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Cristiano wanted to do some shouting of his own. But he refrained.
Barely.
“They want to ask you questions about your grandparents, I believe,” Massimo said apologetically. “And also, I’m afraid, about Sofia Tomasi.”
Sofia Tomasi. A name Cristiano had hoped never to hear again.
His grandfather had died five years ago. Piero Cassara had personally built on an ancient Italian fortune to create Cassara Chocolates, the finest luxury chocolate brand in the world. And he had been a man of honor. So claimed the papers, his employees, even his rivals. Anything Cristiano knew about being a man—and not a sad example of one—he’d learned from his grandfather.
But his private life had been somewhat less sweet than the family business, particularly when thrust under the lens of public perception.
Cristiano wanted nothing to do with his grandmother, a bitter, dour old woman who still lived in a corner of the Tuscany estate, cared only for her own company, and was happy to tell anyone who asked that she’d turned her back on her husband, her marriage and her family long ago. Before Cristiano’s uncle had died, in fact.
That she had never cared for her husband was an accepted fact of the Cassara storyline. Her parents had pressured her into marrying him, she’d done her duty, and once her two sons were born she’d wanted nothing to do with any Cassaras ever again. Cristiano had long imagined her his own, personal fairy-tale witch—hunkered down in a cottage on the edge of the property, bristling with malevolence anytime he ventured near.
He’d thought nothing of it. Just as he’d thought nothing of Sofia Tomasi, the woman his grandfather had called any number of things over the years. Housekeeper. Friend. Companion.
Mistress,Cristiano thought now.
Though the tabloids would start using much worse words, now they knew.
He supposed he’d always known what she was to his grandfather. Like his grandmother, it wasn’t a story that bore repeating. It was simply a fact. Accordingly, no one had commented on the relationship in years, at least not in Cristiano’s hearing. Because everyone already knew about it, Cristiano had thought. And because whatever provisions his grandfather had made for Sofia, they had not been in his will, and thus had never been subject to public review or comment.
But there was one person who could not have known about Sofia, or the Cassara family’s tacit agreement that she was far, far better for Piero than the angry old woman in the cottage ever could be. And that one person was currently at loose in the villa, clearly digging around in things she shouldn’t.
Worse, Cristiano had put her there.
Meaning he had no one to blame for swarming reporters and a breaking new scandal his grandfather would have detested but himself.
He dismissed Massimo, even managing to thank the man. Meanwhile his jaw actually ached as he clenched it, so tight it was a miracle his teeth didn’t shatter.
“I have told them to disperse,” Massimo said as he walked out of Cristiano’s office. “If they do not, I will contact the police.”
Cristiano nodded, but there was no getting around what he needed to do, no matter how little he wanted to do it. He had done his best to carry on as usual, pretending there was no woman off in Tuscany and certainly no pregnancy to contend with. Because he had no earthly idea how to handle either one.
And he was not a man who usually suffered from uncertainty.
But he certainly couldn’t have Julienne stirring up trouble and breathing life into old scandals that should have stayed buried with his grandfather.
He would have to go to her.
“I will have to go her,” he said aloud, as if thinking it wasn’t enough. “Damn her.”
By the time the helicopter landed near the villa, his temper hadn’t cooled a bit. If anything, being back in these rolling fields spiked with cypress trees with the scent of rosemary in the air only made it worse.
Cristiano had been raised mostly in Milan. His father had preferred the city, with its infinite bad choices spread out for him to choose between at his leisure, and he had been deeply scornful of the countryside where he’d been raised. Cristiano had always preferred it here, though he’d known better than to state a preference for anything. He associated the rolling fields and undulating hills so strongly with his grandfather that even now he expected to see the old man waiting for him. His seasons here at the villa were the only times in his life he’d ever really feltright.
You should not have brought her here, you fool,he told himself sharply as he made his way toward the sprawling main house his grandfather had restored and rebuilt over the years, so it felt appropriately storied and historic even though every detail had been modernized.
He braced himself as he walked inside, not sure what he expected. The statuary to be upended and left in chunks, perhaps. As if she’d pillaged the place in the week or so since he’d sent her here.
But everything was as he’d left it. And as he liked to leave it in the state his grandfather would recognize if he walked in the door this very evening, Cristiano didn’t know how to feel about the fact that Julienne had done the same. Somehow that didn’t seem to match a woman who would ring up the tabloids in the next breath.
He wandered through the rooms that looked precisely as they always had, with the same priceless art on the walls and the same furniture that managed to be both sophisticated and comfortable at once. A hallmark of the villa, and in many ways, how he recalled his grandfather, too.
Cristiano wandered across the grand atrium in the center of the building. It was open to the deep blue Tuscany sky above, bursting with flowers, trees and the small pool he knew was stocked with plump, lazy fish.
On the other side, he did not find Julienne in the bedroom suite that had been set aside for her. Or any of the other suites in that wing of the house. And he could admit that he was beginning to feel the faintest sense of unease as he retraced his steps, looking in the various salons and studies and reception rooms, many of which had stood empty since his grandfather’s death.
