He nodded. Damn, but she was beautiful when she smiled.
He’d been struck by that smile at their first meeting then in all their subsequent video calls. Her wide, generous mouth naturally turned upwards, as if smiling were her default position.
Today she’d dressed in a pair of slim-fitting cream trousers that rested above her ankles and a striped grey and white shirt. On her feet were flat ballerina-slipper-style shoes which, remembering the heels she’d worn to their first meeting, he guessed were for the practical reason of having a child in tow. Her long, dark hair had been left loose, the slight breeze lifting random silky strands, some falling across her pretty heart-shaped face. She wore no make-up that he could see but, with her lightly golden, clear complexion and those large, chocolaty eyes, she didn’t need it.
She reached into the pram and unstrapped Dom.
Alessio held his breath as she carefully lifted the sleeping infant out.
The bundle in her arms was the reason he was doing all this. This bundle was a Palvetti, flesh of his flesh.
He cleared his throat. ‘Do you need help?’
‘I’m fine, thank you,’ she replied with a cheerful smile, oblivious to the rush of blood pounding through him at this first clear sighting of his nephew.
With obvious practice, she placed the baby into the car seat then leaned over to fiddle with the straps to secure him.
Suddenly Alessio found his attention transfixed on her pert bottom.
His mouth dried and the blood rushing through him rapidly heated and diverted to concentrate in his loins.
It was a primitive reaction, the like of which he hadn’t experienced since his teenage years.
‘Aha!’
He blew out a puff of air and willed the burgeoning ache to subside. ‘Sorry?’
She turned her head and wrinkled her nose. ‘This was a bit more complicated than I thought it would be but I got there in the end.’ Then she grinned again and turned back to Domenico to place a kiss on his cheek.
Pulling himself together, Alessio put her luggage in the boot of the car while Beth climbed into the front passenger seat. When he was done, and feeling more in control of his functions, he jumped into the driver’s seat.
The moment he closed the door he found his senses springing back to life as a heady fragrance dived into him. Beth’s perfume.
Dio, it was the most mouth-watering of scents.
‘Ready?’ He put the car into gear.
‘Absolutely.’ She laughed, an infectious, melodic tinkle. ‘Take me to the palace!’
He grinned back.
Inappropriate though his responses were at this moment, he welcomed them.
Having worked with her these past six weeks, albeit remotely, he’d come to the conclusion that his initial thoughts had been correct. Beth would be an asset for any business.
Factor in her natural beauty, and his visceral response to her, and she had the exact traits he required in a wife.
BETH’S TIREDNESS HAD GONE. Now she buzzed with the adrenaline that always came when an event was within touching distance. She had never worked so hard in her life as she had these past six weeks. Lucinda, her boss, had diverted staff and resources to her, allowing Beth to co-ordinate everything with a military precision she hadn’t known she was capable of.
She’d never got by on so little sleep, either. The hours during which Dom slept or napped had been spent ensuring everything Giannis Basinas required for his masquerade ball was exactly as it should be.
In only nine hours the guests would arrive. She had arranged events with impressive guest lists before but this one had made her gasp. Paying the extortionate sum to dance and be entertained were the world’s most famous faces: European royalty, Hollywood royalty, billionaires, heirs and heiresses, artists... This was a ball guaranteed to make news.
She thought of the plans that must have been changed so high society could attend the masquerade ball at such short notice—the cancelled holidays, the rearranged schedules...
If it all went wrong it would be her neck on the chopping block.
But if it all went right then a healthy bonus would be hitting Beth’s depleted bank account.
The salary she’d been paid for the ball up to this point had enabled her to pay her rent and buy Dom some new clothes. If she received the bonus she would have enough money to keep them going until her year’s leave was up with enough spare for any future legal battle with Alessio Palvetti.
She would then have the difficult decision of whether or not to return to work.
‘You’ve gone quiet,’ Valente said, cutting through her thoughts. ‘Is something on your mind?’
She cast him a quick glance. His attention was fixed on the clean, wide road before them. There was something incredibly reassuring about his command behind the wheel. Not once in their thirty-minute journey from the airport had she pressed an imaginary brake. ‘I’m just thinking.’
‘About what?’
She laughed. ‘What do you think? The guests are due in nine hours. There’s a lot that can go wrong in those nine hours.’
‘Nothing is going to go wrong.’
‘Speaks the voice of experience?’
‘No, speaks the voice of someone who has found much to be impressed with your organisational talents.’
Embarrassed at how ridiculously flattered she felt at the compliment, she turned her face to look back out of the window. The view outside was almost as good as the view beside her. Little wonder this was a city famed for its romanticism. The architecture alone, grandeur and beauty at every turn of the head, was enough to make her catch her breath.
Sitting beside Valente kept making her catch her breath too. The longer she sat beside him, the more aware she became of his scent, the capable fingers controlling the steering wheel and the tensing of the strong thighs whenever he changed gear.
The longer she sat beside him, the more she became aware of him.
She cleared her throat and answered, ‘The proof of the pudding’s in the eating.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘That we won’t know how good my organisational skills really are until the ball’s over.’
‘Why are you so nervous?’
‘I’ve never undertaken an event of this magnitude before... Is that the palace?’
They’d turned into an enormous courtyard with a water fountain right in the centre of it. Surrounding the courtyard like a titanic curved horseshoe rose the most beautiful building she had ever seen.
Gleaming white under the rising sun, it was impossible to count the number of windows, all aligned with perfect symmetry over three high storeys, or count the ornate white pillars. Dozens and dozens and dozens of them.
No wonder it had quickly become famed as the most expensive hotel in Europe.
The same sense of awe enveloped her when, Dom in her arms, she climbed the wide, curved steps and stepped through the main doors.
She thought she knew every inch of the palace’s ground floor from the photos, videos and scale drawings she’d been provided with but nothing could have prepared her for