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Because this was not only far better than anything she could have imagined while bracing herself for the sort of marriage her father had intended for her—this was magical.
Ago spent most of his time in Italy with her, flying back and forth to London for specific meetings and occasionally taking her with him when he went further afield. He made it seem as if he was not tending to his empire any longer, but tending to her instead. Mostly by turning her inside out with such consummate skill and wild heat that even thinking about it made her shudder with delight.
The medical team who monitored her from the accommodations Ago had made for them in the villa’s converted stables reported that her pregnancy was as healthy as anyone could wish. Between constant confirmation that the baby was well and Christmas cheer everywhere she looked, including lights in the austere column of cypress trees that lined the drive outside, Victoria found that she felt nothing but warmth.
The kind of warmth that had never featured prominently back at home, where her father was about as warm as a block of ice. Especially around the holidays.
But here in Italy, Ago had taught her things she could never have imagined existed. Not just the things that they could do together, naked and inventive. But how it couldfeel. Howshecould feel. Every day was a revelation.
It made her breathless to think she might have missed this.
She paused as she walked down the grand staircase, gazing out the wall of windows that gave her sweeping views over the Tuscan hills. She’d come to love this old, odd villa, slapped together with bits and pieces of all the Accardis who had lived here before her.
Sometimes, in moments like this, she couldn’t seem to stop thinking about the fact that all of this had come to her by chance.
What if she had married any one of the men her father had dangled her in front of all these years—as if she had never been anything but bait? What if one of them had bitten? Met her father’s ever-escalating price. Taken her and treated her...however it was such men treated the women in their lives. The ones they purchased outright and must therefore view as property. Objects to be used and then cast aside when their usefulness ended or something shinier and newer came along.
Her hope had been to find herself married to a different sort of man, one who would politely see to the making of the necessary heirs and then ignore her thereafter. But either way, once the reality of the marriage had time to settle and become routine and—hopefully—endurable, she’d daydreamed about a lovely little life with room for her to throw herself completely into her charity work and, one day, come over utterly dotty like the best sort of older British woman. She imagined she might raise cats or champion dogs or parakeets, or become a virtuoso gardener renowned the world over for a specific variety of rose.
That had always seemed to her like a happy ending. And yet she knew that there was no possibility that she would feel as she did now.
For she knew full well that there was only one Ago.
Standing there halfway down the stairs, she looked out over the cold, rainy, December morning and smoothed a hand over her bump. “You’re going to have a wonderful life, little bit,” she murmured to the baby she carried. “Just wait and see. It’s already so much better than anyone could have hoped.”
Ago had left their bed early this morning, as was his custom. She’d grown used to waking up without him, there in the master suite he’d moved her into when they’d returned from Rome. She’d been so dazzled by him then. So overwhelmed by his brooding masculinity, and all the many ways he could turn her inside out.
She suspected a part of her always would be.
But she was also finding ways to see around the dazzle these days.
That was a good thing. She was starting to get used to the rhythms of this life. A very different life from the one she’d known all these years, forever at her father’s beck and call and the focus for all his fury. Instead of having to wake early and attend Everard while he ranted at her about the men he wanted her to meet and the events he wanted her to attend, her mornings here were deliciously lazy. She was grateful that she did not feel a bit off the way she had in the early days of her pregnancy. She’d first thought it was a virus and later had tried her best to ignore how she felt as her fears had mounted.
But here, there was no fear. Here she woke when she liked and took the milky espresso drink provided to her as her single bit of caffeine for the day. Sometimes she nibbled at the biscotti the staff left for her, sometimes not. Then she normally rose and went out for her walk because it turned out that Ago had not misrepresented the many walking opportunities on the estate. She loved all the paths winding in and around the hills, through the vineyards that slumbered at this time of year, and down marvelously romantic lanes lined with more stately cypress trees.
Even in December, Tuscany was beautiful.
Today, however, it was wet. On other mornings she had gone out while it was misting or gray—because she was made of good English stock, thank you, and thrived in a bit of damp—but today the rain was coming down in sheets that reminded her a bit too much of home.
The parts of home she was happy enough to do without.
So instead of heading out, she wandered through the house instead, heading without quite meaning to for the wing she rarely visited. She knew that Ago’s office was located in this part of the villa. It was how he ran his empire from afar.
Perhaps today was the perfect opportunity to tell him what she’d dug up in the family library. Old diaries and letters that painted a rather different view of the spotless, dutiful Accardi legacy Ago was always so concerned with. Because she had reason to believe that, in fact, he was descended from regular old human beings with their passions and indiscretions aplenty, just like anyone else.
After these few short weeks together, these long, sweet days and nights that went on forever, Victoria thought he might enjoy getting to know the truth about the relatives he’d kept on so many pedestals for so long. He might welcome the opportunity to look at them face-to-face, for a change.
His business wing was different from the rest of the house. It was newer, clearly installed to feel as much like a modern corporate office as possible in this ancient villa. The walls were bare, with fewer windows—as if the only way for someone to truly work here was to barricade themselves away from all the abundant natural beauty that poured in from everywhere else.
She heard Ago’s voice before she saw him and she could conjure him up in her mind to easily, now. He liked to dress for work, even this close to Christmas, and insisted on looking the part on all the video calls he took throughout the day. And the part he played required perfectly tailored suits and innate sophistication, though his natural ferocity fairly hummed in the air all around him.
Maybe it was the contrast that took her breath away.
And Victoria was so busy imagining how handsome he looked, always, that it took her a moment to register what he was actually saying as she drew closer to the room he used as his main office.
Not to mention who he was saying it to.
“I hear you, Everard,” he said coolly.
