The Bride's Awakening Read Online Free PDF Page B

been talking, and she hadn’t heard a word. Now Vittorio turned to her, smiling solicitously. ‘We should go.’
    ‘Yes, all right.’
    One hand rested lightly on the small of her back—the simple touch seemed to burn—as Vittorio said goodbye to Enrico and then led her out to the softly falling darkness and his waiting car.
    Vittorio opened the passenger door for Ana before sliding in the driver’s side. She was nervous, he saw, and her clothes were utterly atrocious. He’d been about to compliment her when she’d first opened the door and had just stopped himself from uttering what they both knew would be more unwanted false flattery.
    He drummed his fingers against the steering wheel as Ana fastened her seat belt. He felt impatient, as he so often did, and also, strangely, a little uncertain. He didn’t like either feeling. He didn’t know how best to approach Ana, how to court her, if such a thing could even be done. He doubted he could act convincingly enough. As intelligent and decent a human being as she obviously was, she was not a woman to take to bed. Yet if this marriage was to work—if he were to have an heir—then he would be taking her to bed, and more than once.
    Vittorio dwelt rather moodily on that scenario before pushing it aside. He could have chosen another woman, of course; there were plenty of pretty—gorgeous, even—socialites in Italy who would relish becoming the Contessa of Cazlevara. Women he would gladly take to bed but, ironically perhaps, he did not wish to marry them.
    Their vineyards did not border his own; they were not dedicated to winemaking, to the region. They were not particularly loyal. They were not, any of them, wife material.
    Ana was. When he’d contemplated taking a wife, Ana Viale had ticked every box quite neatly. Experienced in winemaking, running her own vineyard, a dutiful daughter, healthy and relatively young.
    And, of course, loyalty. He’d read of her loyalty to her family, and her family’s vineyard, in that magazine article. Loyalty was a necessity, an absolute; he would not be betrayed again, not by those closest to him.
    No, Anamaria Viale was the wife he wanted. The only wife he wanted.
    His hands tightened on the steering wheel as he thought of the other reason—really, the main reason—he wished to marry at all. He needed an heir. God willing, Ana would provide him with one, and would keep his brother—treacherous Bernardo—from ever becoming Count, as his mother had so recently told him she wanted.
    The conversation, as it always was with Constantia, the current Countess, had been laced with bitterness on both sides. She’d rung asking for money; had there ever been anything else she wanted from him?
    ‘I don’t know why you hoard all your money, Vittorio,’ she’d said a bit sulkily. ‘Who are you keeping it for?’
    He’d been distracted by the business emails on his computer screen, her words penetrating only after a moment. ‘What do you mean?’
    She’d sighed, the sound impatient and a bit contemptuous; it was a sound he remembered well from childhood, for it had punctuated nearly every conversation he’d had with his mother. ‘Only that you are getting on in years, my son,’ she had said, and he had heard the mocking note in her voice. ‘You’re thirty-seven. You are not likely to marry, are you?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ he’d replied, and she’d laughed softly, the sound making the hair on the nape of his neck prickle.
    ‘But if you don’t marry, Vittorio, you can’t produce an heir. And then you know what happens, don’t you?’ She sighed again, the sound different this time, almost sad. ‘Bernardo becomes Count.’
    He’d frozen then, his hand curled around the receiver, his eyes dark with memory and pain. That was what his mother had always wanted, what his brother had wanted. He’d known it for years, ever since they’d first tried to steal his inheritance from him, his father barely in the grave.
    He