A Mother For His Daughter by Ally Blake

Author:Ally Blake
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2013-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

Dinner was a riot.

Dom had the whole family in thrall with tales of his trip to Crete. The fact that he had barely escaped arrest, fistfights and ancient curses was apparently nothing new.

Dom’s arrival had been enough to bring Gran-nonna out of her cottage. Grey-haired and sombrely dressed though she was, she so obviously adored her younger grandson’s daredevil attitude. She watched wide-eyed as Dom stood atop his chair, wielding an unlit candelabrum as a prop.

On the other hand Luca’s eyes rarely left his plate, and when they did flicker to his guests it was only to glower or ask someone to pass the salt. Gracie thought he was taking his big-brother attitude too far. Sure, Dom was a larrikin, but he had nothing tying him down, so why not?

When Dom’s story ended and he plopped back into his chair, fixing Gracie with a flirtatious stare, she was understandably caught unawares.

‘Gracie, have you found yourself an Italian lover as yet?’ he asked.

‘Domenico, watch your mouth,’ Gran-nonna chastised in her mother tongue, slapping him lightly behind his head, her grin weakening the impact of the reprimand.

Gracie looked around the table for an ally but Mila was busy singing to herself and Luca was watching her with as much interest as Dom, though still glowering all the same.

‘What? It is a relevant question, no?’ Dom asked, his face all innocence as he looked about the tableau of guests. ‘Gracie is a beautiful woman. She is a tourist come to seek out the pleasures of our sumptuous country. And from what I have heard, Australian girls are not so shy as those from less…hot countries.’

She could have continued with her sideshow-clown impersonation, but she knew from Dom’s cheeky smile that he was merely baiting the new girl for sport. With a practised glare piercing enough to have stopped men more determined than Dom in their tracks, Gracie pointed a finger in his direction. ‘Any more of that type of talk and you’ll be receiving an even stronger slap to the back of the head from me.’

Dom cowered and held up two hands in submission. ‘No! Please. Anything but that.’

‘You deserve nothing less,’ Luca insisted, finally joining the conversation. ‘In her brief stay with us, Gracie has done wonders with our little Mila. And for that she deserves our deepest respect.’

Gracie dragged her gaze to look at Luca, though she had a feeling she would later regret it. She had been expecting a cheeky glint to have finally reached his usually smiling eyes, but her host was deadly serious.

Luca held up his glass of red wine. ‘To the kindness of strangers.’

The others at the table followed suit. Her inhibitions loosened by the classic Chianti, drawn from Luca’s vineyard, Gracie stared in silence as Luca brought his glass to his mouth, that mouth that ought to have been immortalised in marble, and took a prolonged sip of his wine, his warm, expressive gaze never leaving her once.

All of a sudden, Mila’s Pino trotted too close to her water glass and knocked it over, spilling the contents over the lace tablecloth.

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