Chapter Two

      GIANNI followed Meg’s instructions only by default. He was so tired his body took complete control of his mind. Leaving the new arrival to fend for herself, he trudged up to his suite. Working entirely on autopilot, he kicked off his shoes and fell into bed.

      The next thing he knew, he was waking up with the sun in his eyes and hunger gnawing a hole in his stomach. Grabbing his bedside phone, he rang Housekeeping to order some food. Megan was right, he told himself. He had needed sleep. He must have been out of action for hours.

      Twenty minutes later, shaved, showered and feeling slightly more human, he walked into the dining room of his suite. A meal was being laid out on its central table. His body clock told him it should be dinner. It didn’t look like it. In fact, it didn’t look like anything that had appeared on the Villa Castelfino’s menu in all his thirty-two years.

      ‘That food looks delicious,’ he said suspiciously, picking up the neatly folded copy of La Repubblica lying on his tray.

      ‘It is, signor. Some of us were invited to lunch over at the Garden Cottage today, and the head gardener gave us this to eat, too.’

      Before Gianni could question the man further, he noticed something.

      ‘This is Monday’s newspaper. What happened to Sunday, Rodolfo?’

      ‘The indoor staff had strict instructions not to disturb you, signor.’

      The man put such an odd emphasis on the word ‘indoor’ that Gianni’s mind filled instantly with suspicion. He walked around the table, surveying his unlikely meal from every angle. There were cheese palmiers with half a dozen different sorts of salads and a cut glass dish of something brightly coloured.

      ‘This looks like English trifle. I haven’t seen that since I was at school. Where did it come from?’

      ‘The head gardener suggested some amendments to your menu, signor.’

      Gianni stopped pacing. Frowning, he shook a finger in the air. ‘That was what I was going to ask you a moment ago. I didn’t know we had a head gardener,’ he said slowly, suspecting he already knew what had happened. The girl who had invited herself into his estate had become a cuckoo in the nest the moment he turned his back.

      ‘Miss Imsey has only recently arrived, signor.’

      ‘Oh…her,’ Gianni said with the airy exhaustion of a man who had a million employees, all of them more trouble than they were worth. ‘Well, don’t worry. She won’t be here for long. I’m more interested in practical skills than paper qualifications. People who hide from life by studying are always afraid of hard work.’ He was quite confident in his views, but the look on Rodolfo’s face instantly made him suspicious again. ‘Oh, now don’t say you’ve been taken in by that face, or those legs…her smile, that rivulet of hair or those baby blue eyes…’

      Gianni’s tone began to waver along with his conviction. Straightening his jacket like a prosecuting counsel, he brought himself briskly back to the ancestral line. No member of staff could be allowed to run riot around the place. It didn’t matter how pretty and distracting she was.

      ‘Or anything else, for that matter!’ He added sharply. ‘That girl is only interested in one thing—collecting her wages. She told me so herself, the moment she arrived.’

      Gianni’s waiter was in no hurry to leave. It was obvious he had something more to say. Reaching for a second cheese palmier, Gianni gave him a stare calculated to squeeze tears from a commando.

      ‘You look like you’ve got something else to tell me, Rodolfo.’

      The man coughed politely. ‘You may like to know that Cook is currently wearing a face like an old lemon, signor.’

      Gianni was bringing the serving tongs from the silver salver to his plate. When he heard those words, he stopped. The thought that Meg had been nice to him only so she could get paid was irritating. News that she could manage to annoy his staid old cook brought a grudging smile back to his face.

      ‘This wouldn’t have anything to do with the new head gardener, would it?’ he asked innocently.

      ‘Sì, Count.’

      ‘And…morale in the kitchens is…?’ Gianni probed, brushing pastry crumbs from his fingertips.

      ‘On the way up.’

      ‘I always said the Bellini family lets good staff have its head,’ Gianni said in a warm glow of self-satisfaction.

      Dismissing the waiter, he settled down to enjoy his meal. He was ravenous, and ate himself to a standstill. It was the first time he could ever remember sitting in the Villa Castelfino and pushing away a plate because he was full, rather than nauseous. It was then he realised he was beginning to feel better than he had done in years. As well as the improved diet, in one day he had managed to get more sleep than he normally did in a week. Then reality kicked in again. His father was dead. The future of hundreds of hectares of real estate and thousands of staff across the globe relied on him, in his capacity as the new Count di Castelfino. His business could expand now, exactly as planned.

      Walking over to his sound system, he put on some music. Then he went out onto the balcony leading from his private dining room. From there he could survey the scene at his leisure. All the land below him, right out as far as the sheltering hills, was now his responsibility. Until a few days ago, his vineyard had occupied fewer than a hundred hectares of the vast estate. That was set to change. Gianni had his gaze fixed firmly on the future. His nights of excess were behind him. From now on, improving his wine business would absorb all his waking moments. It saved him having to think about the one aspect of aristocratic life that loomed over him like a cloud of volcanic ash. He didn’t want to be the last man to bear his name and title—but neither did he want to see a child suffer by being born into the Bellini family. The taste of that was still bitter in his own mouth.

      He sat down to reflect on the view, trying to avoid thinking about the inevitable. It was quite a distraction. He had never really looked at the landscape outside his suite before. It had simply always been there. Now every vine, olive tree and cypress belonged to him. He relaxed in his seat contentedly.

      And then Megan Imsey walked into view, pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with tools. A broad brimmed straw hat shaded her expression, but Gianni could see she was enjoying herself in the sunshine. As he watched she turned her head this way and that, looking at the desiccated grasses sprawling over the weedy path. She must be heading for the walled garden, he realised. Work was already well under way there, on his father’s last project. It was an extravagance of greenhouses, wild enough to bankrupt the Bellini coffers. His study of her became critical. Why was she going there when he had already told her what he thought of his father’s plans? And what sort of person worked when they didn’t have to, in