The Chocolatier Page 10

  “You know about that?”

  She raised her eyebrows at him. “I’m a chocolatière, too.” Did he think she didn’t know her craft? Still, she had never seen an actual hazelnut tree. Though she wouldn’t tell him that.

  “So you say.”

  There it was again, the challenge in his voice. Reining her horse in, she ignored his comment.

  “As I recall, during Napoléon’s regency, cocoa became hard to come by,” she said. “So in Torino, an enterprising chocolatier named Prochet ground up hazelnuts from Langhe to extend his supply. In the mid-eighteen-hundreds, Caffarel created Gianduiotto. Soon, the gianduiotto proved so popular that it became a hallmark of Italian chocolate-making.” Lauro was staring at her with such surprise that she couldn’t resist a satisfied smirk. “So yeah, I’ve heard of it. I’m going to take a closer look.”

  A corner of his mouth lifted in what some might have taken for a grin, but by now, she knew better.

  Without answering, Lauro clucked his tongue, and his horse started off.

  Curious, Celina cantered past him, eager to inspect the trees. Broad, leafy canopies arched over multiple trunks, filtering sunlight that danced around them like fairies on the path. She stopped beside a tree and reached up to bend a branch toward her. A bract of green, fringed leaves encapsulated the hazelnuts.

  Inhaling the scents of nature surrounding her, she paused, wondering why her husband had shunned such a beautiful place where she’d found acceptance, welcome, and love. She shifted on her saddle and peered behind her.

  From everyone but Lauro, that is.

  Celina heard his horse trot behind her. Turning away, she tented her hand and gazed toward neighboring hills beribboned with grapevines arching across mounded earth in neat, graceful lines. Was Lauro the reason Tony had stayed away? Her horse tossed its head. “What do you know, pal?” she murmured to the mare, who only snorted in response. She ran her hand along its silky neck.

  Lauro brought his horse to a halt next to her. He held a large, wrinkle-skinned lemon. “These are sfusato amalfitano, and they’re unique to our area.” He brought out a pocket knife and peeled off a slice. Handing it to her, he added, “Go ahead, they’re sweet.”

  Celina hesitated. After Lauro bit into the fruit, she tentatively tasted it. She was surprised; it was much sweeter than the lemons grown in California. “It’s good,” she said, peeling back sections to finish it.

  After they finished, Lauro tossed the peels aside and shifted in his saddle. “We should keep going. I’m sure you want to be on your way.”

  Celina glanced at him. “Your words, not mine. I’m enjoying the ride and the view.”

  When he shrugged in response, Celina turned toward him. She’d had enough of his attitude. Since she’d decided to stay here until it was time for Marco to start school, it was time to clear the tension between them. She pursed her lips and lifted her chin toward him. “You don’t like me, and that’s okay. But I deserve to know why.”

  Lauro stared at her as to gauge her reaction before he spoke.

  “Well?” she said, growing irritated. “Does it have to do with Tony?”

  “Nino did what he wanted,” Lauro shot back, throwing off any semblance of polite behavior. “He often had a faraway look in his eyes, even as a child. He was never fully present, always lost in thought.”

  “That was Tony, not me.”

  Ignoring her comment, Lauro pressed on. “When Nino left Italy for America, you have no idea how much it hurt my mother. He chose to live his life how he wanted, but we live ours. And I don’t have to welcome his...eccentricities.”

  “So a wife and child are eccentricities in Italy, are they?”

  “You know what I mean. You’re an American.”

  “Of Italian descent.”

  Lauro expelled a breath of exasperation.

  “So that’s why I’m not welcome here? The telegram you sent said something entirely different.” The resentment she’d felt toward Lauro coiled within her. “Whatever was between you and Tony, I had a duty to inform my husband’s family. Your parents have certainly welcomed us.”

  Lauro leaned forward. “Who sent that telegram? Who collected you from the train station? I’ve done everything to make you welcome.”

  “Except be nice to me. Your only brother’s widow.” She paused as her resentment and hurt transformed into anger.

