Page 4 of The Virgin’s Dance with the Devil (The Martinelli Wedding #3)

In approximately five, maybe six hours, she would see Rico again. She would be staying in the same hotel as him for six days… and si x nights.

The butterflies in her belly were like nothing she’d ever felt before, worse even than they’d been during their last lunch together. Much worse.

She gathered the letters together and put them back in their shoe box, which she hid behind her jumpers in her wardrobe.

She wished she didn’t feel the need to hide them.

It wasn’t even as if she thought her mother would go nosing around her bedroom to find the identity of Marisa’s ‘penfriend’ despite itching with curiosity.

There were boundaries that came when adult children lived in their childhood home, and Marisa’s parents respected them.

She was thankful her mother hadn’t asked outright for the name of her penfriend, and thankful she hadn’t mentioned the letters to her father or sister.

Luisa would have got Rico’s name out of her in seconds, and then all hell would have broken loose.

The sisters had chatted on the phone only two days ago, and Luisa had mentioned how much she was dreading having to spend a week pretending to enjoy the awful Espositos’ company. Marisa was still thankful Luisa had failed to notice her dancing with the youngest male Esposito all those months ago.

Reminding herself that she didn’t need the letters when she’d committed every word Rico had written to memory, Marisa closed her wardrobe door.

Marisa had never been to the Amalfi Coast before.

In the years her parents had had money, holidays had been spent in other countries.

The only times they’d stayed in Italy had been when they’d stayed with the Martinellis at their chalet at Cortina d’Ampezzo.

It had been during their second skiing holiday there that the fact something was seriously wrong with Marisa’s father had become obvious.

There had been signs before then, but they had been gradual and, so, easy to ignore, but that skiing trip, two years after their first, Pietro’s deterioration had suddenly slapped them all around the face.

When, Marisa had wondered during that holiday, had her father’s strident walk morphed into a shuffle?

But it was his struggle to stay upright on his skis that really alerted them to something being seriously wrong, and when they swept through The Bianchi Hotel’s stunningly landscaped grounds and their driver (not their driver, but a driver and car arranged by her brother-in-law) parked outside the reception, Marisa and her mother both positioned themselves to help him out.

Pietro’s legs were always a little unsteadier than normal after a drive, and he was prone to dizzy spells when standing up.

Thankfully Leonardo Bianchi, owner of the hotel and cousin of Niccolo and Gennaro Martinelli, had tasked his staff with keeping an eye out for their arrival, and had a wheelchair ready for them.

Marisa knew her father hated ‘being pushed around like a child,’ as he liked to grumble, but sometimes it was necessary.

Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.

After five and a half hours in a car with only one rest stop, he needed it.

Checked in and shown up to their adjacent rooms in the hotel’s main building, Marisa quickly unpacked and then knocked on her parents’ door.

Her father was taking a nap, her mother on the balcony smoking.

“Are you okay if I go off and explore?” Marisa asked her.

If Marisa admired anything about her mother, it was her indefatigable spirit.

She’d taken her husband’s incurable illness in her stride, cherishing his good days without lamenting the bad, an attitude Marisa strove hard to copy.

However indefatigable Sofia Rossellini was, though, being a full-time carer to a man twice her size was hard work; the bruises beneath her eyes and deep lines on her face testament to the toll it was taking on her.

Marisa helped as much as she could, but the bulk of the care rested on her mother’s shoulders.

They were slender shoulders that lifted as she waved her hands in a shooing motion.

“Leonardo called – he’s arranged for a nurse to be on call at all times while we’re here, so go and enjoy yourself. ”

“Really?” Marisa said, surprised. “What made him do that?”

Her mother smiled and lifted a glass full of clear liquid Marisa was suddenly certain contained gin and tonic. “I think Niccolo must have asked for it. All the costs have been taken care of, too.”

“That’s such a kind and thoughtful thing to do.

” Even if it did seem a bit excessive. Her father wasn’t completely helpless…

well, occasionally he was, but under the current medication regime, those helpless days were much rarer.

Still, it was a weight lifted to know that if he did have one of his bad days while they were there, help would be on hand.

“He always was a nice boy.”

“One of them had to be.” Not that Gennaro had been bad or horrible, she thought, just cold. Poor Luisa. Living with that man must be like living with a human ice block.

Rico was bad , a thought that flittered like a warning as she exchanged a wry, knowing smile with her mother before Sofia put her cigarette out and tapped the book she’d brought out with her.

