Italy's Most Scandalous Virgin - Carol Marinelli Page 0,7

a hug, for though Mia was not touchy-feely at all, she adored Sylvia. After a brief embrace Mia pulled back. ‘I’d better head down. I’ll greet them and have a drink to be polite, but then I’ll be taking my meal up here.’

‘Of course,’ Sylvia said, for, like all good staff, she knew better than most the true situation.

When Sylvia had gone, Mia briefly checked her appearance in the full-length antique mirror. She wore a very simple black dress, stockings and low-heeled shoes and her blonde hair was tied back in a low bun. She took out a strand of cream pearls that had belonged to her mother and put them on, but then wondered if that was too much jewellery for a grieving widow to wear.

She truly did not know how she was supposed to act, let alone how she actually felt.

Numb was perhaps the best word, for even if it had been a marriage of convenience, Rafael had become a very dear friend and she would miss him dreadfully. She had decided she would deal with her feelings later, once she was well away from the Romanos.

Mia made her way down the grand staircase. Thankfully they hadn’t quite arrived so she headed straight into the lounge where apericena—pre-dinner drinks and nibbles—was to be served before they moved through to the dining room.

She stood by the fire, hugging her arms around herself and taking a couple of calming breaths as the main doors opened and the Romano family started to arrive.

How to play this?

She had no idea, Mia thought as she gazed into the fire. They all loathed and detested her and believed her to be the cause for the break-up of their Raphael and Angela’s marriage. Would they even want her to go out now and greet them?

Mia very much doubted it.

Over the last couple of years, whenever one of them had visited the Romano residence, Rafael had, of course, been here.

It felt very different to have them all here without Rafael.

Mia could hear the low murmur of voices as more cousins arrived and then, more loudly, Sylvia tried to steer them through to the lounge. ‘Apericena?’ she offered, inviting them for a pre-dinner aperitif, but no one came through.

It would seem Mia’s absence had been noted for it was then that she heard Dante’s deep voice put to its poisonous best.

‘So where is our stepmother?’

Mia’s skin crawled when he called her that, and he insisted on doing so at every available opportunity.

The difference was that tonight it angered her.

The sound of his confident footsteps on the marble told of his approach to the lounge.

‘Ah, there you are,’ he said from the doorway.

There was no attempt at politeness for appearances’ sake.

They had never so much as touched.

No air kisses, no shaking of hands. There was nothing other than the cold touch of his contempt that reached her.

It had always been difficult here at home but the tensions between them had escalated in recent weeks. When he had come to the hospital to visit and had arrived at Rafael’s room she would stand and Dante would step back as she walked out as if he could not bear for even as much as the hem of his coat to brush her. From the moment Rafael had told Dante that Mia was his mistress it was as if there had been prison-cell doors that had slammed closed between them.

And those prison doors had never, in these two years, parted as much as an inch.

They spoke as if from behind bars, and only when they had to, but Mia was grateful for those doors now and the boundaries they had long ago established. Dante was tall and forbidding at the best of times. At the worst of times—and this was exactly that—he was like the devil himself.

She did not want to know that devil unleashed.

He wore a black suit and his white shirt was a little rumpled, which was not up to his usual standards of perfection. His hair had been superbly cut, though he had not shaved, and his black eyes were a little red, but apart from that you would not know he was mourning. And, yes, he was absolutely beautiful, but she utterly refused to admit that now, even to herself.

‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ Mia said, and knew how stilted and wooden she sounded.

‘But not sorry for your gain,’ Dante retorted.

Rather than bite back, instead she was all steely politeness. ‘Your suites have been prepared.’

‘There was no