‘We were just toasting the Benedetti heir,’ Gianluca informed her, kissing each warm cheek she proffered gently.
‘That’s your son, not mine,’ Marco reminded him.
‘There aren’t going to be any, my friend. So drink up.’
‘According to Valentina there will be.’
‘You’ll fall in love, Gianluca,’ said Tina Trigoni, fitting herself into the curve of her husband’s arm. She barely came up to his shoulder. ‘And before you know it you’ll have six sons and six daughters. You’d better,’ she added. ‘I have no intention of sacrificing my children to the Benedetti legacy.’
‘Valentina—’ began Marco, but Gianluca gave her a faint smile.
‘Glad you’ve been paying attention, Tina.’
‘Although you’ll never settle down while you date these bubbleheads.’
He lifted a brow.
‘Women with bubbles over their heads—like in the cartoons,’ said Tina, making an illustrative gesture. ‘Blank bubbles for other people to fill the words in.’
Gianluca privately acknowledged she wasn’t far off the mark. But then he wasn’t looking for a mother for his children.
‘You’ve been talking to my mother.’
‘God, no. I’m not that brave. You do know she thinks a twenty-year-old Sicilian virgin would fill the nursery? I heard her talking to your sisters about it.’
Marco snorted. ‘Does your mother know you at all?’
Did his mother know him? Hardly. And that was the point. The Benedettis threw their boys out to be raised like Romulus and Remus in Rome’s foundation myth, to be suckled by the she-wolf of the military until they came of age.
His mother had conformed to the Benedetti traditions like all the women who came before her and expected him to do the same.
No, his mother didn’t know him—at all.
‘Find me a wife then, Tina,’ he said derisively. ‘A good, plump Sicilian virgin and I’ll follow all the customs.’
‘Find you a wife and thousands of hopeful women will weep,’ Marco observed, swigging his beer.
But Valentina looked interested. ‘I don’t know about virgins—are there any left over the age of twenty-one?’
Completely out of nowhere his mind reverted to a pair of unusual green eyes. There were some, he thought. Once. A long time ago.
‘But frankly, Gianluca, I don’t know if I should introduce any of my friends to you. It’s not as if you’re ever serious about a woman.’
‘Her friends are queuing up to be introduced,’ inserted Marco. ‘I’m glad I don’t make the kind of money you do.’
‘Yes, because then I would have married you for your money,’ said Valentina lightly, ‘instead of for your charm.’ She gave her husband a smart look. ‘Besides, I don’t think they’re entirely after his money, caro.’
Gianluca listened to Marco and his wife banter and for a moment acknowledged that this was what he would miss. All going well, Marco and Tina would grow old together, nurse grandchildren on their laps, reminisce about a life well lived.
In forty years’ time... He came to a dead stop. The way he was going he’d be a rich man in an empty castle. He looked past the happy couple and saw only his parents’ screaming matches, their empty lives performed on the stage set that was the Palazzo Benedetti. One of the most admired pieces of private real estate in Rome. If only people knew the generations of unhappy women who haunted its corridors.
His own mother had been a stunningly beautiful hot-blooded girl from the hills outside Ragusa. Maria Trigoni had married into the social stratosphere and contorted herself into the role of Roman principessa. She had played fitfully at being wife and mother when she hadn’t been completely taken up with her lovers or her much-desired role in society.
Her only real loyalty was to her family in the south—the Trigonis. Marco’s father was her brother. She would vanish down there for long periods of time. He remembered each one of those disappearances like cuts to his back. The first time it had happened he’d been three and had cried for a week. The second time he’d been six and had been beaten for his tears. When he was ten he’d tried to telephone his mother in Ragusa but she’d refused to take his call.
Privately Gianluca suspected the moment a woman put on the Benedetti wedding tiara she lost a bit of her soul. So sue him—he wouldn’t be passing on that little tradition.
* * *
He swigged his beer, barely tasting it as it went down. He had no intention of settling down, providing an heir to the Benedetti name. It was enough that he’d restored its honour.
Besides, after two years on active service he knew better than most that life was lived in the moment, and at this particular moment he was enjoying a little variety in his life. He knew it irritated his mother, disappointed his grandmother, but as a Benedetti male it was almost expected that he would pursue women in numbers.
The old cliché that there was safety in numbers was true. He had a reputation now for being a bachelor who couldn’t be hooked. He played up to it.
As if conjured by the direction of his thoughts a woman stepped out onto the terrace.
She was slender and curvy all at once, and the lights turned her hair platinum.
‘There’s my cue,’ said Gianluca.
‘Fast cars and fast women—this is why I refuse to introduce you to my girlfriends,’ Tina called mischievously after him.
As he approached, the blonde turned up a flawless face and batted long lashes over her Bambi eyes.
‘Come and dance with me, Gianluca.’
‘I’ve got a better idea,’ he said, shouldering past her. ‘Let’s get a drink...’ For the life of him he couldn’t remember her name.
‘Donatella,’ she said coldly, in that moment losing the little-girl act.
‘Donatella—si.’ He suspected from her tone that he’d forgotten her name more than once tonight. It wasn’t important. She’d only latched on to him because of his name, his reputation.
He slid a hand into his jacket, dragged out his PDA. He’d have a drink, do some work, lose the blonde. But she was a good excuse to put his head back into what mattered—making a deal, setting up the next one, keeping an eye on what the Asia-Pacific markets were doing overnight. Not contemplating what Marco had found seemingly so effortlessly: a good woman. While he, Rome’s pre-eminent bachelor, had been stood up by a sexless Australian dragon who clearly didn’t know her loss was what’s-her-name’s gain...
He rifled through his mind for the blonde’s name again, gave up, and hit the bar for another drink.
* * *
Ava gave her name to the hostess and naturally only drew a blank. Part of her had hoped she would just be waved on in.
‘Strawberries,’ she whispered.
‘Scusi, signorina?’
Ava cleared her throat. ‘I believe I’m listed under the name “Strawberries”.’
Her mouth felt dry, her skin prickled, and she was sure the couple behind her were finding this hilarious. She closed her eyes briefly to fortify herself. Public humiliation suddenly felt all too close. ‘I’m Signor Benedetti’s guest.’
Just saying it made this all real, and Ava felt her Dutch courage—a glass of white wine before she left the hotel and two reds downstairs—curdle in her stomach like milk left in the sun.