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The wiry head gardener of the palace grounds turned around. He'd just lowered a bag of peat moss onto the pile inside the nursery shed behind the greenhouse. When he saw who it was, he made a slight bow.
"Buona sera, Principessa.I'm very sorry about your father." Though he was civil to her, she'd always felt his reticence around her. Of late she'd sensed his antipathy.
No matter how many times she'd asked him to call her Regina, he'd always called her Princess and insisted his sons did, too. The rigid, class-conscious father of three would maintain his distance to the grave.
"Thank you, Guido. I am, too," Regina murmured.
No one could have had a more wonderful parent than the man who'd reigned over the European Principality of Castelmare since before she'd been born. Lung cancer had finally taken her father and although it had been a blessed release, Rudolfo Vittorio IV had died too young.
Her mother was handling it exceptionally well, probably because his long suffering was over and she had a new three-month-old granddaughter to dote on. Regina's older brother, Lucca, now king, and his wife, Alexandra, had each other and their darling Catarina. Everyone had someone. Now more than ever before Regina needed the one man she'd always loved, the man who'd been her closest friend and confidante from the age of ten.
"What can I do for you?"
"Is Dinozzo still on the grounds?"
"No," was all he said before he went out of the doors to pull another bag off the bed of his truck. She flinched because Guido's behavior bordered on open hostility.
Her watch said it was after 6:00 p.m. She'd planned to come this late so Dizo, her special nickname for him, would be through with any jobs his father had saved for him after leaving the university's animal hospital. Filled with a fierce disappointment that she'd missed him, she followed Guido.
"If you should talk to him tonight, will you please tell him I'd like a word with him in the morning about some plantings we discussed earlier?"
He went back out to the truck to pick up another bag. "I would, but he left for Sardinia."
She almost doubled over in shock.
Sardinia—
Without any other explanation, Guido returned to the shed to deposit the bag.
"W-when did he leave?" her voice faltered. She'd been counting on him being here so they could talk. In her loneliest hours she could always turn to him. He'd been there for her at every crossroad. When she'd been betrothed to Crown Prince Nicolas of Pedrosa at the age of twenty-one, she'd run to Dizo in turmoil. Somehow he had always made her feel better.
"Early this morning."
Early meant evenbeforethe funeral. While Guido sounded exceptionally happy about it, pain seared her so deeply she couldn't breathe.
While she and her family had been burying their father and husband in the plot that held all the past Castelmare rulers of the House of Savoy, Dizo had just left without letting her know why? He hadn't even watched the burial from a distance when he knew how much her father had respected Dizo for putting himself through college and medical school.
"I see." She fought to maintain her composure so Guido couldn't take satisfaction in her devastation. Today was a national day of mourning in honor of her father. Now that Nic had become king and was pushing for her to marry him right away, this had turned out to be the blackest day of her life. "How soon do you expect him back?"
"I don't."
She swallowed hard. "Is someone ill?" The Fornese family had been born in Sardinia. They had extended family in Sassari. Dizo was particularly fond of his aging grandmother who lived with Guido's brother.
Dizo visited them when he could, but between his studies at the University of Castelmare and helping his father in his spare time, there weren't as many visits anymore.
Even so, Regina hated it whenever he had to be gone for a day or two at a time. She found herself counting the seconds until he returned.
"No. He will be getting married soon."
That was a lie. Though Guido could have wished his eldest son had settled down with a wife years ago, it hadn't happened. What he'd just said were the words of a wishful thinking father. If it were the truth, Dizo would have told her himself. Guido valued family over education, not wanting to admit his hardworking son could have both in time.
Choose the battle you're sure of, Regina's father used to tell her. This was one she would let pass. "I had no idea. Thank you for the information, Guido."
"Prego, Principessa."When he went back for the next bag, she realized she'd been dismissed.
As she walked away in agony, she saw Dizo's younger brothers returning in one of the other trucks. Out of desperation she waved them down.
The vehicle slowed. Fonsi tipped his head out the window."Princess?Is there something wrong?"
