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“Quite a while now. She realized the life of most supermodels fades after twenty-five years of age and it’s past time for her. Dea went back to her true passion and this last year has been finishing her degree at the Accademia Roma. This is her last semester.”
Her true passion? Guido blinked. He didn’t know she’d ever gone to college. “I had no idea. What is she studying?”
“Period costume fashion design. I’m so thrilled for her. She has an extraordinary gift in that area.”
Before Guido could think, he heard voices at the entry. Alessandra’s parents walked in the room, but he only had eyes for the gorgeous woman behind them. His heart thundered.
Dea!
She wore her long hair back in a chignon, a style he hadn’t seen her in. All that glossy brown hair with streaks of sunlight was hidden. The oval of her face with less makeup than he’d ever noticed before caused him to stare. With those dark burgundy eyes—like the color in a stained glass window—she was beautiful in a brand-new way.
Guido stood up and greeted the three of them. Alessandra begged her parents to join them for dinner, but they said they’d already eaten and were going upstairs.
“What about you, Dea?”
“I’d love some dinner, but first I want to see the baby. I brought Brazzo a present. I hope he doesn’t have a bear yet. This one speaks!” She handed it to Alessandra, who opened it and pressed the button. They all listened and laughed.
“Brazzo will love this, but we left him with Rini’s father and family. They wanted to give us a break.”
“I’m sure you’re thrilled, but I’m horribly disappointed.”
“There’ll be plenty of other times for the rest of our lives.”
“You’re right, of course.” She sat down at the table. “I left work without grabbing a bite and now I’m starving. This dinner looks wonderful. Baked halibut and vegetables with feta cheese. How perfect!”
She was wearing a simple white blouse and a print skirt. Her outfit was so unexpectedly casual that Guido was still trying to make sense of everything when she sat down next to him.
For the rest of the meal Guido was amazed to watch her dig into her food and eat everything. Where was the woman who never ate anything that wasn’t on her special diet? Come to think of it, she looked like she’d gained some becoming weight since the last time he’d seen her at the wedding.
Over a glass of wine she turned to Guido. He noticed she no longer wore her fingernails long and painted. “There’s a girl at the shop named Gina. She and her fiancé, Aldo, went to the soccer game at the Stadio Emanuele last weekend.”
Where was this leading?
“Aldo came in to pick Gina up and she told him I knew the owner. He fell all over me.” Guido could believe that. “According to him, you were the greatest soccer player he’d ever seen and he desperately wants to meet you in person sometime, hopefully with my help.”
Dea had discussed him with her coworker? He couldn’t believe it.
She kept talking. “According to Aldo, the Scatto Roma team is going to win the championship this year. He was a soccer player himself, not on your level, of course. He thinks you walk on water already for lifting the B team to top-tier status.”
“Thank you, Dea,” he said, attempting to take it all in, but he couldn’t understand her interest. “Have you ever been to a soccer match?”
“Never,” she confessed without shame. “I’ve never even watched it on TV. You must think I’m terrible. I had no idea you’d won so many championships for Italy. Aldo said you were everyone’s favorite player and the women were crazy about you.”
“They were,” Rini inserted with a grin.
She hadn’t talked to Guido like this at the wedding reception, where she had seemed very stiff. This was something else. He decided to change the subject.
“I understand you’re no longer modeling.”
“Not for the last year.”
“Where do you work?”
“I started at the shop of Juliana Parma ten days ago. She’s the costume designer for the opera. I’ve been permitted to shadow her. My aunt Fulvia made it possible. You remember her from the wedding?”
“Of course.” The woman had taken Dea away from the table before the wedding cake had been served.
“They’re best friends and Juliana took me on as a favor to my aunt. But now that I’m working there, I’m on my own and I’m terrified.”
“How could you possibly be that when you’ve been Italy’s top model?”
“That period of my life is over, and modeling modern-day fashions has nothing to do with being a period costume designer for the opera.” Guido still had a hard time believing she had changed her whole life in the last year. To his mind, she was more beautiful than ever. “I have to prove myself in a whole new field. I’m not like you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Alessandra said that when you bought that floundering soccer team, you had the satisfaction of being one of the greatest soccer players ever to compete in Italy. With your knowledge and confidence, you’ve been able to turn your team around. I’m very impressed.”
“He’s done that, all right,” Rini concurred. “So I have an idea. Why don’t the four of us go out behind the castle and play a little soccer before it gets dark? Two against two. It works even if we don’t have a whole bunch of guys around. Since Brazzo was born, Alessandra and I haven’t had a weekend to enjoy like this. Let’s team up.”
“That sounds fun!” Alessandra chimed in with enthusiasm that sounded real. “I like soccer, but I’d love to learn more about it since Rini is determined our son will be a great player like you, Guido. What do you say, Dea?”
“I’m hopeless when it comes to sports and would hate making a fool of myself, but I’ll do it this once.”
So she was willing to toss him a bone after she’d just admitted she’d never even seen a soccer game?