  Throwing up a hand and shaking it toward her, Lauro burst out, “In suggesting you stay at the villa, my parents made a polite gesture to you.” His eyes flashed under dark, lowered brows. “But you are not part of this family. Don’t accept their offer.”

  Celina laughed. “Is that a threat?”

  Spreading his hands, Lauro leaned back. “I don’t threaten women.”

  “I might not be part of your family, but Tony’s son is.” Her horse stepped back, seeming agitated by their exchange. “Your mother told me it’s been years since she’s seen Carmine’s face light up as it does when he’s with Marco.”

  His face reddening with frustration, Lauro spat on the ground. “That’s just it. What if you’re using your son to get to my parents?”

  “Oh, no. No you don’t.” Swinging her horse around to face him, Celina advanced toward him. “You will not sully their relationship. Your brother’s little boy—who just lost his father and has been grieving over him for months—has a right to have a relationship with his grandparents. Just as they have a right to assuage their grief over their son and transfer some of that love in their hearts to his son. If you don’t like it, you can get the hell away from us.”

  For a moment, he looked as though she’d struck him. He muttered, “Spoken like a true American.” His lips curled as if the word itself were distasteful to him.

  Nudging his horse closer to hers, he pulled himself up and glared at her. “What is it you want from us? Support for your son? For you? The chocolate factory? Maybe you think you’ll inherit all this,” he added with a wave of his hand.

  “Absolutely nothing.” Celina huffed in his face, indignant that he would even imagine that. The idiocy of this man. Lauro was nothing like Tony, who might not have been as cultured as his brother, but her husband’s heart was so big it had burst with love. He had died not from the accident, but from the heart attack he suffered just before impact. How dare Tony’s little brother accuse her of such a thing. “Surely you can’t think that.”

  “You’re transparent,” Lauro muttered as he shook his head. “Non capisci una fava.”

  Celina lifted her chin to him. “Tu sei una fava,” she shot back. He was the one who didn’t know anything.

  “No one calls me stupid.” Lauro grabbed her horse’s rein and yanking it toward him, brought his face close to hers.

  “Then prove you aren’t. You can’t possibly believe that’s why I’m here.” He was so close she could feel his breath on her lips. She was appalled to think that he’d been sharing these thoughts with his parents. Staring at him with a mixture of contempt and sadness, she held his piercing gaze, which seemed to bore through to her soul.

  In a flash, Lauro’s hand slid behind her neck, and his lips hovered near hers, their warm breath mingling, so close he could have kissed her. Instead, he bit his lip, containing whatever emotions were raging through him. His eyes darkened, and his expression was one of anguished lust—as if he were fighting his attraction to her.

  Tearing loose with a cry, she leveled her hand against his cheek, the sting shocking her as much as him. “Don’t you dare take liberties with me.”

  She swung her horse around and pressed her legs into its body. What had possessed him to think he had the right to put his hands on her like that? Tears of anger burned across her cheeks and whipped into her hair as she rode.

  While her horse gained speed, she glanced back to see Lauro, his head bowed, gingerly rubbing his face.

  Chapter 9

  Amalfi, 1939

  “Maybe we’ll be married in the spring,” Lauro said to Signore and Signo
ra Ferrara, friends of his parents. He searched the crowded salon for Isabella.

  The Savoia family and close friends had gathered for the traditional Christmas Eve feast of the seven fishes at his parent’s villa. Savory aromas of sautéed fish, clams, and oysters wafted from the kitchen. After fasting all day, which was their custom until after midnight mass, Lauro was starving.

  “That’s a surprise,” Signora Ferrara said. “You’ve proposed?”

  “Not formally,” Lauro confided, feeling nervous. “But her father just gave me permission to ask her.”

  Candlelight flickered in the grand salon, and outside, the haunting harmonic sound of the local shepherds, the zampognari, playing their bagpipes floated to them. Lauro spotted Isabella with Adele across the room, whispering and laughing at some secret or gossip, he imagined. He caught her gaze, and she flashed a brilliant smile at him.