Wrong? her heart cried hysterically. Yes, something was wrong. "I came here to discuss the kind of trees I wanted planted at my father's grave, but I just learned that Dinozzo left for Sardinia."
Fonsi nodded.
"Your father said he's going to be married." They would tell her it wasn't true.
"At the end of the summer," Pasquale informed her from the interior of the cab. "He's found a job there."
Dizo had never breathed a word of it to her. He'd just passed his medical boards. She'd thought of course he planned to be a vet here in Capriccio where he could stay close to his family. She'd planned on it. Regina couldn't live without Dizo.
She patently didn't believe Guido. He'd made it up and his sons were in on the lie.
"Did you ask Papa for help?"
"Not yet, Fonsi," she said out of wooden lips. "Your brother mentioned he had some ideas, so I wanted to talk to him about them first."
"We are all very sorry about your father. Papa revered him and will be happy to plant something special," Pasquale chimed in, but he was a little too eager for them to get off the subject of Dizo. It could only mean their father had coached them in what to say to her. He really disliked the spoiled princess of Castelmare.
Guido Fornese had always been in charge. He saw no reason for his boys to go to college when they all had a fine job on the estate. Fonsi and Pasquale, already married with children, would never usurp his authority by acting on something without his directive first. Dizo was different.
Though he showed his father respect and helped out as much as he could, he'd become a brooding, thirty-two-year-old bachelor who'd wanted more from life and had gone after it even knowing it displeased his parent. Unlike his siblings, Dizo had never lived in fear of Guido or anyone else.
Whatever had caused him to leave the country so abruptly, he'd done it of his own volition. That put the terror in her.
"I'll talk to your father later in the week when he's not so busy. Thank you."
They nodded before driving on.
Regina kept walking until she couldn't see them anymore, then she broke into a run across the extensive grounds, her pain too deep for tears. When she reached the rear of the eighteenth century palace, she entered through a private door with one of her bodyguards right behind her and raced up the steps. Her suite on the second floor of the east wing overlooked the Mediterranean. Before she shut the doors, she motioned to the closest bodyguard to come inside.
"Rico, as soon as I pack a bag I'm leaving for Nice in the limo. My family knows nothing about my plans." She didn't dare take the helicopter or Lucca would hear it leaving and ask questions. "If you and Vito like this job, then keep this information to yourselves, please."
"Capisco,your highness."
Once he was out the door she phoned her pilot. "I'm flying to Alghero, Sardinia, tonight." It was less than an hour's flight to the northwest part of the island. "I'll be at the airport in forty minutes. Be ready to take off. I have no idea of my return."
After buzzing her private secretary who would arrange for a rental car to be waiting at Fertilia airport in Sardinia, Regina threw some clothes in a bag and left the palace the same way she'd slipped in.
The thirty-five-mile drive to the Fornese farm on the outskirts of Sassari wouldn't take long. Secretly she'd always wanted to visit there with him, but of course that had been out of the question.
Not any longer…
Though she was betrothed to someone else, Regina needed this one night of freedom to love Dizo and no one was going to stop her…
Dinozzo Romali Fornese stood at the bar with his shirtsleeves pushed up to the elbows. He knew he was getting very, very drunk. That was good. His native Vernaccia d'Oristano always did the job. The pain of imagining Gina as Nic's bride was too staggering to contemplate.
Tonight he needed to be totally blotto if he had a prayer of getting through it. One more drink to make certain, then he tread his way carefully to the entrance of the two hundred year old tavern. "See you later, Dinozzo," the barman called after him in their native Sassarese.
The night air was soft, but it didn't drip with the flower-scented sweetness that surrounded the palace,grazie a dio.No reminders here. Dizo climbed in his uncle's truck and headed through the city's ancient streets for the farm where he'd grown up as a boy.
Instinct, not faculties, was all he required to get him there. When he flew in for short visits he always slept in the back bedroom of the stone farmhouse, but this time he hadn't come for a visit. If he was still alive tomorrow, he would have to find work and an apartment.
