in need of a husband acknowledged him with an enticing smile. Fortunately, he’d retained the street smarts that warned him of advantage-takers. He wouldn’t be chaining himself down to a simpering aristo any time soon. Though he could do nothing about the testosterone running through his veins, Luca conceded wryly. Even freshly shaved and wearing dress uniform, he looked like a swarthy brawler from the docks. His appearance had been one thing his adoptive father, the late Prince, had been unable to refine.
Well over six feet tall and deeply tanned, with a honed, warrior’s frame, Luca couldn’t be sure of his parentage. His mother had been a Roman working girl. His father, he guessed, was the man who used to pester her for money. The late Prince was the only parent he remembered clearly. He owed the Prince his education. He owed him everything.
They’d met in the unlikely setting of the Coliseum, where the Prince had been on an official visit, and Luca had been stealing from the bins. He had not expected to come to the notice of such a grand man, but the Prince had been shrewd and had missed nothing. The next day he had sent an aide de camp with an offer for Luca to try living at the palace with the Prince’s son, Max. They would be company for each other, the Prince had insisted, and Luca would be free to go if he didn’t like his life there.
Young and street smart, Luca had had the sense to be wary, but he’d been hungry, and filling his belly had been worth taking a chance. That chance had led to this, which was why honouring the Prince was so important to him. He held his adoptive father in the highest esteem, for teaching him everything about building a life, rather than falling victim to it. But the Prince had left one final warning on his deathbed. ‘Max is weak. You will follow me onto the throne as my heir. You must marry and preserve my legacy to the country I believe we both love.’
Clasping his father’s frail hand in his, Luca had given his word. If he could have willed his strength into a man he loved unreservedly, he would have done that too. He would have done anything to save the life of the man who’d saved him.
As if reading Luca’s thoughts, his adoptive brother Maximus glared at him now from across the aisle. There was no love lost between the two men. Their father had failed to form any sort of relationship with Max, and Luca had failed too. Max preferred womanising and gambling to statecraft. He’d never shown any interest in family at all. He favoured the hangers-on who flocked around him, lavishing praise on Max in hope of his favour. Luca had soon learned that, while the Prince was his greatest supporter, Max would always be his greatest enemy.
Picking up the order of service to distract himself from Max’s baleful glare, Luca scanned his father’s long list of accomplishments and titles with great sadness. There would never be such a man again, a thought that made him doubly determined to fulfil his pledge to the letter. ‘You are a born leader,’ his father had told him, ‘and so I name you my heir.’ No wonder Max hated him.
Luca hadn’t looked for the honour of being heir to the throne of Fabrizio. He didn’t need the money. He could run the country out of pocket change. Success had come when he’d nagged his father to let him bring Fabrizio up to date, and had insisted on studying tech at university. He’d gone on to become one of the most successful men in the industry. His global holdings were so vast his company almost ran itself. This was just as well as he had to turn his thoughts to ruling a country, and to filling the empty space beside him.
‘If you fail to do this within two years,’ his father had said on his deathbed, ‘our constitution states that the throne will pass by default to your brother.’ They both knew what that meant. Max would ruin Fabrizio. ‘This is your destiny, Luca,’ his father had added. ‘You cannot refuse the request of a dying man.’
Luca had no intention of doing so, but the thought of marrying a simpering princess held no appeal. The royal marriage mart, as he thought of it, didn’t come close to his love of being with his people. He would leave here and travel to his lemon groves in southern Italy, where he worked alongside the other holiday workers. There was no better way for him to learn what concerns they had, and to do something to help. The thought of being shackled to a fragile china doll appalled him. He wanted a real woman with grit and fire inside her belly.
‘There are good women out there, Luca,’ his father, the Prince, had insisted. ‘It’s up to you to find one. Pick someone strong. Search for the unusual. Step off the well-trodden path.’
At the time Luca had thought this wouldn’t be easy. Looking around today, he thought it impossible.
* * *
As funerals went, this one was small, but respectable. Callie had made sure of it. It was small in as much as the only people to mourn her father’s passing, other than herself, were their next-door neighbours, the rumbustious Browns. It was a respectable and quiet affair, because Callie had always felt she should counterbalance her father’s crude and reckless life. There couldn’t be two of them wondering where their next meal was coming from. If it hadn’t been for her friends, the Browns, laughing with her at whatever life threw up, and reminding her to have fun while she could without offending other people, as her father so often had, she’d have been tearing her hair out by now.
The Brown tribe was on its best behaviour today—if she didn’t count their five dogs piling out of their camper van to career around the country cemetery barking wildly, but they’d given Callie a glimpse of what a happy family life could be, and, in her heart of hearts, love and a happy family was what she aspired to.
‘Goodbye, Dad,’ she whispered, regretting everything they’d never been to each other as she tossed a handful of moist, cool soil on top of the coffin.
‘Don’t worry, love,’ Ma said, putting her capable arm around Callie’s shoulders. ‘The worst part is over. Your life is about to begin. It’s a book of blank pages. You can write anything on it. Close your eyes and think where you’d like to be. That’s what always makes me happy. Isn’t it, our Rosie?’
Rosie Brown, Callie’s best friend and the Browns’ oldest child, came to link arms with Callie on her other side. ‘That’s right, Ma. The world’s your oyster, Callie. You can do anything you want. And sometimes,’ Rosie added, ‘you have to listen to the advice of people you trust, and let them help you.’
‘Anywhere ten pounds will take me?’ Callie suggested, finding a grin.
Rosie sighed. ‘Anywhere has to be better than staying round the docks—sorry, Ma, I know you love it here, but you know what I’m getting at. Callie needs a change.’
By the time they’d all crammed into the van, Callie was feeling better. Being with the Browns was like taking a big dose of optimism, and, after the lifetime of verbal and physical abuse she’d endured keeping house for her father, she was ready for it. She was free. For the first time in her life she was free. There was only one question now: how was she going to use that freedom?
‘Don’t even think about work,’ Ma Brown advised as she swivelled around in the front seat to speak to Callie. ‘Our Rosie can take over your shift at the pub for now.’
‘Willingly,’ Rosie agreed, giving Callie’s arm a squeeze. ‘What you need is a holiday.’
‘It would have to be a working holiday,’ Callie said thoughtfully. ‘I don’t have enough money to go away.’ Her father had left nothing. The house they’d lived in was rented. He’d been both a violent drunk and a gambler. Callie’s job as a cleaner at the pub just about paid enough to put food on the table, and then only if she didn’t leave the money lying around for him to spend at the bookies.
‘Think about what you’d like to do,’ Ma Brown insisted. ‘It’s your turn now, our Callie.’
She liked studying. She wanted to better herself. She aspired to do more than clean up the pub. Her dream was to work in the open, with fresh air to breathe, and the sun on her face.
‘You never know,’ Ma added, shuffling around in her seat again. ‘When we clear out the house tomorrow your father might have left a wad of winnings in his clothes by mistake.’
Callie smiled wryly. She knew they’d be lucky