New Year Fireworks: The Duke's New Year's Resolution / The Faithful Wife / Constantino's Pregnant Bride

“I’ll be fine.” Her eyes twinkled. “Your uncle has offered to show me the gardens by moonlight.”

“The old goat!” Curling a knuckle, he brushed it over her cheek. “If I were you, I’d stick to the lighted paths.”

“I will,” she promised, laughing.

Her rippling amusement stayed with Marco as he joined Etienne to escort the duchess and AnnaMaria down the grand staircase. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken such delight in the sound of a woman’s laugh. Or such intense pleasure from the simple act of touching her.

The aftershocks from that touch were still with him when his mother and AnnaMaria seated themselves on a stiff-backed sofa in the green salon. Marco and Etienne took up places behind them.

Donna Maria’s ever efficient secretary had furnished a copy of the guest list to the various papers and TV networks weeks ago. They in turn had submitted their requests for interviews with particular celebrities, which had been coordinated with the individuals involved. Those interviews would be conducted when the guests arrived for the ball. This session focused strictly on the family whose roots went so deep into Neapolitan society.

Donna Maria presented brief prepared remarks before graciously inviting questions. Most concerned the drive she’d just launched on behalf of the victims of the floods that had devastated the village of Camposta. AnnaMaria and Etienne were asked about their latest exhibits. Marco fielded several questions concerning the seventeen-hour surgery he’d performed last month to separate twins conjoined at the base of their skulls.

He was beginning to believe they’d escape the session relatively unscathed with a reporter at the back of the room raised her hand.

“Sophia Ricci here. I have a question for His Excellency, Don Marco.”

“Yes?”

The reporter edged to the front of the gathering. She was in her early thirties, with a thin, attractive face and black hair razored into uneven lengths.

“I see a name has been added to the guest list. Ms. Sabrina Russo, of Arlington, Virginia.”

When she paused and let a small silence spin out, Marco lifted a brow. “Is that your question?”

“No, Your Excellency. I would like to know if Ms. Russo is the woman you were spotted with yesterday, disembarking from the ferry in Sorrento?”

A stir of palpable interest flowed through the reporters, and Marco smothered a curse. The hounds had picked up the scent sooner than he’d expected.

“She is,” he replied.

Pens clicked. Notebook pages flipped. While her rivals scribbled furiously, Ricci’s eyes gleamed with the triumph of having scooped them all.

“The same woman my sources tell me is currently staying at your villa?” she asked slyly.

He’d learned long ago the futility of attempting to deny the facts. “That’s correct.”

“May I ask how you met?”

“Quite by accident. Ms. Russo fell and sprained her ankle. Luckily, I was close by and was able to treat the injury. She’s been recuperating at my villa.”

“So is she your patient?” Ricci asked with dogged persistence. “Or your lover?”

Donna Maria’s head snapped up. AnnaMaria let out a little hiss. Marco forestalled their instinctive responses and answered with the authority bred into him by his heritage and his demanding profession.

“Ms. Russo is my guest,” he said coldly. “Now you must excuse us. We’ve kept her and our other guests waiting long enough.”

Ricci was no more immune to his icy stare than first-year residents at the hospital. She stepped back, momentarily cowed, as Marco offered the duchess his arm. Etienne did the same for AnnaMaria.

“That woman will be at her desk all night,” Donna Maria predicted grimly as they mounted the grand staircase. “You’d best warn Sabrina to expect the worst.”

“I will.”

“You know how they flayed Gianetta.”

His jaw set. “I know.”

How could he not? He’d had to force his way through them, protecting his shuddering, sobbing wife with his body the last time she checked into a rehab clinic.

“Sabrina is stronger than Gia. And …”

He searched for the right word to describe her.

“… and truer to herself,” he finished slowly. “She’d have to be, to resist Dominic Russo’s attempts to break her.”

The duchess halted halfway up the stairs. Marco met her frowning gaze with a steady one of his own. After a long moment his mother blew out a long breath.

