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Prologue
“YOUR MOTHER’S GONE, ALESSIO. She no longer had need of us.”
Eight-year-old Alessio Cavalcante met his father’s eyes with a look of confusion. “Gone? Gone where?”
The senior Alessio regarded his son with a face that was ice cold. “She has left. That’s all that matters.”
Alessio nodded, but it made no sense.
His mother was always there, always cooking, always smiling, always reading to him before bed. At most, she’d gone away for a night, when it couldn’t be helped. Never longer.
“When will she be back?”
“Damn it,” his father swore. “She won’t be. Don’t you understand? She has gone. Left us for good. You are to stop thinking of her, and certainly never speak of her. Do you understand?”
Alessio flinched at his father’s unusually angry tone, the words cracking through the room like a whip before devolving into muttering that made no sense to Alessio. Words likeother man. Unfaithful. Cotswolds. Miserable life.Words that were of no consequence to a little boy who was still reeling from the idea that his mother wasgone.
“She…didn’t want…”
“No. She didn’t want you. Or me. She has gone.” Alessio senior held out a hand to his son, his eyes expressing a challenge, daring him to be brave. The young boy stared back even as his lower lip began to tremble, and he tried to make sense of the idea that his mother had left. The feelings crashing through him were new and strange, but there was no time to study them, far less to understand them.
His father was asking something of him, and Alessio had only one parent left now—he didn’t intend to lose him as well.
“I’m coming, papa,” he said quietly, pressing his hand into his father’s. As they walked, side by side, from the palatial living room, Alessio wondered at the pain in his chest, and if it would ever go away again. In truth, it wouldn’t. Not, at least, for a great many years and even then, only if he was brave enough to let it…
Chapter1
“WE’RE CLOSED!” Charlotte called through the heavy oak doors, wiping what felt like the millionth table of crumbs and sticky ale marks, her eyes lifting to the clock in the hall. At just past ten, she was already working an hour beyond when her shift was supposed to have ended. As so often happened, she’d been the only one available to cover closing. It was one of the cons of living just upstairs—everyone knew you were almost always available.
The knock sounded, louder than before, and she ground her teeth together before weaving through the remaining tables, placing the dishcloth on the bar as she passed. A coaster was on the floor, and she crouched on autopilot, lifting it between fingertips and placing it beside her cloth.The Duck and Fig,it proclaimed in elegant gold script against a matte black background—the colour theme had been her suggestion, shortly after taking up the head chef position in the quaint Cotswold pub’s kitchen, three years earlier.
Wiping her hands on the apron as she approached the front of the pub, she pushed the heavy lock down, and drew the door inwards, a polite yet cool look of enquiry on her face. She was too tired for any of the regulars to be deciding they wanted to ‘make a night of it’.
It was dark out, the light to the pub switched off and the cloudy, mid winter’s eve offered little moonlight, but even with only the blade of warmth thrown from the pub behind her, she could see this wasn’t a regular patron. Having lived in the little Cotswolds village for years now, she knew most residents—certainly the pub-frequenting ones—quite well, even in silhouette. This person stood easily six and a half feet tall with broad shoulders and a body that was quite impossible to discern beneath his heavy wool overcoat. The boxiness of it simply made him look…enormous.
“I’m sorry.” Her voice was a little squeaky. “We’re closed.”
“I have reserved a room.” His words were accented, Italian, she guessed, and deep, a tone that was quite fascinating.
She frowned, mentally toting up the guest list for the day—not difficult to do when only one person was due to arrive. This close to Christmas was usually flat out, but a new hotel had just opened across town, filled with all the old-world country style people came to the Cotswolds for, meaning the pub was a little slower than normal. The weekend should have a full house though, she thought with crossed fingers. “Mr Gray?”
“No.”
“Oh.” She cast a glance over her shoulder. “Are you sure you have the right place? The Duck and Fig?”
“Si.”
Charlotte’s lips tugged to the side in an unconscious gesture of consideration.
“At the Duck and Fig?” She repeated.
“As I said.” A large exhalation could be heard—a sigh of exasperation and she smiled despite herself. She could barely see the man and yet he immediately gave her the impression of being impatient and haughty—two qualities Charlotte generally found best when teased.
“Well, then, you’d better come in and take a seat while I get to the bottom of it,” she said with a small sigh of her own. She was bone-weary, but there was a strange electrical current in the air, and it was breathing fresh energy deep into her body. “What was your name?”
“Alessio,” he replied crisply, the word sending a strange shiver down her spine. She stepped backwards, waiting for him to follow her before bolting the door locked and turning to regard him properly. He was tall even when compared to the Christmas tree that dominated the space, its old-fashioned lights casting the pub in a quaint and cosy atmosphere that Charlotte adored.
Haughty, definitely, but also, utterly ridiculously handsome. Her lips parted on a quick rush of breath as feminine instincts long ago exiled to the recesses of her brain and mind jangled to life in one screaming fever pitch of awareness. It was impossible not to stare—at his thick, dark hair, strong, proud brow, dark eyebrows, aquiline nose, square jaw with just the right amount of stubble, strong, chiseled lips, strong looking neck and shoulders and a physique that was, quite simply, stunning.
