“Dimi?”
“Have you read everything yet?” His cousin sounded ecstatic.
“Almost.”
“Our cup has run over today.”
“I agree.”
“I’m bringing Filippa to the castello with me later on today and we’ll celebrate.”
“That sounds perfect. Ciao.”
He hung up and they began to read Paolo’s article.
A new star is born in Lombardi!
Ring out the bells for the Castello Supremo Hotel and Ristorante di Lombardi. From its hundred-years-old ducal past has emerged a triumph of divine ambience and cuisine so exquisite to the palate, this critic can’t find enough superlatives. One could live forever on the slow-cooked boeuf bourguignon and the sfogliatelli Mirella dessert alone. This critic thought he’d died and gone to heaven.
It deserves six stars. Bravo!
Gemma put it down and threw her arms around Vincenzo’s neck. “You and Dimi and your partners did it, amante! You did it!” She broke down crying for joy.
“We all did it, including your wonderful mamma.”
“Was it your idea to name the dessert after her?”
He studied her features before kissing her passionately. “It was Cesare’s. An Italian loves his mother. After hearing your story, he knew your mamma deserved the credit on the souvenir menu commemorating the opening.”
“That’s so sweet of him. When Mamma sees this, she’ll die.”
“I have a better idea. Let’s frame it, along with a menu, and give them to her for a special present. Cesare was touched that you loved your mother so much you talked about her on your application. I already know how sweet you are.
“The day you came running outside with the lemon ricotta cheesecake she made for my birthday, you ran straight into my heart and never left. You’ll always be there. Ti amo, Signora Gagliardi.”
“Ti amo, Your Highness.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“It’s the highest honor I can give you, Vincenzo. You’re the greatest Gagliardi of them all.”
* * * * *
Bound to Her Greek Billionaire
Rebecca Winters
The billionaire she learns to love...
When Lys Theron inherits a hotel in Crete, her life is changed forever! Especially as she has to share ownership with gorgeous Greek billionaire Takis Manolis.
Instantly attracted to stunning Lys, Takis can see only one way to protect both his family and his reputation—make her his temporary fiancée! But the more time he spends with her, the more Takis knows he’s living a lie. He’s falling for her—hard! Can he persuade Lys that their temporary engagement should be more permanent?
To my first editor and friend, Paula Eykelhof,
who believed in my writing and helped me find
a happy home at Mills & Boon Romance.
I’ve been there ever since.
How blessed could an author be?
LYS THERON ARRIVED ahead of time for her appointment with the detective at the prefecture in Heraklion, Crete. The officer at the desk looked her over in a way she found insulting and hurtful.
From her early teens she’d had to get used to men young and old staring at her. But his scrutiny was different because the unexpected and unexplained death a month ago of Nassos Rodino, the Greek multimillionaire hotelier on Crete, continued to be under police investigation and she was one of several people still being questioned.
The well-known, forty-nine-year-old owner of the Rodino Luxury Hotel and Resort in Heraklion had died too young. Nassos had always been an object of fascination in the news. But since the divorce from his wife, Danae, four months ago, there’d been rumors that he’d been having an affair with twenty-six-year-old Lys, his former ward who’d lived in their household since the age of seventeen.
While Lys struggled with her grief over his death, and many people lamented his demise, the media had done their best to sensationalize it, developing a story that had played every night in the television news cycle. Had Lys conducted a secret affair with the famous hotelier for several years? Questions had been raised as to what had actually caused the divorce and his ultimate death.
Without answers, speculation grew that foul play might have been involved. Rumor that Lys might have caused his death to gain access to part of his money had caught hold. Though the detective conducting the investigation hadn’t put the blame on anyone, the reason for Nassos’s death still hadn’t been declared and a cloud hung over her. Lys’s heart shuddered over the cruel gossip. Nassos was the man she’d loved like a father since childhood.
At seventeen, her millionaire Greek father, Kristos Theron, owner of a successful hotel in New York City, had been killed in a small plane accident. He’d left a will with a legal stipulation. If he died before she was of age, his best friend and former business partner, Nassos Rodino, would become her legal guardian.
Nassos had come to New York often throughout her early childhood and she had seen him as part of her extended family. When her father died, it was no hardship to travel to Greece with him.
But the moment Nassos had brought her to his home, she’d discovered that he and his wife had been living in a troublesome marriage.
Lys had never known the reason for their struggles, but it grieved her because she’d sensed that deep down they loved each other. It was all very complicated and she’d tried not to add to their problems. But in that regard she felt she’d failed when she’d started dating men neither of them approved of.
Nassos called them rich men’s playboy sons. Danae saw them as opportunists with no substance, adding to Lys’s insecurity that somehow she didn’t have the ability to attract the right kind of man. None of her relationships developed into anything serious because she sensed her adoptive parents’ disapproval.
Since coming to live with them, the paparazzi had followed her around, never missing a chance to exploit her private life by filming her accompanied by any rich man she may have been seen with in public. Unfortunately in her work at Nassos’s exclusive hotel chain, wealthy people made up her world. She’d never known anything else.
If she’d met and fallen in love with a poor fisherman, would they have approved of her choice? She didn’t have an answer to that question, nor to the many
