Chapter 1
Romeo Dante Lorenzo was known among his friends as “that good-looking sonofabitch.” The one thing he didn’t love about himself was his first name, but at thirty-five years old, he wasn’t bothered by it anymore. Women seemed to find his name sexy, romantic, promising. They soon discovered that only the first part of their notions was ever true. He didn’t do romance, and he certainly didn’t do promises.
“Sir, have you chosen something from our excellent bar menu?” the flight attendant asked him with sparkle in his eyes.
“Blue Johnnie, please,” Romeo said. Then, reading the nametag, added, “If you don’t mind, Steven.”
The man beamed then hurried away to fetch the drink.
Romeo brushed his fingers through his ruffled, light brown hair and gazed through the window at the clear blue sky and white clouds that stretched below. Men and women alike were affected by the juxtaposition of his cobalt blue eyes, naturally bronzed skin, and sculptured facial features that his Irish father and Italian, former-model mother had bestowed upon him, along with the chiseled torso that he had bestowed upon himself in the gym.
When the drink was served with a complimentary smile and a, “For anything else, just buzz me, Mr. Lorenzo,” Romeo retrieved the documents from his brown leather laptop bag. They were crinkled, yellowing pages in Italian that his mother had dug out of an old binder, kept in her basement when financial necessity reminded her of the existence of real estate that she had inherited from her aunt.
“You have to go, Romeo,” his mother had told him. “Someone has to take care of it, and I know you can. You’d be doing me a favor also by not showing your face around here in the next few weeks. Cunningham is furious.”
“I hardly ever show my face here anyway, and Cunningham should be furious at his daughter. She’s the one who fu—who hit on me on her wedding day.” Though he could sometimes be blunt with his mother, he had held his tongue and hadn’t used the full verb that accurately described what he and Blair Cunningham had done in her father’s estate in Katonah soon after she had performed the newly-weds dance with her new husband.
“She wouldn’t have lost the money she was supposed to have by marrying that boy if you had kept your thing in your pants!” Livia’s voice had risen to a near yell.
“Oh, trust me; I tried. She was very persistent. Besides, with the prenup she signed, she wouldn’t have gotten a penny, even if she did what she had done years after the wedding. And, believe me; I know the type—she would have done it sooner or later.”
“You know the type, eh?” his mother had mumbled in the accent everyone found charming.
“Why can’t you send Orlando? He’s a better fit to deal with old ladies. He’s one himself.”
“Don’t talk of your younger brother like that, Romeo!”
He hated the Shakespearean names his mother, who had come to the US to pursue a modeling career in the early eighties, had given to the sons who she had had from two different men within three years. She hadn’t kept either of their last names, though she had kept their money.
“I don’t send him because he’s assisting me with the audit, and you have a lot of free time these days,” she had continued.
The sunny skies and white feather clouds that reflected through the little circular window reminded Romeo of the infinity pool at his mother’s Upstate, New York house. It had looked murky the afternoon he had agreed to fly to Italy and handle the sale of her inheritance on her behalf. Maybe Livia didn’t trust her ability to soon mark another conquest that would put more money under her belt. He suspected that Cunningham had been more than just a new potential investor in her skincare business. “You can’t get skin like mine from products; it’s genes. But I make money while they try,” was what his mother always said.
Recently widowed, Andrew Cunningham had been just his mother’s type. They had become close enough to have their families meet once or twice, which had culminated in him fucking the brand-new Mrs. Reggie Arnolds against the closed door of a back room with the wedding caterers close by to hear and call for help, thinking that someone had accidentally gotten locked in there. It had been an embarrassing scene, more for the Missus than for him.
“Steven, I’ll have espresso now, if you don’t mind?” he asked the eager-to-please attendant.
With good Italian coffee working its magic in his bloodstream, Romeo opened the Excel file that had kept his research, financial scenario calculations, and the buy offers he had managed to gather for the building in Rimini that his great-aunt Gina had left his mother.
Gina was still alive, so he would have to behave as she probably remembered him and thought of him—the sweet boy of Livia’s, herself the former jewel of the family who had done the unthinkable and left the family in Umbria to pursue a career in New York. Thinking of his childhood visits to Italy made him hungry for real basil, garlic, and tomato pasta, though he hardly ate carbs these days.
Upon landing in Milan several hours later, Romeo cursed the inefficiency of the car rental office. Despite belonging to an international brand, in Italy, everything seemed to take longer. The line of people waiting looked like a triangle instead of a line, and the service was slow. But the yellow Alfa Romeo, his favorite brand regardless of the fact that this was his latest girlfriend’s nickname for him, compensated for it.
