"Oh, come on," Scarlett said with a laugh, rolling her eyes. "It's a villa in Rome. How bad could it be?"
The answer to that question came soon, as she gingerly entered the faded, dilapidated eighteenth-century villa, set behind a tall gate with a guardhouse and a private cobblestoned drive.
Holding the baby carrier carefully in her arms-she'd refused all offers from bodyguards and her husband to carry it, as her baby's eight pounds was precious cargo to her-Scarlett went through the enormous front door into the foyer. Stepping over the crumpled trash on the floor, she went farther into the villa.
On the high ceiling of the great room, a disco ball gleamed dully in the shadows. She stopped.
Black leather furniture, zebra and leopard print pillows, strobe lights and multiple bowls of overflowing cigarette butts decorated the room. In front of the enormous marble fireplace was a bearskin rug stained with red wine...at least she hoped it was wine. Empty liquor bottles littered every corner.
Wide-eyed, Scarlett turned to her husband, who was watching her with amusement. "I told you."
"Was your tenant a playboy?" she said faintly. "From the early seventies?"
"Styles change. People don't always change with them." Vin's lips quirked. "Luigi did live here a long time. He was quite the ladies' man, for eighty-five."
"Eighty-five! So did he move, or...?" She paused delicately.
Vin shook his head with a grin. "Decided he was finally ready to settle down. Moved to Verona and married his childhood sweetheart."
"Wow," Scarlett breathed. "Getting married. At eighty-five."
"Just goes to show it's never too late to change your life." His sensual lips lifted to a grin. "He only moved out last week. So this place hasn't been remodeled yet." He tilted his head. "The suite at the hotel is still available..."
Scarlett shook her head. "No hotels. When I was young, we didn't live in any house long enough to make memories, good or bad. Don't worry," she said brightly. "We'll make this the home of our dreams!"
He snorted. "Dream-or nightmare?"
"This house has good bones," she said with desperate hope. "Wait and see."
Later, Scarlett looked back and thought the next two months of remodeling the Villa Orsini were some of the happiest of her life.
Their first night was admittedly a little rough. The bodyguards brought in the necessary supplies, then hastily decamped to a neighboring three-star hotel. Only the bodyguard who'd lost the coin toss was forced to remain, and he chose to sleep on a cot in the foyer rather than face the rats' nests of bedrooms upstairs.
So it was just Vin and Scarlett and their baby sleeping in the great room, where the black leather sectional sofas were in decent repair, that first night.
She and Vin heated water themselves on the old stove for the baby's first sponge bath. It was almost like camping. There were no servants hovering. No phones ringing incessantly. No television or computers, even. They just shared a takeaway picnic dinner on a blanket on the floor, then played an old board game that Vin found in a closet upstairs, before they both crashed on the sofa, with Nico tucked warmly into his portable baby car seat next to her.
Her husband was protective, insisting that Scarlett take the most comfortable spot on the sofa, offering to get her anything she needed at any moment. When the baby woke her up at two in the morning to nurse, Vin woke up as well and tucked a pillow under her aching arm that held the baby's head.
"Thank you," she whispered.
"It is nothing, cara." His eyes glowed in the darkness. "You are the hero."
Just the two of them, she thought drowsily, regular first-time parents, a married couple in love, with each other and with their newborn baby.
The next morning, the hiring began, of designers and architects and a construction crew to start the remodel. No expense would be spared. "If you're determined to live here," Vin told her firmly, "we'll get it done as soon as possible."
As the villa was cleared out, cleaned, and slowly began to take shape, Vin suggested that they bring in permanent house staff. He wanted two full-time nannies-one for day, one for night-and a butler, housekeeper, gardeners. After their blissful night alone together, Scarlett had been crestfallen. She'd tried to convince Vin that she could take care of the villa herself. He'd laughed.
"You want to spend your every waking hour scrubbing floors? No. Leave that to others." He kissed her. "You have a far more important job."
"Taking care of Nico?" she guessed.
