Page 1 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 5-8

His Enemy’s Italian Surrender

Sharon Kendrick

“There’s only one thing I want to do right now,” he said, his voice as taut as a piece of elastic that had been stretched to breaking point. “And that is to kiss you.”

Their gazes locked. Kelly realized what a massive admission this was for a man like Romano to make—a man who had once taken great pleasure in rejecting her. And if it didn’t sound in the least bit romantic, that was because it wasn’t. More like an annoying itch that needed to be scratched.

But wasn’t it exactly the same for her? She was wrong for him in so many ways. She didn’t need a heartless control freak as her first lover, and if she walked away now, she would occupy the moral high ground and it was a very tempting prospect.

But not nearly as tempting as the alternative…

She met the hard glitter of his eyes and suddenly all her reasons for refusing melted away. “So kiss me,” she urged him recklessly. “I’m not stopping you.”

With thanks to Hilary “Hils” Birch, violin virtuoso and woman of encyclopedic knowledge. Also to the masterly clarinetist Colin “Colinas” Lawson. You have introduced me to so much beautiful music, for which I am forever grateful. xx

CHAPTER ONE

THE STORM ROARED, the rain lashed, and the inky-dark sky seemed to reflect the current state of Romano Castelliari’s mood.

Which was angry, to say the least.

He had just returned from Turin where he had been poised to sign the deal of a lifetime. The purchase of one of Italy’s most iconic car factories to add to his already impressive portfolio had been a long-held dream and for once he had allowed his stony heart to feel a flicker of anticipatory joy. And then, right at the last minute, the elderly owner had pulled out, citing a deep aversion to Romano’s lifestyle as his reason.‘I want to sell my company to a family man,’he had rasped.‘Not an international playboy.’

The old man had been adamant, stubbornly rejecting every inducement Romano had offered, leaving the Italian billionaire—simmering with a quiet rage—to make his way to where his private jet waited. He was still simmering now.

‘Porca miseria!’he raged, although there was nobody around to hear him. What right did Silvano di Saccucci have to refuse a deal on such flimsy grounds? What right did anyone have to stand in the way of his wishes? Or to judge him like that?

Irritably, he continued to pace the corridors of his Tuscan retreat, glaring as the rain lashed against the windows of the ancientcastello, obscuring the mountains in the distance with a heavy grey curtain.

He had never been a man who allowed himself to be governed by the elements and would walk, or ride, or hunt boar in almost any weathers. But this! This never-ending rain was yet one more intolerable fact to add to his growing list of inconveniences and if the coming weekend had not been fixed in stone, he might have taken himself off to somewhere warm, maybe Brazil, to watch one his cars competing in the Premio Mondo.

He scowled. Certain social events were inevitable when you were custodian of a vast Italian estate like this and, since he was rarely here, he always limited them to a few per year. This weekend was the baptism of his little half-sister’s baby. Actually, Floriana was not so little any more, he reminded himself, for she was a wife now and a mother. But he was not looking forward to it, because such occasions always prompted intrusive questions—the most intrusive being the supposedly innocent query about when he intended having children of his own.

Innocent they most certainly were not, though he should have been used to fielding them by now. How many times had lovers looked deep into his eyes, with what he always considered a rather bovine expression? It usually happened after a particularly satisfying bout of sex, when they suspected he might have let his guard down, because they were foolish enough not to realise that heneverlet his guard down. When would they ever learn? ‘You’d make such a good father, Romano,’ they would coo, as if the idea had only just occurred to them.

This was a lie. He knew his limitations—the very same ones which had made Silvano withdraw his offer at the last minute. He had neither the desire nor the tolerance to settle down, despite the growing pressure to do so with every year which passed. A shudder of distaste whispered its way over his skin. Why create a situation which would inevitably draw his memory back to his own, wretched childhood?

And now he had opened a floodgate to the rogue thoughts which came tumbling in. Because it had been a night like this, hadn’t it?

His body tensed.

The night his mother had taken him away. He remembered rain lashing down on him as he had been carried outside in her arms. The howl of the wind as he had been bundled into the back of a waiting limousine. He recalled the pungent smell of some sickly sweet and cloying smoke and then…nothing—until he had awoken in an unfamiliar house with his mother kissing an unfamiliar man who was not his father.

Romano felt a pulse begin to hammer at his temple. The ordeal had lasted a full three years before he was free again. But you could never really be free of your past, could you? Good or bad, those experiences made you the person you were. Every criticism laid at his door, he could trace back to that interlude. He accepted that it accounted for his lack of feelings. His chosen remoteness from other people. His sense of always being on the outside, looking in. The man who never really fitted in anywhere.

And that was the way he liked it.

Because he didn’t want emotional mess. He had no intention of going through that again. He didn’t want pain, or insecurity. He lived his life in a carefully controlled way and if anybody ever dared challenge him, then he cut them out with a ruthlessness which came as easily as breathing to him.

He threw another log onto the massive fire which burned so brightly in the castle’s entrance hall, splashing the dark panelled walls with red and gold and providing some much-needed warmth, because it had been freezing when he had arrived at the emptycastello. At least he had been granted an unexpected day’s grace before everyone else got here. His half-sister and her family, along with his stepmother, had all been delayed, which meant he would be able to spend the rest of the evening alone. He swallowed. Trying very hard not to think about the other guest…

The unwanted one.

The spectre at the feast.

The green-eyed witch with the cascade of copper curls.

The woman who…

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