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Tilting back her head, she gaped when she got out of the Rolls, staring up at the glamorous hotel. She held her breath as she turned to see the view. All of Rome was at their feet.
“Like it?” Cristiano murmured lazily.
“I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Of course you have not.” He grinned, looking pleased. “Campania is the best luxury hotel brand in the world. And the Campania Roma is the best of them all.”
As Marco and Salvatore collected their bags, Hallie and Cristiano strolled hand in hand. Baby Jack, pushed by his father in the stroller, didn’t seem nearly as impressed by their surroundings. He chewed on the stuffed giraffe clipped to his shirt.
Hallie looked down at the letters imprinted on a manhole cover near the sidewalk. “What is SPQR?”
“It’s Latin. Senatus populusque Romanus—the Senate and People of Rome. You’ll see the emblem everywhere in the city.”
“Wow. This city is really old,” she said in awe, and flashed him a grin. “Almost as old as you.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Am I old?”
She liked teasing him about the eleven-year difference between them. She countered, “You’re teaching me Latin now?”
His dark eyes simmered. “Let me take you to our room, cara. And I’ll teach you other things. All night long.”
Her cheeks burned as a smiling, dark-eyed doorman held open the hotel door. Pushing the stroller ahead of them, they walked into the soaring lobby.
Hallie sucked in her breath. The opulence was unbelievable. Gilded Corinthian columns stretched up toward the Murano glass chandeliers high above.
“I didn’t think it possible,” she breathed. “This place is even more amazing than your hotel in New York.”
He smiled at her. “Grazie.”
She turned to stare as a chic fortysomething woman passed by, dressed to the nines in six-inch heels and a velvet skirt suit so well crafted the jacket was like a corset, and perfect scarlet lips. At the woman’s side was a man in a well-cut suit who paused to let his eyes caress Hallie before he continued past. Hallie blinked in amazement, staring after them. “And the people...”
“What about them?”
“All the women look like movie stars. And the men like James Bond. Everyone dresses as if they’re about to meet the love of their lives. What is this place?”
Cristiano gave her a sudden wicked grin. “Roma.”
She shook her head in awe at a city where everyone, from teenagers to octogenarians, seemed to claim eternal sensuality as both a privilege and a duty. “You grew up here?”
“I lived here briefly.”
She knew so little about his past. “You were born in Rome?”
His gaze shuttered, as if he could sense her probing.
“Naples,” he said flatly. Clearly he wasn’t interested in saying anything more.
Mr. Moretti was a brawler, back when he was young. He fought his way out of the streets of Naples.
His driver’s words came back to her. Not for the first time, she wondered how a fatherless, penniless boy, neglected then orphaned by his mother, had made his fortune, turning himself into an international hotel tycoon.
“Look.” Cristiano pointed at the lobby ceiling. She gasped, tilting back her head to look up.
On the ceiling, gold-painted stars decorated a midnight sky. Across the lobby, she saw huge vases filled with red flowers beside marble fireplaces carved with cherubs. The enormous sweeping staircase had an actual red carpet.
She’d never seen anything so incredible, not even in a movie. She stopped, feeling she was in a dream. “It’s—it’s—”
“I know,” Cristiano replied. “The building was once a palazzo gone to ruin. I was only twenty-two when I convinced the contessa to sell it. It took two years to rebuild and restore it. I gambled everything I had—my reputation, my future. This place,” he said softly, looking around them, “was the making of me.”
