Rebecca Winters: Italian Groom, Princess Bride

“She could never marry you, let alone acknowledge you or your love-child in public either! How does that sit with you?”

“I’m going to get word to her I’m here in the greenhouse, waiting to talk to her.”

Dizo’s father patted his arm. “ Corragio, figliomio .”

This went beyond courage. Dizo didn’t have a choice but to face the situation head on. A scandal like this would rock the royal palace. It would undermine the honor of both his family and Gina’s.

He thought of other royal families who’d been caught up in similar situations. Once the press got wind of what was going on in Castelmare their lives would never be the same. They’d all be labeled and crucified. The torment would never end.

For himself, it didn’t matter. For Gina, he would do whatever it took to protect her.

Rebecca Winters, whose family of four children has now swelled to include three beautiful grandchildren, lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, in the land of the Rocky Mountains. With canyons and high Alpine meadows full of wildflowers, she never runs out of places to explore. They, plus her favourite vacation spots in Europe, often end up as backgrounds for her Mills & Boon® Romance novels, because writing is her passion, along with her family and her church. Rebecca loves to hear from her readers. If you wish to e-mail her, please visit her website at: www.cleanromances.com

BY

REBECCA WINTERS

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

“GUIDO?”

The wiry head gardener of the palace grounds turned around. He’d just lowered a bag of peat moss onto the pile inside the nursery shed behind the greenhouse. When he saw who it was, he made a slight bow.

“ Buona sera, Principessa . I’m very sorry about your father.” Though he was civil to her, she’d always felt his reticence around her. Of late she’d sensed his antipathy.

No matter how many times she’d asked him to call her Regina, he’d always called her Princess and insisted his sons did, too. The rigid, class-conscious father of three would maintain his distance to the grave.

“Thank you, Guido. I am, too,” Regina murmured.

No one could have had a more wonderful parent than the man who’d reigned over the European Principality of Castelmare since before she’d been born. Lung cancer had finally taken her father and although it had been a blessed release, Rudolfo Vittorio IV had died too young.

Her mother was handling it exceptionally well, probably because his long suffering was over and she had a new three-month-old granddaughter to dote on. Regina’s older brother, Lucca, now king, and his wife, Alexandra, had each other and their darling Catarina. Everyone had someone. Now more than ever before Regina needed the one man she’d always loved, the man who’d been her closest friend and confidante from the age of ten.

“What can I do for you?”

“Is Dinozzo still on the grounds?”

“No,” was all he said before he went out of the doors to pull another bag off the bed of his truck. She flinched because Guido’s behavior bordered on open hostility.

Her watch said it was after 6:00 p.m. She’d planned to come this late so Dizo, her special nickname for him, would be through with any jobs his father had saved for him after leaving the university’s animal hospital. Filled with a fierce disappointment that she’d missed him, she followed Guido.

“If you should talk to him tonight, will you please tell him I’d like a word with him in the morning about some plantings we discussed earlier?”

He went back out to the truck to pick up another bag. “I would, but he left for Sardinia.”

She almost doubled over in shock.

Sardinia —

Without any other explanation, Guido returned to the shed to deposit the bag.

“W-when did he leave?” her voice faltered. She’d been counting on him being here so they could talk. In her loneliest hours she could always turn to him. He’d been there for her at every crossroad. When she’d been betrothed to Crown Prince Nicolas of Pedrosa at the age of twenty-one, she’d run to Dizo in turmoil. Somehow he had always made her feel better.

“Early this morning.”

Early meant even before the funeral. While Guido sounded exceptionally happy about it, pain seared her so deeply she couldn’t breathe.

While she and her family had been burying their father and husband in the plot that held all the past Castelmare rulers of the House of Savoy, Dizo had just left without letting her know why? He hadn’t even watched the burial from a distance when he knew how much her father had respected Dizo for putting himself through college and medical school.

“I see.” She fought to maintain her composure so Guido couldn’t take satisfaction in her devastation. Today was a national day of mourning in honor of her father. Now that Nic had become king and was pushing for her to marry him right away, this had turned out to be the blackest day of her life. “How soon do you expect him back?”

“I don’t.”

She swallowed hard. “Is someone ill?” The Fornese family had been born in Sardinia. They had extended family in Sassari. Dizo was particularly fond of his aging grandmother who lived with Guido’s brother.

Dizo visited them when he could, but between his studies at the University of Castelmare and helping his father in his spare time, there weren’t as many visits anymore.

Even so, Regina hated it whenever he had to be gone for a day or two at a time. She found herself counting the seconds until he returned.

“No. He will be getting married soon.”

That was a lie. Though Guido could have wished his eldest son had settled down with a wife years ago, it hadn’t happened. What he’d just said were the words of a wishful thinking father. If it were the truth, Dizo would have told her himself. Guido valued family over education, not wanting to admit his hardworking son could have both in time.

Choose the battle you’re sure of, Regina’s father used to tell her. This was one she would let pass. “I had no idea. Thank you for the information, Guido.”

“ Prego, Principessa .” When he went back for the next bag, she realized she’d been dismissed.

As she walked away in agony, she saw Dizo’s younger brothers returning in one of the other trucks. Out of desperation she waved them down.

The vehicle slowed. Fonsi tipped his head out the window. “ Princess? Is there something wrong?”

Wrong? her heart cried hysterically. Yes, something was wrong. “I came here to discuss the kind of trees I wanted planted at my father’s grave, but I just learned that Dinozzo left for Sardinia.”

Fonsi nodded.

“Your father said he’s going to be married.” They would tell her it wasn’t true.

“At the end of the summer,” Pasquale informed her from the interior of the cab. “He’s found a job there.”

Dizo had never breathed a word of it to her. He’d just passed his medical boards. She’d thought of course he planned to be a vet here in Capriccio where he could stay close to his family. She’d planned on it. Regina couldn’t live without Dizo.

She patently didn’t believe Guido. He’d made it up and his sons were in on the lie.

“Did you ask Papa for help?”

“Not yet, Fonsi,” she said out of wooden lips. “Your brother mentioned he had some ideas, so I wanted to talk to him about them first.”

“We are all very sorry about your father. Papa revered him and will be happy to plant something special,” Pasquale chimed in, but he was a little too eager for them to get off the subject of Dizo. It could only mean their father had coached them in what to say to her. He really disliked the spoiled princess of Castelmare.