Page 180 of Modern Romance June 2025 5-8

Addie was still packing her few toiletries when the doorbell rang. Toothbrush, hairbrush, a couple of hair ties, moisturiser, lip gloss, and industrial-strength sunscreen. The last thing she needed was more freckles.

She opened the door and her breath stalled in her throat. Vic Jacobetti was much taller than she remembered, or maybe that was because on the three formal occasions she had met him she had been wearing heels. Boy, did she need a pair of heels right then. Or a ladder. Or a crane. She looked up, up, up to meet his dark brown eyes. Her eyes were brown too, but nothing like the colour of his. Hers were a bland sort of brown, neither light nor dark but something in between. His were so dark, Addie could barely make out where his pupils began and ended, and they were fringed with ink-black lashes far longer than hers. His eyebrows were prominent, his nose straight and his mouth… Oh, dear Lord in heaven, his mouth would have sent Michelangelo dashing off to sharpen his chisels. Sculptured with a full lower lip that was both sensual and utterly masculine. Vic hadn’t recently shaved and the dark stubble along his chiselled jaw and around his mouth made her mouth water. He was dressed in dark blue suit trousers and a light blue business shirt that emphasised the olive tan of his skin, the cuffs folded back from his strong wrists, the neck open to reveal a dusting of hair on his chest—curly, thick, black, dangerously male.

‘Ready,cara?’ His casually delivered term of endearment should not have drawn her eyes back to his mouth. It should not have made her heart skip and her pulse trip. It should not have made her think she was anything special because she had heard him say it to lots of women. But…no one had ever called her that before.

‘Erm, yes…sort of…’ She was trying not to show how flustered she was. And not just because six foot four of male perfection was standing in the frame of her front door addressing her with an Italian term of endearment. Here was the thing—at work, she was fabulous in an emergency and never got flustered. She stayed calm and never allowed her emotions to get the better of her. Of course, some of the incidents at work were gut-wrenchingly sad but she held herself together until she got home. But being in Vic Jacobetti’s presence was enough to send her pulse racing and her heart to bounce around her chest like a yo-yo having a tantrum. Her crush to this point, on a scale of one to ten, had been a five. Now it was a six.

‘Is that your only luggage?’ Vic looked at the small overnight case she had packed and placed near the door; a frown pulling at his brow.

‘Yes.’

He raised his eyebrows in what she took to be an expression of faint surprise and picked up her bag. ‘Let’s go. The car is waiting.’

Addie locked her door and followed him to the long sleek car parked on the street. A driver was behind the wheel and there was a glass partition between him and the passenger section. The driver got out of the vehicle and swiftly opened the door for her, giving her a polite nod. ‘Good evening, Miss Featherstone.’

‘Good evening.’ She smiled and got in with as much grace as she could muster, but she couldn’t help wondering if both the driver and Vic were comparing her to her mother. Most people did. Needless to say, her mother was excellent at entering and alighting from luxury vehicles. She, on the other hand, was so worried she might trip or bump her head, she usually ended up doing one or both. But miraculously, this time she managed to get in without making a fool of herself.

Once Vic had taken his seat and closed the door, the driver closed the panel dividing him from them, and smoothly pulled away from the curb and entered the night-time traffic.

Addie was suddenly aware of being alone with Vic Jacobetti. He was sitting within touching distance. She could smell the citrus and woodsy notes of his aftershave. She could see the long length of his legs, and she could hear the rustle of his shirt as he reached for some papers in a leather briefcase on the floor at his Italian leather–clad feet. He sat back in his seat with the papers resting on his lap and glanced at her. The dark interior of the car made his eyes so black she was mesmerised by them. Hypnotised like someone being put under a spell.

‘Is everything all right,bella?’

She rapid-blinked. If only she didn’t have the propensity to blush.Bella.Now, that was taking the endearments a little too far. She did not for one moment consider herself beautiful. Hopefully the subdued lighting would disguise the heat crawling across her cheeks. ‘Of course. It’s just been a bit of a rush, that’s all.’

One side of his mouth lifted in a grimace, and he looked back down at his papers and began to shuffle through them. ‘Tell me about it.’

There was an echoing silence.

‘What did you have to cancel in order to take care of Katerina? A hot date with a supermodel or superfamous actress?’ She wanted to bite her tongue. She wanted to slap the side of her head for being such a fool for showing any interest in his love life. She wanted to sink to the floor and disappear under the seat like a lost coin. She hated this about herself, but sometimes when she was flustered, she didn’t clam up as you’d expect someone shy to do, but instead she would blurt out the first thing that came to her mind. It was like the more uncomfortable and out of her depth she felt, the more likely her tongue would flap its way into territory it would never normally dare to go. This was such a time.

Vic’s eyes came back to hers with a glint that did nothing to quell her skittering pulse and cool her hot cheeks. ‘No. I’ve taken myself off the market for a while.’

Her brows rose. ‘Oh?’

He tapped the paperwork on his lap with his long and tanned fingers. ‘I have a lot of work on at the moment. I’m about to begin a new hotel development.’

She tried not to show her surprise at his choice of temporary celibacy. It was rare for a week or two to go by without a gossip magazine or social media platform documenting his latest love interest. For all she knew, there was probably a waiting list of women desperate to date him. ‘So, where is this new development?’ she asked.

‘Lake Como.’

‘Near your villa?’

‘As close as you can get.’ He gave a wry half smile and added, ‘It is my villa. I’m turning it into a hotel, or I will be once Katerina and her parents finish their holiday there.’

‘How long have you lived there?’

‘I haven’t lived there since I was a child.’ He turned over another page and then glanced at her again with an inscrutable expression and continued, ‘Isabella and Marcus use it more than I do. I’ve only been there two times in the past year. I mostly travel between my hotels or stay in my London apartment.’ He looked back down at his paperwork, his expression now set in taut lines of almost fierce concentration.

‘You don’t feel any sentimentality about the place?’

‘None.’

For some reason, she wasn’t fooled by that brusque response. Sensing an undercurrent of bitterness contained in that single-word answer, she kept quiet. She had heard via Marcus that Vic had lost his father when he was young, and his mother had remarried a couple of years later. Isabella was born the following year. Losing a parent at any age was devastating, but for a young child it was life changing. So too was divorce, but she didn’t want to think too much about her parents’ acrimonious divorce, and she certainly didn’t want to talk about it. With anyone. Even Marcus and she had made a tacit agreement to never discuss it.

‘How long did you live there as a child?’

‘Until I was seven.’

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