It was also refreshing to have his name pronounced right by the rental service employee. Italians uttered his name correctly, as his mother had intended it to be pronounced—Romeo, not Romio, as English-speakers called him. His friends and colleagues had learned the right pronunciation, and so had the women he dated. He didn’t want to hear his name mispronounced in bed.
The three-and-a-half-hours’ drive was done mostly on the highway, so upon reaching Rimini, the sea air and the view were a pleasant change. But as he entered the town, the GPS in his phone stopped working and, at some point, he found himself relying on his rusty Italian to ask for directions.
“Anywhere, Florida,” he muttered to himself, driving through the streets that stretched along the beaches. Turning up the air-conditioning in the car, Romeo vaguely remembered the last time he had been to Rimini. His vacations in Italy with his mother and brother had been mostly spent in Rome, Florence, Venice, Milan, and less frequently in his mother’s hometown in Umbria. It had been many years since he had joined them, preferring to spend his vacations with his friends or girlfriends in more exotic destinations.
When he seemed to be in the vicinity of his intended address, Romeo noticed that he was driving in circles around the same few, smaller convoluted streets. The buildings were two- to four-stories tall and mostly well-kempt in what looked like a combination of a touristic and residential neighborhood. Deciding to ask for directions to the exact building, he stopped the car at the curb and, leaning over the stick shift and passenger’s seat, called to a woman who had just come out of a grocery store.
“Mi scusi, dov’è via Maurizio Quadrio numero sette?”
Approaching the yellow Alfa Romeo, the woman bent and peered into the car. “It’s around the corner, but you have to enter through the other end of the street,” she replied in English with a heavy accent, probably used to tourists getting lost in this seaside town.
“I circled this block twice,” he explained, scanning her oval face. “The GPS stopped working. My phone …” He pointed at the device, as if not wanting her to think him incapable, or as making a pass at her.
“I’m going that way; I can show you,” she then said, her lush, brown, shoulder-length hair falling into her face before she tucked it behind her ear.
“That’d be great, thanks,” he said, pushing the door open for her from within.
When she stepped in, he sent a side glance at her midi floral sundress. His experienced gaze made an inventory of a pair of nice, tanned legs and a more curvaceous figure than what he would usually define as a good body. Her shopping bags, which she placed on the floor between her heeled, sandaled feet, seemed heavy.
“Here for a vacation?” she asked while buckling up, sending a glance of her own at his buttoned-up, azure shirt and dark suit pants.
“No. Business,” he replied, shifting into gear and meeting her gaze. Her almond-shaped eyes were honey-colored, speckled with green.
He drove away and, a minute later, she pointed at a side street. “Right turn here.” As soon as he turned, she added, “Most business here is hotels. You are in the hotel business?”
“Family real estate,” he replied succinctly, her curiosity about his personal affairs starting to jar on him. He looked at her profile. Her jaw clenched under the smooth, olive skin, accentuating the high cheekbones.
“Before you miss it, turn right again there, where you see the red car.” She pointed ahead. “So, you’re here to invest in family property?” she asked, her gaze stuck on the windshield.
“Shed family property,” he replied off-handedly then turned his attention back to the road and entered a street dense with green trees with yellow and purple flowers. It ran parallel to the main beach avenue that was half a mile away. Some of the houses had a Pensione or Albergo signs on them, marking their use as small hotels.
“This is what you’re looking for,” the woman said, pointing at a white-washed, four-story, villa-looking building with several balconies on each floor, white-painted wooden shutters, and ornate, black metal banisters. Flowerpots hung on all the balconies, their colorful content cascading over the banisters. A faded sign in Italian and English at the front of the building indicated that this was Porto Lorenzo—Lorenzo’s Haven.
“Oh, great. Thank you,” he said, his mind preoccupied with the fact that the place looked better than he had expected. It should have been shut down years ago but seemed to still function as a hotel. He hoped it wouldn’t thwart his plans and calculations. “Where do I drop you off?” Romeo then asked.
“Right here is fine,” the woman said as he neared his great-aunt Gina’s building. A fleeting smile stretched her naturally rosy lips. Her mouth was rather wide, and her face not exactly pretty but interesting.
“I can take you to wherever you need,” he said. “Thanks to you, now I know my way here.”
“No, that’s okay. I live right here,” she said.
“Okay,” he replied and, finding a spot several hundred feet ahead of the building, parked the car.
He stepped outside and opened the door for her. Then, as she scrambled out of the car, he took the shopping bags from her.
“Thank you,” she said, moving her hand through her hair and avoiding his eyes.
