Italian Bachelors: Irresistible Sicilians

* * *

Grace spotted a faint glimmer of opportunity. ‘Let me and Lily go,’ she blurted out before he could open the door. ‘If you never intended to bring me home, why put either of us through this?’

Luca had learned he was a father only that morning, she reasoned. Shock could lead to irrational actions, as she knew well. It had been the shock of seeing that poor man’s battered face and body, and the fear on his face when he recognised her. That, along with the aftershocks of her and Luca’s ferocious argument still reverberating through her, had provided the spur she needed to leave. She had spent the drive back from her shopping trip mute with shock. Her brain frozen, she had walked into the bedroom she shared with the man she loved. She had gazed at the cherubs and lovers on the walls and had felt nothing. All the happiness and feeling had been sucked out of her.

The man she had married with such hope and such all-encompassing love was nothing but a criminal. And a dangerous one at that. Whether he’d been a criminal or not when they’d first married had been moot. It made no difference to the man he had become.

‘It won’t be any good for Lily,’ she continued, resolve spurring her on. ‘Can you imagine how awful it will be for her growing up knowing her parents hate each other? Because she will feel it. She will. Children are like emotional sponges.’

‘Lily will not suffer because I will not allow it,’ he bit back. ‘And if you want to remain in her life then you will not allow it either. If I think at any time that you are trying to poison her against me, you will be gone. Now, if you will excuse me, it has been a long day and I would like to shower. You have been put in the blue room.’

Yanking the door open, he held it for her. She couldn’t help notice the wince of pain he gave and the tight, queasy feeling in her belly rippled.

She stalked past, flinching when he slammed it shut behind her. Only when she was safely in her new room did she start to shake.

She sank onto the bed and held Lily’s bag to her chest, blinking rapidly, trying to catch her thoughts.

The blue room was exactly as it had been when she left. Blue. Blue walls, blue curtains, blue furnishings...even the en suite was the blasted colour. It was the one room of their wing she had never got around to personalising. It had been next on her to-do list, before the discovery of the truth had sent her fleeing.

She hated this room, had deliberately left it until last because she had known this room above all others would give her the greatest fulfilment.

Unzipping a compartment of the bag, she pulled out her fated phone. If there was one silver lining to this imprisonment it was that she could now speak to her mum and Cara. It would be the first time she had spoken to either of them in ten months.

It had been safer all round that no one knew where she was hiding, something she had found especially hard in England. She had known moving to Cornwall was pushing her luck to its limit, but the closer she had come to giving birth, the lonelier and more frightened she had become. There she was, about to go through the most terrifying, life-changing experience of her life and she had no one to share it with. Knowing her mother was only three hundred miles away had at least brought some comfort, but in all honesty her mum would have been a useless birth partner.

Billie Holden was an artist too—a sculptor—but reality rarely intruded in her life. Grace laughed sourly as she acknowledged it was a trait she had inherited—after all, hadn’t she refused to allow reality to intrude on her love for Luca?

She remembered her call to Billie from Schiphol Airport with a smile. Typical of her mum, she’d been unfazed when Grace had explained the situation, merely relieved her only child was alive. Even when Grace had said she might not be able to contact her for a very long time, Billie had reacted with a cheery, ‘Never mind, my darling, you’re the best-equipped person I know to fend for yourself.’ She’d probably envisaged Grace’s situation as a great adventure rather than confront the reality of the situation.

Grace’s childhood had been different from those of her friends. Her mother had treated her like a best friend rather than a daughter. Not for her rigid bedtimes or mealtimes—it was a rare day when Billie even remembered to cook a meal—or the relentless nagging all her friends received. Instead, Grace had been encouraged to embrace life and given all the freedom she desired. Her father was of the same mindset and every bit as much of a dreamer as her mum, but where Billie poured all her energy into her art, Graham devoted his to worthy causes in the developing world, disappearing for months, sometimes years, on end.

