Page 15 of The Virgin's Dance with the Devil
Rico had learned Georgia was pregnant a few weeks ago. His men had been sending him daily reports on her movements since her final weekend with Niccolo in Paris. A couple of hospital visits eight weeks apart had roused suspicions, but she’d disappeared in the hospital’s warren of corridors too quickly for his men to get their bearings. Deeply suspicious about those hospital visits and her changing shape, and with her phone, which was already being monitored, revealing nothing, he’d ordered bugs to be put into the flat she shared with her sister, Callie. Within hours of those bugs being implanted, he’d listened to a heated row between the two sisters about the pregnancy and Georgia’s refusal to tellNiccolo about it. It was a row repeated a number of times until the sisters were barely on speaking terms... not until that morning.
Rico’s men had dropped the ball. Having heard Georgia leave for work, no one had bothered monitoring the bugs in real-time, and so no one knew she’d returned home shortly afterwards and caught Callie preparing to fly out to Naples with the sole reason of telling Niccolo he was going to be a father.
This was where Rico’s men had dropped the ball a second time. The imbeciles had failed to continually monitor Georgia’s phone communications and so missed the panicked message she’d sent to Niccolo in the minutes after her twin left their home for the airport with a bullshit story of her unstable sister flying over to destroy him by sharing intimate pictures of them with the press.
If Rico’s idiot spies had done their jobs properly and relayed all this information to him in real-time, he would have made sure to send a welcome party to the airport to greet her. Mercifully for those idiots, this hadn’t been necessary. Niccolo had taken his ex-lover’s warning about her sister being a psychopath at face value and dispatched his best man, Dante Coscarelli, to meet her. Dante had duly left Accardiano, intercepted Callie and flown her to his Tuscan castle, where Rico had it on great authority he intended to keep her locked away until after the wedding. So, potential disaster averted. At least for now.
Niccolo wasn’t stupid. He knew he had to marry Siena or suffer the consequences. But avoiding a potential sex scandal on the eve of his wedding as he thought he was doing was one thing. Learning he’d got another woman pregnant…?
Niccolo was impulsive and, Rico suspected, in love with Georgia. If he learned about the baby, all bets were off, which meant the wedding would probably be off,which meant humiliation for the Espositos. The whole of Italy was going mad for the wedding of Lorenzo Esposito’s daughter to the son of a Duke, and Rico’s father was not a man to take humiliation lightly.
If Niccolo jilted Siena, he would be lucky to escape living the rest of his life in a wheelchair.
Lorenzo knew about the baby. He knew Georgia’s sister was currently tucked away in Dante’s castle. He also knew Rico had dispatched his team, plus extras, to keep watch of all the castle’s exit points. If Callie Thomas escaped, Rico’s men would know immediately, and action would be taken. The choice of action would be Lorenzo’s to make.
Rico hoped it didn’t come to that.
Reassured with his son’s answer, Lorenzo’s eyes flickered across the room. “Good. Keep me abreast if that changes.”
Rico nodded, a gesture his father didn’t notice as his attention had been diverted by a couple of Siena’s friends strolling out of the restaurant. They were the same friends his father had been flirting with earlier around the pool, and he swallowed his distaste when his father excused himself and followed them out. If his mother didn’t care about his father’s taste for young women, then why should he? It wasn’t illegal – his father liked his women young, but he liked them to be women – so why should it turn his stomach?
All thoughts of his queasy stomach disappeared when Gennaro and Luisa left the restaurant. Rico had twisted his seat around, ostensibly to better converse with his grandparents but in truth for a better view of the exit, and now he could see Marisa and her mother helping Pietro Rossellini to his feet.
Slowly swirling what remained of his liqueur, Rico made the appropriate noises to his grandmother’s latest pitch for him to settle down with a ‘nice girl’, but his attention was fully on the chestnut-haired beauty whose kisses he could still taste on his tongue. Would she meet him by the spa pool? Usually, he’dbe able to guess with one hundred per cent accuracy, but Marisa wasn’t like the women he usually pursued.
When she’d walked into the restaurant, she’d looked so damned sexy that his heart had near damned stopped at the sight of her. She wasn’t even trying to look sexy, not in that russet-coloured dress. It was a simple long-sleeved maxi dress with buttons running its length, and showed barely an inch of flesh, but the effect on Rico was the same as if she’d strolled in wearing a corset and stockings.
He'd spent the whole meal fully aware that she was dining under the same roof.
They made their way to the exit slowly, the two Rossellini women keeping pace with Pietro’s shuffles. Rico admired the dignified way Pietro held himself, admired too, the way the women flanked him but didn’t baby him, ready to catch him if he stumbled without making a big deal of it.
Only when they were in his direct line of vision did Marisa turn her head and catch his eye with a stare full of longing. If he’d blinked, he would have missed the tiny shake of her head.
Chapter Five
Rico approachedthe exclusive nightclub his brothers were holed up in and strolled past the rowdy crowd of scantily clad young women queuing for admittance. They were the usual beauties who draped themselves over the Espositos like wasps to honey. He barely noticed them; paid them not the slightest bit of attention. The only woman he currently wanted draped over him was likely tucked up in bed, fast asleep like the good girl she was. He would have enjoyed bringing Marisa here, would bet his fortune she’d never stepped foot in a nightclub before.
He’d waited outside the spa for an hour hoping he’d misinterpreted the shake of her head, but there had been no sign of her. A stroll through the hotel’s grounds and all its bars had revealed no sight of her either.
The bouncer manning the VIP entry point recognised him and put his hand to the rope barrier in preparation for lifting it.
He heard his name and looked over. The giggling women had recognised him and were vying for his attention. One was flicking her blonde hair over her shoulder, another tugging the top part of her micro dressdown to show off more cleavage.
Just as he would bet his fortune that Marisa had never stepped foot in a nightclub before, he would bet the same that none of these women were local. They were there, on a Monday night, because they knew there was a good chance the Espositos and many of the other famous names staying at The Bianchi would be there.
All of them were dressed for sex. All were gazing at him with lascivious expectation, and as he gazed back at what he would normally consider rich pickings, Rico felt not even a tendril of desire. He felt nothing, and suddenly the thought of wasting the next few hours in a sweaty nightclub turned his stomach.
Ignoring the women’s catcalls, he turned and walked away, firing off a quick message to his brothers telling them he would no longer be joining them.
Back in his suite, Rico stepped out on the balcony and craned his neck for a glimpse of the main hotel. He wondered what Marisa was doing. Was she reading? Thinking about him? Dreaming of him?
Rico had made more progress in one day than he’d expected, but frustratingly, it felt like no progress at all, and now there was a restlessness in his veins of a kind he didn’t know how to purge. Okay, hedidknow how to purge it, but she wasn’t ready yet, and he refused to listen to the taunting voice in his head that said she would never be ready and he would lose his bet. This was only day one. Plenty of time left.
A message pinged on his phone. An insulting message about his manhood from Mattia. Another message pinged with another insult to his manhood from Tommaso.
He went inside and flopped backwards on his bed.
Gazing up at the ceiling, he undid his trousers and tookhold of his impugned – a word he’d learned during his hours spent writing to Marisa – manhood. His cock, which had spent most of the day vacillating between half and full mast, responded immediately, especially when he closed his eyes and relived the sensation of Marisa’s sweet tongue in his mouth. It didn’t take much at all to bring himself off, but it did nothing to cure his restlessness.
