thought slipped into her mind like a sly traitor waiting in the wings. What if he’s here? He won’t be, Valentina assured herself with something bordering uncomfortably on panic. Why would he be here when it was common knowledge he’d left home at sixteen and become completely independent of his family? The fact that he’d since carved out a stupendously successful career breeding and training thoroughbred horses had served to further that estrangement from his own family business and legacy.
He won’t be here, Valentina assured herself again. Because if he was … Her mind froze as a yawning chasm of grief and pain and anger washed through her, along with something much more disturbing and hard to define.
He wouldn’t be. He couldn’t be. She was far too vulnerable today to deal with seeing Giacomo Corretti.
If there was any mercy in this world, Valentina told herself fervently, he would be kept away by the sheer psychic force of her anger and hatred. And yet, her heart beat a little faster as she went about her business.
Gio put his fingers between his bow-tied shirt and neck, trying in vain to ease the constriction he felt. He gave up with a muffled curse, leaving his white bow tie slightly askew. The problem was that the constriction was in his chest, and had nothing to do with his tie. He cursed again and wished he was on the other side of the island in his habitual uniform of T-shirt, jeans and boots, with his horses.
He could see people milling about outside the hotel and in the lush landscaped square that was between the huge imposing church and the Corretti Hotel. Clearly the wedding had ended but the luncheon hadn’t started yet.
Damn. He’d almost hoped he’d be too late entirely. The only reason he’d come at all had been because his mother had pleaded with him. ‘Gio, you never see your brothers, or anyone else. You can’t go on isolating yourself like this. Please come.’
He’d had to bite back the frustration—the urge to lash out and say something like, Why the hell should I? But he hadn’t, he’d been immediately disgusted by his own pathetic self-pity and his relationship with his mother was tenuous at the best of times.
As a young boy he’d been witness to his parents’ volatile relationship and had watched as his mother had become more and more insecure and self-loathing as she’d tried in vain to keep the attention of her straying husband, Gio’s deceased father. Unfortunately her growing instability and self-absorption had coincided with a particularly vulnerable time in Gio’s life, and so while affection for her was there … Gio couldn’t force an intimacy that had been long ago irreparably eroded.
But he was an adult now and took responsibility for his own actions; it was futile to dwell on the past. He forced his mind back to his mother: if she had some fantasy notion of bringing all of her sons under one roof for their cousin’s wedding then would it really be so hard to at least put in an appearance?
So now he was here, hovering on the edge of the square. He smiled grimly at the imagery. He’d been hovering on the edges of his family for as long as he could remember. The youngest male in the Corretti dynasty. The youngest in his own family. Dominated by two older brothers who’d vied for supremacy, and a father who had been mercilessly exacting of all of his sons, not least his quietest one. The one who had disappointed him on every possible level with frailties that were unacceptable in a Corretti male.
Gio ruthlessly pushed aside the memories that threatened to rise and choke him. That way lay madness and even worse memories. Drawing on the icy veneer he’d surrounded himself with for years now, Gio pushed an impatient hand through his unruly hair. He was aware that he wasn’t perhaps as clean shaven as he could be, but he just cursed softly again and strode forward and towards the towering Corretti edifice.
Valentina looked blankly at the ladder in her tights. She’d come by way of a ladder in her tights when she’d been all but knocked down by Alessandro Corretti, the groom. Instead of greeting a triumphant married couple after their wedding ceremony, it had been just the groom who had burst into the main reception room like an exploding tornado. She, and a tray of delicate hors d’oeuvres had gone flying, and with Alessandro blissfully unaware