Page 8 of The Virgin’s Dance with the Devil (The Martinelli Wedding #3)

Mercifully, Carmella’s parents were already seated with them, allowing Pietro and Sofia to use them as a buffer.

Having helped her father sit down and folded his walking stick, Marisa took the seat next to her mother.

The two empty seats separating her and Carmella were for Luisa and Gennaro, and she sent a quick, selfish prayer to God to make them hurry up.

It was like the two couples were invisible to each other. There was zero eye contact between them. When Marisa met Carmella’s eye, she automatically smiled, then felt so guilty that she immediately looked away, glancing over her shoulder… and immediately caught Rico’s eye.

Her heart making a good attempt at exploding out of her chest, Marisa poured herself a glass of water. Her hand was shaking almost as much as her father’s, and she was grateful when a waiter came to take their drink order, even more grateful when her sister and brother-in-law finally turned up.

“Is it me or is it cold enough to freeze the Sahara?” Luisa whispered as she slid into the chair beside Marisa.

Marisa grimaced in response.

Wine was poured, and after both sisters had taken a healthy drink of it, Luisa turned back to her. “How come you were so late arriving?”

“We were late setting off,” she answered.

Her heart thumped again at the thought of her sister probing why they were late setting off.

Marisa found it impossible to lie, but how could she explain that she’d overslept because she’d been awake until the early hours in a state of heightened excitement over Rico Esposito? Luisa would kill her. Or kill Rico.

Luisa’s eyes narrowed. She’d clearly picked up on something in her voice or manner. “Has something happened to Dad?”

“No,” she was quick to reassure her. “He’s been fine these last few days.” No point in telling her the drive had worn him out. That was to be expected. Even short drives wore him out, but his long nap on arrival had done him the world of good.

Any further probing by her sister was cut short by the waiter returning for everyone’s food order.

The dinner was the longest meal Marisa had ever endured. For some reason she’d selected gnocchi as her main course, which reminded her – as if she needed reminding – of her first meal with Rico, and she had to fight harder than ever not to cast her stare around the restaurant in search of him.

Nerves and indecision about what to do after dinner had her drinking more wine than she normally would. Frightened she was close to being drunk, she drank a pint of water and refused a liqueur after she’d forced every crumb of her dessert down her throat to soak up the alcohol.

Excusing herself to use the ladies, she took her handbag with her and was shocked to see the feverishness of her face.

After fanning herself with her hand, she added a light cover of powder to dull the fevered effect and retouched her lipstick.

Her efforts were in vain when she left the bathroom, and the first person she saw was Rico.

He was sitting in an alcove with his family, his back angled away from her, but that glimpse was enough to set the fever back off.

He must have felt her stare because barely three steps later, he turned his head and his gaze zoomed straight to her.

Another glimmer of a smile passed between them, a smile that sent such a rush through her that she knew she couldn’t bear to spend the rest of the evening without even a few minutes alone with him.

So strong was her need to be with him that terror at the depth of it struck her in the throat and stopped her breathing.

Rico lingered over his liqueur and chatted with his parents about the following evening’s casino theme, assuring them everything was in hand.

For one night only, The Bianchi Hotel’s ballroom would be transformed into an Esposito Casino.

All the hundreds of guests enjoying the pre-wedding celebrations, including the snobby Martinellis and all their snooty friends, would be obliged to spend their money on swelling the Espositos’ coffers.

He couldn’t think of anything sweeter… except, perhaps, Marisa.

His brothers had gone into Accardiano. They’d both grinned knowingly when Rico had said he’d catch up with them later, but behind the smiles, he smelled fear, a smell that made him smile.

It was against the rules for them to interfere in his pursuit of Marisa.

When the Esposito brothers bet amongst themselves, the stakes were always big.

This particular bet had the highest stakes they’d ever laid.

Mattia, in particular, was very attached to his Swiss chalet, which would make it an even greater pleasure when he handed over the title deeds and keys for it.

His face when Rico casually mentioned that Marisa had the sweetest taste in the world had been one he wished he’d filmed.

It was the exact expression Mattia would have given if he’d swallowed a wasp.

His mother excused herself, kissing her husband and son on the cheeks before heading off for drinks at the cocktail bar with her sister. As soon as she was out of earshot, his father leaned in and, in an undertone so none of the remaining extended family could hear, said, “Anything to report?”

“No. Everything’s under control.” And from the most unexpected source.

When Rico’s chief spy had informed him that Georgia Thomas’s sister had flown to Naples that morning, Rico had hit the roof because by the time Rico had been informed, she’d been in their country long enough to disappear.

He’d threatened to sack – and worse – the whole team if a full report on her whereabouts wasn’t issued within the hour.

Rico had learned Georgia was pregnant a few weeks ago.

