style="font-size:15px;"> “I’ll be fine.” Her eyes twinkled. “Your uncle has offered to show me the gardens by moonlight.”
“The old goat!” Curling a knuckle, he brushed it over her cheek. “If I were you, I’d stick to the lighted paths.”
“I will,” she promised, laughing.
Her rippling amusement stayed with Marco as he joined Etienne to escort the duchess and AnnaMaria down the grand staircase. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken such delight in the sound of a woman’s laugh. Or such intense pleasure from the simple act of touching her.
The aftershocks from that touch were still with him when his mother and AnnaMaria seated themselves on a stiff-backed sofa in the green salon. Marco and Etienne took up places behind them.
Donna Maria’s ever efficient secretary had furnished a copy of the guest list to the various papers and TV networks weeks ago. They in turn had submitted their requests for interviews with particular celebrities, which had been coordinated with the individuals involved. Those interviews would be conducted when the guests arrived for the ball. This session focused strictly on the family whose roots went so deep into Neapolitan society.
Donna Maria presented brief prepared remarks before graciously inviting questions. Most concerned the drive she’d just launched on behalf of the victims of the floods that had devastated the village of Camposta. AnnaMaria and Etienne were asked about their latest exhibits. Marco fielded several questions concerning the seventeen-hour surgery he’d performed last month to separate twins conjoined at the base of their skulls.
He was beginning to believe they’d escape the session relatively unscathed with a reporter at the back of the room raised her hand.
“Sophia Ricci here. I have a question for His Excellency, Don Marco.”
“Yes?”
The reporter edged to the front of the gathering. She was in her early thirties, with a thin, attractive face and black hair razored into uneven lengths.
“I see a name has been added to the guest list. Ms. Sabrina Russo, of Arlington, Virginia.”
When she paused and let a small silence spin out, Marco lifted a brow. “Is that your question?”
“No, Your Excellency. I would like to know if Ms. Russo is the woman you were spotted with yesterday, disembarking from the ferry in Sorrento?”
A stir of palpable interest flowed through the reporters, and Marco smothered a curse. The hounds had picked up the scent sooner than he’d expected.
“She is,” he replied.
Pens clicked. Notebook pages flipped. While her rivals scribbled furiously, Ricci’s eyes gleamed with the triumph of having scooped them all.
“The same woman my sources tell me is currently staying at your villa?” she asked slyly.
He’d learned long ago the futility of attempting to deny the facts. “That’s correct.”
“May I ask how you met?”
“Quite by accident. Ms. Russo fell and sprained her ankle. Luckily, I was close by and was able to treat the injury. She’s been recuperating at my villa.”
“So is she your patient?” Ricci asked with dogged persistence. “Or your lover?”
Donna Maria’s head snapped up. AnnaMaria let out a little hiss. Marco forestalled their instinctive responses and answered with the authority bred into him by his heritage and his demanding profession.
“Ms. Russo is my guest,” he said coldly. “Now you must excuse us. We’ve kept her and our other guests waiting long enough.”
Ricci was no more immune to his icy stare than first-year residents at the hospital. She stepped back, momentarily cowed, as Marco offered the duchess his arm. Etienne did the same for AnnaMaria.
“That woman will be at her desk all night,” Donna Maria predicted grimly as they mounted the grand staircase. “You’d best warn Sabrina to expect the worst.”
“I will.”
“You know how they flayed Gianetta.”
His jaw set. “I know.”
How could he not? He’d had to force his way through them, protecting his shuddering, sobbing wife with his body the last time she checked into a rehab clinic.
“Sabrina is stronger than Gia. And …”
He searched for the right word to describe her.
“… and truer to herself,” he finished slowly. “She’d have to be, to resist Dominic Russo’s attempts to break her.”
The duchess halted halfway up the stairs. Marco met her frowning gaze with a steady one of his own. After a long moment his mother blew out a long breath.
“So it’s that way, is it?”
“It is for me.”
“And for her?”
The tension knotting the cords in his neck eased. “I’m working on that,” he said with a wry smile.
The duchess tapped the toe of her jeweled shoe. “You’d better ask her to stand beside you in the receiving line. That might spike the worst of their guns.”
Two steps down, AnnaMaria’s eyes widened. “Mama! You wouldn’t let Etienne stand with us to greet the guests until he made a respectable woman of me.”
Her loving husband snorted. “And whose fault was that? You wouldn’t agree to marry me until you were well into your ninth month. Have you forgotten how your water broke at the altar?”
“Please!” A pained expression crossed the duchess’s face. “Do not remind us. Marco, go find Sabrina.”
He located her in a circle that included three of his cousins and a long-time friend of his sister.
The all-female group was hunched forward in their chairs and deep in a discussion of last year’s American presidential elections. Not surprisingly, Sabrina heartily agreed with her European counterparts that a woman was more than capable of leading either the U.S. or Italy.
“I’m sorry but I need to steal you away,” he said with a smile.
She excused herself from her new friends and rose. The long column of her gown shimmered like molten gold as she hooked her arm through his.
“How’s your ankle?” Marco asked.
“Good. Except for a very short stroll with Uncle Pietro, I’ve kept off it.”
“Can you take a little extra duty? The ball guests are about to arrive. I’d like you to join me in the receiving line.”
She slanted him a surprised glance. “You told me this is the first time you’ve brought a woman to the ball since your wife died.
