Italian Mavericks: Forbidden Nights With The Italian: The Forbidden Ferrara / Surrendering to the Italian's Command / The Unwanted Conti Bride

Please. Please let him have softened—

Fia put the glass on the table in front of her grandfather and poured. ‘So what’s wrong?’

‘You mean apart from the fact that you are here every night slaving in that kitchen while someone else looks after your child?’

‘It’s good for Luca to be with other people. Gina loves him.’ She didn’t have the family she wanted for her son, so she’d created it. Her son was never going to be lonely in the way she’d been lonely. He had people he could turn to. People who would hug him when life threw rocks.

‘Love.’ Her grandfather grunted with contempt. ‘You are turning him into a girl. That’s what happens when there is no father to teach a boy to be a man.’

It was the perfect opening for her to tell him what she needed to tell him. But Fia couldn’t push the words past her dry throat. She needed time. Time to discover what Santo intended to do. ‘Luca has male influences in his life.’

‘If you’re talking about that boy you employ in the restaurant, there’s more testosterone in my finger than he has in his whole body. Luca needs a real man around.’

‘You and I have very different ideas about what makes a real man.’

His bony shoulders slumped and the lines on his forehead were deep. In the past month he appeared to have aged a decade. ‘This isn’t what I wanted for you.’

‘Life doesn’t always turn out the way we plan it, Nonno. When life gives you olives, you make olive oil.’

‘But you don’t make olive oil!’ He waved a hand in frustration. ‘You send our olives to our neighbours and they make our oil.’

‘Which I use in my restaurant. The restaurant that everyone in Sicily is talking about. I was in the paper last week.’ But somehow the buzz that she’d got from that fleeting moment of success had gone. Recent events had diminished it to nothing. ‘The week before I was mentioned in an important travel blog. The article was called “Sicilian Secrets”. I’m doing well. I’m good at my work.’

‘Work is what a woman does before she finds a husband.’

Fia put the bottle down on the table. ‘Don’t say that. Soon, Luca will be old enough to understand you and I don’t want him growing up with that opinion.’

‘Men ask you out! But do you say yes? No, you don’t. Dark, blond, tall, short—it’s always “no”. You shut everyone out and you have done since Luca’s father.’ He looked at her intently and Fia’s fingers tightened on the bottle.

‘When I meet a man I’m interested in, I’ll say yes.’ But she knew that wasn’t going to happen. There had only ever been one man in her life and right now he despised her. And worse, he thought she was an unfit mother.

Barely able to think about that, she focused on her grandfather and felt a flicker of worry as she saw him absently rub his fingers across his chest. Impulsively, she reached across the table and touched his hand. When he immediately withdrew, she tried not to mind. Her grandfather wasn’t tactile, was he? It was silly of her to even try. He didn’t hug her and he didn’t hug Luca. ‘What’s wrong? More pain?’

‘Don’t fuss.’ There was a long silence while he glared at her and something in his gaze made her stomach clench.

Was it just her guilty conscience or did he—?

‘You weren’t going to tell me, were you?’ The harshness of his voice shocked her and she felt as if the earth had shaken beneath her feet.

‘Tell you what?’ Her heart was suddenly pounding like a drum in a rock band.

‘He was here tonight. Santo Ferrara.’ He said it as if the name tasted bad on his tongue and Fia put the bottle down before it slipped from her hand.

‘Nonno—’

‘I know you banned me from mentioning his name but when a Ferrara walks onto my property, that gives me the right to talk about him. You should have told me he was here.’

How much did he know? How much had he heard?

‘I didn’t tell you because I knew this would be your reaction.’

He thumped his fist on the table. ‘I warned that boy not to step onto my land again.’

Fia thought about the width and power of those shoulders. The haze of dark stubble accentuating that hard jaw. ‘He’s not a boy. He’s a man.’ A wealthy man who now ran a global corporation. A man with the power to shake up everything she loved about her life. A man who had gone off to talk to lawyers and think about the future of her son.

Their son.

Oh, God—

Her grandfather’s eyes glowed bright with rage. ‘That man walked into my home—my home—’ he stabbed the air with his finger ‘—with no respect for my feelings.’

‘Nonno—’

‘Did he have the courage to face me?’

‘Calma! Calm down.’ Fia was on her feet; the emotion was a burning ball at the base of her ribs. If her grandfather was this upset now, how much worse was it going to be when he found out the truth? It was starting again, only this time Luca would be in the middle of it. ‘I didn’t want him to see you and this is why! You’re getting upset.’

‘Of course I am upset. How could I not be upset after what he has done?’ His face was white in the flickering light from the candle and Fia was sure that hers was equally pale.

‘You promised me when Luca was born that you would let the past go.’

He gave her a long, long look. ‘Why are you defending him? Why is it that I’m not allowed to say a bad word about a Ferrara?’

Fia felt the heat pour into her cheeks. ‘Because I don’t want Luca growing up with that animosity. It’s horrible.’

‘I hate them.’

Fia breathed deeply. ‘I know.’ Oh, yes, she knew. And she’d thought about that every day since she’d felt the first fluttering low in her abdomen. She’d thought about it as she’d pushed her son from her body, when she’d first looked into his eyes and every time she kissed him goodnight. There were days when she felt as if she couldn’t carry the weight of it any more.

Her grandfather’s eyes were fierce. ‘Because of Ferrara, you will be alone in the world when I’m gone. Who will look after you?’

‘I will look after us.’ She knew he blamed Santo for her brother’s death. She also knew it was pointless to remind him that her brother had barely been able to look after himself, let alone another. It had been his own reckless irresponsibility that had killed him, not Santo Ferrara.

Her grandfather rose unsteadily to his feet. ‘If Ferrara dares to come back here again and I’m not around you can give him a message from me—’

‘Nonno—’

‘—you can tell him I’m still waiting for him to act like a man and take responsibility for his actions. And if he dares set foot on my property again I’ll make him pay.’

CHAPTER THREE (#u0241d7e0-98ba-5b5d-a1a3-a78148fefb12)

SANTO sat and waited in his office at the Ferrara Beach Club—an office hastily vacated in his honour by the manager of the hotel. If he needed an indication as to why this hotel was less successful than the others in the group it was right there on the desk. Lack of discipline and organisation was visible everywhere, from the scattered papers to the dying plant that drooped sadly in the corner of the office. Later, he’d deal with it. Right now he had other things on his mind. Mocking him from the wall was an enlarged photograph of the hotel manager, posing with his wife and two smiling children.

A typical Sicilian family.

Santo stared moodily at that picture. Right now he felt like tearing it down. He’d never considered himself idealistic, but was it idealistic to assume that one day his family would look much like the one in the picture?

Apparently it was.