Page 19 of Unveiled As The Italian's Bride
Stepping in to fill the awkward, stretching silence, Kate smiled reassuringly, and Antonio visibly relaxed, although there was something still there, something ever so slightlyguiltyin his expression.She was probably way off target with that.
‘Happy you understand an old man!’ He rose to his feet and shuffled to the fridge to peer inside for a few seconds, before turning to look at them. ‘You young things need to get out of this stuffy house and have some fun in the City of Canals!’
Stuffy house?The kitchen was big enough to fit in most of the places where she had ever lived when she and her parents had been on the road! But he was shooing them off and, with barely any words exchanged, they were at the front door half an hour later, ready for their day of sightseeing to commence.
Angelina, on cue, had unerringly known when to reappear. This time Dante took time to look down at his daughter and then, in a gesture so rarely seen, he stooped, tenderly stroked back her hair and smiled. For a few heart-stopping seconds, Kate’s breath caught in her throat and she had the awkward feeling of being witness to an intensely personal moment.
Angelina smiled at Dante, a wise, young smile, and then he scooped her up and really hugged her tight. She riffled his hair right back before he put her back down.
‘It’ll be fun.’ He turned to Kate and smiled. ‘We’ve been effectively dismissed by a stubborn old man, so let’s get out there and do some sightseeing.’
It took a couple of seconds to focus. She had been transported for a moment and seen the loving dad behind the stern man, but she blinked and gathered herself sufficiently to nod.
She had only managed to get to Venice a couple of times since she had started working for Dante. A combination of distance, responsibilities keeping her close to Milan and holidays back to the UK to visit her parents had clipped her wings when it came to exploring.
Then there had always been the question of money. It had never felt right to treat herself to anything frivolous when she knew that there were places the money should go to first. Her parents always did their best to encourage her to spend what she earned, to persuade her that they could manage on their own, that things would improve over time: when the land started yielding a bit more; when her mother’s jewellery began selling into shops; when her father finally made it to the top of the waiting list for the prosthetic leg that would revolutionise his day-to-day life...
When...when...when...
She would see the gratitude and vulnerability underneath their generous, kind-hearted reassurances and wouldknowthat letting them down was never going to be an option.
But now... Now, with this arrangement in place, she would be able to achieve so much...everything.
Which, as she slid a sideways glance at the towering guy striding confidently next to her, Angelina between them, set the agenda for her mood. Buoyed at the thought of what this brief inconvenience was going to achieve, Kate sidelined her natural inclination to keep Dante at arm’s length and allowed herself to relax.
When was the last time she’d relaxed?
As they began to explore Venice, wrapped up against the biting cold, Kate realised that she had forgotten what it felt like to let life glide past her, to live in the moment and appreciate the things around her.
Dante was a surprisingly good guide and a fount of information, which he threw at them both, nodding and pointing at various landmarks to bolster what he was saying.
‘The Doge’s Palace took centuries to complete.’
He pointed out all the hallmarks of the Gothic architecture, squatting down so that Angelina could follow the sweep of his hand as he contoured the perfect symmetry of the building, and feigned astonishment that she couldn’t rustle up facts and figures about one of the city’s most famous landmarks.
Kate’s eyes swept over him as he stooped and she was a little startled when he vaulted back to his feet to capture her gaze with a frown.
‘She’s eight,’ he murmured as they strolled towards a café for a coffee break. ‘What are they teaching her at school?’ But he winked when he said that and gave Angelina’s hand a little squeeze.
Kate grinned and then laughed.
‘They’re teaching her how to be a kid.’ She joined in the moment, not looking at him as she reached into the backpack she had brought to extract a sketchpad and some graphite pencils. She handed them to Angelina along with a few light-hearted instructions on drawing, as best as she could, the square in which they had been seated and which was the biggest open space in the city. From here, they were treated to the spectacular view of the stunning, elegant buildings, as old as time, that made up the city.
‘Use your imagination,’ Kate urged Angelina. ‘The Basilica is gorgeous and so is the bell tower...but you can draw them how you see them through your eyes.’
‘I will do it for you, Papa!’
‘I will frame it and keep it on my desk at work.’
It was there in the sudden flash of warmth in Dante’s eyes—that fierce paternal love that could be hard easily to detect.
How sad, she thought, to have all that love trapped inside, to be a prisoner of a harsh, duty-bound childhood. Had his ex-wife been the only woman who had managed to break through that diamond-hard exterior?
Curiosity clawed inside her, sudden and overpowering, and for a few seconds, as she vaguely listened to Dante explain something of the history of the piazza to his daughter, she could feel the acceleration of her heartbeat thudding inside her, confusing, disorienting and a little scary.
She blinked and what she saw was no longer the forbidding guy she had agreed to marry but the man—living, breathing and crazily, inaccessibly, stupidly sexy...
Kate screeched to a panicked halt at the image that flared in her head of his powerful, muscular body in bed with her.