His dark eyes became tender. "Being the heart of our home." She melted a little inside. Then his smile lifted to an ironic grin. "You've got your work cut out for you, married to a ruthless bastard like me."
He was joking, of course, she thought loyally. Vin wasn't a ruthless bastard. He was a good man, and in spite of his tyrannical instincts, she knew he saw her as an equal partner. After all, he'd let her make the decisions about driving instead of flying, about remodeling the villa rather than enjoying the comfort of a hotel. And most of all, he had married her without a pre-nup. As partners, they had a chance to be happy in this marriage, she thought, really happy, for the rest of their lives.
The days passed, turned to weeks. November became December. Scarlett had pictured the Eternal City as a place of eternal sunshine, but to her surprise, winter descended on Rome.
The villa had become livable. Tacky old furnishings were removed, and the walls and floors of ten bedrooms were redone. The kitchen was expanded and modernized. Bathrooms were scrapped and remodeled, and one of the extra rooms was turned into a master en suite bathroom with walk-in closet. Vin had wanted to fly in the interior designer who'd decorated his New York penthouse, but remembering the stark black-and-gray décor from the single night she'd spent there, Scarlett had refused. She wanted to make the villa warm and bright and, above all, comfortable. She'd do the decorating herself.
She loved every minute. Each morning when the baby woke her up to be fed, Scarlett woke up with a smile on her face, stretching happily in the enormous bed. She didn't get much sleep, with the baby waking her through the night, but in spite of feeling tired, Scarlett had never been so happy. Joy washed over her like sunshine.
She had the home she'd always dreamed of. The family she'd always dreamed of. The husband she'd always dreamed of. She had everything she'd ever wanted, except one thing.
Vin hadn't told her he loved her.
But soon. Soon, she told herself hopefully. In the meantime, the villa was larger than she'd imagined her home could be, so she brought it down to size. Made it homey and inviting for family and friends.
She carefully began to add household staff. Wilhelmina Stone was the first person she hired, luring her away from Switzerland as housekeeper by doubling her salary.
"You don't need to pay me so much," Wilhelmina had grumbled. "We're practically family."
"Which is why I insist," Scarlett replied happily.
Then a few other employees were added, two maids and a gardener, but Scarlett flatly refused the idea of a butler and two full-time nannies. Instead, the kind, fiercely loyal housekeeper soon became a second grandmother to Nico.
When the guest rooms became habitable, the baby's actual grandparents, Giuseppe and Joanne, came down from Tuscany for a visit in December, bringing Maria and Luca with them. They all enjoyed a weekend of sightseeing, which was ostensibly to "show the baby the sights of Rome"-as if a five-week-old in a stroller who couldn't yet sit upright would appreciate the Colosseum, the Pantheon and the Trevi Fountain.
"Of course he appreciates them," Giuseppe said expressively, using his hands. "He is my grandson! It is in his blood!"
"He can't even taste gelato yet," Vin pointed out, rather peevishly, she thought.
It was the only discordant note to the joyful melody of Scarlett's life. Vin seemed strangely uncomfortable around his family, and the more loving they were, the more he seemed to flee. Thirty minutes into their sightseeing tour, he abruptly announced an emergency at the Rome office that seemed like an excuse to leave. But Scarlett must be mistaken, because why would he want to flee his family, who loved him so?
In spite of that small flaw, Scarlett was happy and proud to share their newly beautiful home with the family that had been so kind to her. The best moment was when Maria and Luca announced they'd picked a wedding date: the second week of January, in Rome.
"A winter wedding, in Rome," Maria had beamed, holding her fiancé's hand. "It'll be so romantic."
"You are romantic," Luca had said rapturously and kissed her.
Scarlett had looked at Vin, but he'd avoided her gaze.
Since his parents' visit, he'd seemed even more strangely distant, spending all his time at the office, where his company was trying to devise a new offer to interest Mediterranean Airlines' CEO, Salvatore Calabrese. But the man flatly refused to have anything to do with Vin now. It made Scarlett indignant, but she knew her husband would wear him down. No one could resist Vin for long. Scarlett knew this personally.