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She responded with a smile of such saccharine goodness she hoped the sweetness made him puke. Anything had to be better than him knowing her whole body vibrated with excitement at his closeness.
It was somewhat of a shock when they entered the ballroom and found it transformed into a nightclub. Or that was what she assumed it had been turned into with the heavy velvet drapes that covered the walls and the dark mood lighting. Loud music pumped, not the quaint string group she had envisaged but a DJ in a booth high up on a stage, already surrounded by a throng of beautiful women. She recognised him as the house DJ employed at Luca and Francesco’s nightclub in Palermo. She had visited it twice and loathed it. Luca had holed himself up in the offices, leaving her bored out of her skull. At least when she accompanied him to one of the casinos there was always something to do that didn’t involve gyrating into strangers’ groins.
She could feel the vibrations through her fantastic gold sandals. Next to the DJ’s booth were two caged podiums in which semi-naked lap dancers writhed. Much as it made her feminist hackles rise, even she could see the professional pride they took in their performances.
For the second time that evening she wished she had her sketchbook with her.
The ballroom was packed, not with shady men in black—although there were a fair number of them around—but men and women from the height of Sicilian and Italian society, minor British royalty and American film and rock stars. She even recognised a few patrons of the arts. Dotted around the enormous room were enough armed guards—unobtrusive but to her trained eye obvious—to overthrow a government.
It seemed as if Luca knew all the guests. Forced to stick to his side, she was introduced to dozens of both new and familiar faces, all of whom studied her with great interest. It was the familiar faces she found the hardest to endure, the curiosity in their eyes at the return of the prodigal wife.
She’d had no idea anyone would be interested about the state of their marriage, not at a birthday party in Florence.
Luca must have picked up on the curiosity too, for he kept her hand tightly clasped in his. Or was he simply marking his territory?
Glasses of champagne were thrust into her free hand, which she took cautious sips of, careful not to drink too much. Alcohol had a terrible habit of loosening her inhibitions and she needed to keep them tightly squashed away.
Her hackles rose again when a tall, lithe man approached them, two women walking to heel as if especially trained.
Francesco Calvetti. The party boy. Luca’s main business associate.
CHAPTER TEN
DRESSED IN A dapper silver suit and open-necked black shirt, and looking as if he had just stepped off a catwalk, Francesco was sinisterly handsome. Grace would have bet every penny she owned he winked at his own reflection whenever he looked in a mirror. She had met him half a dozen times and he never failed to make her skin crawl. If she were to paint him she would cast him as a vulture.
‘Luca!’ He opened his arms wide and pulled him into an embrace that involved lots of back-slapping.
Grace watched Luca carefully, certain she had felt him tense at Francesco’s approach. He responded with the same masculine enthusiasm, but as they conversed she could hear the tension in his voice, even if she couldn’t understand the words.
Finally, Luca switched to English. ‘Do you remember my wife, Grace?’
‘But of course.’ Francesco’s English was faultless. He took her hand and pressed a kiss to it. There was nothing seedy in his manner but, for reasons she could not even begin to quantify, she wanted to snatch her hand away and disinfect it.
‘I trust you have fully recovered from the ailment that kept you away for so long?’ From the tone of his voice, he seemed to be speaking in code. Unfortunately she did not have the faintest idea what the code stood for.
‘Yes, she is fully recovered,’ Luca interjected smoothly.
‘Excellent news. Please, both of you, accept my congratulations on the birth of your first child together. I hope your family is blessed with many more bambini.’
‘That’s what we hope for too,’ said Luca.
The conversation ended with the men exchanging another back-breaking embrace before Francesco disappeared into a melee of beautiful women.
‘What the hell was that about?’ Grace demanded. ‘What am I supposed to have recovered from?’
‘Pre-natal depression.’
‘What?’
‘I told him you’d been in England.’ Here he shrugged. ‘His own mother suffered from severe pre-natal depression. He assumed you had suffered from it too and had gone to England to be cared for by your mother.’