“So it’s that way, is it?”

“It is for me.”

“And for her?”

The tension knotting the cords in his neck eased. “I’m working on that,” he said with a wry smile.

The duchess tapped the toe of her jeweled shoe. “You’d better ask her to stand beside you in the receiving line. That might spike the worst of their guns.”

Two steps down, AnnaMaria’s eyes widened. “Mama! You wouldn’t let Etienne stand with us to greet the guests until he made a respectable woman of me.”

Her loving husband snorted. “And whose fault was that? You wouldn’t agree to marry me until you were well into your ninth month. Have you forgotten how your water broke at the altar?”

“Please!” A pained expression crossed the duchess’s face. “Do not remind us. Marco, go find Sabrina.”

He located her in a circle that included three of his cousins and a long-time friend of his sister.

The all-female group was hunched forward in their chairs and deep in a discussion of last year’s American presidential elections. Not surprisingly, Sabrina heartily agreed with her European counterparts that a woman was more than capable of leading either the U.S. or Italy.

“I’m sorry but I need to steal you away,” he said with a smile.

She excused herself from her new friends and rose. The long column of her gown shimmered like molten gold as she hooked her arm through his.

“How’s your ankle?” Marco asked.

“Good. Except for a very short stroll with Uncle Pietro, I’ve kept off it.”

“Can you take a little extra duty? The ball guests are about to arrive. I’d like you to join me in the receiving line.”

She slanted him a surprised glance. “You told me this is the first time you’ve brought a woman to the ball since your wife died. Won’t it add fuel to the speculative fire if I’m included in the receiving line?”

“Unfortunately, the fire has already been fueled. One of the reporters downstairs asked about the woman I was spotted with in Sorrento yesterday. She found out you’re staying at my villa and wanted to know if we’re lovers.”

“She asked you that? In front of your mother?”

“She did.”

“How did you respond?”

“I told her you were my guest. We left it at that.”

Lips pursed, she shook her head. “I seriously doubt it will stay left.”

“Probably not. As you Americans say, however, the best offense is a good defense. Or is it the other way around?”

“Beats me.”

“No matter. We’ll put ourselves in plain sight and let everyone think what they will.”

She wasn’t convinced. “Don’t you think you should clear this with the duchess first?”

“It was her suggestion.”

“You’re kidding!”

He had to smile at her thunderstruck expression. “No, Sabrina mia, I am not.”

“Well, in that case …” Squaring her shoulders, she pasted on a brilliant smile. “Lead on, McDuff.”

Sabrina knew darn well her presence in the receiving line would generate all kinds of speculation. Sure enough, the guests who streamed into the grand ballroom regarded her with expressions that ranged from mild interest to avid curiosity.

Marco introduced her simply as his guest from America, in Italy on business. But the possessive hand he kept at the small of her back didn’t go unnoticed. Nor did the private smiles he gave her between introductions.

Once most of the guests had been received, Marco officially opened the festivities by leading his mother out for the first waltz. Head high, her emerald-and-diamond tiara sparkling in the light, Donna Maria moved with regal grace in her son’s arms.

Her next partner was one of the guests of honor—the mayor of the city of Naples—leaving Marco free to cross the parquet floor and hold out a gloved hand to Sabrina.

“Shall we?”

Either by luck or by design, the song was a slow, dreamy Italian love song. Marco held her close. Too close for ballroom protocol, judging by the glimpses Sabrina caught of raised eyebrows. She knew darn well the tight arm around her waist was intended to take most of the strain off her ankle. That didn’t stop her from reveling in its hard, muscled strength or delighting in the brush of Marco’s lips at her temple.

He was too well mannered to dance only with Sabrina, and far too solicitous of her injury. But before doing his duty with his mother’s other guests, he made sure she was comfortably seated in one of the chairs lining the long ballroom. An assortment of his friends and acquaintances were detailed to keep her entertained.

