Chapter Nine
SUDDENLY FLORA FOUND herself channelling Alice in Wonderland.
The girl from Ealing was on her way to Milan, mostly due to the persistence of the Italian billionaire.
Not that she had allowed Vito Monticello to have everything his own way.
She had firmly put the brakes on the tycoon’s speedy agenda.
She told him that no way would she accompany him to Italy the moment he snapped his commanding fingers, insisting on a few days’ grace to make her small flat pristine for the duration of her absence.
‘Why?’ he had demanded impatiently. ‘Let me have an agency do that for you.’
‘No. I want to do it myself,’ she had objected stubbornly.
But it wasn’t simply because she needed time to stop and gather her breath and try to get her head around what was happening.
Wasn’t the truth that it gave her a kick to defy him?
She enjoyed seeing the look of surprise in his eyes, as if he were used to women doing exactly what he wanted.
She gave a set of keys to Joe, who promised to water her plants and keep everything ticking over until she knew what her plans were. Because Flora knew she needed to cling onto her independence. She needed a base to come back to. A place to run to.
Yet things had changed, and she had to change with them.
No longer a stranger to private aviation, Vito’s jet wasn’t quite so intimidating this time around and the enormous limousine waiting for them at the Milanese airfield didn’t faze her one bit.
But as the uniformed driver opened the rear door and she slid inside, Flora knew she hadn’t imagined his curious glance.
Was he thinking that this rather ordinary Englishwoman was very different from his boss’s usual partners?
But she wasn’t Vito’s partner, was she? More like his lodger.
And a temporary one at that, he had made that abundantly clear.
As they drove through the busy streets of the city, she snuck a glance at him, all dark and sexy and delicious, jabbering away on his phone in Italian as the car purred past the monuments and as always, her stomach melted.
He had turned up at her flat this morning, wearing a charcoal suit which was quite literally traffic-stopping—judging by the two women on the school run whose cars almost collided because they were so busy gawping at him.
She mustn’t get used to living like this or taking these kinds of conveniences for granted, she told herself. The fancy planes and cars were nothing but the transitory benefits of carrying a wealthy man’s child and Vito certainly wasn’t offering anything other than a very brief refuge.
Not marriage, or permanence or any suggestion that he intended to be part of their baby’s life.
And certainly nothing which would come even close to love.
So stop thinking about it, she warned herself fiercely—or rather, stop thinking about him in the romantic sense.
Concentrate on giving all your love to this little being inside you.
This innocent child who didn’t asked to be conceived.
The baby he hasn’t even mentioned since he’d got his way over bringing her here.
Her sister had expressed grave doubts when Flora had finally made her bombshell pregnancy disclosure. Originally cautioning her against putting herself in Vito’s territory, Amy had changed her mind when her sister had confessed to being sick.
‘Well, since there’s nobody else around to do it, you’d better tell Vito Monticello to take good care of you,’ she had announced grimly. ‘Or he’ll have me to deal with!’
Flora would like to have been a fly on the wall to see that happen.
She had bitten back the accusation which was hovering on her lips—that her sister had in some way helped facilitate the inappropriate liaison with her boss with her gift of sexy undies.
And she hadn’t even told Amy the whole story—that a strange sense of contentment had crept over her from the moment Vito had stormed back into her life.
Because wasn’t there something supremely comforting about having the powerful tycoon take over and look after her?
For the first time ever she felt as if she could let someone else do the worrying and that felt like a pretty big deal.
And wasn’t that a crazy thing to be thinking?
‘We’re here,’ Vito announced, sliding his phone back inside his pocket as the car entered an impressive square with an unusual bell-like sculpture at its centre.
A careless wave of his hand indicated an impressive-looking modern building towering above them.
‘This is the Piazza San Babila and my home is right here.’
‘Home’ it seemed, was a penthouse apartment which occupied three whole floors.
‘Three floors?’ Flora verified incredulously.
He nodded.
‘All for you?’
‘All for me,’ he agreed, with the ghost of a smile. ‘I like my personal space.’
‘Yet you live in a city?’
‘Oh, believe me.’ His eyes glittered. ‘It’s easy to be anonymous in a city.’