For all her parents’ benign neglect, Grace had never doubted their love for her. It was just a different love from that which most other parents gave. And if there had been moments—many moments—when she had yearned to test them and ask how deep their love for her ran, she wouldn’t swap them for anyone or change a single day of her childhood.

At least she could now make proper contact without worrying that Luca had tapped Billie’s phone or could trace her IP address.

For better or for worse, she would no longer have to look over her shoulder. At least, not until she found a way to escape again.

* * *

Luca lay in his bed, listening as Lily’s cries lessened. The door to the makeshift nursery opened and he heard soft footsteps go past his room.

He willed his eyes to shut but they refused, just as they had refused since he had come to bed five hours ago.

There was too much going on in his head to sleep. This was the first time he had been alone with his thoughts since he had learned of Grace’s location. Not even the sedatives in his painkillers could switch his brain off.

He had found her. After ten long months he had really found her. It had all happened so quickly the day held a dream-like quality to it. Or was it a nightmare?

He was a father. That was his daughter crying in the dark. That was his wife comforting her. She was here, back under his roof. Unwillingly back under his roof.

There were no words to describe the loathing he felt towards Grace, as if an angry nest of vipers were festering in his guts, stabbing their fangs into him.

Nothing would give him greater pleasure than to pack her stuff and tell her to leave, to get out and never come back. But he could not. Even after everything she had put him through, he retained enough rationality to know it would be Lily who would suffer the most.

No, Grace’s punishment would be of an entirely different nature.

From now on, when they entertained guests or left the estate, she would damn well be deferential towards him. No longer would he tolerate having his business activities probed, his opinions contradicted or his word questioned. No longer would he tolerate a wife who neglected her appearance because her mind was too full of whatever she was currently creating on a canvas to run a brush through her hair or wear clothes that matched. No longer would he find these particular quirks endearing.

He’d never met anyone like her before: someone who saw all the colour the world had to offer. Before Grace, the women he’d dated had always been perfectly turned out with opinions that were in line with his own. They could have been identikit. Until Grace appeared, as if by magic, casting him under her spell, he’d never realised how boring he found them all, or how predictable his life had been.

He’d taken such pride in her talents and the freshness she’d brought to his life that the last thing he’d wanted to do was change her in any way.

He’d loved her exactly as she was.

Well, more fool him.

Grace would learn to be a proper Sicilian wife.

Sleep was not going to come any time soon. Throwing the sheets off, he climbed out of bed and pulled on his dressing gown, carefully navigating the sling.

All the lights were off.

Grace and Lily were nowhere to be found.

He opened every door in the wing, his chest tightening with every empty room.

He returned to Grace’s room. Her suitcases lay on the floor, seemingly unpacked. Her toothbrush and toothpaste had been laid on the sink of the en suite, a bulging bag of toiletries placed on the cabinet.

Entering the adjoining room, he flipped on the light. His heart twisted at the empty cot. A pile of nappies and baby accessories he did not recognise had been neatly placed on the dresser.

Where the hell had they gone?

Just as he was debating waking the household and conducting a thorough search for them, Grace walked into the room, her dressing gown covering her tall, slender frame, carrying Lily and a bottle of formula.

Immediately she switched the light off but not before he caught the glare she directed at him.

She walked soundlessly past him and settled in the old rocking chair, curling her legs in a ball and placing the teat of the bottle in Lily’s tiny mouth. ‘I want her to go back to sleep after she’s had this,’ she whispered, nodding at the light switch.

‘Where have you been?’ he asked, adopting an identical whisper.

‘In the kitchen warming the bottle up.’

The kitchen was on the other side of the monastery. In the early hours of winter it was always freezing down there. ‘Why didn’t you get a member of staff to do it for you?’

Even in the dusky light he could clearly identify the look of disdain that crossed her face. ‘Apart from your security guards, everyone’s asleep.’

‘Does she always wake so early?’ It was five a.m.

