THREE days later, Villa Uccello was in total wedding-day uproar.
“Let me in!” Maximo roared, pounding the bedroom door.
“No!” Lucy leaned back against it. Her teeth chattered with the reverberating force of his pounding. “It’s bad luck for you to see me today!”
“Lucy, be reasonable! It’s an evening wedding. You can’t expect me not to see you all day long. This is torture!”
She covered a laugh. She could just bet he wanted to see her. Ever since they’d returned to Aquillina, they’d both been busy—he with wrapping up the details of the Ferrazzi acquisition, and Lucy with her planner trying to create her dream wedding in just a few short days.
Three days of dress-fittings and cake-tastings, with Chloe sampling as much frosting as she could get her chubby little hands on. Three days of being interviewed by reporters from around the world. Three days of manicures and pedicures and massages, as Maximo had brought the team of stylists from Milan to stay at the Villa Uccello at Lucy’s beck and call. Three days of luxury and frantic fun, of feeling like a bride, of feeling like a star.
And three nights of unbridled passion in her husband’s bed.
Every night, he set her world on fire. Even once in the middle of the afternoon, when he’d found her alone in the hallway and dragged her into a quiet unused study. He’d made love to her against a wall of leather-bound Italian books. She flushed hot to her toes. She would never think of Machiavelli or Petrarch in quite the same way again.
So it was no wonder he was so frustrated, Lucy thought, since it had now been ten hours since they’d last made love. She could understand why he might be going a little crazy.
So was she.
But she was pushing him away for a good cause. One that had nothing to do with wedding-day superstition.
This was her last chance to try to sneak away before the wedding. Her last chance to speak with Giuseppe Ferrazzi and find out his side of the story, so she could invite him to the celebration with a clear conscience. Once she was sure that their feud was all based on a misunderstanding, she would have no qualms about forcing the two men to meet in public. Maximo would never want to insult his dignity with a humiliating public scene. He would have no choice but to listen, if only for a few scant moments.
And she would end the feud between the men. She’d save her grandfather from poverty and loneliness, and save the soul of the man she loved.
If Maximo could never love her, at least he might someday love someone. Thinking of him with another woman made her want to rip her heart out, but Maximo’s happiness was everything to her.
Even if he couldn’t be happy with her.
Maximo’s pounding on the bedroom door increased.
“Cara—” he sounded truly desperate now “—have mercy! I’m just a man!”
“Maximo, go away!” she said over the lump in her throat. “It’s for your own good!”
Growling and muttering in Italian, he left.
When she was sure he was gone, she took a deep breath, squared her shoulders and went to the nursery. Waking up Chloe from her morning nap, she bundled her against the cold, and grabbed a coat for herself.
She tiptoed them both past the enormous kitchen, where Ermanno was tucking into a plate of late-morning pasta. Over her objections, Maximo had recently assigned him to be her bodyguard. With his three hundred pounds of muscle and bulk, he’d be eating his lunch for an hour. And Georgiana Stewart, her British wedding planner, had ordered Lucy to take a refreshing nap (“just forty-five minutes to restore your skin’s youthful glow, Princess”), warning the servants to leave both Lucy and her baby to sleep in peace.
Now all Lucy could do was cross her fingers and pray she was successful. And able to finish her mission before anyone, especially Maximo, caught her.
It was dangerous. For her to even talk to Giuseppe was a breach of the prenuptial agreement. If Maximo decided to nullify their marriage contract, Lucy and her daughter would be left destitute.
But she had to risk it. She couldn’t choose between her husband and her grandfather. She couldn’t live happily with her baby, knowing that a mile away the poor old man was suffering alone. And she couldn’t bear for Maximo to live his whole life suffering as well, choking on the vengeful guilt in his soul.
Not when she could fix everything.
She would protect all the people she loved. She would save them, even from themselves.
Maximo had good in his heart. She’d seen it. All the times he’d been good to her and Chloe without benefit to himself proved it.
Tucking Chloe into a stroller, she hurried through the villa’s elaborate gardens. She waited until the security guard was distracted, flirting with a pretty reporter, then escaped behind the bushes near the back gate.
