He had known James for years. His father was English and his mother Italian—her family home was on the shores of Lake Garda, near the Zanelli family home. He had met James as a teenager in the summer holidays at a local sailing club, and they had been friends ever since.
Usually Lorenzo avoided weddings like the plague, but now he was grateful he had accepted James’s invitation—it could not have come at a better time. The past two weeks had seen his perfectly contented and well-ordered life severely disrupted.
First the photographs from Manuel had disturbed him so much he’d been angry on meeting Lucy Steadman, and behaved with less than his usual iron control. And then her expectation that he would agree to help her keep a business she had no interest in and that made little money had infuriated him still further. Kissing her had been a bad mistake, but how like a woman to expect a man to bail her out …
Then there was the complete and utter fool he had made of himself the next day. Instantly assuming the green-eyed little witch was following him. He still could not believe he had actually tried to have her thrown out of the building. For some reason her laughing eyes had featured in his dreams ever since, and why a plump little woman dressed not much better than a bag lady was disturbing his sleep he had no idea.
Maybe he was having a midlife crisis … His usual taste in women veered towards tall elegant brunettes, well groomed, immaculately dressed, and preferably with a brain.
The dinner party last Saturday with a few friends should have put him back on an even keel, but it had turned out to be a surprise birthday party arranged by Olivia Paglia—as if he needed reminding he was thirty-eight. His luck had continued its downward spiral when on Monday a photograph of him, with Olivia wrapped around him as they exited the supper club at two on Sunday morning, had appeared in the press, with an article full of innuendo.
The following day had brought a summons from his mother—the one woman in the world whose opinion actually mattered to him. His father had died when he was twenty-six, and he had been head of the family ever since—though he only occasionally stayed at the family home. He had various properties of his own that he used. Seeing the disappointment and anger in her eyes when she’d demanded an explanation for his behaviour with a married woman had bothered him.
Astonishingly, his mother had confided in him that she had always known her husband had kept a mistress. She had not liked it, but had accepted it. But even his father, for all his faults, would never have taken a married woman to his bed—and certainly not his best friend’s wife.
Lorenzo could have told her his father had not had one mistress but two when he died. He knew because he had paid them off—plus he had known since he was a teenager of others, which had caused a rift between him and his father and was the reason he had gone to America to make his own way in the world. On his return he had discovered three more were on the books—his father had actually pensioned them off! Instead he’d bitten his tongue and listened as she berated him.
A Zanelli had never before been the subject of the tabloid press—he had disgraced the name. And then she’d got on to her favourite subject: it was past time he found a wife and settled down to produce a grandchild—an heir to the Zanelli name. Then, with tears in her eyes, she reminded him he was the only son left.
He had consoled himself that with luck, by the time he returned to Italy, the gossip started by the newspaper report would have blown over, and hopefully his mother would have forgotten as well. On flying into Exeter airport he had rented a car, and had driven down to Cornwall last night. He had booked into a country house hotel for the weekend, and would be flying out of London on Monday to New York for a week or two.
Much as he loved his own country, given the traditional position he had to uphold in Verona, he preferred the vitality of New York, where he usually had a lover. The women tended to be career-orientated, smart and sexy, and while his business affairs often appeared in the financial press his private affairs rarely registered on the press radar there. Whereas, given the status of the Zanelli name, in Verona, his every move was scrutinised by the gossip columns.
The bride passed by, and he caught sight of the single bridesmaid. For a moment he thought he was hallucinating.
Lucy Steadman … It couldn’t be?
Her mousy hair was not mousy at all, but a kaleidoscope of colour, with hints of red and gold, swept up at the sides and held with a garland of rosebuds on the crown of her head, revealing her delicate features and then falling in soft silken waves down her back.
His dark eyes moved slowly in stunned amazement over her shapely body. The strapless sea-green dress she wore enhanced the creamy smoothness of her skin and clung lovingly to her full firm breasts, a handspan waist and slim hips. How had he ever imagined she was fat? he asked himself, and could not take his eyes off her.