“You should have thought of that before you brought the vineyard to the edge of bankruptcy.”
The prince made an impatient gesture. “Will you do as I ask or not?”
Was there a choice? Alessia thought bitterly.
“Two days,” she said. “That is all I can give you.”
“Grazie, bella mia.”
“A blackmailer does not thank the person he blackmails, Papa.”
It wasn’t much of a rejoinder, she thought as she went into the villa, to the room that had once been hers, but it would have to do.
CHAPTER TWO
THERE was no woman waiting in Nick’s bed, but she’d left a note.
Call me.
Nick sighed and tossed the note aside. He’d call, but not until he’d returned from this pointless trip. Call, send flowers and say goodbye. It was definitely time to end things.
He stripped off the tux, showered, put on a set of well-worn Marine Corps sweats and went into the kitchen. It was a decorator’s dream but he pretty much used it only for making a sandwich or a pot of coffee, as he was now, spooning the stuff into a French press, putting the kettle on to boil, then settling in to wait.
The more he thought about it, the more certain he was that he’d been suckered into going to Italy. That story about his mother… Even if it were true, and that was a stretch, why would his father have waited forty years to give her, as he’d put it, a little bit of Tuscany?
Not that it mattered.
He’d said he would do this thing. A man was nothing if he broke his word.
The kettle whistled. Nick made the coffee, gave it a few minutes, then poured some into an oversized mug. Too much champagne or maybe too much Cesare. Either way, a couple of sips and he felt the caffeine kicking in as he emptied the contents of the envelope his father had given him onto the polished stone counter.
He picked up a document, read a couple of paragraphs, then shook his head in dry amusement. He was due to meet with Prince Vittorio Antoninni the next day.
“Would have been nice if you’d consulted me first, Father,” he muttered, but a quick meeting would serve his purpose. The sooner this was behind him, the better.
He drank a little more coffee, then reached for the phone. The Orsini jet was taking Falco and his bride on their honeymoon. No problem. The company used a travel agent; Nick had the guy’s home phone number. It was one of the perks of doing seven figures worth of business with him every year.
To his surprise, there were no nonstop flights from Kennedy Airport to Florence. He would have to change planes in Rome. That meant the travel time would be longer than he liked, but still, two days for this would be enough. He arranged for a first-class ticket that would get him into the city by 2:00 p.m., arranged for a suite at the Grand Hotel and a rental car he’d pick up at the airport.
Okay.
Nick punched a speed-dial number, ordered pad thai from a little place a few blocks away. While he waited for it to arrive, he went through the rest of the Antoninni Vineyard papers, but he learned little more than he already knew. The Antoninni family had owned the land and the winery for five centuries. Prince Vittorio had taken over from his father; his daughter would eventually take over from him, though she seemed disinterested in anything to do with business.
Alessia Antoninni was a party girl. She called herself a publicist but she spent her time in Rome, running with a fast crowd of people too rich for their own good. He knew what she was like without half-trying. Self-centered. Self-indulgent. And bored out of her empty mind. New York was filled with young women like her.
Not that it mattered to him.
His business was with her father. Without question, the sooner it was over with, the better.
There was a note in the envelope, on heavy vellum adorned with a royal crest. Signore Orsini was to telephone the prince’s secretary when he knew the exact time of arrival. The prince would not simply send a car, he would, himself, be at the airport to greet Signore Orsini. And, of course, Signore Orsini would be his guest at the Antoninni villa in the hills outside Firenze.
Nick made the call. It was the middle of the night in Italy by then so he ended up leaving a voice mail message in what he suspected was terrible Italian because he’d never picked up more than the basics, confirming he’d be arriving the next day, as planned, but omitting the time and flight information, and politely refusing the offer that he stay at the villa.
He preferred being on his own when he was checking out possible investment properties.
The bell rang. It was the doorman with the pad thai. Nick settled down with his dinner and his laptop and went through the Antoninni Vineyards paperwork again.
By midnight, he had lots of questions and not many answers. He could only hope the prince could provide them.