“Go on, enjoy the time we have here. I’m going to relax until we go for dinner, then hopefully I’ll feel calm enough not to stab Carmella. ”

Marisa’s heart never failed to twist when her mother mentioned Carmella Martinelli.

The two women had been as close as sisters.

As the saying went, ‘To err is human, to forgive divine,’ a sentiment Marisa, as a woman of strong faith, believed in wholeheartedly.

When it came to Carmella Martinelli though, Marisa fully understood why her mother preferred to stab rather than forgive because she couldn’t forgive her either.

Strangely, she felt less animosity toward Giuseppe even though his cruelty in dumping her father as his lawyer had been directly responsible for the Rossellinis coming within weeks of bankruptcy.

It had also been at Giuseppe’s direction that he and Carmella had dumped the Rossellinis as their closest friends, despite them being Luisa’s godparents.

Giuseppe had always been an arsehole. Carmella had been considered an aunt by Marisa and Luisa.

She’d made the women of the Rossellini family love her and then broken her mother’s heart, and for that, Marisa would never forgive her.

Kissing her mother goodbye, Marisa quietly slipped out of her parents’ room and resisted returning to her own to reapply her lip gloss.

The grounds of The Bianchi were much more expansive than would be guessed from the outside.

Seemingly cut into the sheer cliffs that lined the Amalfi Coast, it was a haven of peace and tranquillity…

at least, Marisa assumed that would usually be the case.

For the next six days, The Bianchi was for the exclusive use of Niccolo Martinelli and Siena Esposito’s wedding party.

Approximately five hundred guests were arriving that day, all with strict instructions to have fun and join in with the pre-wedding celebrations.

Having cut through the vast, bustling reception, Marisa’s explorations found her discovering the enormous ballroom, the main restaurant, the Bistro, a coffee shop, the spa, a games room, an art studio and a gallery.

Cutting back the way she’d come, she followed the noise until she found the main swimming pool.

Already, guests were sunbathing under the warm spring sun, groups sat around the pool bar chatting and drinking, a sense of excitement pervading the air.

According to her sister’s message, the path on the far side of the pool would take her to the block Luisa and Gennaro’s suite was located.

Marisa was one of the only people in the world who knew her sister and brother-in-law slept separately. Poor Luisa had discovered earlier on arrival that their suite only had the one bed.

Spotting lots of familiar faces, Marisa smiled and waved at everyone who caught her eye, and tried not to make it obvious that she was actively seeking one particular guest.

She shouldn’t be actively seeking him, but she couldn’t help herself. She was as skittish and excited as she’d been on the eve of her birthday as a child.

They hadn’t made any specific plans to meet up. They hadn’t needed to.

She’d never known intimacy could spring between two people writing weekly letters to each other.

It was all so much deeper and more personal than anything that could happen over email.

She’d come to adore Rico’s atrocious handwriting.

Come to adore so much about him. Seeing him in the flesh for their lunches, which had somehow become a twice, sometimes three times weekly affair, had only reinforced this growing adoration.

Rico was much different in person than in his letters, almost like he was two different men.

The man in the letters was a thoughtful, romantic soul who shared Marisa’s love of books and old films. The man in the flesh was bouncy, good-humoured, inquisitive and attentive.

Both men made her feel like she was the only woman in the world.

Both men made her feel alive in a way she’d never felt before.

But he was also a thug. While his father and brothers ran different divisions of the Espositos’ massive media empire, Rico ran their chain of casinos, an even greater means of laundering money than the opening of nursing homes and hospital wings.

The women usually draped on his arm were as different to Marisa as the sun was to the moon.

They were the kind of women who fit into his world: glamorous ornaments with a flinty edge, something she could never be.

His was a life she could never be a part of, and so friendship was the most she could offer him.

Except it wasn’t friendship that made her heart jump so hard and flood her face and head with colour when she spotted him at the pool table to the side of the pool bar playing a game with one of his brothers.

Wearing a black t-shirt and knee-length canvas shorts that perfectly displayed the muscularity of his physique, his biceps flexed as he made his shot, and then, as if sensing her presence, his head turned. A breath later, their eyes locked.

Tightening her grip on her beach bag, Marisa had no idea how she kept her legs moving or how she was able to pull a friendly smile to her face as she strolled past him.

Her heart and head were still pounding when she stepped onto the path, and she pressed her hand to her chest and forced herself to keep looking forward, to not look back, to keep her veneer of nonchalance going.

It was only when she approached a sign for the beach with an arrow facing to the right that she realised she must have passed her sister’s block, and as she realised this, she became aware of footsteps nearing her.

Her pulses had already jumped to hyperdrive when she heard her name being called.