The Italian's Christmas Child(27)

She couldn’t ask because she didn’t think she could bear to live with the wrong answer.





CHAPTER TEN

TWO WEEKS LATER, Holly shuffled the messy pile of financial publications that Vito always left in his wake and lifted the other, more gossipy newspapers out to peruse. She flicked through the pages, thrilled when she was able to translate the occasional word of Italian.

Her knowledge of the language was slowly growing. She could manage simple interactions with their staff and greetings. Hopefully once she started proper Italian lessons with a local teacher later in the week her grasp of Italian would grow in leaps and bounds. After all, both her son and her husband would speak the language and she was determined not to be the odd one out. Vito’s desire that their son should grow up bilingual was more likely to be successful if she learned Italian as well.

Abandoning the papers, she selected a magazine, flipping through glossy photographs of Italian celebrities she mostly didn’t recognise until one picture in particular stopped her dead in her tracks. It was a photo of Marzia wearing the most fabulous sparkling ballgown with Vito by her side. She frowned and stared down at it with such intensity that she literally saw spots appear in front of her eyes. She struggled to translate the blurb beneath the picture. It appeared to be recent and it had been taken at some party. The previous week, Vito had spent two nights at his Florence apartment because he had said he was working late. Well, the first time he had been working late, the second time he had actually said that he had to attend a very boring dinner, which invariably would drag on into the early hours...

For dinner, read dinner dance, she reflected unhappily. Her entire attention was welded to the photo. Vito and Marzia had been captured at what appeared to be a formal dance with their arms in the air as if their hands had just parted from a clasp. Both of them were smiling. And my goodness, didn’t Marzia look ravishing? Not a blonde hair out of place. Holly’s fingers crept up to finger through her own tumbled mane. She studied Marzia’s perfectly made-up face and thought about her own careless beauty routine, which often consisted of little more than eyeliner, blush and lip gloss. Looking at that gorgeous dress, she glanced down at her own casual silky tee and skirt and low-heeled sandals. She was dressed very nicely indeed in expensive garments but there wasn’t even a hint of glamour or sequinned sparkle in her appearance.

Maybe it had only been one dance that Marzia and Vito had shared. And of course they had been photographed for such a potentially awkward moment between former partners was always of interest to others. And they were smiling and happy together. Why not? Her heart had shrunk into a tight, threatened lump inside her chest and her tummy felt as though it were filled with concrete. Vito had spent a couple of years with Marzia. They knew each other well and why should they be enemies? There was no reason why they shouldn’t dance together and treat each other like old friends, was there?

Vito hadn’t broken any rules. He hadn’t told her any lies. All right, he hadn’t mentioned the dancing or seeing Marzia, but then he never mentioned his ex, a reality that had made it very difficult for Holly to tackle the subject. Wasn’t Vito entitled to his privacy in relation to past relationships? In any case he was not the kind of man who would comfortably open up about previous lovers. Her eyes stung with tears because trying to be reasonable and take a sensible overview was such a challenge for her at that moment.

At the heart of her reaction, Holly registered, was Marzia’s sheer glamour and her own sense of inadequacy. Holly didn’t do glamour, had never even tried. The closest she had ever got to glamour was a Santa outfit. But what if that kind of gloss, Marzia’s gloss, was what Vito really liked and admired?

Obviously she had to confront him about the photo and there would probably be a perfectly reasonable explanation about why he had said nothing...

‘I knew you would make a fuss,’ Vito would be able to point out quite rightly.

She was a jealous cow and he probably sensed that. Although she had never been competitive with other women, having a rival that beautiful and sophisticated could only be hurtful and intimidating. She loved Vito so much and was painfully aware that he did not love her. In addition, she was always guiltily conscious that she had won her wedding ring purely by default. Vito had married her because she was the mother of his son.

Mother of his son, Holly repeated inwardly. Not a very sexy label, certainly not very glamorous. But it didn’t have to be that way, she reasoned ruefully. She could walk that extra mile, she could make the effort and dress up too. But she needed the excuse of an occasion, didn’t she? Well, at least to begin with... On her passage across the hall, she spoke to Silvestro and told him that she would like a special romantic meal to be served for dinner.

