Chapter Eight
Antonluca approached his upcoming nuptials the way he did everything in this world, which was also the only way he knew how to do anything.
Meaning, he treated it like business.
And he was deliberately as cold and as calculating as possible in all things when it concerned his business, because that was how a street kid who came from nothing became an international phenomenon.
He quickly decided that there was no point in inviting their families.
Antonluca and Hannah were becoming a family thanks to Dominic, and surely that was enough.
And he didn’t have very many friends, either.
Friendships were the sorts of things that were developed when a person had free time, and he’d never had any.
Certainly not when he was younger, and could have used some friends.
Back then he’d had work and his siblings, that was all.
But then he’d become very famous and very rich, very fast, and had quickly discovered that he could not possibly trust anyone who cozied up to him once that happened. They didn’t want him. They wanted the image they had of him in their heads and those two things never matched.
If he really took the time to consider it closely, that had likely been a huge part of why he’d liked Hannah so much, and so instantaneously, in New York. It had been very clear that she had no idea who he was. Not the faintest inkling.
For the first time in as long as he could remember, someone had simply…liked him for him.
It still made Antonluca hard when he remembered it.
Then again, so did the memory of her delicate, gloved hand on his arm and her face tilted up toward his as she sat in that car of hers that night.
There had been snow in the air and the faint sound of music in the distance from the hotel lobby.
He had thought to himself that she had never looked more beautiful, this one long night that had become so much more.
And then she had agreed to become his wife.
There was very little about Hannah that did not arouse him, which was something Antonluca found he was more comfortable admitting now.
Because she was going to become his wife. She’d agreed.
So he set about making certain that she didn’t have time to change her mind.
He didn’t want to involve his siblings, because he wasn’t interested in their opinions on this matter, and they would certainly wish to give them anyway.
There were no friends to gather near, which he decided was a blessing.
What he had, in lieu of those things, was a great deal of money, a lovely old chapel that had been built in his castle when the residents needed to pray over the deaths caused by many ancient battles, and the ability to obtain, within twenty-four hours, a special license to marry at will.
All he needed then was a priest to perform the ceremony.
“This is very unusual,” the priest tutted reprovingly when Antonluca called on him in person, special license in hand.
“It seems to me that all the churches in the diocese could use repairs,” Antonluca replied, with a vague wave of his hand toward the whole of the village outside, and the rolling hills beyond with their dusting of white.
“Perhaps they have roofs that date back a few wars. Perhaps they could use plumbing from at least the last century or so. Modern conveniences are so helpful, do you not think, in allowing the faithful to concentrate on their eternal souls instead of historic irritants.”
“Love is a beautiful thing,” the priest said to that, with a beneficent smile. As Antonluca had been certain he would. “Especially at this time of year, is it not?”
The only slight wrinkle in all of this efficiency was that Hannah did not seem quite as delighted as Antonluca felt she should.
It seemed to him that she had taken some sort of step back even as she had agreed to the wedding, and he didn’t like it. But he didn’t want to risk discussing it and thereby ruining their forward momentum. He therefore decided that what he needed to do was keep his eyes on the prize.
He had to marry her. He had to make certain that she was his and do what was necessary to claim his son, too. Everything else could be handled later.
Once Hannah was his.
“We will get married tonight,” he told her one morning at La Paloma, with no preamble or attendant fanfare.
It seemed to him that Hannah took much too long looking up from her computer screen and even longer to meet his gaze.
When she did, he thought her gaze was unduly measured.
“Thank you for informing me,” she said.
Very calmly. Too calmly, to his mind.
Antonluca had the nearly ungovernable urge to vault over the desk, get his hands on her, and remind her how easy it was for neither one of them to feel the least bit calm about anything, not while they were busy tearing each other apart.
Because they were so damned good at tearing each other apart.
“We will go back to the castle after work,” he told her in the same tone, as if delivering a list of demands. “Cinzia will be waiting and she will have Dominic with her, of course.”
At that, Hannah’s mouth curved, and Antonluca felt something flood through him that could only be relief—but he didn’t want to admit that. He didn’t want to accept that it took only the faintest smile from her to make him feel soothed. To make him feel…
Well. Anything at all.
“Dominic will be very excited,” Hannah said then, still smiling. “He’s always wanted to visit a castle.”
He didn’t want to categorize the feelings that charged through him then. He didn’t want to believe he was capable of that kind of softening. His voice was unnecessarily gruff when he replied. “Then he will be even more excited to live in one.”
Her green eyes flashed as they met his and he expected her to argue, or at least respond with something other than that calm, quiet competence of hers, but she didn’t. He watched the column of her throat move as she swallowed. Carefully.
Everything about Hannah was so careful and it made him…want to mess her up a little. Just enough.
“Then he will be the luckiest boy alive, clearly,” she replied.
Without inflection.
Very much as if she knew that she was getting under his skin.
He believed she did.
And it was closer still to Christmas now. There were a thousand different things going on in the hotel, all calculated to make the guests feel as if they were in a fantasy version of home, whatever that meant to them.
This was why Antonluca did not shadow her when she left him in the office later that morning.
Hannah had been asked to personally supervise a particular VIP group of guests into Florence for the day.
It was but one of the services the hotel offered to those who settled in and made a holiday out of their stay.
Excursions to anywhere with the same luxurious attention to detail available at La Paloma, all with the same casual presentation of that luxury that made a certain kind of remarkably wealthy person feel downright cozy.
And as he was one of those people, he should know.
He waited for her later that evening. He sat in her sterile office, wondering why she had no pictures of Dominic on her walls or her desktop.
It was tempting to imagine that she’d been hiding the baby from him that way, but he didn’t think so.
According to all reports and his own observations here, Hannah was a consummate professional in all things.
Too much so, to his mind.
Still, he had discovered today that he could be, too, as he’d stayed at the hotel and had answered many of the calls that would normally be within Hannah’s purview.
It was a far cry from the loud, busy kitchens that had defined the height of his career, but Antonluca had enjoyed himself all the same.
There was something deeply satisfying about solving the guests’ various problems in ways that made them happier than before.
He supposed it was not so different from the kind of customer service he liked to offer in his restaurants—but he wasn’t sure he’d ever been so personally involved in the process.
It was a surprise to him that he quite liked it.
He was mulling that over when Hannah came marching into the office, bringing the scent of snow from outside with her. She stopped dead when she saw him, and he thought, once again, that it took her a moment too long to produce that polite smile of hers.
“How did things go?” she asked, no trace of any hesitation in her voice. “I was delighted to see that the hotel did not crumble in my absence.”
But she smiled a little wider to show she was kidding.
“I didn’t know how I would like it,” he told her. “If you want to know the real truth, I would have told you that I had no other skills than cooking.”
“On the contrary,” she assured him. “Léontine made a point of coming to speak to me when I came in. She wanted to make sure that I knew that you handled everything beautifully and impressed the entire concierge staff. In case you were looking for validation.”
He was Antonluca Aniello. It was never his goal to achieve external validation. It was not required, because such was his talent.
On the other hand, he found himself quite pleased indeed that he received such rave reviews. And from such an unlikely source as the ferocious French concierge who made edginess seem plush and soft.
He did not know how to express that, so instead he cleared his throat and said, “How was your trip?”
“It went well,” Hannah replied.
She moved past him, being very careful that no part of either one of them brushed against the other, though he felt certain she was as aware of him as he was of her.
That awareness buzzed around them and lit him up inside.
She went around behind her desk and stacked up some papers, exchanging them with whatever she had in her bag.