The Bride of Montefalco. Rebecca Winters

      “As usual, I’m indebted to you.”

      “Our families have been close for years. I’m not about to see you and Sofia destroyed.”

      Those words meant more to Gino than his friend would ever know.

      “Grazie, Carlo.”

      There was a jarring knock on the bedroom door.

      “Signora Parker?”

      Ally had only been in bed an hour and groaned in disbelief. Her long connecting flights from Oregon to Switzerland, then Rome, had been bad enough. But it was the horrendous day she’d spent on a hot, overcrowded train to reach the hilltop town of Montefalco that had done her in.

      To compound her troubles, every hotel in the town had been booked months in advance for some festival. If her taxi driver hadn’t taken pity on her and brought her to his sister’s house to sleep, she would have been forced to return to Rome for the night. Perish the thought!

      The rapping grew louder.

      “Signora!”

      Ally couldn’t work out what was happening.

      “Just a moment!”

      She sat up, unconsciously running a hand through her short, blond curls. They made her look younger than her twenty-eight years.

      Grabbing her robe lying across the end of the bed, she slipped it on, then hurried over to the door and opened it.

      The elderly woman looked tired. Ally thought she sounded out of breath.

      “Quickly! You must get dressed! A car from the Palazzo Di Montefalco has come for you.”

      Ally’s green eyes widened. “But that’s impossible!”

      Earlier in the day she’d been turned away from the palace gates by armed guards. No one knew where she’d gone after she’d gotten back in the taxi.

      “You have to be a very important person for the Duc Di Montefalco himself to send for you. Hurry! You must not keep the driver waiting,”

      “I’ll be out as soon as I can. Thank you.”

      Unless one of the guards had followed the taxi here, Ally was mystified as to how he’d known where to find her.

      But that didn’t matter now. In a few minutes she was finally going to meet with the man she’d flown thousands of miles to see. After her futile attempts to reach him by phone from Rome before boarding the train, and then the fiasco that took place earlier in front of the palace, she’d almost given up hope.

      She shut the door and reached for her suitcase. In a few minutes she’d donned fresh jeans and a green print blouse. At one-thirty in the morning she didn’t feel like dressing in the suit she’d brought.

      Once she’d put on her sneakers, she finished the little packing she had to do. Before leaving the room, she found her purse and left two hundred dollars on the dresser.

      One more look around to make sure she hadn’t left anything behind and she joined the older woman who stood in the foyer waiting.

      Ally rushed up to her. “I’m so sorry you had to be wakened at this late hour because of me. Especially after you were kind enough to take me in. I’ve left money on the dresser for you and your brother. Thank you again for everything, including the delicious meal and the chance to shower. Please tell your brother thank you, too. I don’t know what I would have done without your help.”

      The other woman nodded impatiently. “I’ll tell him. Now you must go!”

      She opened the door onto an ancient narrow alley. The woman’s house was one of several built at street level. Yet all Ally could see was a gleaming black sedan parked right outside the door.

      The light from the foyer illuminated the gold falcon insignia of the Montefalco crest emblazoned on the hood.

      As Ally ventured over the threshold, a man dressed in black like the palace security guards stepped away from the stone wall connecting the houses.

      Since Ally was only five foot five, she was immediately aware of a tall, solidly built male with hair black as night. Something about his imposing demeanor and the almost hawkish features that distinguished him from so many other Italian male faces she’d seen today sent a little shiver of alarm through her body.

      With breathtaking economy of movement he relieved her of her purse and suitcase.

      “Give that back!” she cried. Ally tried to wrest the suitcase from his hand, but it was no use. She was no match for him. Besides, he’d already stashed everything in the trunk.

      She felt his glance mock her before he opened the rear door.

      The interior light revealed a broad shouldered man of unquestionable strength. The sun had darkened his natural olive toned skin. He was more than conventionally handsome. The words splendid and fierce came to Ally’s mind before she climbed in the back seat.

      Following that thought she wondered if she wasn’t crazy to let a total stranger whisk her away from her only place of refuge in this foreign country. She didn’t know a soul here except the taxi driver and his sister.

      Worse, she’d somehow lost her cell phone during the train ride, so she couldn’t call for help. Someone had probably pilfered it.

      The premonition that she might need a phone to the outside world was growing stronger as he climbed in behind the wheel and set the locks.

      After he turned on the engine, they shot down the empty alley to the main road. Three blocks later and Ally sensed she was in trouble.

      Instead of climbing to the top of the hill, the driver drove them through the lower streets of the town. He appeared to have a destination in mind that wasn’t anywhere near the ochre-colored ducal palace clinging to the side of the cliff.

      Rather than leave the old woman’s protection at such an unorthodox hour, Ally should have obeyed her instincts and stayed in her room until morning.

      She leaned forward in the leather seat. “This isn’t the way to the palace.” She’d said it in as steady a voice as she could muster.

      “Please take me back to that woman’s house.”

      The enigmatic guard ignored her demand and kept driving until they entered another alley behind some municipal buildings.

      “Where are you taking me?”

      “All in good time, signora.” The first words out of his mouth were spoken in impeccable English with only a slight trace of accent.

      He pulled in front of a steel door with a single light shining overhead. In the next instant he’d come around to her side of the car and opened the door for her.

      “After you, signora.”

      She lifted her proud chin, refusing to budge. “Where have you brought me?”

      His heavily lashed eyes looked like smoldering black fires.

      “The Montefalco police station.”

      Police? “I don’t understand.”

      “Earlier this evening you asked to speak to the Duc Di Montefalco, did you not?”

      “Yes. Are you telling me I didn’t have the right?”

      “Let’s just say he doesn’t grant interviews.”

      “I didn’t want an interview. I’ve flown a long way to talk to him in private.”

      He shifted his weight, drawing her attention to the play of raw muscle power in his arms and chest.

      “Anyone who wants to make contact with him has to go through me.”

      That explained why she could never get anywhere on the phone or in front of the security guards.

      Ally