  Lauro touched his fingertips to his lips in response. Never had he been happier in his life.

  His family and Isabella’s had just returned from mass services at the cathedral. To his great relief, Isabella’s father had approved of his request to ask her to marry him, though he’d made him wait more than two weeks for his answer.

  Isabella’s father, Rocco Guardino, was a powerful, wealthy industrialist, and his company was responsible for building and improving roads and bridges throughout Italy. Built like a bull, he was admired and feared, Lauro suspected, in equal measures. After calling him into his cavernous study early this morning, her father had made him promise he’d take care of Isabella and protect her with his life until the day he died, which he intended to do, of course. But Signore Guardino had never once smiled during the entire meeting.

  Lauro wiggled the ring in his pocket he’d been carrying around with him for what seemed like an eternity. But now, he was elated. Isabella Guardino would soon be his bride—if she accepted his formal proposal. He’d been hinting, and she’d been coy, but she had yet to give him a direct answer until her father approved.

  “Isabella is quite spirited,” Signore Ferrara said, drawing Lauro’s attention back.

  Signora Ferrara added, “By next Christmas, the two of you might have a little bambino.”

  “Maybe not that soon,” Lauro said, gulping the French champagne Signore Guardino had provided in lavish quantities for the special evening.

  He felt his face flush and glanced at Isabella again, hardly believing his good fortune. Sensing his gaze on her, she turned, her vivid, laughing blue eyes meeting his, her tawny blond hair framing rosy cheeks flushed with excitement. She blew him a kiss and sashayed toward him, her holly red dress swirling around her shapely legs.

  Lauro smiled as the Ferraras moved on. Babies. They were both young, and he wasn’t sure if he was ready for babies yet, but he did want a family. He just wanted to have Isabella all to himself first.

  Turning around, Lauro spied his father in conversation with Isabella’s father in the corner. Their parents knew each other socially as well as through business, for Cioccolata Savoia had also grown into a major export company over the last couple of decades, enhancing the Savoia family wealth along with it. First Germany and Austria, then England and Russia. Next, North America.

  As the company grew, so did the line of mothers anxious to introduce their daughters to Lauro and Nino. After the wedding, that would be in the past, at least for him. Nino would still have to contend with the matchmakers. So far, Nino had dodged the question, insisting that he needed to spend more time at university than Lauro had. Although Nino had graduated with a degree in biology, he decided he wanted to continue to pursue medicine, so he was working in the family business until medical school began next year.

  “You’re the older brother,” Lauro had told Nino in the summer, as soon as he was sure he wanted to marry Isabella. “You should be getting married first.”

  “I have essential work to do before I consider marriage,” Nino had replied, though his pained expression seemed to imply something else. “Does your girl know who our family is?”

  “Why shouldn’t she?”

  Nino shrugged. “I want a woman to marry me for who I am, not for who my family is or what we have.”

  Lauro didn’t understand. “But that’s who we are.”

  Nino shook his head. “Maybe you, brother.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Only if you’ve found the woman of your dreams, and you’re certain, then don’t let her get away. Marriage is forever for us.”

  Lauro had replayed that conversation many times, but it didn’t hold any meaning for him. He was twenty-one, he had completed his university studies, and he was ready to embark on adulthood with a beautiful woman by his side. He would grow old with Isabella and never tire of her the way some men tired of their wives. Those men were married to women who weren’t like his Isabella.

  Isabella’s family had a villa in nearby Positano, as well as a grand home in Rome. Everything Rocco Guardino did was large scale and designed to impress—or intimidate.

  Originally, Lauro had meant to propose on New Year’s Eve, but once he’d made up his mind, he couldn’t fathom waiting that long. Isabella Guardino was the only woman for him.

  How such an exquisite creature would agree to marry him was still beyond his grasp, but he’d fallen for her the moment he’d seen her. He’d met her just a few months ago at a summer party in Positano. Isabella and her cousin were seated at the next table.

