Chapter Two
Antonluca Aniello could not believe his eyes.
Hannah Hansen—the Hannah Hansen—stood before him, somehow even more beautiful than he remembered her.
As if she gleamed in a new way, here in Italy where beauty was a passion, a lifelong journey, a way of life.
There were a lot of women named Hannah Hansen in the world. Antonluca knew this too well. So while he had noted the name when given her details during the sale, he hadn’t thought anything of it. Or rather, he knew better by now, because he’d looked for her to no avail.
For years.
Because he had been haunted by that night in New York.
More haunted than he should have been, or could even accept for some months afterward, since the entire reason he’d met her in the first place was because he’d been incensed by that idiotic thing she’d said.
And worse, had shared with the whole world in a dirty tabloid rag.
He could still remember all of it as if it had been yesterday, especially now that she stood before him as if frozen in place, just as he was.
His mind spun out the way it had the first time he’d seen those green eyes of hers, reminding him of the only peace he’d ever known—the land he’d bought in these very same hills.
Back then he’d been in Japan, minding his own business and going about his life, overseeing a new restaurant build. Until his phone had blown up, with everyone he knew rushing to tell him that there was a snake in the grass at his New York restaurant.
That the manager of the restaurant—a position that should have come with some level of decorum and discretion to accompany the excellent pay—had shot her mouth off to some tabloid reporter.
If you like fancy, it’s fine, the woman had said, according to the papers. But it’s an experience. It’s not a meal. I eat before I go to work and sometimes grab a snack on the way home, too.
The audacity. The astonishing cheek of it, to take his money and then turn around and talk about him this way, as if his Michelin stars were meaningless. As if being named the most exciting thing to happen to the culinary arts in a generation was nothing more than lip service.
She grabbed a snack on the way home from work? Antonluca had been incensed. Dangerously so.
He had managed over the years to tamp down on the wildfire temper that some people—including himself, back in his early days—called passion and artistic temperament.
When Antonluca was entirely too aware that whatever it was, wherever it came from, it made him act like one of those stereotypical chefs.
Forever barking out terse orders in a busy kitchen, having temper tantrums over side dishes and meltdowns regarding the temperature of the soup.
All things worthy of having tantrums over, to his mind. But there was no denying that there was a certain point at which the tantrum became a sideshow, drawing attention away from the reason they were all there in the first place: the food.
His food.
She’s gone, his business manager had assured him when Antonluca had taken his call. I’ll fire her myself.
I think not, Antonluca had replied, glaring out at the dark Tokyo night on the other side of his hotel penthouse window, his voice scathing.
I think I will come to New York myself and see if I find my food more of an amusement park ride than a meal.
Perhaps this woman is correct. If so, she deserves a raise.
And so he had stormed onto his waiting jet and fumed his way across the planet.
Somewhere high in the air, he accepted the unpleasant fact that he wouldn’t have been so outraged if he wasn’t concerned that there was some truth in what she’d said. Cruising along at high altitude, he had been forced to face something he’d known that he’d been avoiding for a while.
The truth was simple and devastating. He, Antonluca Aniello, who had redefined Italian cuisine—according to everyone—did not feel connected to his food any longer. Not in the way he had been, way back when he’d started.
Back when he’d accidentally found his way into a restaurant in Rome and had saved his own life. And not only his.
He had started off washing dishes. He had been thirteen and big for his age, so it had been easy enough to pretend he was older.
And working in that kitchen had been a means to an end, at first. It had meant money, and that had been all he’d cared about.
Because money meant that he could take care of his siblings—and keep them from making far more desperate choices out on the streets of Rome.
Bad things happened to homeless children, as Antonluca knew all too well.
And he was the oldest, so it fell to him to figure out a solution.
So he had. He’d worked his way up from washing dishes to cutting up vegetables, and then had picked up more than that as he went along. He’d slowly become fluent in the language of food. The dance of flavor, the subtle language of texture, the magic of presentation.
The restaurant had been a family affair, unpretentious and casual and, after a while, welcoming. Antonluca’s interests had been encouraged. Emiliano, the owner and cook, had taught Antonluca everything that he knew—until Antonluca was cooking the dinner service himself.
Soon after that, he began tinkering with the dishes and playing around with the restaurant offerings. And when the day came that he took over for the man who had become more or less the only father he’d ever known, Antonluca had turned it into one of the finest restaurants in Rome.
To this day, people still traveled from all over the world to stand in line on a narrow Roman street—because he refused to take reservations—simply to eat at the few small tables where he had started.
If he really stopped to think about it all, it was astonishing. Still. To have come from so little and to be where he was now, buying hotels on a whim.
But he remembered how that had happened, too, he thought, as he and Hannah still stood frozen in that same moment while these things flashed through his head.
Because he had still been responsible for his siblings, he’d branched out from Emiliano’s.
He’d worked so he could give each one of his siblings half ownership in a restaurant, to make sure that all of them would be taken care of forever.
The way his mother would have wanted, if she’d been in her right mind instead of addled on drugs. If she’d lived.
The restaurant business was volatile, but Antonluca’s take on elevated staples never seemed to go out of style.
And when he had restaurants all over Europe, and a few in the United States, he didn’t stop.
Because his younger brothers and sisters were messy and complicated and he was the only one who could help. He was the only one who understood.
So he did what he could.
But somewhere in there, he’d stopped experimenting in the kitchen.
While he was busy building an empire, he’d retreated into the boardrooms, he’d taken the meetings, and he’d told himself it was because he was retreating from the celebrity he’d never wanted as fast as he could.
He’d told himself that the food spoke for itself.
Trust some brash, reckless American to call all that into question.
Because if his food had no soul, then neither did Antonluca.
He had gone to New York to find out, once and for all.
What he had discovered instead was Hannah.
Hannah with her golden hair, her eyes like emerald fields, and her total trust in him. Hannah, who had somehow humbled the man who had once been called so arrogant that he circled back around to charming.
Maybe because he had known, even if she hadn’t, that she shouldn’t have trusted him at all. That he bore her significant ill will, confused though that had become once he touched her and felt that unmistakable fire blaze to life between them.
He had thought, Absolutely not.
But he had done it anyway.
Because he could hardly bring himself to recall why it was he should treat her as anything but a revelation when he got lost in all that green and gold.
Yet even now, blindsided by a woman he had convinced himself could not be his Hannah Hansen, Antonluca did not regret that night.
How could he, when he could not recall a single day that had passed since that he had not remembered some part of it in minute detail?
Now, standing in this library that had been spruced up considerably since he’d known it as a younger man, when he’d visited Paloma and one of her husbands here—to cook for them, though that was not the story the Paloma liked to tell, as if there was some world where a street kid from Rome and one of the most famous socialites in Europe would interact otherwise—he watched as Hannah’s perfect face…
reddened. He watched her green eyes go wide.
She looked very much as if she’d seen a ghost, and he found some kind of solace in that. Because, clearly, she hadn’t been anticipating running into him today, either. He found that there were a thousand questions he needed to ask her.
Only some of them involving the running of Paloma’s pet hotel.
But they were alone in this room. And the last time they had been alone together, they’d both been naked, tangled around each other as the morning light streamed into the hotel he’d taken her to.
He’d meant to leave her several times before he’d actually managed to do it.
And so his last memory of her was her sprawled out on the bed they’d torn apart, a smile on her face and that lush body he had come to know so well over the course of that long night limp and boneless.
He could probably paint that image, so perfect was his memory of it, if he possessed even the slightest bit of talent in that area.
Her lips parted as if she meant to say something, or was trying to say something, but no sound emerged.