The group included a wiry professional soccer player, who swore he owed the hump in the bridge of his nose from a kick Marco delivered when they were boys, and a sixtyish socialite arrayed in diamonds who regaled them all with stories from her days as stripper. She had everyone in the group helpless with laughter when a young couple caught Sabrina’s eye. They stood at the edge of the gathering, hesitant to intrude, until she smiled an invitation.

“Please,” she urged. “Join us.”

“No, no, Signorina.” Keeping an arm curled around his wife’s shoulders, the young man demurred. “We come only to wish you happy on this Feast of San Silvestro.”

“Thank you. The same to you.”

“We see you with His Excellency,” his wife said shyly. “We want to tell you … We want you to know …”

She stumbled to a halt and her brown eyes flooded with tears. Concerned, Sabrina started to push to her feet. The young husband stopped her with a quick explanation.

“His Excellency, he operates when no other surgeon would and saves our baby. Theresa and I … We would like to tell you he is a good doctor, a good man.”

“I know,” Sabrina replied softly.

When the young husband led his wife away, she swept her glance over the vast, mirrored hall until she spotted Marco. So tall, so distinguished in his white tie and tails. So damned handsome.

Yet she knew what she now felt for the man had little to do with his admittedly spectacular exterior. Sometime in the past week, she’d fallen for the whole package. Doc. Duke. Fast driver. So-so chess player. Inexhaustible, inventive, incredible lover.

With a small sigh, she turned her attention back to his friends.

Marco joined the group for the final hour before midnight. Music and laughter filled the ballroom. Tuxedoed waiters circulated with glasses with sparkling spumante. The minute hand on watches and clocks raced toward twelve.

Suddenly the lights dimmed. At a signal from the duchess, servers threw open the tall French doors leading to the wide terrace.

“Naples puts on the most spectacular fireworks display in all Italy,” Marco explained. “We can watch in here, where it’s warm, or out on the terrace.”

Sabrina had spotted outdoor umbrella heaters during her short excursion with the admiral and didn’t hesitate. “The terrace, please.”

Glasses in hand, they joined the crowd outside and leaned elbows on the wide balustrade to soak in the incredible view of Naples lit up below. Strung out in a crescent of lights, the city circled the ink-black harbor guarded by the brightly illuminated Angevin fortress.

Judging by the noise that rose in waves, every Neapolitan must have spilled out in the streets. Horns honked. Spoons beat against pots. Raucous shouts and laughter competed with the reverberating bass boom of a rock band.

As if on cue, the noise died down. A hush seemed to settle over the city. Then someone on the terrace started a loud countdown.

“Dieci, nove, otto …”

Other voices joined in the chant.

“Sette, sei, cinque, quattro …”

Marco’s arm tightened around Sabrina’s waist. She turned a laughing face up to his.

“Tre,” she sang out with him. “Due. Uno!”

His mouth came down on hers and not in a polite, celebration kiss. This was a hungry joining that kicked the New Year off with one hell of a start.

Sabrina was so lost in it, so consumed by it, she barely heard the shrill whistle of a rocket launched high into the sky. Marco ended the kiss just as the night exploded in balls of brilliant red.

He hadn’t exaggerated, she decided some twenty minutes later. Naples’s pyrotechnic display had to be the best in Italy. Synchronized to a compilation of Puccini’s most famous arias, it was a joyous symphony of color and light and sound. Sabrina enjoyed every moment of the show.

She enjoyed it even more when Marco steered her to a dim corner of the terrace. Hands clasped around her waist, he lifted her to sit on the balustrade. He stood next to her, at eye level for a change.

Roman candles and starbursts continued to explode overhead. The revelry in the streets below reached fever pitch. Yet they might have been alone in the night.

His face cast in shadows, Marco reached up to tuck a wayward strand behind Sabrina’s ear. “Do you remember asking me if Italians make New Year’s resolutions?”

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