Silvestro positively glowed with approval and she went upstairs to go through her new wardrobe and select the fanciest dress she owned. In the oddest way she would have liked to put on a Santa outfit for Vito again but it wouldn’t work out of season. She would tackle Vito the moment he came home. She wouldn’t give him time to regroup and come up with evasions or excuses. What she wanted most of all was honesty. He needed to tell her how he truly felt about Marzia and they would proceed from that point.

Did he still have feelings for the beautiful blonde? How would she cope if he admitted that? Well, she would have to cope. Her life, Vito’s and Angelo’s were inextricably bound to the stability of their marriage. Would he want a separation? A divorce? Her brain was making giant leaps into disaster zones and she told herself off for the catastrophic effect that photo had had on her imagination and her confidence. Since when had she chosen to lie down and die rather than fight?

From the dressing room she extracted the hand-embroidered full-length dress, which glittered with sparkling beads below the lights. It definitely belonged in the glamour category.

* * *

Vito knew something strange was afoot the instant he walked into the hall of the castello and Silvestro gave him a huge smile. Silvestro had the face of a sad sheepdog and was not prone to smiling.

‘The signora is on the way downstairs...’ he was informed.

Vito blinked and then he saw Holly as he had only seen her on their wedding day, and quite naturally he stared. She drifted down the staircase in a fantastic dress that seemed to float airily round her hourglass curves. It was the sort of gown a woman wore to a ball and Vito suffered a stark instant of very male panic. Why was she all dressed up? What had he forgotten? Were they supposed to be going out somewhere? What special date had slipped past him unnoticed?

Silvestro spread wide the dining-room door and Vito saw the table set in a pool of candlelight and flowers and thought...what the hell? He spun back as Holly drew level with him, her blue eyes bright but her small face oddly tight and expressionless. A pang ran through Vito’s long, lean frame because he was accustomed to his wife greeting him at the end of the day as though he had been absent for a week...and in truth he thoroughly enjoyed the wholehearted affection she showered on both him and his son.

‘You look magnificent, bellezza mia,’ Vito declared, while frantically wondering what occasion he had overlooked and how he could possibly cover up that reality rather than hurt Holly’s feelings by admitting his ignorance.

She was so vulnerable sometimes. He saw that sensitivity in her and marvelled that she retained it even after all the disappointments life had faced her with. His primary role was to protect Holly from hurt and disillusionment. He didn’t want her to lose her innocence. He didn’t want her to turn cynical or bitter. But most of all he never ever wanted to be the man who disillusioned her.

‘Glad you like the dress,’ Holly said a tad woodenly. ‘Shall we sit down?’

‘I’m no match for your elegance without a shower and a change of clothes,’ Vito pointed out with a slight line dividing his black brows into the beginnings of a frown because her odd behaviour was frustrating him.

‘Please sit down. We’ll have a drink,’ Holly suggested, because she had laid that photo of Marzia and him at his place at the table and she was keen for him to see it before she lost her nerve at confronting him in what was starting to feel a little like a badly planned head-on collision.

Maybe she should have been less confrontational and given him warning. Only not if the price of that was Vito coming up with a polite story that went nowhere near the actual truth. She didn’t believe he would lie to her but he wouldn’t want to upset her and he would pick and choose words to persuade her in a devious way that her concerns were nonsensical.

Vito was on the edge of arguing until he glimpsed the photo, and its appearance was so unexpected that it stupefied him. He stared down at the photo of himself dancing with Marzia in wonderment while Silvestro poured his wine. Why were they apparently celebrating this inappropriate photograph with rose petals scattered across the table and the finest wine? His frown of incomprehension deepened.

‘What is this?’ he demanded with an abruptness that startled Holly as he swept up the photo.

Consternation gripped Holly because he didn’t sound puzzled, he sounded downright angry. ‘I wanted to ask you to explain that picture,’ she muttered warily.