for her old Fiat, he drove around the corner into an alley. Her blue car sat beside a stairway leading to the second floor of the bakery.
He found another spot along the crowded one-way street. Once he’d parked his car at the rear of the pasteria next door, he took the steps two at a time to the little porch outside her door. To think all these years since leaving the castello this place had been her home. How could he or Dimi have known?
He knocked twice.
Soon he heard, “Chi e?”
He was glad she didn’t automatically open the door. Anyone could be out here. “It’s Vincenzo. I would have phoned you I was coming, but I wasn’t sure you would answer.”
There was a long silence. “Go away!”
“I can’t. Surely you can see that,” he fought back. “I never expected any of this to happen. Even if you refuse to come to work for us, how could you think I would just let you drive away?”
“I’m not going to open my door. Go back to your home, Vincenzo.”
What home? He hadn’t known that feeling in the ten years since he’d last been with her. He broke out in a cold sweat. So much damage had been done, he didn’t know if he could repair any of it, even if he told her the real truth of everything.
“Would you deny your time to any other person you knew well in the past who wanted to get reacquainted after a long period of separation? Since I’ve come all this way and am starving, let’s have dinner at the pasteria next door. We’ll order some wine and reminisce over a time when life was wonderful for both of us.”
“That would be a mistake.”
“You don’t recommend the food? If anyone would know whether it was good or not, you’re the one.”
“Be serious, Vincenzo,” she snapped.
“I’m trying to be. You have no idea how isolated I’ve felt all these years. Dimi and I are the only ones left who can talk about that other life and relate. Our fathers kept us under virtual lock and key, with bodyguards controlling everything we did. You better than anyone know that they only allowed us to have a few friends they picked.
“But all these years there’s been a huge hole, and you know why. Because that other life included you. I need a few hours with you, Gemma.” His voice shook. “Will you grant me that much?”
He waited for her response. “You’re not the person I thought you were, Vincenzo. Otherwise you wouldn’t have left without so much as a goodbye. I was never good enough for you, we both know that. We’ve led separate lives since your disappearance, and we were never the same people growing up.”
His eyes closed tightly, but her pain kept her talking.
“You’re from one world and I’m from another. A little while ago the reminder came from the padrona, who said the Duca di Lombardi was standing outside waiting to see me. There’s no need for us to talk or be with each other again, Vincenzo.”
She knew where to thrust through to the gut. Her mother had done a sensational job of indoctrinating her over the nonsense of ancient class distinctions he couldn’t abide.
“If I swear on my mother’s soul to leave you strictly alone, will you accept the position at the castello to see us through the first three months? Takis and Cesare will be the ones working with you. I’ll stay out of your way unless there’s a professional reason why I have to talk to you about something.”
Was she even listening?
“You can put me on probation, Gemma. If I make one mistake, you can leave immediately, no questions asked. If at the end of the three months you still want to leave, you’ll receive impeccable recommendations and be given a generous severance package of your choosing.”
“Why would you enter into an arrangement like that when you know how I feel?”
“Because your expertise as a pastry chef is unparalleled. My partners will be bitterly disappointed to learn that you’ve refused the position because you can’t forgive me for my past sins.”
“It’s not a matter of forgiveness. The trust is gone.”
Vincenzo couldn’t take this much longer. “They trust me. You have to understand that I asked them to go into business with me. But for me they wouldn’t be here. Not only my integrity, but their financial lives and reputations are on the line. Like me, they want our business venture to work.”
“As you told me earlier, you have three other applicants eager to work there.”
“My friends don’t want anyone else and are convinced that with everything we’ve put in place including your cooking, we’ll succeed beyond our wildest dreams. I know we will, because I grew up on your mother’s delicacies that you’ve perfected. You have no equal, Gemma.”
“Please leave.”
“I only have one more thing to say. You don’t have to make a decision this very minute. I’m on my way back to Milan.” I’ve got to stop and see Dimi. He wasn’t going to believe Gemma had been found.
“Gemma? If you don’t show up for your first orientation meeting with rest of the staff the day after tomorrow, then I’ll tell my partners you found you couldn’t accept the position after all because of a family emergency at the bakery. Naturally we’ll choose one of the other pastry chef finalists.”
She still said nothing.
His pain had reached its zenith. “Arrivederci, tesoro.”
* * *
Gemma gasped. The night in his bedroom when they’d been wrapped in each other’s arms, he’d called her his treasure. While her world spun in reaction to that endearment, she watched out the window. His car traveled down the street until she couldn’t see him anymore.
Surely to accept his offer would mean that she had no self-control, that all he had to do was summon her in his inimitable, seductive way and she’d come running.
What else could she expect when Vincenzo’s immoral father and uncle had been his role models? He might not think he could ever behave as they’d done, but the precedent had been set for decades. Once he married a princess and had children, the need for distraction would come.
With business enterprises on either side of the Atlantic, he’d have ample opportunities to be with women his wife wouldn’t know about. Or would pretend not to know about. Who better than the adoring daughter of the former cook to fill the position as one of his mistresses and provide him amusement during secret getaways when he was in Italy?
Gemma, unmarried and childless, wouldn’t have a life while she waited for those moments of rapture with him. Little by little his need for her would grow more infrequent while she went on getting older and more unfulfilled. Over the centuries, women of the lower class had done as much in order to be with the titled men they’d loved, but Gemma refused to be one of them!
She’d been afraid he’d break her down with words like this. Somehow he was succeeding despite her determination not to listen or be moved. Tears dripped from her eyes while she called Filippa, who’d just come out of a bad relationship.
