incredibly divisive, so divisive that Charlotte was more comfortable with her stepbrothers and sisters than her own siblings.
He shrugged. “We’re family. Family sticks together.”
Or not.
He looked at her, silver gaze assessing. “You don’t agree?”
“My family isn’t as neat and tidy as yours, so I’m not sure how I feel about ‘family.’ It’s not a simple question, nor a simple answer.”
His expression eased, and he smiled. “Then how about I pose a simple question. Are you hungry? Lunch should be served soon.”
“I am hungry,” she admitted. “Lately I feel like I’m always hungry.”
“Then let’s walk back to the house, and you can freshen up before we meet on the terrace for lunch.”
Brando escorted her back to the sprawling castello, where he left her at the foot of the stairs—on her insistence, as she didn’t need to be walked all the way to her bedroom door—but as she climbed the stairs to the second floor, she couldn’t help thinking of what Brando had said when they’d first arrived, that Castello Marescotti is where he’d want to raise his children, because there would be room for them to run and play. He was right, there was plenty of room here, both indoors and out. The stone house was huge, almost too big for a game of hide-and-seek, but she’d been raised in such a place herself and had thought nothing of the grandness, or the sheer amount of space. It’s what she knew. It was home.
In her room, she took a brush to her hair, combing through the long blond strands until they were smooth, and then touched up her makeup. As she reapplied her lipstick, Charlotte tried to imagine this house as her baby’s home and felt an odd prickle of pain and her hand shook. She had to draw a breath and steady her hand before putting the cap on the lipstick. It wasn’t that this grand medieval house wasn’t comfortable, because the interior was stylish and yet welcoming, a place both grown-ups and children would be at ease, but rather it was the idea of the baby being here without her...that her baby would have a whole life without her...
Sudden tears stung her eyes and she blinked hard, clearing her vision. She wasn’t usually emotional, and yet all she felt right now were emotions, strong, intense, overwhelming.
She loved her unborn child rather desperately, and every fiber of her being wanted to protect the baby. But how could she do that if she wasn’t with him or her?
How could she bring a child into the world and then not be part of his or her life...even part-time?
She put away her lipstick and slid the makeup bag and hairbrush into the top dresser of the pretty vanity, and then squared her shoulders. She could do this with Brando. She could be civil, and calm, and make him understand that she wasn’t going to let a baby grow up without her. She didn’t know the answer to “sharing” the baby, she just knew she was going to be with her child full-time, end of story.
CHAPTER FOUR
BRANDO WAITED FOR Charlotte on the terrace, the sun warm overhead as he stood at the balcony overlooking the valley. It was perfect weather for lunch al fresco, the temperature warm, the air fragrant, smelling of roses, citrus blossoms and jasmine. The table was set for two, and a lush bouquet of pale pink and creamy white antique roses created a charming centerpiece, especially when paired with the fine china and delicate Venetian stemware.
It was a table setting that hinted at romance, but there was nothing romantic about his intentions. Brando had never been a man of romance—he was far too carnal, far too practical. He loved women and loved sex, but so far, he’d been careful to avoid commitments, much less serious entanglements.
And yet despite his best efforts to avoid entanglements, he was facing one now, an entanglement with lifelong implications.
He’d known that one day he’d have children—Italians were family oriented, and he had a wicked soft spot for his nieces and nephews, who made it clear they adored him—but marriage and children was down the road, far, far down the road, because marriage was forever. Marriage required complete commitment, as well as a suitable partner who one could grow old with, and hopefully, still like decades later.
His parents had had such a marriage. His parents married in their twenties, and had just celebrated their sixtieth wedding anniversary when his father passed away. Heartbroken, his mother had almost immediately moved to her widowed sister’s house in Cinque Terre, where she and her sister found happiness being under the same roof. They missed their husbands but found endless opportunities to see their children and grandchildren.
Livia and Enzo had grumbled about their mother moving to the coast, to a place that wasn’t easy to reach, but Marcello agreed with Brando that it was good for their mother to have an identity of her own, that she needed to have adventures and fun, adventures that had nothing to do with the rest of them.
Brando smiled thinking of his mother. She was a spitfire, full of endless energy, and she was always happy to see her family, but he respected her for not wanting to sit around her house, just mourning the death of her husband, and waiting for death to come. Life was meant to be lived. Life was meant to have passion, and gusto, and if anyone in the family had gusto, it was his mother.
But he also knew what his mother would say if he knew he’d gotten a woman pregnant. Her first question would be, “How will you make this right?” Not because a pregnancy was shameful, but a pregnancy represented life, and love, and family. He didn’t think of himself as a traditionalist, but the idea of someone, anyone, having his child and raising that child far from him made his skin crawl. Maybe Charlotte was comfortable picturing a world where her baby—their baby, he corrected himself—shuttled back and forth between two homes, but he wasn’t.
He knew her family had numerous marriages, divorces and out-of-wedlock babies in it. They took the idea of commitment far more loosely than his family did. There hadn’t been a divorce in his family for generations. Nor had there been a baby born out of wedlock.
One of his older brothers had married when his girlfriend was pregnant, and it had been a rather hastily arranged wedding, but they were still together, and had added three other children besides that first unplanned pregnancy.
Brando hadn’t been thinking of marriage, nor had he thought he was ready to settle down, but if Charlotte was pregnant, this was serious. This was a game changer. This impacted everything. Either she would agree to give him custody of the baby—which he didn’t see her ever doing—or she would agree to marry him. Those were the only two options he saw. He wasn’t about to have his firstborn raised in a bohemian househol
d in California, or at one of the sprawling estates owned by her family in England. Her family seemed to spend as much time in England as they did in France and that was not acceptable, not for a Ricci. His family was Italian, and proud of their heritage. He wanted his child—son or daughter—to be raised immersed in his culture, his language, his family.
Bottom line, he wanted his child to be part of his family.
And put like that, it did make him sound conservative, and old-world. But the Riccis were family oriented, and family came first, and last, and they understood what it meant to stick together, through thick and thin. It wasn’t that her family or culture didn’t count, but her culture was a mishmash of English, American, French, and then there were those years from the Swiss boarding school, years where he suspected young women were taught how to snare the world’s most eligible bachelors, rather than how to live a successful, independent life.
Charlotte, though, was probably the exception. She’d started her own business and had created a name for herself. She was financially independent, and successful. She’d be a good wife. Once he convinced her it was the right thing to do.
He thought of her, stubborn, proud, confident—and then just like that, she was there, stepping through the glass doors out into the Tuscany sunshine, blond hair spilling down her back, a hint of rose in her cheek, fire in her eyes—and he knew it would take some convincing, to get her on the same page.
She wasn’t going to want to marry him, but having weighed his options, it was the only real option before them.
Lunch was leisurely, with small courses being replaced by other courses, and the portions were perfectly sized so that Charlotte enjoyed everything as much as she could, considering Brando kept watching her with an intensity that she found dizzying. Every movement reflected his physical strength and grace. He was not a man of leisure. One didn’t get a body like his without hard activity. She had a sudden flash of memory, of his hips arching against hers, his body filling her so completely that she wanted nothing more than to be his, again and again.
