Italy's Most Scandalous Virgin - Carol Marinelli Page 0,5

and Ariana started to cry again and said no.

‘I’ll be back tonight,’ Dante said. ‘And then we shall all return to Luctano together on the eve of the funeral.’

‘It’s my fault,’ Angela sobbed, ‘I should have been a better wife. I should have held on...’

Dante frowned, because she had said the same thing when they had found out his father was dying. ‘Held on?’

But she was crying too hard to answer him and so Dante held his mother’s heaving shoulders. ‘None of this is your fault.’

He knew exactly where the blame lay.

Dante called the hospital and said he was on his way, and to please not move his father yet, and then he called Sarah to arrange the pilot and also—

‘It’s fine,’ Sarah said. ‘I’ll feed Alfonzo.’

Damned dog.

He was the bane of Dante’s life, and the reason he preferred to take women to hotels rather than home, to avoid having seven pounds of blind, ancient Bichon baring his teeth.

‘Thank you.’

The helicopter took him to the Florence hospital and Dante made his lonely way through long corridors and to the private room where his father lay.

Mia had gone by the time he arrived, though he hadn’t exactly expected her to be sitting at the bedside, quietly weeping. He was just grateful that there was no awkward meeting or standing back to let her pass.

Rafael Dante Romano looked peaceful, as though he was asleep, and there was the sweet vanilla scent of orchids from an array of blooms in a vase by his bed.

‘You knew, didn’t you?’ Dante said as he sat beside him. ‘That was what you meant last night when you told me you wanted to return to Luctano...’

And then he took his father’s cold hand and his strong voice finally cracked as Dante asked a question he hadn’t dared to when his father had been alive. ‘What did you have to go and marry her for, Pa?’

Dante wasn’t referring to the pain his father’s second marriage had caused.

It was the agony of wanting his father’s wife.

CHAPTER TWO

MIA WATCHED FROM the comfort of the sumptuous Suite al Limone as Dante’s helicopter approached in the rainy, grey, cloud-laden sky on the eve of Rafael Romano’s funeral.

Very deliberately she did not look over to the lake.

This morning, when she had been riding Massimo, Mia had come across the freshly dug grave and it had spooked her so much that she had swiftly turned the old horse around and kicked him into a gallop.

The Romano family residence was nestled in a valley on the outskirts of the Province of Luctano, in the fertile Tuscan hills. The endless vines that neatly laced the hillsides were, apart from a select few, now owned by the company. Who owned those vines, along with the residence, would be revealed tomorrow after the funeral. One thing was certain, it wouldn’t be Mia. Both she and Rafael had long ago agreed that she would stake no claim to it.

And, though she didn’t want it, Mia would miss it very much.

She would miss the horses in the stables and the beautiful rides that she took most days. Miss, too, standing here at her window, watching the dogs head out in search of truffles, and times spent sitting by the vast, still lake, or walking around it in an attempt to make sense of her jumbled thoughts. And she would miss the quiet comfort of this suite that had been both her refuge and her retreat.

The Suite al Limone was just that—a gorgeous suite with silk lemon walls and exquisite furnishings. The lounge room was both elegant and cosy and she loved nothing more than to curl up and read by the fire on winter nights. The bedroom with its high four-poster bed was both pretty and feminine and, Mia found, soothing to the soul.

Suite al Limone had been her private space for the last two years and had allowed for gentle healing, and although she truly didn’t want the property, Mia wasn’t quite sure that she was ready to leave it behind.

But there was no choice, and it had little to do with the contents of Rafael Romano’s last will and testament. He was to be buried on the grounds tomorrow and so Mia would be leaving that very night.

Although she was dreading the Romanos’ arrival, Mia was relieved to see Dante’s chopper, for the blend of low clouds, rain and high winds were not the best conditions in which to fly. Her stomach lurched at the mere sight of