“Heavy,” he commented. “I’ll carry it for you to your building.”
They started walking back in the direction of Porto Lorenzo, and Romeo expected her to thank him and take her shopping bags at any one of the entrances to the other buildings that they passed by, but she didn’t.
When they reached Gina’s, he looked at her. “You live over there?” he asked, jutting his chin in the direction of the next building.
“No,” she said. Then, to his surprise, she walked straight to the entrance of Lorenzo’s Haven.
He followed her, still holding her shopping bags.
At the entrance, she stopped and turned to him. “I’m Siena Borrelli. You’re a Lorenzo?” she asked, her face stern as she reached out to shake his hand.
He hadn’t missed the sardonic tone she had used. “Romeo Lorenzo, yes,” he said, automatically placing one bag on the floor so he could take the outstretched hand. “You’re staying here?”
“I live here. I help your aunt with her albergo,” she replied, using the Italian word for hotel. Maybe she registered the surprise on his face, because she then added, “But I think she will not have one for much longer now that you came to shed the family property.”
He could plainly hear the scorn she injected into the last two words.
Chapter 2
The minute she had heard the exact address of the building that she now called home and had attached it to the very handsome face that had peered at her through the extravagant car window, Siena had known this man meant trouble. Her suspicion had been soon verified by his words. Squeezing more information had been the reason she had held on before revealing that she had realized who and what he was.
Now, looking at the shabby entrance to Gina’s hotel through his eyes, she could imagine what it all looked like to him.
The building was originally a large villa, and the ground floor had been used as the lobby, reception area, and breakfast room. It was all deserted now. The front door was made of an ugly, dark brown glass and gold aluminum frame. The reception area, too, bore the seventies design that had been there when Gina’s hotel had been at its peak. The sitting area of the lobby was the only one that bore the marine-themed, quiet colors that Siena herself had given it as part of her efforts to renovate the place for Gina. It had given her something to do instead of mourning the death of her marriage while saving her money since Gina let her stay for free in exchange for doing work in and on the place.
“I know what it looks like, but it has a lot of potential,” she said, turning to the too good-looking man who stood beside her, still holding her shopping bags in his large hands and taking everything in with a repulsed grimace on his face. “What you see here, I did myself, alone, with almost no money. Just imagine what a real proprietor could do with it.”
“Does my aunt know what you do with the place, or are you just hoping she’ll leave it to you?”
“Of course she knows. She lives here, too.”
“Gina? Lives here? My mother told me she was at a home.”
“Yes. In her home.”
“Where is she then?” he asked, skimming his eyes over her face before looking away.
She felt like she had before, in the car—self-conscious under his too-experienced, x-ray gaze that made her feel like he knew what she looked like naked with just a glance. In this town, you learned to recognize those types fast.
“In her suite. She’s not feeling too well these days. I don’t think she knew you were coming.”
“She didn’t. My mother tried to reach her, but the number was disconnected, and she didn’t know this was still a hotel. I looked it up, but it’s not listed anywhere on the internet. Now I can see why.”
“It hasn’t functioned as a hotel for a while. There aren’t guests here; just two suites out of sixteen, not including Gina’s and mine. That’s all Gina was capable of doing in recent years, but I tried to help, and a website was next on my list,” she said, knowing that it sounded ambitious, given the way the place looked. His gaze told her that was exactly what he was thinking, so she added quietly, “Because she wasn’t feeling well, I had to stop the noisy works, but she’s better now.”
“I booked a hotel room, but I want to see Gina first,” he said.
“Which hotel?”
“The Regal.”
Of course that was the hotel this man would choose. Siena had heard from Gina that her niece, this man’s mother, had made her money through marrying and divorcing rich men and from building a skincare business that her husbands had invested in. But Gina had said it as if it was a triumph.
In any case, Siena hoped he missed the wooden chairs and faded, dusty red and white tablecloths that peeped through the folding doors of the unused breakfast room. It looked like it had frozen in the same timeframe as the rest of the reception area. There was an old-fashioned Formica and mirrors bar there that she was planning on removing, maybe even burning.
“Where do you want this?” Romeo suddenly asked, and she realized he was still holding her shopping bags.
“I’ll take them.”
“They’re heavy. I’ll put it where you need it,” he fired the words, so despite the gallant offer, he sounded as if he wanted to slam the thing on the floor.
She reached out to take them from him, but he didn’t release the bags and their fingers brushed as she grabbed them from him. Against her will, she was conscious of his touch and the clean, earthy scent that emanated from his body.
“I’ll take it to my suite. I cook there for your aunt, too.”
“Can you take me to her?” he asked again. “Please,” he added after a beat.
“Sure.”
As they crossed the lobby, she hoped he noticed the sitting area with its light seawater-blue walls, cream-colored sofas, and delicate marine-themed knickknacks that she had found in the market and a few well-placed flower pots, which matched the flower pots she had put on every balcony, even the ones that weren’t in use. She watered them twice a week and aired the closed rooms, just so it would be nice to look at the Haven from the street. The old villa could be beautiful someday, if it were lovingly treated.
“She’s on the first floor,” Siena said as they reached the staircase.
“No elevator?” he muttered.
She didn’t reply, just started climbing up the stairs.
The staircases weren’t something she was ashamed he would see. The banisters had been chafed then painted white, the walls a warm cream, adorned with old Rimini pictures she had bought at a flea market. The wooden stairs had been scrubbed, polished, and coated, which had taken her two weeks and a lot of backaches. She side-glanced Romeo and saw on his face that he noticed the difference from the shabby aspect of the ground floor.
“Here, let me,” he said and, without warning, took the bags from her again, his arms colliding with hers in the process.
She had noticed before the muscular contours of his shoulders and arms and how well they filled his shirt. The touch now proved they were true to the promise.
“Your aunt is here.” She pointed at the second of four doors on the first-floor landing. Approaching it, she knocked. “Gina, sono io,” she announced her presence.
When a hoarse voice replied, Siena opened the door and shoved her head in. “Your great-nephew, Romeo Lorenzo, is here,” she said in Italian.
The old woman half lay on the sofa under the open window, the white lace curtains blowing a few centimeters above her face. “That’s how I know I’m still alive,” she used to say.
“Il figlio di Livia, il bello playboy?” Gina asked with an arched smile, pushing herself laboriously to sit up and wondering if this was Livia’s son, the beautiful playboy. She was weak in body but not in mind or spirit.
Siena shifted her feet uncomfortably, suspecting that, even if Romeo didn’t know enough Italian to fully understand, which she guessed he did, the word that mattered was similar to English.
Before she had a chance to reply, she felt a warm, large palm on her arm. “Mi scusi, il bello playboy vuole vedere la sua cara zia,” Romeo said, his voice and breath caressing the side of her face from above, his body slightly pressing against her, forcing her to move aside and make way for him to see “his beloved aunt.”
It was amazing to watch the old lady’s face light up at the sight of him. Maybe it was because he was family, the son of her beloved niece, both of whom she hadn’t seen in years. Maybe because he was young and a visitor, something that Gina hadn’t seen much of these days. Or, maybe because he had this effect on women, regardless of age.
“I’ll bring something to drink,” Siena said, following him into the room.
Carrying the bags that he had left at the door, she continued to the adjacent kitchenette, where she placed some of the groceries in Gina’s fridge and cupboards. She then poured cold lemonade into two glasses while listening to the conversation that took place in the small living room. His Italian was decent; sufficed for the niceties he exchanged with his great-aunt and the half-avoiding excuse he gave to explain his arrival.
“Hotel? What? You have to stay here.” Gina sounded hurt when he told her where he was planning on staying while in Rimini. “Siena, tell him we have enough rooms here,” Gina coaxed while Siena helped her sit up more comfortably so she could have her drink.
“We have enough rooms here,” Siena repeated flatly in Italian, accompanying it with a fake smile. “It will be easier for you to assess the price, no?” she added in English.
“Thank you, Gina, but I don’t plan to stay long,” Romeo replied in Italian, ignoring Siena’s jab and turning his head back to look at the old lady. “I already ruined your hospitality,” he added.
Siena wanted to laugh at the verb he had mistaken. He had probably meant to say that he didn’t want to outstay his welcome, but “ruined” better fit his real intent, after all.
“Che sciocchezza,” Gina insisted, calling his reluctance nonsense.
Siena couldn’t bear it. “I’ll be in my apartment, Gina,” she said in Italian, leaving the woman to battle or catch up with her long-lost great-nephew.
Two floors up, in her own suite—which was made up like all the other suites in this small apartment hotel, with a bedroom, a tiny living room, a well-equipped kitchenette, and a bathroom—Siena started calculating where she would go from here.
In her one year in Rimini, she had managed to feel at home, thanks to this place. She had come here a recently divorced, thirty-three-year-old woman, who had defied and disappointed her family first by marrying late, then by preferring her stilted, academic career over having children, and then by divorcing her cheater of a husband. She had boarded the first train out of her hometown, which had led her to Rimini. Gina’s derelict hotel had been all she could afford while figuring out what to do with her future. Now she was here, in the little apartment she had cleaned and painted in light colors, with vintage furniture she had bought and hand-painted to replace the old Formica atrocities that had been there for over thirty years. She had done the same for Gina’s apartment after the old lady had asked her to stay and offered her a sort of job. Since then, she had started working her way slowly on other parts of Lorenzo’s Haven.
Siena placed the groceries in the fridge and cabinets, and just as she stepped onto the little balcony that was attached to the suite and sat on the azure-painted wooden chair and looked over at the distant beach, there was a knock on her door.
“Hello,” she said, opening the door to the overly handsome face of Romeo.
“Which is the ‘Family Gallo’ suite?” he asked without returning her greeting.
“It’s the one over here.” She pointed at the door next to hers. “Why?”
“Looks like I’ll be staying there until I resolve this issue,” he replied then started to walk over to the other door. “Why is it called the ‘Family Gallo’ suite?”
“Oh, Gina remembers each suite by the family who usually stayed there in the summer months. People used to come here for at least two to three weeks each summer. It was mostly families.”
“Oh, okay,” he muttered, seeming impatient to enter said suite.
“What issue?” she called after his back.
He retreated back the few steps he had taken. “Didn’t Gina tell you? This building can’t be sold. It can be rented or leased, but it can’t be sold, due to some legal issue.”
“I didn’t know that,” she said, repressing the smile that was building up inside her.
“Can I come in?” he then asked, though it sounded more like a demand, as if she had no choice but to let him into her suite. It reminded her of the lawyer who had told her that she had no choice but to sell her share of the mutual apartment to her ex-husband.
“Sure, Mr. Lorenzo,” she said bitingly.
He stopped in the middle of her little sitting room, and she could have sworn he looked impressed. He noticed the open, large window and stepped uninvited onto the balcony. He then looked around and down at the balconies next and below them.
In half of them, she had managed to place hand-painted sets of azure and yellow chairs and tables that she had saved from various places to replace the chapped, faded plastic ones that had been there. She had varnished the black metal banisters. With the red, pink, and white flowers that spilled from the pots that she had hung, the view from the street was enchanting. A few tourists had even knocked to ask if they had vacancies, but despite the temptation, given that they didn’t have a cook or cleaning staff, and she couldn’t do the work herself, she’d had to decline.
“You did all this?” he asked, turning his head to look at her.
She nodded, pressing her lips into a thin line.
“That’s nice. What you did in the staircase and hallways, too. But this place needs a lot more.”
“It took me less than a year to do this all by myself with almost no money,” she said, her eyes locked on him. She noticed that he had rolled his sleeves up to his elbows, exposing strong forearms and warm, golden skin. He had also opened the top two buttons of his shirt, enabling a glimpse of a chest that made her avert her gaze, not wanting to be distracted or think anything nice about this man.
“Who lives here beside you and my aunt?”
“There are Sylvia and Emilia, two older sisters who share one suite on the second floor, and an older gentleman in the suite next to them. They pay rent to your aunt.”
“So, they just live here?”
“They all used to come here every summer when this was still a hotel, and Gina let them stay when they got older and she closed down. Bruno, the man who lives here, came here two years ago after his sons sold the family farm, because he couldn’t work there all alone. When I arrived, they were already living here.”
“And you take care of them, too?”
“I help them a bit, but they clean by themselves and run most of their own errands. They’re younger than Gina and … healthier.”
Romeo nodded. “You pay rent, too?” he asked after a beat.
“No,” she said, jutting her chin and locking her eyes on his impossibly blue ones. “I paid at first, but then Gina let me stay if I took care of her and the place. I bought all the paint and plants and shared with Gina on the furniture, which is all secondhand and … it’s all bargains that I find. I do all the work myself.” She hated that she sounded almost apologetic.
Again, he just nodded. Then, averting his gaze toward the sea, he asked, “There are sixteen suites in total?”
“Yes, and twelve are free. I clean them, too, from time to time, run the water in the taps, the toilet, water the plants, dust. But they look terrible, like this one and Gina’s used to look before I remodeled.” Her words had the effect she had hoped they would have—he turned his head back to look at the interior of her little home. She was proud of it.
Nevertheless, she had no illusions that she could execute and complete her vision for the entire place and create such beauty in the other suites, too. None of this would happen now that this man, this Romeo Lorenzo, was here. All someone like him could see was money and numbers, and this was no money-maker. He would find a way to sell it before she could say “Alfa Romeo.”
“Okay,” he muttered, verifying her notions. “I’ll go get my things from the car.”
Without waiting for her, and without another word, he entered back into the living room and went straight out her door, already acting as if the place was his.
Which it was.
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