If she kept her eyes closed and kept the world out, she could pretend to herself that they were one and always would be. Her and Gennaro, always.
He lifted his head to gaze down at her, drinking her in as much as she was drinking him in.
Her heart swelled.
His mouth came down on hers in a tender, lingering kiss before he rolled off her and onto his back.
The coldness at the loss of his warmth was immediate, but only lasted seconds for he hooked an arm beneath her and rolled her into him.
With her cheek on his chest and her leg slung over histhigh and both his arms wrapped around her, a sense of contentment like she’d never known before settled in her.
For the longest, longest time they just lay there, Gennaro’s fingers making gentle trails up and down her back, and the world’s focus stayed in the shadows.
“Are you warm enough?” he asked huskily.
She nodded and kissed his chest, inhaling the musky scent of his skin deep into her lungs.
His hold around her tightened.
Her contentment deepened.
Nothing in her whole world had ever felt as right as it did in that moment, but just thinking that was a sign of the world pulling itself out of the shadows, and its focus sharpened when the distant voices of two people shouting at each other drifted into their suite. They must have been passing their suite’s block for seconds later the voices had melted into the night.
“I wonder who that was,” she whispered.
He sighed, his breath whispering through the roots of her hair. “Right now, I’d prefer not to know.”
She lifted her face to rest her chin on his chest and gazed at him. “In case it’s your brother?”
His features tightened. Closing his eyes, he jerked a nod. Another beat passed before his face softened and he grunted a laugh. “I never thought I’d get to thirty-seven and still have to protect him.”
“He doesn’t want to marry Siena, does he,” she said quietly.
Gennaro gazed into the soft doe eyes and skimmed his fingers up her spine and gently fisted her hair. “No,” he admitted. “And she doesn’t want to marry him. But you’d already intuited that.”
Her lips curved into a small smile. “Then why are they doing it?”
He held her stare and then inhaled deeply. “Niccolo gothimself into debt with Lorenzo. I’m talking serious debt. He made a deal with the devil that he couldn’t afford to pay back and the devil’s solution was for Niccolo to marry his daughter as payment for that debt.”
He watched her eyes flicker as her clever brain turned. “So I was right? The marriage really is for Lorenzo to have the prestige of being related to the great, ancient Martinelli family?”
“Yes,” he agreed. “Niccolo is the son of a duke and one day will be the brother of one, and is considered a noble in his own right. Lorenzo has created great wealth for himself and by clever manipulation of the media he owns, has the love of a large portion of the population. But he’s not stupid – he knows those in the upper reaches of Italian society look down on him. The marriage is his way of buying himself into that society.”
She was silent for a long time. “I’ve never really thought about your family’s duchy before, or that you inherit the title. Not in any real, non-abstract way.”
“And why would you? It means nothing. The title is worthless in all but name but to someone like Lorenzo, it’s priceless.”
“Did he engineer Niccolo’s debt?”
“I am certain of it. Niccolo crossed paths with him in the course of his ordinary business and Lorenzo cultivated his friendship, much like my father cultivated your father’s friendship. Lorenzo and my father are more alike than either of them realise and Nic was too naïve or greedy or desperate or whatever was going through his mind at the time to recognise it.”
There was more silence before she quietly asked, “What will happen if Niccolo doesn’t go ahead with the marriage?”
“Lorenzo will call in the financial debt but he will add interest to it, and it is the interest that means the wedding must go ahead. If it was just money, then I’d pay it offmyself – hell, Dante would pay it off for him – but Lorenzo’s interest is never monetary.”
Feeling suddenly cold, Luisa put her cheek back on Gennaro’s chest and pressed herself tighter against him. “Would you be put in danger?”
“Everyone Niccolo loves will be in potential danger. If Niccolo fails to marry Siena then Lorenzo will be humiliated in front of the whole country, and that will only make him more dangerous.”