‘Okay, I get it, Vito. I’ll try not to impinge on your personal space too much.’
‘Good.’
She insisted on him giving her ‘the tour’ because she wanted to see it through his eyes as well as to get her bearings and, although he seemed somewhat taken aback by her request, he complied, taking her through room after glamorous room.
But Flora couldn’t help thinking that Vito’s apartment looked more like pictures from a glossy magazine, than a place where real people lived.
The ceilings were high and the decor achingly modern.
Spectacular chandeliers glittered their light onto large velvet sofas and sumptuous drapes framed the cityscape, but the atmosphere felt almost antiseptic.
As if he’d given a very expensive interior designer carte blanche to do as they pleased.
Only his study provided a glimpse of the man behind the shiny patina of success, although initially he tried to steer her past it.
‘You’re saying it’s out of bounds?’ she dared to tease.
‘No, I’m not saying that at all,’ he growled reluctantly, throwing open the door for her to step inside.
Flora prowled around the room with interest, studying the various industry awards which littered his desk.
The statuette which proclaimed him a clean-energy titan.
A framed front cover of Time magazine on the wall, with his coldly beautiful face regarding the camera with more than a little mocking defiance.
Behind his desk was a photo of a much younger Vito in the University of Bologna football team and a framed MBA from Harvard.
‘I didn’t know you’d been to America,’ she observed.
‘That’s where I started my tech business.’ His ice-blue eyes were hooded and he nodded as he registered her surprise. ‘I was successful in my own right, long before my father died. I bought this place with my own money,’ he added brusquely, as if this mattered.
‘Right,’ said Flora, absorbing this piece of information as she scanned the contents of his bookshelves and there, pushed into the background and almost swallowed up by the volume of books surrounding them, were some photos.
Three photos, to be precise. Flora bent down to peer at the first. A man of around seventy—his lined and handsome face so like Vito’s own.
Next to it was a portrait of a beautiful woman in her prime—her shoulders bare, with just the hint of white fur beneath and, wrapped around her slender neck, was a collar of sparkling aquamarines which matched her ice-blue eyes exactly.
‘Your mum and dad?’ Flora verified.
‘Si,’ he agreed brusquely. ‘Come, Flora. That’s enough. I have a busy schedule.’
‘In a minute.’ Refusing to be rushed, she bent to study the final photo of a man younger than Vito but just as beautiful, though his eyes were dark, not blue.
Yet this wasn’t a happy snap, she thought suddenly.
His face was bleak and unsmiling, his hair untidily long and there was something awfully empty about his eyes. ‘Is this your brother?’
‘Si.’
She’d noticed before that he automatically lapsed into Italian when he was tense and although he used this particular word forbiddingly, Flora took no notice—and not just because she was curious to know more about her baby’s ancestors.
It was because he’d told her his brother was dead and she knew the worst thing you could do was to pretend that a person had never existed.
Hadn’t that been what had happened when Mum had died?
People had literally crossed over to the other side of the road because they hadn’t known what to say to her or Amy.
And even though it was often painful to recall the person you’d lost—that didn’t mean you shouldn’t do it.
‘You don’t look very alike,’ she offered truthfully.
‘We weren’t alike. Not in any way.’ His voice was abrasive as he pulled open the study door and now there was no mistaking his determination to get her out of there. ‘Come on now, Flora. I have a call to the States I need to make before dinner and I can’t waste any more time talking to you.’
‘Well, since you ask so nicely,’ she said sarcastically as she followed him into one of the vast reception rooms and he rang a bell to summon his staff.
A housekeeper called Marisa and a smiley cook called Mafalda trooped in, accompanied by two of Mafalda’s daughters, who came in on a daily basis to keep the enormous place clean. They all shook Flora’s hand and looked her up and down with friendly interest.
‘They all speak excellent English,’ Vito informed her, once the small deputation had filed out. ‘So you shouldn’t have any problem making yourself understood.’
‘So the only communication problem I’m going to have is with you, is it, Vito?’
‘What are you talking about?’
She sighed. ‘Well, you and I speak the same language but that didn’t stop you riding roughshod over my desire to stay in England, did it?’ Or from effectively refusing to talk about his family.