She nodded. ‘If I’m lucky she might go back down for another couple of hours. I had worried that after all the travelling she might have trouble settling, but she nodded off without any problems.’

‘In future I will ensure someone is available to warm the milk for you.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘I’ll get a kettle and a jug brought up to my room.’

‘That’s what I pay the staff for.’

‘Luca, I’m not going to argue with you about it. I’m not going to have someone else’s sleep disrupted for the sake of a kettle and a jug.’

‘I think you’ll find you are already arguing with me about it.’

The whisper of a smile curved on her cheeks. ‘No change there, then.’

Grace had always enjoyed sparring with him but it had always been done in a gentle, amused fashion. She was the only person, aside from his mother and brother, who did not automatically assume his word was on a par with God’s. She challenged him, made him look at the world through a different prism. Where he saw things in black or white, she saw the varying shades of grey in between. It was one of the many things he’d loved about her: the context and sense she helped him make of the world.

Having taken over the running of the estate at the age of twenty-one, he’d been so focused on keeping the high standards set by his father and keeping his family safe from those who would snatch everything away from them, he’d never had the time to really think about his place in the world.

When, a year into Luca’s marriage, Francesco Calvetti, an old childhood acquaintance whose family had been the Mastrangelos’ bitter enemies, had suggested going into business together, it had seemed like perfect timing. Luca had already been toying with the idea. Both men were keen to establish themselves away from the long shadows cast over them by their respective fathers and equally keen to end a feud neither had wanted.

Being with Grace and the fresh perspective she had on life had, for the first time, made him see that the life he had been living was the life expected of him. He was living in his father’s footsteps. His own hopes and dreams had been suppressed for the good of the family. For duty.

It was time to strike out in his own name.

Yet, for all the context his wife had given his world, he failed to see the context or sense in why she had run away.

She thought he was a monster. She had wilfully kept their child a secret from him. Where was the context in that? So they’d had an argument? All couples rowed. One proper argument was not good enough reason to rip a marriage apart.

A lump formed in his chest. He swallowed hard to dislodge it. ‘Did you find everything you need in the nursery?’

‘Pretty much. Thank you. And thank you for putting me next to her.’ She adjusted her hold on Lily and looked back at him. The rising sunlight was slowly dispersing the dusky grey, her features becoming clearer by the passing minute. ‘I admit, when you said I was to have the blue room, I thought it was deliberate because you knew how much I hated it. It took a while for me to remember it adjoined another room.’

‘She is sleeping in my old cot,’ he said. ‘My mother got the staff to take it out of hibernation.’

‘I did wonder.’

He should leave; return to his room. Instead he found his eyes transfixed on the feeding baby. His feeding baby. Their feeding baby. A child he and Grace had created together.

A part of him longed to reach over and touch her, to stroke his baby’s face, to hold her to his chest and feel her warmth on his skin, to smell that sweet, innocent scent.

They looked so perfect together. Even Grace could not create a more beautiful picture.

A spike cut through his heart, piercing him, a pain a thousand times stronger than the ache in his shoulder. It took all his strength not to sway with its force.

And there was another ache too, a much baser ache that should not exist for her, not any more.

His sex drive had always been high but Grace was the only woman who had been able to turn him to lava with nothing more than a seductive smile or the flash of a shoulder. To his body, there was no more desirable a woman. Even the curve of her ankle was erotic.

There were times when he would swear she was a sorceress. How else could he explain the hold she had over him, the unquenchable yet ultimately poisonous desire that lived in his blood? Why else had he not grabbed his freedom when he’d had the chance, as any other red-blooded Sicilian man would have done?

But he’d had no time for such pursuits. What with running the estate and his other, newer, business interests, there had been no time for any kind of affair. On top of all that, the main focus of his energies had been spent on tracing Grace. Sex had never crossed his mind.

To discover his libido had reawoken because of her and that he could still respond when she wore nothing but a tatty old dressing gown sickened him. That his fingers ached to lean over and trace the delicate line of her neck, that his lips tingled to press against her...

