Loving Venus (Sally-Ann Jones Sexy Romance) (23 page)

     “Did you really paint it, Al?” Annabella asked, seeing herself as if for the first time. Shehad no idea she was even pretty, let alone a beauty.

     “Of course he did,” Claudia spat. “He’s a romantic fool, at heart.”

     “I think he’s clever,” Eduardo said.

     “Here, here!” agreed Umberto. “Three cheers for Alessandro de Rocco, the artist.”

     When they had all cheered and clapped, Alessandro said, “Now I must go back to Florence.”

     “Just stay one night, please,” Eduardo begged. “One more night at Casa dei Fiori.”

     “Please,” agreed Tonia.

     “One night,” he conceded, knowing he was defeated. Turning to the taxi driver he said, “Please come for me tomorrow. At eleven o’clock in the morning. Sharp. I will be waiting.”

     “
Si, signor,”
the taxi man said, getting back into his cab.

     The other driver followed suit and the little crowd began to disperse, the Silvestros back to Villa Claudia, Eduardo, with the painting, to his room to see his beloved Rosa, Tonia to the kitchen to check the roasting leg of lamb she had placed in the oven with sprigs of fresh rosemary and cloves of garlic.

     “She’s a magnificent mare,” Sassy said, rubbing the glossy neck.

     “You deserve her, Bella,” Umberto said, smiling.

     Alessandro wished he hadn’t given in to his brother’s pleas and that he was in the taxi, bound for his lonely apartment. Anything was better than the doctor’s fawning over his second cousin.

     “Will you come riding with me, once more, Al?” Annabella asked, turning to him. “I’d love to try her out. But it’s no fun going alone.”

     “All right,” he agreed. “I’ll walk to the stables with you.” Alessandro was glad he’d worn jeans and a casual shirt.

     As he fastened the girth around his horse, he glanced over at Annabella, who was struggling with the flighty mare.

     “Are you sure you’re strong enough for this?” he asked.

     “Of course I am,” she snapped. “It’s just that Siena isn’t used to me yet.”

     At last, she had saddled the chestnut and adjusted the bridle. She leapt easily onto her back, enjoying the springy trot and the horse’s responsiveness. Siena, being eager, led the way from the stable yard onto the path that led through the woods, Alessandro’s horse close behind.

     They trotted easily for a few hundred yards then, keen to test her canter, Annabella squeezed her forward. The mare broke into a gentle rocking that was almost soporific. Annabella steered her towards her favourite ride – the riverside bridle path where she and Alessandro had ridden when she was a child.

     “Be careful!” he warned, just as he had when she was aboard old Gregorio. “I think we should stay away from this track. It could be dangerous.”

     But Annabella wasn
’t listening. She was dazzled by the beauty of the forest, the roar of the river one hundred feet below.

     Then, without warning, a shot rang out. It was, Alessandro suddenly remembered, the hunting season. They
’d been mad to venture out. Siena, terrified, clenched the bit in her teeth and, ears back, tore along the rocky cliff-side path, Annabella desperately trying to stop her. The recent storm, which had wreaked such havoc on Tonia’s tomatoes, had also damaged the side of the cliff, causing its edges to slide downwards towards the rocky river below.

     Afraid the mare would fall, and Annabella with her, Alessandro whipped his startled old horse into a gallop. Siena, however, was too fast. There was no way he could catch her. They were at a point where the river bent southwards, almost looping in on itself while the path took a more circuitous route to rejoin the river further downstream. Alessandro knew that if he could scramble along the bank on foot, he might be able to get back on the path before the bolting mare reached it.

     He launched himself from his horse and began to clamber through the undergrowth on the steep bank, running so fast he felt his heart would burst. Ignoring the brambles that tore his face, the vines that whipped his feet, the prickles and thorns that snared his clothes and pierced his skin, he struggled on. He couldn’t see Annabella or the mare and prayed he’d be able to reach them. Rocks and stones slid under his feet and he caught desperately at brambles to keep himself from tumbling down into the water. Gasping for breath, he regained the path – seconds before the galloping mare and her ashen-faced rider.

     He threw himself in front of Siena, willing her to stop. A big, powerful horse could trample a man but he had no choice but to risk it. For a millisecond, there was a battle of wills. The man’s and the mare’s. His eyes bored into hers for what seemed to him like a lifetime – and she quiesced, rearing up with a mighty neigh that was more like a scream. Annabella slid off her back when her hooves crashed down again – and into Alessandro’s bruised and bleeding arms.

     The mare snapping at grasses as if nothing had happened, Annabella breathed, “Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou,” over and over again. And, “Look at your poor face. Your poor arms. Oh, Al!”

     “Bella!” he cried, burying his face in her hair, too distraught to be wary of what he might say next. “I’m so glad you’re not hurt. I adore you, you know, whatever you might think to the contrary.”

     “And I adore you, too,” she whispered, clutching him. “I always have, ever since I was twelve years old.”

     He pushed her roughly away and rasped. “But you adore Umberto Esposito more, is that it?”

     “No!” she cried, aghast. “Why do you say that?”

     “It
’s he you are to marry,” he bit out.

     “But he loves Sassy, not me,” she said, perplexed. “He’s always loved Sassy. They’ve been emailing each other for a year. And it was sheer coincidence that Sassy was coming to visit me, and he happened to live in the village. I like him, but I’ve never loved him.”

     She felt his whole body slump thankfully against hers and heard his next words through her thick, damp curls.

     “Will you marry me, then, Annabella Smith?”

     She laughed. “It’s what our great grandpapa had planned all along, isn’t it? But there’s one thing he didn’t think would happen quite so soon, Al. The patter of tiny little feet. Four of them.”

    He lifted his sweat and tear-stained face and looked delightedly into her eyes. “Twins?”

     She nodded and laughed again. “The professor discovered I was pregnant when I was in hospital. Twin de Rocco babies. Are you prepared to take all three of us on?”

     “Thank goodness I can paint to earn a living, is all I can say,” he laughed. “Because I have a funny feeling that we won’t stop at just two children. Don’t you?”

     “Definitely,” she whispered, nuzzling close and feeling the hard evidence of his love for her. “Two will just be the beginning.”