“To what do I owe this entirely unexpected and unsolicited honor?” he asked his brother. “And who is watching over the restaurant in Rome if you’re here?”
“I also have a manager.” Rocco waved a hand. “You have to listen to what this man is here to tell you,fratello. It’s important.”
Antonluca doubted that very much, but he ushered the men into one of his sitting rooms, called for his single member of staff, and took his time showering and changing his clothes before he went down to join them.
Rocco was lounging in Antonluca’s favorite chair when he returned—and knew it, judging from the smirk on his face—but the stranger was standing by the fireplace, looking stiff and ill at ease.
“Forgive me,” Antonluca said, barely sparing the stranger a glance. “I find anticipation makes me hungry. Perhaps a meal while we—”
“I will get this out and then take my leave,” the stranger belted out.
Rocco’s eyes widened. Antonluca merely stared at him.
He was not used to being interrupted. Particularly not by uninvited strangers in his home.
“My apologies,” he replied after some long moments, with scathing courtesy. “I have clearly forgotten myself. Of course I want any guests in my home, invited or not, to feel at ease when they arrive without warning.”
But his sardonic words were lost on the stranger. The pinched-faced man puffed himself up, standing taller and looking even more pompous. “I used to be the manager at La Paloma,” he intoned, and managed to give off the impression that he was offended Antonluca did not already know this, and recognize him. “I was tossed out without so much as a thank-you by that evil old witch and replaced with—”
“The current manager, yes,” Antonluca interrupted him smoothly, before this man called Hannah a name. It was bad enough that he had spoken so disrespectfully about Paloma. He already disliked the man.
But if he said the same kind of things about Hannah, Antonluca rather thought that he might end him.
“Your current manager is a woman of low morals,” the man told Antonluca.
Meaning, of course, that Antonluca began plotting his death immediately. Perhaps he could simply toss the man off the battlements, the way the ancients who’d built this place had surely done with their enemies. Otherwise, there would be no need for battlements, would there?
“Raffaele still has family in the village,” Rocco chimed in then, perhaps reading the look on his older brother’s face. “There’s nothing that happens around here that he doesn’t know about.”
“Is that so?” But that was less a question and more a threat, the way Antonluca said it.
“She turned up about two and a half years ago,” Raffaele said with great, whining umbrage, which did not endear him to his host in any way. “Like most Americans, she made no attempt whatsoever to integrate herself into the village. Instead, she thought that she could simply appear and everything would be handed to her. Just as my own job was.”
He lapsed off into a tirade that was mostly a list of complaints about Paloma, and Antonluca shifted his gaze to his brother. Rocco knew exactly how Antonluca felt about complaining. That he always wanted solutions, not feelings.
But Rocco made a face at him, as if there was something in all of these complaints that should matter to him.
“I’m sorry that you feel that you were cruelly treated,” Antonluca said shortly when Raffaele finally paused for breath. “But I’m afraid I can’t help you with any of that. Paloma is no longer involved in the hotel. And I did not fire you.”
“Your brother wanted to know about this manager of yours,” Raffaele said, sounding somehow even more aggrieved. “And I say again, she is a woman ofextremelylow morals. I would not be surprised if she keeps some kind of aside businessgoing out of the cottage she rents.”
Antonluca decided that the man could not possibly mean what it sounded like he meant.
“You perhaps mean some crafting?” he asked, dangerously. “The sort of thing that can be sold in the Christmas Market, I imagine?”
His brother had the sense to look alarmed, and rose from the chair he’d been lounging in. But the stranger Antonluca had decided he disliked intensely enough to perhaps relive the more violent days of his misspent youth let out a bitter sort of laugh.
“She moved here pregnant,” he said with a sniff of disgust. “And all alone. And there has never been a man in the picture. She is simply a sad single mother who ran off from her own country to hide her shame in Tuscany. Aren’t you tired of these people? I know I am.”
He launched off into another tirade, but Antonluca stopped listening.
Because all he could think about was timing.
Two and a half years ago.
Already pregnant.
What were the chances…?