He dragged his gaze upwards and found her staring at him, the same pained yearning mirroring back at him, her angular cheeks heightened with colour. Then her eyelids snapped a blink and she turned her face away.

Clenching his hands into fists, Luca looked to the door and willed his thundering heart to slow.

The sooner he found himself a lover, the sooner he could be released from the sexual hold she still held on him.

The sooner he stopped thinking about making love to his wife, the better.

‘Write a list of everything you need for you and Lily, and I’ll get someone to get it for you tomorrow.’

Closing the door softly behind him, he went back to his room and fired up his laptop.

There was no way he would be able to get any sleep now.

Work would be his salve, as it had been since Grace disappeared. Work would help focus his attention on the matters that truly deserved it, not the deceptive, heartless bitch he had been foolish enough to marry.

* * *

As Grace tiptoed back into her bedroom from the adjoining nursery there was a rap on the door.

She hurried over and yanked it open, her fingers already flying to her lips.

‘Shh,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve only just got her down for a nap.’

‘Here’s your passport,’ Luca said without any preamble, extending it to her, making no move to step over the threshold.

Snatching it from his hand, she flipped through it. ‘I did wonder if you would give it back to me.’

‘Why would I want to keep it?’ he said, his top lip curving. ‘You are free to leave whenever you like.’

‘And Lily’s passport?’

‘I will be keeping that.’

She expected nothing less. ‘I suppose it’s pointless asking where, exactly, you will be keeping it?’

‘You presume correctly. Now give me your phone.’

‘I’m surprised you didn’t take it from me yesterday.’ Turning her back to him, she grabbed it off her bedside table where it was charging.

‘Today will suffice.’

She passed it to him. ‘I take it you’re going to put a tracker in it.’

‘You’re getting good at this—you assume correctly. If you need to make a call before I get it back to you, use the landline.’

How she hated the coldness of his tone. And how she hated that she hated it.

‘I’ll do that,’ she said with a brittle smile. As he had still not stepped over the threshold she took great delight in shutting the door, quietly, in his face.

The smile dropped. She leaned back against the closed door and crossed her hands over her racing heart.

* * *

Her phone was returned that afternoon by one of the maids. She took it from her gingerly and threw it onto the bed. It felt tainted. The first chance she got, she would buy herself a new pay-as-you-go one.

Purchasing another phone turned out to be trickier than anticipated.

When she felt ready to take Lily on a Sicilian shopping trip two days later, a Mercedes was brought out for her. Three heavies were sitting in it.

The number of her personal ‘guards’ had been increased.

Pushing Lily around Palermo, her gorillas surrounding her, she knew she was onto a lost cause.

Their presence only served to remind her of what she had hated most about her marriage. Before she had opened her eyes to her husband’s true nature, the biggest blot on the marital landscape had been the lack of privacy. Sure, on the estate she could come and go as she pleased, but she had always been aware of hidden cameras, supposedly there for all the Mastrangelos’ protection, watching her every move on the grounds. Outside the estate, she was under constant armed guard. She couldn’t even pop off to buy a paintbrush without one of Luca’s gorillas accompanying her.

She had hated it.

She still hated it, loathed the thought of her daughter growing up in an environment where freedom meant nothing.

Freedom was precious. It was unrealistic and dangerous to expect Lily to have the same levels of freedom she had enjoyed, but, unless she found an escape route, her daughter would never experience what it meant to be a proper, regular child. She would never be able to explore and get into mischief without her parents knowing her every move. She would always be in her father’s eyeline no matter where he was.

All the material advantages Lily would have being a Mastrangelo would be cancelled out by the disadvantages. And that was without considering what it would be like growing up with a father who was a dangerous gangster.

While Grace didn’t believe for a second that Luca would lay a finger on either of them, his rages, which in the last six months or so of their marriage had become more frequent, could be terrifying. Especially for a child. She never wanted her daughter to witness that.

