He nodded. “A private dinner for two on my balcony.”
“Lovely,” she said. “Um...any particular reason?”
“I just thought before our guests arrive in the morning, it would be nice to have a quiet dinner. To talk.”
“Oh.” That sounded ominous. The last time they’d had a private dinner and a talk she’d walked out engaged, with her whole life changed forever. She was afraid what might come out of it this time. The questions she might ask. The answers he might give. All words that could never be unheard or forgotten.
She licked her lips and tried to smile as she repeated, “Lovely.”
Cesare led her into his enormous en suite bedroom, with a fireplace and a huge bed that she tried not to look at as they walked past it. He led her out to the balcony, where she found a charming table for two, lit by candlelight, and two silver plates covered by lids. Beyond the table, the dark sweep of Lake Como trailed moonlight in a pattern of gold.
Emma looked at Cesare, noticing for the first time how he had carefully dressed in a crisp black shirt and pants. With his dark hair, black eyes and chiseled jawline, he looked devastatingly handsome. He was the man every woman wanted. While she... Well.
Emma touched her hair, which was tumbling over her shoulders, messy from Sam tugging on it, and from the wind of their walk. She looked down at her simple pink blouse and slim-fit jeans. “I’m not dressed for this.” For all she knew, she might have baby spit-up on her shoulder. She tried to look, but she couldn’t see. “Um. I should go change...”
“Go back to your bedroom and risk waking up our son? Don’t you dare. Besides.” He looked over her body with a heavily lidded gaze. “You are perfect just as you are.” He held out her chair with a sensual smile. “Signorina, per favore.”
Nervously Emma sat down. He sat down across from her, poured them each a glass of wine, then lifted off the silver lids of the plates. She took a deep breath of fettuccine primavera, with breaded chicken, salad and fresh bread. Placing the linen napkin in her lap, she picked up her heavy fork, also made of solid silver. “This looks delicious.”
“It is an old family recipe.”
“You cooked it yourself?”
“Not the bread, but the pasta, yes. I had to do something to be useful while you were fighting the war to put Sam to sleep.” He paused. “I had Maria pick up the vegetables from town, but I made the sauce as well.”
“I had no idea you knew how to cook.”
He gave a low laugh. “When I was a boy, I helped with everything. Milked our cow. Made cheese and grew vegetables in the garden.”
“Your life is very different now.” She sipped red wine. She wasn’t going to ask him if he planned to be faithful after their marriage. She wasn’t. Placing a trembling hand over her throat to keep the question from popping out, she asked in a strained tone, “So why have you let the garden grow so wild and unloved? I could cut back the weeds, and bring it back to its former glory....”
His hand tightened on his wineglass, even as he said politely, “It’s not necessary.”
“I wouldn’t mind. After all, it’s my home, too, now....”
The candlelight flickered in the soft, invisible breeze. “No.”
His short, cold word echoed across the table. As their eyes locked, Emma’s heart cried out. For all the things they both weren’t saying.
Was this to be their marriage? Courtesy, without connection? Proximity without words?
Would this beautiful villa become, like the Kensington mansion had been, her empty, lonely tomb?
Taking another gulp of wine, she blinked fast, looking out at the dark, quiet night. Lights of distant villas sparkled like stars across the lake. She heard the cry of unseen night birds, and the soft sigh of wind rattling the trees.
“How did you first meet her?” she asked softly. “Your wife?”
“Why do you want to know?” He sounded guarded.
“I’m going to be your wife tomorrow. Is it so strange that I’d want to hear the story of the first Mrs. Falconeri? Unless—” she bit her lip and faltered “—you still can’t bear to speak of her...”
For a moment, she thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he exhaled. “I was twenty-three.” He paused. “I’d inherited my uncle’s hotel. Not the hotel you worked at on Park Avenue, but an old, rickety fleabag on Mulberry Street. I struggled to keep it afloat, working each day until I dropped, doing everything from carrying luggage to bookkeeping to making breakfast.” He paused. “Angélique stumbled into the lobby one evening, taking cover from a rainstorm.”
He fell silent. He cut a piece of chicken, took a bite. Set his fork and knife down. Emma leaned forward over the table, on edge for what he would say next, barely aware of the cool night breeze against her overheated skin.
Cesare looked out at the dark, moonswept lake, haunted with October mist. “For me,” he said softly, “it was love at first sight.”
Emma’s heart lurched in her chest.
“She was so glamorous, ten years older, sexually experienced and—well, French...”
Everything she was not. Emma felt the pain twist more deeply beneath her ribs.
“We were married just six weeks after we met.”
“That’s fast,” Emma mumbled. He’d known her for almost eight years.
“I was dazzled by her. It seemed like a miracle that she wanted to marry me. After we wed, I was more determined than ever to make the hotel a success. No one would ever accuse me of living off my wife.”
“No,” she whispered over the lump in her throat. She took another gulp of wine, finishing off her glass.
“She was unique,” Cesare said in a low voice. “My first.”
He couldn’t mean what she thought he meant. “Your—first?”
“Yes,” he said quietly.
“But—you were twenty-three.”
“Amusing, yes?” His lips curved. “The famous playboy, a virgin at twenty-three. My uncle was strict, and after he died, I was too focused on the hotel. I had no money, nothing to offer any potential wife.”
It was a good thing she hadn’t been drinking wine or she would have spit it out in shock. “You were trying to save yourself—for marriage?”
“I was idealistic,” he said quietly. “I thought love was supposed to be part of it.” He glanced behind him at the villa, then at the dark water, scattered with gold and silver moonlight like diamonds on citrine. “Then it all died.”
Yes. She’d died. His one and only love.
“You still love her, don’t you?” Emma choked