His men had been sending him daily reports on her movements since her final weekend with Niccolo in Paris.

A couple of hospital visits eight weeks apart had roused suspicions, but she’d disappeared in the hospital’s warren of corridors too quickly for his men to get their bearings.

Deeply suspicious about those hospital visits and her changing shape, and with her phone, which was already being monitored, revealing nothing, he’d ordered bugs to be put into the flat she shared with her sister, Callie.

Within hours of those bugs being implanted, he’d listened to a heated row between the two sisters about the pregnancy and Georgia’s refusal to tell Niccolo about it.

It was a row repeated a number of times until the sisters were barely on speaking terms.. . not until that morning.

Rico’s men had dropped the ball. Having heard Georgia leave for work, no one had bothered monitoring the bugs in real-time, and so no one knew she’d returned home shortly afterwards and caught Callie preparing to fly out to Naples with the sole reason of telling Niccolo he was going to be a father.

This was where Rico’s men had dropped the ball a second time.

The imbeciles had failed to continually monitor Georgia’s phone communications and so missed the panicked message she’d sent to Niccolo in the minutes after her twin left their home for the airport with a bullshit story of her unstable sister flying over to destroy him by sharing intimate pictures of them with the press.

If Rico’s idiot spies had done their jobs properly and relayed all this information to him in real-time, he would have made sure to send a welcome party to the airport to greet her.

Mercifully for those idiots, this hadn’t been necessary.

Niccolo had taken his ex-lover’s warning about her sister being a psychopath at face value and dispatched his best man, Dante Coscarelli, to meet her.

Dante had duly left Accardiano, intercepted Callie and flown her to his Tuscan castle, where Rico had it on great authority he intended to keep her locked away until after the wedding.

So, potential disaster averted. At least for now.

Niccolo wasn’t stupid. He knew he had to marry Siena or suffer the consequences. But avoiding a potential sex scandal on the eve of his wedding as he thought he was doing was one thing. Learning he’d got another woman pregnant…?

Niccolo was impulsive and, Rico suspected, in love with Georgia.

If he learned about the baby, all bets were off, which meant the wedding would probably be off, which meant humiliation for the Espositos.

The whole of Italy was going mad for the wedding of Lorenzo Esposito’s daughter to the son of a Duke, and Rico’s father was not a man to take humiliation lightly.

If Niccolo jilted Siena, he would be lucky to escape living the rest of his life in a wheelchair.

Lorenzo knew about the baby. He knew Georgia’s sister was currently tucked away in Dante’s castle.

He also knew Rico had dispatched his team, plus extras, to keep watch of all the castle’s exit points.

If Callie Thomas escaped, Rico’s men would know immediately, and action would be taken.

The choice of action would be Lorenzo’s to make.

Rico hoped it didn’t come to that.

Reassured with his son’s answer, Lorenzo’s eyes flickered across the room. “Good. Keep me abreast if that changes.”

Rico nodded, a gesture his father didn’t notice as his attention had been diverted by a couple of Siena’s friends strolling out of the restaurant.

They were the same friends his father had been flirting with earlier around the pool, and he swallowed his distaste when his father excused himself and followed them out.

If his mother didn’t care about his father’s taste for young women, then why should he?

It wasn’t illegal – his father liked his women young, but he liked them to be women – so why should it turn his stomach?

All thoughts of his queasy stomach disappeared when Gennaro and Luisa left the restaurant.

Rico had twisted his seat around, ostensibly to better converse with his grandparents but in truth for a better view of the exit, and now he could see Marisa and her mother helping Pietro Rossellini to his feet.

Slowly swirling what remained of his liqueur, Rico made the appropriate noises to his grandmother’s latest pitch for him to settle down with a ‘nice girl’, but his attention was fully on the chestnut-haired beauty whose kisses he could still taste on his tongue.

Would she meet him by the spa pool? Usually, he’d be able to guess with one hundred per cent accuracy, but Marisa wasn’t like the women he usually pursued.

When she’d walked into the restaurant, she’d looked so damned sexy that his heart had near damned stopped at the sight of her.

She wasn’t even trying to look sexy, not in that russet-coloured dress.

It was a simple long-sleeved maxi dress with buttons running its length, and showed barely an inch of flesh, but the effect on Rico was the same as if she’d strolled in wearing a corset and stockings.

He'd spent the whole meal fully aware that she was dining under the same roof.

They made their way to the exit slowly, the two Rossellini women keeping pace with Pietro’s shuffles. Rico admired the dignified way Pietro held himself, admired too, the way the women flanked him but didn’t baby him, ready to catch him if he stumbled without making a big deal of it.

Only when they were in his direct line of vision did Marisa turn her head and catch his eye with a stare full of longing. If he’d blinked, he would have missed the tiny shake of her head.