When she returned to the monastery, she carried Lily to the private front door of their wing. Before she could unlock it, Donatella materialised. ‘I thought you would want to know that Pepe will be returning tomorrow,’ she said, referring to Luca’s younger brother who had his own, rarely used, separate wing in the monastery. Pepe was the family firebrand, a playboy rebel without any discernible cause. Yet, despite his outward rebelliousness, he was fiercely loyal to his family.

Grace was not looking forward to his return. Pepe would know the truth of what had gone on between her and Luca. The last time she had seen him, Pepe and Luca had had a massive argument. She still had no idea what the row had been about but it had been heated enough for her to worry that one of them would get hurt. It still made her blood freeze whenever she recalled questioning Luca about it afterwards and their own subsequent row.

‘Thanks for the warning.’ She placed the key in the lock and as she turned it Donatella placed a bony hand on her arm.

‘Why did you return?’

Grace eyed her warily. There was little point in saying it was because of love. The atmosphere between her and Luca was so cold and yet somehow so charged, the entire household had to be aware things were not right between them. ‘What has Luca told you?’

‘Luca does not confide with me. All he has said is that he found you and you agreed to try again. He still has not told me why you left to begin with, or what happened to his shoulder.’

Grace blanched. She shook her head, trying to clear the fog that clouded it every time she thought of it. She could still smell the gun smoke.

She could also see the poor beaten man whose eyes had widened with terror when he recognised her as Luca’s wife.

‘I’m sorry, but it’s for Luca to tell you what happened.’

Donatella studied her for a moment before digging into her pocket and producing a key.

Grace stared at it.

‘It’s the key for your studio,’ Donatella said, passing it to her. A shadow crossed her face. ‘Luca refused to let anyone in there. He said it was yours until you returned, even if you only came back to collect your belongings.’

‘He said that?’

A sliver of ice shot out of her mother-in-law’s eyes. ‘I am not a stupid woman. I can tell you do not wish to be here. But you are here even if the circumstances are not what you or my son would wish.’

With those enigmatic words, Donatella walked off.

CHAPTER FIVE

IT TOOK ANOTHER two days before Grace gave in. Leaving Lily with Donatella, who was delighted to be granted her first official babysitting duty, she headed through the thick forest that surrounded the monastery to her cottage.

Her cottage. Given to her by Luca on their wedding day.

She could still recall her excitement when she’d first walked inside and seen the lengths he had gone to to make it into a proper studio for her. The walls of the ground floor had been knocked down to make one enormous room, and painted white to enhance the natural sunlight. Daylight-mimicking light bulbs had been installed for when the muse took her at night. There were easels to accommodate all different sizes of canvas, a hundred different brushes of varying sizes and hair and, best of all, he had bought every shade of paint from the specific brand she favoured. She had been in heaven.

She had not picked up a paintbrush or done anything as basic as a doodle since she had left. All her creative juices had died when she walked out of the estate.

Taking a deep breath, she turned the key and pushed the door open. Immediately she was hit with the trace of turpentine and oil paint, scents that had seeped into every crevice of the cottage.

At first glance it looked exactly as she had left it. The canvas she had been working on was still on its easel, a fine layer of dust now covering it; her brushes all rammed into varying pots, her tubes of paint still scattered randomly across her workbench. Stacks of blank and completed canvases still lay in neat stacks; half-finished canvases she had left to dry before working on them again still lined the walls.

Someone had been in there during her absence. It was nothing specific she could put her finger on, more of a gut feeling.

Her stomach tying itself in knots, she climbed the open staircase to the first floor. The sense that someone had been there grew stronger, especially when she entered the bedroom. This was the room she had slept in whenever Luca was abroad or tied up with business until the early hours, something that had dramatically increased throughout the second year of their marriage. Although she’d missed him being around so much, she would take the opportunity to work through the witching hours without guilt and then flop into bed shattered.