  Eavesdropping, he had heard her confide in the other girl that her boyfriend in Rome had broken up with her, which he still failed to understand. But she had been devastated. To him, Isabella was like a spark that lit the dimmest room, and everywhere they went people gravitated toward her.

  The next day, Lauro had invited her to sail to Capri with friends, and within a week he’d known this was the woman he would marry. He’d worked hard to coax tentative smiles from her troubled face. Maybe she hadn’t gotten over her last boyfriend, but Lauro saw that she was passionate and sensitive.

  He felt his chest tighten at the memory of their stolen kisses on Capri when her older brother—her chaperone—had been lusting after a girl he’d met in a café. The despair he’d seen in her eyes when they’d first met was soon washed away on ocean waves, and her laughter peeled out as if from the heavens. By the end of the week, he was thrilled to have brought happiness to her suntanned face. How could he not have fallen in love with her?

  Now, when Isabella reached him, she brushed her cheek against his, taunting him with lowered eyelids and the tip of her tongue that moistened her full lips. He slid his arm around her waist.

  “Bella,” he whispered, playfully pinching her hip. “You’re a merciless tease.”

  “Who’s teasing?” Isabella made a small moue with puckered lips and ran her finger along his smooth jawline.

  Lauro groaned. “Maybe we should move up the wedding date.”

  “You haven’t even proposed yet.” She laughed. “Besides, it wouldn’t look good to Mama and Papa if we did. Pazienza, amore mio.”

  Lauro brought her hand to his lips and kissed it. “Your papa worries too much.”

  Isabella lifted a coupe de champagne from a young man balancing a tray of chilled drinks and sipped from it, never taking her eyes from him. With effervescent bubbles clinging to her lips, she stole a quick kiss and handed him the glass.

  “Mmm, champagne kisses.” Lauro took the crystal glass and nuzzled her neck. His patience was being stretched thinner with every passing day. “Think of the fun we’re going to have, my love.”

  Signore Guardino was called away, so Lauro’s father joined them. Carmine slung an arm around his son. “You two look like you have a secret.”

  “Never from you.” Isabella laughed and pressed her cheek against his father’s.

  Lauro tickled her. “Ask my father. He’ll tell you I’m not the patient one in the family. And neither are you.” They both laughed, but Lauro respected her wishes. The last thing he wanted was to get
on the wrong side of her father before the wedding.

  “No, that would be your brother,” Carmine said, before turning his attention to Isabella. “In our family, Lauro has never been known for his patience.”

  “Papa, don’t spoil my chance here.” Lauro jabbed his father in the side.

  Isabella’s laughter bubbled through her as she took Lauro’s hand and guided it around her waist. “I can hardly wait to spend more holidays together like this. You should come to my parents’ home next year. My father always invites the best chefs for a lavish gourmet meal. Last year we had a formal dinner for more than a hundred people.”

  Lauro noticed that his father let her comment slide over him. He knew his father cherished their Christmas Eve, which revolved around family. Throughout the evening, they had more family stopping by—some staying for dinner, others on their way to the homes of other family and friends. He spied his younger cousins, lively and boisterous, clowning around and popping sweet struffoli balls into each other’s mouths. How could he miss this? They would deal with that after they were married.

  Carmine looked over the festive gathering with expectation. “Speaking of your brother, someone said he’d arrived. Have you seen him?”

  “Not yet,” Lauro replied. Since Nino had returned to Rome last year for advanced studies, they hadn’t seen much of him. Lauro had already finished his university classes. Nino continued to work on behalf of Cioccolata Savoia in Rome, tasked with managing their accounts in Rome and introducing buyers in shops, restaurants, and hotels to their chocolates. Lauro had stayed in Naples to work in their main factory.

  “Who is this mystery brother of yours?” Isabella asked. “Everyone speaks of him, but I think he’s a ghost.”

  “More like a god,” Lauro said. “Always the most popular and top of his class.” When Lauro was younger, he’d sometimes been jealous of Nino’s talents, but after he stepped out of his brother’s long shadow, he’d gained confidence and skills. Now he was marrying before Nino, and this was the only thing he’d ever accomplished before his older brother.