Italian Groom, Princess Bride

She patently didn’t believe Guido. He’d made it up and his sons were in on the lie.

“Did you ask Papa for help?”

“Not yet, Fonsi,” she said out of wooden lips. “Your brother mentioned he had some ideas, so I wanted to talk to him about them first.”

“We are all very sorry about your father. Papa revered him and will be happy to plant something special,” Pasquale chimed in, but he was a little too eager for them to get off the subject of Dizo. It could only mean their father had coached them in what to say to her. He really disliked the spoiled princess of Castelmare.

Guido Fornese had always been in charge. He saw no reason for his boys to go to college when they all had a fine job on the estate. Fonsi and Pasquale, already married with children, would never usurp his authority by acting on something without his directive first. Dizo was different.

Though he showed his father respect and helped out as much as he could, he’d become a brooding, thirty-two-year-old bachelor who’d wanted more from life and had gone after it even knowing it displeased his parent. Unlike his siblings, Dizo had never lived in fear of Guido or anyone else.

Whatever had caused him to leave the country so abruptly, he’d done it of his own volition. That put the terror in her.

“I’ll talk to your father later in the week when he’s not so busy. Thank you.”

They nodded before driving on.

Regina kept walking until she couldn’t see them anymore, then she broke into a run across the extensive grounds, her pain too deep for tears. When she reached the rear of the eighteenth century palace, she entered through a private door with one of her bodyguards right behind her and raced up the steps. Her suite on the second floor of the east wing overlooked the Mediterranean. Before she shut the doors, she motioned to the closest bodyguard to come inside.

“Rico, as soon as I pack a bag I’m leaving for Nice in the limo. My family knows nothing about my plans.” She didn’t dare take the helicopter or Lucca would hear it leaving and ask questions. “If you and Vito like this job, then keep this information to yourselves, please.”

“Capisco, your highness.”

Once he was out the door she phoned her pilot. “I’m flying to Alghero, Sardinia, tonight.” It was less than an hour’s flight to the northwest part of the island. “I’ll be at the airport in forty minutes. Be ready to take off. I have no idea of my return.”

After buzzing her private secretary who would arrange for a rental car to be waiting at Fertilia airport in Sardinia, Regina threw some clothes in a bag and left the palace the same way she’d slipped in.

The thirty-five-mile drive to the Fornese farm on the outskirts of Sassari wouldn’t take long. Secretly she’d always wanted to visit there with him, but of course that had been out of the question.

Not any longer…

Though she was betrothed to someone else, Regina needed this one night of freedom to love Dizo and no one was going to stop her…

Dinozzo Romali Fornese stood at the bar with his shirtsleeves pushed up to the elbows. He knew he was getting very, very drunk. That was good. His native Vernaccia d’Oristano always did the job. The pain of imagining Gina as Nic’s bride was too staggering to contemplate.

Tonight he needed to be totally blotto if he had a prayer of getting through it. One more drink to make certain, then he tread his way carefully to the entrance of the two hundred year old tavern. “See you later, Dinozzo,” the barman called after him in their native Sassarese.

The night air was soft, but it didn’t drip with the flower-scented sweetness that surrounded the palace, grazie a dio. No reminders here. Dizo climbed in his uncle’s truck and headed through the city’s ancient streets for the farm where he’d grown up as a boy.

Instinct, not faculties, was all he required to get him there. When he flew in for short visits he always slept in the back bedroom of the stone farmhouse, but this time he hadn’t come for a visit. If he was still alive tomorrow, he would have to find work and an apartment.

The last thing he remembered was turning onto the gravel track that led around the rear of the old family home.

“Dizo?”

No. No dreams. Not tonight.

“Dizo, caro—”

That voice. No one called him that except one person. “Leave me alone, Giannina,” he muttered in agony.

“You know you don’t want me to.”

He felt her arms go around him. The curvaceous mold of her figure melted into his hard body, denying him no part of herself. That mouth he’d likened to a wild red rose began devouring him with an insatiable hunger.

“You’re right,” he cried feverishly against those seductive lips. “Dio mio. I want you so much I could bite the heart right out of your beautiful body.”

“Do it, tesoro.”

With skin like velvet and glossy black hair filled with the scent of sweet orange blossoms, he was helpless to do anything but roll her on her back and begin kissing her the way he’d done so many times in his other dreams.

This one was different.

Instead of her suddenly vanishing from sight where he couldn’t find her, she stayed right where she was and kissed him in and out of oblivion. His legs tangled with her silky limbs. After all the years of aching, she was bringing him ecstasy. He wanted it to go on forever.

“Come here to me my precious, adorable Giannina. Closer—” he cried against her tender throat.

“I love you, Dizo. I always will. That’s never going to change.”

“Don’t leave me, amore.”

“Never. Have no fear.”

Once again he was swept away by rapture she brought with every sigh and caress. “I want to feel you just like this until the very second I wake up.”

“Let’s not wake up,” she whispered against his lips.

“You think I want to?”

“Then we won’t. We’ll go on like this into infinity.”

“Into infinity?” he whispered back in a husky voice. “That’s not long enough. If you knew the years I’ve been waiting…aching,” he cried.

His mouth enveloped hers, drinking in her sweetness. He plunged his hands into her hair, loving the way the curls wrapped around his fingers. Still his dream didn’t fade.

“Hey, Dinozzo—” came a discordant note out of the soporific waves. “I want to talk to my nephew. When are you going to get up? Do you know how late it is?”

Dizo realized his fantastic dream had ended. He couldn’t bear it. The alcohol he’d consumed last night was supposed to have wiped everything from his subconscious. Instead a silken pair of arms had transported him to a place where he’d been given a taste of paradise.

On a groan he started to get out of bed, but felt something warm and soft lying next to him, preventing movement. He opened his eyes that were having trouble focusing and discovered a female body lying facedown next to him. The cap of glossy black curls looked shockingly familiar.

His jet-black eyes took in the trail of his clothes and her shoes and jacket starting at the door and ending at the bed. The sheet partially covering both of them revealed that the woman he must have picked up outside the bar last night was wearing a pale yellow and white flowered tank top. With trembling hands he carefully turned her over.

Holy mother of God.

Giannina.

He couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe.