Page 158 of Modern Romance June 2025 5-8

He threw back the covers, stalked to the bathroom. He glared at himself in the mirror, the dark smudges beneath his eyes advertising his restless sleep. He tried to ignore Ivy’s open toiletries bag and the mismatch of skincare containers.

‘…it’s the little things. Like knowing what skincare brand she uses…’

He didn’t want to know. He didn’t want Ivy creeping into his life even more than she had already.

Biting back a curse, he turned on the shower and stepped beneath the powerful jets of water. The frigid temperature might have numbed his skin, but it did nothing to touch the heat bubbling beneath the surface. Leaning one hand against the cool tiles, he took himself in the other with long, powerful strokes. His head fell back, open to the water as it pounded against his face, the pleasure an unsatisfying imitation of what he really wanted.

Ivy.

Ivy smiled at Maria as she searched the breakfast buffet that was big enough to feed the army that was the Gallo family. She was looking for herbal tea, but craving the fresh mint that Agata made so well.

‘How did you sleep?’ Maria asked by way of greeting.

Terribly.

Amazingly.

Not that Ivy would even think of telling Maria what it was like to wake up to feel Antonio beside her. How that, for the first time in ages, despite the way her body lit up like a firework, she’d also slept the most sound, deep sleep she’d had in what felt like years. Yet, even though she was utterly rested, she was restless and agitated.

‘Good, thank you. And you?’

Maria gave a graceful shrug. ‘I drank too much,’ she admitted freely, and Ivy couldn’t help but smile. There was something infectious about the energy Maria had. It was powerful. ‘But you must have thecornetti—they’re homemade and divine,’ she added, before her eyes landed on the pot of coffee on the other end of the table and she disappeared, leaving only a moan in her wake.

Ivy smiled to herself as she wandered further along the table, seeing the pastries Maria had mentioned. She picked up a plate just as someone else picked up the tongs.

‘Allow me,signora.’

Ivy’s gaze flickered to the face of the man who had offered to help her to some pastries and stopped. ‘Micha!’ she exclaimed in a whisper.

‘It is good to see you again, Ivy.’

It was silly, she knew that, but she cast her gaze around, knowing that Antonio wouldn’t like her talking to him.

‘I had hoped to be here last night, but work kept me away,’ he said, picking up acornettoand putting it on her plate. ‘Alessia was kind enough to extend an invitation to me,’ Micha explained as if she would have queried his presence.

The tension she felt shifted to compassion, sensing that he too was not entirely at home here.

‘I’m sorry about Signor Gallo,’ she said to him, and something flashed in his gaze. She imagined that most people thought Micha’s relationship with Antonio’s grandfather was that of employee and employer, but when he had approached her in London last year, Ivy had seen it to be more than that.

‘Grazie,’he said, and he meant it, she could tell. ‘How is the—?’ He broke off and tapped beside his eye.

Ivy smiled, knowing that he’d been concerned for her when they’d met. Apparently, Gio Gallo had a full dossier compiled on her and knew full well about her accident and her eye. Gio, she assumed, was a man who’d wanted to‘know thine enemy’. But by the time she’d met Micha, Ivy had been well on the way to recovery.

‘It’s about the same,’ she admitted, ‘but I’m working again and that feels good.’

Micha’s face was expressionless, but still she felt something shift.

‘Was Signor Gallo angry when you went back to Italy?’ she asked, wondering what had happened after he’d left London. ‘When I refused his request?’

Micha pouted and shrugged. ‘More surprised. You impressed him.’

That hadn’t been her intention. Although it might have been shocking to the Gallos to have someone considerably less wealthy refuse such a request, Ivy hadn’t even needed to think about it. She had given Antonio her vow. He was the only one who could ask her to break it.

‘Not enough to make him change his will,’ Ivy pointed out, despite the small burst of pride that she’d managed to impress Antonio’s grandfather.

‘No. Signor Gallo was consistent in one thing. He wanted his company to stay in the family. It was…important to him. He did many things to ensure it happened the way he wanted.’

There were shadows and a story in Micha’s eyes, but now wasn’t the place nor the time for it. Ivy wondered, as Micha bowed his head and left her to breakfast, if many people took the time to look beyond the forbidding façade he showed the world. But as she encountered the curious, sometimes hostile, mainly disdainful looks on the faces of the Gallo family, she doubted it. She might have hated growing up with an absent father and a mother who cared only about her own wants and needs, but at least she’d had Jamie. And that had to have been better than growing up in the viper den that was the Gallo family.

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