He realised he had no idea where that was. Some palazzo or castello somewhere—but where? He would have to look it up. There would be plenty of information on her family if he consulted the genealogies of the Italian nobility. It was a world he didn’t know and wasn’t interested in. Had no sympathy with.
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘My sister’s getting married there next year—a huge affair. I think one of your hotels sounds better. Maybe abroad?’
She shouldn’t have said ‘abroad’. Instantly in her mind’s eye was the Falcone Nevada, an oasis of luxury, lapped by the desert, where she had taken Nic to be one of his own employees, taken off with him for the road trip that would change her life for ever. That had brought her to this destination now.
The tearing feeling assailed her again.
‘What about the Caribbean?’ Nic was continuing. ‘I’ve got a good few there you can choose from.’
‘I’m sure any one of them will be fine,’ she answered.
She didn’t mean to sound dismissive. It was just that the very thought of standing beside Nic, becoming his wife, seemed beyond unreal.
‘I’ll...um... I’ll look them up on the internet,’ she went on, trying to sound less blitzed.
The car was gliding up to the imposing frontage of the Viscari Roma. Nic climbed out, opening the passenger door for Fran, who got out gracefully.
Nic’s eyes went to her. He felt his stomach clench, as it always did whenever he looked at her. Per Dio, how beautiful she was.
He crushed the reaction down. He was not marrying her for her beauty, but for the baby she carried.
The doorman was coming forward, his eyes registering exactly who it was walking into his employer’s flagship hotel. A caustic smile tightened Nic’s mouth. Fran seemed unaware, turning towards him.
‘We’re meeting Cesare and Carla in the cocktail lounge,’ she said.
Nic’s eyes were sweeping around the lobby, going to the service door behind Reception that led down to the basement where he had first worked—the lowest of the low, the humblest employee of all. As he went forward towards the cocktail lounge, which opened off the lobby, his face was set.
It stayed set as they approached the Conte and his Contessa. The former got to his feet, greeting Fran with a kiss on her cheek, and then turned to Nic.
‘Falcone,’ he said, and held out a hand to him.
For a moment Nic was motionless. Then, wordlessly, he took the outstretched hand. After all, had the illustrious Conte not wanted him to be here with his ex-fiancée he would not have deigned to inform Nic that there was any requirement to call upon Fran that morning.
‘Signor Il Conte,’ he acknowledged.
The handshake was brief. Cesare’s hand was slim, but strong for all that, in Nic’s larger hand. Then the Conte was introducing his wife, whom Fran was already greeting cordially.
‘Contessa,’ offered Nic dutifully.
He could see the Contessa’s eyes were alive with curiosity. A dramatic brunette, her looks were a striking foil to Fran’s pale blondeness, and her dress in dark cerise was a vivid contrast to Fran’s eau de Nil. He wondered in passing whether he had ever seen her here at the hotel when he’d worked here, for she was, after all, Vito Viscari’s late uncle’s stepdaughter.
Nic and Fran took their seats and the Conte resumed his. For a moment there was silence, as if the full impact of just why he was there with his host’s former fiancée was pressing upon them all. Then a waiter was there, the Viscari emblem blazoned on his shirt.
‘Campari and soda, please,’ Nic heard Fran say.
And as he heard it memory thrust into his head. It was the very drink she’d ordered that night he’d homed in on her. Was she remembering it too? He thought she was, for she suddenly paled.
He ordered a martini for himself and then sat back, crossing one leg confidently over the other. He was here in the Viscari Roma—enemy territory—and he was socialising with Il Conte di Mantegna, who had once thought to marry the woman that he, Nic, was in fact going to marry.
And no way—no way on God’s earth—was Nicolo Falcone, who had dragged himself from slum kid to billionaire by his own efforts and had had nothing handed to him on a plate, going to do anything but own the evening.
‘Francesca and I are trying to decide where to have our wedding,’ he said, addressing his hosts, taking control of the conversation from the off, wanting nothing unspoken about why he was there. ‘At the moment the Caribbean is the front runner. I have several properties there to choose from.’
‘That sounds very romantic,’ the Contessa said brightly, sipping at her drink.
It wasn’t the best word to choose, and it hung awkwardly in the air.
Fran stepped into the gap. All the long-learned habits of social correctness slipping into gear. ‘I don’t really know the Caribbean,’ she mused. ‘How different are the islands?’