So far, so good. Lucy reached the edge of the village. The snow had long melted, the sun was warm and the days were already growing longer. Spring was just around the corner, lifting her spirits. Now if she could just find her grandfather’s old villa without anyone noticing…
A foolish hope. Even if she weren’t the principessa, the new darling of the whole village, the street was packed full of people trying to see her. The village was filled with florist and catering trucks, reporters covering the “single mother rags-to-riches” story and international paparazzi stalking the illustrious guests scheduled to arrive from the Villa d’Este, opened out-of-season especially for the event.
“La principessa!” she heard a voice shout down the street. Heart pounding, she ducked back into an alleyway between two old houses.
A kind-eyed, white-haired woman was at the end of the alley, sweeping with a broom. “Bambina?”
Lucy knew this woman. She struggled to remember the Italian word. “Bambinaia?”
The woman dropped the broom with a clatter. She burst into excited chatter in Italian, embracing first Lucy and then Chloe. She pulled them both into her tiny kitchen. Lucy knew that her old nanny didn’t speak English, but the request she had to make didn’t need translation.
Lucy pleaded, “Giuseppe Ferrazzi?”
For a long moment, the old woman stared at her. Then, with a reluctant sigh, she nodded.
Leaving the stroller behind, Lucy carried Chloe in her arms as she followed her old nanny through a web of alleyways in the back streets of the village. Beckoning her with a trembling hand, Annunziata suddenly pointed up. Her grandfather’s villa.
“Grazie,” she said, kissing the woman’s cheek. She turned toward the door of the half-ruined villa, her heart singing with optimism and hope. She’d made it! She would speak to her grandfather, and hear his side of the story. Surely two proud men who had both lost so much could come to some peace.
“You’re going to meet your great-grandfather,” she told Chloe happily as she knocked on the door. “You’ll see—it’s all going to work out!”
But an hour later, Chloe was wailing unheeded in her arms as Lucy looked at the old man in shock. Cold tea had been left untasted on the table as she tried to comprehend what he’d just told her.
“No,” she whispered. “Maximo didn’t do that. He wouldn’t.”
Her grandfather gripped the faded gold-painted arms of his antique chair. His raspy voice had a heavy accent. “So you see why you must help me destroy him.”
“Destroy him?” she repeated numbly. She thought of the times Maximo had been kind to her. He’d saved her from Darryl in Chicago. Comforted her after she saw Alex in Rome. He’d carried her across the field of flowers, kissing her beneath the hot Sicilian sun.
The images stabbed at her like a knife.
He hadn’t done it out of some hidden spark of good in his soul. He’d done it out of guilt. Bone-crushing, hellish guilt.
Abruptly the sound of her daughter’s crying cut through her thoughts, focusing her. “Shh, baby, shh.” She held Chloe close, snuggling her, breathing in her baby scent. Her daughter was soon comforted, but who would ever comfort Lucy…ever again?
“Have no fear, mia nipotina.” Her grandfather’s rheumy eyes were bright and wild. “We will get vengeance.”
Vengeance? Her mother hadn’t raised her to be so heartless. “No,” she said faintly. “That’s not what I want.”
“You will listen to me. I am your grandfather,” he demanded. “You will do as I say—”
“No.” She rose abruptly from the chair. “I will do as I think best.”
Vengeance wasn’t what she wanted.
But justice…
She recalled Amelia pleading with her the first day they’d arrived in Aquillina, begging her not to humiliate Maximo in front of the village, begging her to keep their quarrels private. But privacy had been her undoing. Maximo had charmed away her suspicions and fears beneath the force of his arrogance and strength…and unexpected kindness.
A prince. A handsome prince.
Coming for her. Saving her. Taking care of her and Chloe forever. Teaching Lucy to feel again. To be brave. To risk her battered heart one last time.
She’d known all along it was too good to be true.
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath. When she exhaled, all her hopes and dreams left her body with the breath.
Leaving room for only one thing.
The truth.
She lifted her chin.
“I’ll make Maximo confess,” she said. “Tonight, at the wedding, he will admit…to everything.”