I wanted to punch him for the first time in our long friendship. He’s a hothead with a very low opinion of marriage in general. His father married six times,’ Vito explained ruefully. ‘I know that doesn’t take away the sting but, speaking for myself, I don’t care how many people know how I met my very lovely, very sexy wife and acquired an even cuter baby. You’re a Zaffari now. A Zaffari always holds his or her head high.’
‘Is that so?’ Holly’s heavy heart was steadily lightening because it meant a lot that he was perceptive enough to understand how she felt and that he had made his friend aware that he was angry about that speech.
‘Yes, gioia mia. We Zaffaris take ourselves very seriously and if one is lucky enough to find a waitress like you in the snow he’s grateful for it, not suspicious. Apollo and I have a friendship based very much on the fact that we are opposites in character. He distrusts every woman he meets. He’s always looking for a hidden agenda. It must be exhausting,’ he said wryly.
Holly rested her brow against his shoulder as they slow-danced and she let the mortification and the anger seep slowly out of her again. It was being with Vito that was important, being with Vito and Angelo and becoming a family that really mattered. And in her heart of hearts she could not credit that Vito was planning a sham marriage purely to try and deprive her of their son. That accusation was hopefully the suggestion of a troubled, misogynistic mind, she reasoned hopefully.
* * *
‘This is your jet...like really? Your own jet?’ Holly carolled incredulously a few hours later when she scanned the ultra-opulent leather interior of the private jet.
‘I travel a great deal. It’s convenient,’ Vito parried, amused by her wide, shaken eyes.
‘As long as sleeping with the cabin crew isn’t included,’ Holly whispered, her attention resting on the more than usually attractive team overseeing the boarding of Lorenza and Angelo and all the baby equipment that accompanied her son. In consternation Holly realised that she had accidentally spoken that thought out loud.
Predominantly, Vito was shocked by the concept of having sex with anyone who worked for him and then he looked at his bride’s burning face and he started to laugh with rare enjoyment. ‘No, that sort of entertainment is probably more Apollo than me. Although I did take advantage of you.’
‘No, you didn’t,’ she told him before she hurried forward to grasp her son, having missed him during her enforced break from him throughout the day.
‘Older, wiser, plied an innocent with wine...’ Vito traded, condemning himself for his crime for her ears alone. ‘But if I had the chance to go back I would still do it again.’
Encountering a lingering sidewise glance from black-fringed dark golden eyes, Holly felt heat lick through her pelvis as she took a seat and cuddled Angelo. For possibly the first time since she had conceived she looked back at that night in the cottage without guilt and regret. No, on that score Vito had hit a bullseye. Given the chance, in spite of the moments of heartache and stress along the way, she would also still have done the same thing again.
And if Vito could be that honest, why shouldn’t she match him? Tell him about the phone call she had overheard Apollo making? She would pick her moment, she decided ruefully, and she would ask if he had ever thought of their marriage as a sham and if she had anything to worry about.
Angelo was asleep by the time they landed in Italy. Holly had freshened up, noting with disappointment that her outfit hadn’t travelled very well. The fashion stylist had tried to persuade her to buy a whole host of clothes but with Vito already paying for the wedding and her gown she hadn’t felt right about allowing him to pay for anything else before they were married. She had teamed an elegant navy-and-white skirt with a matching top but her get-up had creased horribly and looked as though she had worn it for a week rather than only a few hours. Straightening it as best she could, she wondered if Vito would even notice.
Holly was enchanted by the wonderful scenery that enfolded as the four-wheel drive moved deeper into the countryside. Charming low hills rolled across a landscape peacefully dotted with cypresses, serrated lines of fresh green vines and silvery olive groves. Medieval villages slumbered on hilltops while ancient bell towers soared into the cloudless blue sky. Occasionally she caught a glimpse of beautiful, weathered old farmhouses nestling among the greenery and the wild flowers and she wondered if Vito’s home resembled them.
‘There it is...the Castello Zaffari,’ Vito announced with pride as the car began to climb a steep ribbon of road. Dead ahead Holly glimpsed a building so vast it covered the whole hilltop like a village while elaborate gardens decorated the slopes below it. She froze, convinced that that could not possibly be his home because it was a palace, not a mere dwelling. A giant domed portico denoted the front entrance where the car came to a halt.
‘Is this it? Is this where you live?’ Holly asked in a small voice, wondering crazily if she could hide in the car and refuse to emerge until he admitted that the palace wasn’t really his and he had only been joking. It had to be a joke, she thought fearfully, because no ordinary woman could possibly learn to live in the midst of such medieval splendour.
Vito picked up on the edge in her voice and frowned at her. ‘Yes. What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ she said hurriedly as she took Angelo to allow the nanny to climb out.
‘Don’t you like it?’
‘Of course I like it,’ Holly lied in a rush, utterly overpowered by the huge building as she accompanied Vito into a massive marble-floored hall studded with matching lines of columns. ‘But you could’ve at least hinted that you lived like royalty.’
‘I don’t,’ Vito incised in firm rebuttal. ‘I live in a historic building that has belonged to my family for centuries. I live a very average, normal life here...’
Please tell me he didn’t say that, Holly argued with herself as they rounded the gigantic centrepiece of a winding stone staircase and were faced with a long assembled row of what could only have been household staff all dressed up in uniform as though they had strayed off the set for Downton Abbey. Average? Normal? On what planet was Vito living?
Sick with the nervous unease of someone totally out of their comfort zone, Holly fixed a smile to her stiff face while Vito conducted introductions. There was a great deal of billing and cooing over Angelo and Vito’s own former nanny, Serafina, surged forward to take the baby. Apart from her, Silvestro was the head honcho in the household and little giggly Natalia, it turned out, was Holly’s English-speaking maid. With great difficulty Holly kept her face straight at the prospect of having a maid and watched while the two nannies carried Angelo off upstairs.
‘Natalia will show you to our room,’ Vito informed her at the foot of the stairs and then he paused, a frown etching between his level brows, his dark eyes semi-concealed by his ridiculous lashes as he murmured, ‘I should have asked you—do you object to sharing a room?’
The planet he was on was definitely far, far from the moon, Holly thought crazily as she raised her brows. ‘Where else would I sleep?’
‘Obviously you could have your own room,’ Vito told her valiantly.
And Holly almost burst out laughing because Vito was being his extraordinarily polite self and going against his own instincts. She could see it in the tension etched in his lean, darkly handsome face, hear it in the edge roughening his dark, deep drawl. He really, really didn’t want her to choose a separate bedroom and she wondered why on earth he had made the offer. ‘No...’ Holly reached