The last thing he remembered was turning onto the gravel track that led around the rear of the old family home.
"Dizo?"
No. No dreams. Not tonight.
"Dizo,cam—"
That voice. No one called him that except one person. "Leave me alone, Giannina," he muttered in agony.
"You know you don't want me to."
He felt her arms go around him. The curvaceous mold of her figure melted into his hard body, denying him no part of herself. That mouth he'd likened to a wild red rose began devouring him with an insatiable hunger.
"You're right," he cried feverishly against those seductive lips."Dio mio.I want you so much I could bite the heart right out of your beautiful body."
"Do it,tesoro."
With skin like velvet and glossy black hair filled with the scent of sweet orange blossoms, he was helpless to do anything but roll her on her back and begin kissing her the way he'd done so many times in his other dreams.
This one was different.
Instead of her suddenly vanishing from sight where he couldn't find her, she stayed right where she was and kissed him in and out of oblivion. His legs tangled with her silky limbs. After all the years of aching, she was bringing him ecstasy. He wanted it to go on forever.
"Come here to me my precious, adorable Giannina. Closer—" he cried against her tender throat.
"I love you, Dizo. I always will. That's never going to change."
"Don't leave me,amore."
"Never. Have no fear."
Once again he was swept away by rapture she brought with every sigh and caress. "I want to feel you just like this until the very second I wake up."
"Let's not wake up," she whispered against his lips.
"You think I want to?"
"Then we won't. We'll go on like this into infinity."
"Into infinity?" he whispered back in a husky voice. "That's not long enough. If you knew the years I've been waiting… aching," he cried.
His mouth enveloped hers, drinking in her sweetness. He plunged his hands into her hair, loving the way the curls wrapped around his fingers. Still his dream didn't fade.
"Hey, Dinozzo—" came a discordant note out of the soporific waves. "I want to talk to my nephew. When are you going to get up? Do you know how late it is?"
Dizo realized his fantastic dream had ended. He couldn't bear it. The alcohol he'd consumed last night was supposed to have wiped everything from his subconscious. Instead a silken pair of arms had transported him to a place where he'd been given a taste of paradise.
On a groan he started to get out of bed, but felt something warm and soft lying next to him, preventing movement. He opened his eyes that were having trouble focusing and discovered a female body lying facedown next to him. The cap of glossy black curls looked shockingly familiar.
His jet-black eyes took in the trail of his clothes and her shoes and jacket starting at the door and ending at the bed. The sheet partially covering both of them revealed that the woman he must have picked up outside the bar last night was wearing a pale yellow and white flowered tank top. With trembling hands he carefully turned her over.
Holy mother of God.
Giannina.
He couldn't think, couldn't breathe.
Slowly her black-fringed lids fluttered open. Those brown eyes so fabulous because of their burgundy hue stared into his.
"Dizo—" came her urgent cry. Like a cat preening in the sun with delight, she stretched without inhibition and wrapped her arms around his neck. He felt her warm, sweet breath on his lips. Then it was the dream all over again as her mouth took him to that place he'd never wanted to leave.
This time there was a loud knock on the door bringing him fully awake. "Dinozzo! I'm getting worried. If you're not up on the count of three, I'm coming in."
Diavolo!
None too gently Dizo pushed her against the mattress. The second he threw the sheet over her head his uncle walked in.
"Your papa has already phoned twice. He has a mes—"
That was all that came out of his uncle's mouth. Scratching his balding head, he took in the scene of what could only be labeled wanton desire with his-and-her clothing and blankets scattered, pillows askew. Their gazes locked in silent communication.
His uncle cleared his throat. "I'll tell your father you'll call him later." He closed the door.
Muttering a curse, Dizo levered his tall, well-honed body off the other side of the bed. By some miracle he was still wearing his pants. While he was still disoriented, Gina peeked out from beneath the sheet covering her head. His heart slammed into his ribs to see her beautiful face framed by her disheveled curls. One dangled in the middle of her forehead. She was a living, breathing miracle.
Excerpted from Italian Groom, Princess Bride by Rebecca Winters
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