and get on with her life.
The sweet seduction of his kiss and the ache of longing he evoked inside her made a mockery of her intentions. But when he had told her about his unhappy childhood she had glimpsed a hint of vulnerability in him that he kept hidden beneath his self-assured, sometimes arrogant persona, and she had not been able to resist him.
‘Tell me about your grandparents,’ she said huskily when he eventually ended the kiss and she drew a ragged breath. ‘It was lovely that your grandmother finished renovating the house she and your grandfather had planned together. She must have loved him very much.’
‘They adored each other,’ Dante agreed. ‘They met during the war and were married for many years.’
‘So, not all marriages in your family are doomed to failure. Doesn’t the fact that your grandparents were happily married for so long make you think you should reassess your attitude towards marriage?’
He laughed, but his eyes were hard as he said, ‘If that’s a roundabout way of asking whether there’s any possibility of our affair leading to a permanent relationship then let me make it crystal-clear there’s absolutely no chance.’
Rebekah ruthlessly quashed the sharp little pain his words induced. ‘I hope one day to meet the right man, and we’ll fall in love and decide to spend the rest of our lives together,’ she told him, wondering if she would ever really have the courage to risk her heart again. ‘But he won’t be anything like you.’
Why not? What the hell was wrong with him? Dante wondered, feeling an inexplicable surge of annoyance at her casual dismissal of him as prospective husband material. Not that he had any ideas on that score, of course. But he wouldn’t make a bad husband. In fact he had been a damn good one. He had done his best to make Lara happy, but the bitter reality was that his best hadn’t been good enough.
He stared moodily out of the plane window and was glad when the flight attendant came to serve them coffee and his conversation with Rebekah ended.
‘It was once a Benedictine monastery,’ Dante explained as the car rounded a bend and a huge house built of pale pink brick and darker terracotta roof tiles came into view. ‘Parts of the original building date back to the eleventh century. It was renovated at various times over the years, but my grandparents—well, my grandmother mainly—turned it into the beautiful house it is now.’
‘It looks amazing.’ Rebekah was stunned by the size of the building and impressed by its history. The monastery stood on a hill overlooking rolling green fields and others filled with golden sunflowers and scarlet poppies. In the distance was the distinctive semi-desert landscape of the area known as the Crete Senesi. A narrow road wound past olive groves and tall cypress trees up to the Casa di Colombe—The House of Doves.
A few minutes later Dante drove through the gates into the courtyard, where it was easier to appreciate the huge amount of restoration work that had been done on the ancient monastery. On three sides of the courtyard the cloister had been fitted with arched glass windows which gleamed in the bright sunlight. In one corner was an ancient well, and all around the courtyard stood terracotta tubs planted with lavender, lemon and bay trees and a profusion of different herbs.
The splash of a fountain was the only sound to disturb the silence. As Rebekah climbed out of the car she was struck by the serene atmosphere. It was not difficult to imagine the Benedictine monks who had once lived here going about their daily lives with quiet devotion to their religious beliefs.
‘Nonna Perlita was a keen gardener,’ Dante told her when she admired the plants. ‘The knot garden on the other side of the house was her pride and joy. There is also a swimming pool, and in the grounds of the estate there’s a lake, although I wouldn’t recommend you swim in it. I used to catch newts in it when I was a boy.’
‘Who looks after the place now that your grandmother is no longer here?’
‘I employ staff from the village—a couple of grounds-men tend to the gardens and carry out any maintenance work, and two women come regularly to clean the house.’
Dante opened the heavy oak front door and gave a deep sigh of pleasure as he ushered Rebekah into the cool stone-floored hall. ‘For me this is home. One day I intend to move back here permanently.’
Rebekah gave him a surprised look. ‘Did you used to live here? I thought you grew up in England.’
‘I was born here—much to my father’s displeasure. He wanted his heir to be born in England, at the Jarrell estate. But my mother went into labour early while she was visiting my grandparents, and so this house is my birthplace.’ He gave a wry laugh. ‘Apparently my father accused my mother of giving birth early on purpose because she wanted me to be born in Italy. It was just one of many things they could not agree on—as was the language I should be brought up to speak. My father only spoke English to me and my mother taught me Italian, so I grew up bilingual.
‘I went to school in England, but spent most of the holidays here with my grandmother,’ he continued. He shrugged. ‘I enjoy living in London, but I think of myself as Italian rather than English.’
His Italian heritage was obvious in his dark olive skin tone and his jet-black hair, Rebekah mused. At his house in London she mostly saw him dressed in one of the superbly tailored suits he wore for work. He always looked gorgeous, but today he was wearing black jeans, matching shirt and designer shades and was so impossibly good-looking that she felt a fierce ache of longing whenever she looked at him. In fact she was so intent on not looking at him that she walked across the entrance hall to inspect a large framed photograph hanging on the wall.
The woman in the photo was clearly very elderly. Her hair was white and her face lined, but despite the marks of old age she was startlingly beautiful and bore an aura of serenity that was reflected in her bright silvery-grey eyes.
‘Is this lady your grandmother?’ She spun round and her heart lurched when she discovered that Dante had moved silently to stand beside her.
His eyes were focused on the picture. ‘Yes, that was Perlita a few months before she died.’
Unexpectedly, raw emotion clogged Dante’s throat. Usually when he’d arrived at the house he’d gone straight to see his grandmother. He wished she was still here, and curiously, because he had never brought any of his mistresses to the Casa di Colombe, he wished that Rebekah could have met her. In many ways the two women were very alike, he realised. Like Nonna, Rebekah was independent and, he suspected, fiercely loyal to the people she cared about. He had heard the love in her voice when she spoke about her family.
He glanced down at her and for the first time it struck him how petite she was compared to his tall frame. He hadn’t noticed when he had danced with her at the party because she had been wearing high heels, but now she was wearing flat shoes and he was surprised by a feeling of protectiveness. He ran his finger lightly down her cheek. ‘How are you feeling? You still look pale.’
‘I’m fine now that the sickness has stopped,’ she assured him.
‘I want you to take things easy for the next couple of days.’ Dante’s eyes glinted wickedly. ‘In fact I think you need to spend most of the time lying down.’
Rebekah’s common sense told her to move away from him, but her heart refused to listen and her senses were swamped by his virile masculinity. The scent of his aftershave was tantalisingly sensual, as was the warmth that emanated from his body as he stepped closer and slid an arm around her waist.
‘Naturally,
