Page 2 of Pregnant in the Italian's Palazzo

Aria Dane clutched the mud-covered skirt of her dusty pink bridesmaid gown and shivered, once again wishing that she’d had the foresight to design a matching coat to shield her from the October weather. The delicate satin and tulle gown had been a flamboyant last-minute choice, back when she’d assumed she would be standing and posing for pictures for the majority of the afternoon, not running through Manhattan in the pouring rain in pursuit of a runaway bride.

She checked her phone once again, waiting for a response from the recently departed billionaire groom’s security team. They said that Priya had probably just got cold feet but she knew her friend. She knew that something was very, very wrong.

She looked up at the old stone courthouse with its windows glowing orange in the rapidly fading evening light. She had made a few calls to the places she thought Priya might have run to, only to come up empty. Now she was stuck at the scene of the crime, so to speak, with less than five dollars left in her tiny clutch bag and no way of getting home. The sense of abandonment was strong and deeply triggering, but she refused to let her mind wander back to the one other time she’d found herself discarded by someone she trusted in a strange place.

She banged on the tall oak door of the historic building, not surprised to find the venue had been closed up. It was Sunday evening and the space had only been booked exclusively for the wedding, after all. The rain still fell in a light shower, the streets glistening under the feet of pedestrians. She stood frozen in her spot under the portico, her mind whirring over her options. Her flight home to London was due to depart in a few hours and all of her possessions were locked inside Priya’s apartment. Including her passport, her ticket and the tablet computer she used for work. She froze, feeling panic and worry break through the first rush of adrenaline.

She was stranded.

Aria had long ago accepted that she was a natural helper, the kind of person who saw a problem and jumped into action without a thought. And yet every time she was in trouble herself, she always found herself alone. Like right now.

She looked at her phone once again, feeling her stomach twirl. She was going to miss her flight and that meant missing her opportunity to give the presentation that she had been working on for the past month. The one constant in her life over the past ten years was her job as a fashion buyer in one of London’s largest department stores. She’d walked through the doors as a college dropout and worked her way up to a place where she now actually had some creative input on what went out on the floor each season.

In fact, over the past few years they’d even supported her as she undertook an online textile degree at evenings and weekends and relentlessly pitched her ideas to expand their minuscule plus-size lingerie section. She swallowed past the knot that formed in her throat. With all of the downsizing that had swept through the departments lately, shereallyneeded to get home.

She briefly considered calling her parents for help and fought the swift wave of discomfort that followed. Being an outspoken, spontaneous creative in a family full of very calm, very organised accountants was hard enough without the fact that, unlike her three older sisters, she didn’t earn a six-figure income. She barely earned enough to pay the rent on her studio flat in Richmond as it was.

None of them would be surprised that she needed help, of course. It had been more than a decade since her own ill-fated elopement, but her parents still saw her as the foolish daughter who’d found herself abandoned on a Greek island by her spoilt, rich boyfriend.

She was the last person who could judge anyone for an impulsive jaunt into matrimony, but the moment Priya had asked her to travel to Manhattan to support her through a last-minute marriage of convenience with a stranger, her intuition had screamed at her. She’d felt a soul-deep sense of unsettlement about the arrangement, but put it down to knowing this marriage meant Priya had to leave London.

There were a great many things in life that she was not sure of, but the intention of never entering into matrimony with another person was one that she’d thought she and her best friend had shared.

A low tinny whistling noise made her jump and it took her a few moments to realise that the noise was coming from the phone she’d stuffed into the bodice of her dress.

She hissed a greeting, the past ninety minutes of adrenaline making her hands shake even as she fought to keep her voice civilised.

‘Relax. I’m fine. I’m safe.’ Priya’s voice was strangely breathless, her words uncharacteristically quick and clipped. ‘I...I found another way to solve my problem but I need to leave town for a few weeks.’

Aria pressed her lips together, silencing the instant exclamation of disbelief on the tip of her tongue. First her calm sensible friend had run away from a wedding that would have solved all of her problems, then she suddenly had to leave town for a few weeks...? Priyanevermade spontaneous plans, she hated breaking routine.

‘Another way? Another groom, you mean?’ Aria asked, her heartbeat pounding loudly in her ears as she tried to think of what she needed to ask Priya to ensure her safety. ‘Where are you going? Where is he taking you?’

Priya’s voice was hesitant as she explained, as if she couldn’t speak freely, but she was adamant that she was safe. It was obvious that whomever she was accepting help from was with her, standing nearby. Definitely a man. Yet another out-of-character action for her best friend. They both had their own issues with trusting the opposite sex, it had been what drew them together in a college bar as they’d bonded over stories of their disastrous first attempts down the aisle. They trusted one another with the hard stuff, or at least they had.

Her fingers tightened on the phone’s hard case. ‘I don’t like this. I don’t like any of it.’

‘I don’t like it either, but it’s what I need to do.’ Priya’s voice cut off for a moment, a strange tapping sound coming from the background. When she spoke again her voice was calmer. ‘Look, it will all be fine. I’ll explain everything once I’m back.’

Suspicion clouding her senses, Aria whispered into the phone. ‘If you can’t talk, just say yes or no. I heard Xander sent guards in pursuit of his brother...there was this one really intense, dark-haired man. Are you with him?’

The line went dead.

Aria chewed on her nail, feeling a pinch as she bit her skin. She had begun to pace at some point, a habit of hers when she felt restless, but when a throat cleared nearby, she realised she was no longer alone.

She fought to hold in the strange reaction that caught in her chest as she took in the man standing a respectable distance away from her. The same man she’d seen earlier, watching from a car across the street as the scandalous wedding unfolded. Working in the fashion industry, she was no stranger to beautiful men, but this man wasn’t just handsome...he had the kind of magnetic presence and other-worldly good looks that made him stand out. His swarthy tan and silk pocket square made him look like a movie star from another time.

Was this the brother that Priya’s erstwhile groom had seemed so frantic to find? He would fit the bill for the wealthy Mytikas family—everything about him seemed to scream wealth and privilege. Passers-by gave him a wide berth, some even stared as though they knew they were observing someone important...someone of power. And yet, when she gave herself a moment to look at him in detail, she could practically feel his discomfort as he barely tolerated the attention. He reminded her of a lion in captivity, one who had been tethered and seemingly tamed but...still vibrated with a fierce primal energy obvious to anyone who looked beyond the polished surface of his designer suit.

He was looking directly at her, his eyes scanning along the mud splatters that now painted her sheer stockings, as though the sight irritated him. He had stopped at the end of the steps and she was intensely aware that she was a woman standing alone on a quiet street...yet she strangely didn’t feel any fear. In fact, she seemed to be waiting for him to speak, her breath held and her body leaning ever so slightly forward.

His gaze met hers for a split second and for a moment she stood frozen, her body enthralled under the laser focus of stormy blue eyes and long lashes. It was an assessing glance, barely lasting more than five seconds or so before he looked away, but Aria instantly felt her heart thundering in her chest.

‘Do you require assistance?’ he asked in heavily accented English.

‘What gave me away?’

‘I saw what happened with the wedding. You are a friend of the bride and groom?’

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