Chapter 1

• ‘SO, I’VE been having wild, orgasmic sex every day with my tennis coach for over a month now.’
• ‘What?’ Astoria gave a start as she stared across the drawing room at her friend Fiona.
• The two women were putting the finishing touches to the décor of the country home Fiona would share with Axel following their Christmas wedding in a week’s time. As an interior designer, Astoria had spent the last month helping Axel and Fiona choose both the furniture and décor for the spacious house that she knew the two hoped would one day be filled with their children.
• ‘Hang on a minute.’ Astoria’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. ‘You don’t have a tennis coach, Fiona.’
• ‘True.’ Fiona, a beautiful Venetian, laughed at Astoria’s frowning expression. ‘But it caught your attention, didn’t it?’ She smiled wryly. ‘I’ve been talking to you for the last ten minutes, Astoria, and I’m pretty sure you haven’t heard a word I’ve said!’
• ‘Sorry, Fiona,’ Astoria apologised with a grimace.
• She had been doing her best, she really had, but obviously Fiona knew her too well to be fooled for a moment. Well, for any longer than ten minutes, anyway.
• The two women had first met when they were both fourteen and Fiona had arrived at Astoria’s boarding school from her home in Venice, sent there for a year by her brother Leo, the head of the D’Alessandro family, in order to improve her English. The two girls’ friendship had been so strong by the end of that year that when it had been time for Fiona to return home she had pleaded with Leo to let her come back to the English school for four more years and complete her education there. A battle she had lost…
• Astoria gave a shudder just at the memory of her first meeting with Leo D’Alessandro, after Fiona had insisted that Leo take both girls out to lunch so that she might introduce him to her English friend. Intimidating didn’t even begin to describe the arrogantly assured Venetian.
• Head of the D’Alessandro banking family for four of his then twenty-seven years, Leo D’Alessandro had been imposingly tall, his shoulders wide beneath his tailored suit, his stomach taut, legs long and muscular. Seeing his overlong black hair that he’d brushed back from his aristocratically handsome face, eyes of deep, brooding brown, high cheekbones, a long arrogant nose, a firm mouth that looked as if it rarely smiled, and a hard square jaw, it hadn’t been in the least difficult for Astoria to imagine that Leo D’Alessandro was descended from pirates as well as princes; she had a little more trouble imagining any D’Alessandro male could ever have been a priest, although she had been assured some of them had.
• It had been also obvious what Leo had thought of Astoria after that single meeting—he had flatly refused to let Fiona remain at school in England, only relenting in his decision when Fiona had reached eighteen and wanted to go to university in NewYork.
• ‘Man trouble?’ Fiona prompted knowingly now.
• Astoria shook her head as she dragged her thoughts back from that first meeting with Leo D’Alessandro, almost ten years ago now. ‘Not in the way you probably think.’
• Fiona, her hair darkly luxurious, her brown eyes warm and glowing, shrugged slender shoulders. ‘Let me guess. Either you have a man and he’s being uncooperative. Or you don’t have a man and you want one.’
• ‘I had a man, remember?’ Astoria pointed out dryly.
• Fiona frowned. ‘I’m not sure I would call Edward that.’
• ‘I was married to him!’
• ‘Technically, yes.’ Her friend nodded. ‘But in reality we both know that the two of you didn’t even last through the honeymoon.’
• To Astoria’s everlasting mortification.
• Edward had looked like a Greek god, and he had been charming, thoughtful, and funny. Until the honeymoon following their lavish wedding, when the jealousy he had been hiding until that point had suddenly reared its ugly head. He had turned into a monster, accusing her of being too friendly with every man she met, from the elderly porter who had delivered their suitcases to their hotel suite, to the waiter who served them dinner on their first evening in Florence.
• The scene that had followed in their hotel suite after that last accusation was something that Astoria preferred not to even think about!
• The two of them had arrived home from the honeymoon separately. Astoria had filed for divorce almost immediately, and since that time she had stayed well away from any sort of romantic involvement, no longer trusting her own judgement when it came to men.
• ‘I don’t have a man.’
• ‘Then it’s about time you did,’ Fiona said, having been happily engaged to Axel for the last year. ‘Not all men are like Philip, you know—’
• ‘I have no guarantee of that,’ Astoria interrupted firmly. ‘And until I do, I have no intention of getting involved with anyone again. Well…not by choice,’ she muttered, sighing as the heavy weight of her earlier distraction came crowding back.
• Damn her grandfather, anyway. What person in his right mind would put a clause like that in his will, for goodness’ sake? Her grandfather, apparently. If she hadn’t complied with the terms of that particular clause by the time her grandfather died, then her parents were going to lose Wiverley Hall, their home in Gloucestershire, where her father had spent years building up the reputation of his stable for training racehorses.
• Fiona raised dark brows. ‘That last statement sounded very intriguing…?’
• Astoria gave herself a mental shake. It was a problem, yes, but not an immediate one when her grandfather was still so fit and well.
• ‘Not really,’ she dismissed briskly. ‘So, tell me how your plans for the reception are progressing? Have you—?’
• ‘Oh, no, you don’t, Astoriaella Ken,’ Fiona cut in. ‘I’m not going to be put off by a change of subject. Tell all,’ she demanded, her dark brown gaze avid with curiosity.
• Astoria couldn’t help but smile. It was difficult to believe now that Fiona’s English had ever been other than what it was. In fact, apart from the darkness of Fiona’s colouring, nowadays her friend was almost more English than Astoria.
• She should never have given Fiona, of all people, even an inkling that something was troubling her. Fiona was like a dog with a bone when she got her teeth into something, and she wouldn’t let this go until Astoria had ‘told all’, as she had so succinctly put it.
• But maybe she should tell Fiona what was worrying her.