“Let me run upstairs to put on my trainers.”
Alessandra patted her husband’s arm. “I’ll find mine too.”
Rini got to his feet. “My soccer ball is around here somewhere. We’ll all meet in the foyer in a few minutes.”
Everyone took off except for Guido, who stood there in a funk. Since Rini’s marriage, they hadn’t had time to kick a ball around. And now he wanted them to play with the women?
He’d go along with this, but before he went to bed, he intended to have a talk with Rini about what was going on.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_6b58efcc-dcbb-5941-b979-858deb4d4d9c)
DEA RACED UP the stairs to her bedroom. Rini had no idea how petrified she was when it came to participating in sports. Alessandra was the one who did everything well: tennis, golf, swimming and scuba diving. But Dea didn’t dare say no to his suggestion in front of Guido.
The tall, attractive dark blond was not only a recognized national celebrity in the sports field; he was Rini’s best friend. Dea didn’t want to be a drama queen and create a scene. Those days were relegated to the past. She’d turned over a new leaf and was embracing a different life that meant accepting challenges she’d avoided before now.
She changed out of her skirt into jeans and put on her trainers. No doubt she would fall flat on her face repeatedly for being out of her element, but at least she would be prepared. If Rini allowed her to be on his team, then she’d wouldn’t feel so terrible when she let him down. Alessandra would be a much better fit for Guido when it came to sports.
How strange that today of all days Dea’s folks had come to the shop and begged her to fly home with them after work for the weekend. None of them had known that Rini and Alessandra had invited Guido. It had come as a shock to see the three of them at the dining room table.
Both on the yacht and at the wedding, Dea had only seen him dressed in a tuxedo. This evening Guido was wearing a blue polo shirt that emphasized his well-defined chest, which combined with tight jeans made it impossible to look anywhere else. Soccer kept him in the sun. His bronzed complexion accentuated the midnight blue of his dark-fringed eyes.
She could understand why female soccer fans would have gone crazy over him. Guido might not be playing soccer now, but it didn’t matter. He was an incredibly appealing man.
After the fashion show on the yacht, Guido’s father had sought her out. At the time she’d taken an instant dislike to the renowned shipping-company CEO. He was so full of himself that he was quite unbearable. Dea’s modest father was a completely different type and so easy to be around. Meeting the puffed-up man’s son was the last thing Dea and her friend Daphne, who had modeled with her, had wanted to do, but she knew she had to be gracious.
Prepared not to like his son, who was probably an obnoxious replica of his father, she’d been shocked to meet his best friend, Rini Montanari, the dark-haired handsome prince standing next to him. At that moment everything else had left her mind. He wasn’t a real prince, but he’d seemed to have stepped right out of her childhood dreams. But Rini hadn’t responded to her as she’d hoped and her world had fallen apart. Of course, that was ages ago...
Tonight she felt she was truly seeing Guido for the first time and not just as Rini’s best friend. It had been unfair to judge him because of his father. This was important to Rini and Alessandra. For that reason she made up her mind to be a good sport and act friendly. Why not? If nothing else, she might be able to talk him into meeting Gina’s fiancé after a game, or giving Aldo an autographed team poster or something.
Dea left the bedroom and hurried down to the foyer, where the others had congregated. Rini glanced at her. “While we were waiting, we flipped a coin. You’re on Guido’s team.” He smiled broadly. “My wife is on mine.”
“Hmm. I wonder how that happened. Sorry, Guido.” Dea rolled her eyes at him. “You got the bad end of this deal.”
“Why don’t I show you a few moves before we start.” He was holding the soccer ball. “Who knows what can happen?”
She chuckled. “I’m game if you are. Let’s go.”
They left the castle and walked around to the back, where the cruiser was pulled up to the dock in the distance. Rini and Alessandra had moved on to draw boundary lines in the sand.
While Guido explained the basic rudiments of the sport to her, there was no chitchat. He was all business. No doubt the players on his team held him in awe.
“The whole point of the game is to prevent the other team from driving the ball forward and scoring. One of the first basic moves is to take a big side step and pull the ball with you to put space between you and the enemy.”
“Show me.”
“It goes like this.”
Dea watched his hard-muscled body and legs do the move with sheer masculine grace and speed. Whoa. She smiled. “Do that again.”
He did it five more times. No matter how she anticipated what he was going to do, she couldn’t react fast enough to stop him.
“Again!”
This time she was desperate to succeed. Refusing to let him elude her, she made a flying leap and tackled him with all her strength. They both went down. She turned over to look at him, trying to catch her breath, but laughter kept bubbling out of her. “I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not.” He lay there looking at her before bursting into laughter himself. Their faces were so close she could tell his incredible blue eyes were smiling. Guido Rossano was a sensational-looking man. How could she not have noticed before today?
His gaze continued to play over her features. “For a first soccer lesson, you did well. You’d make an excellent player in American football—tackling is what they do in their football games. Tackling isn’t what we do in soccer. Who would have thought?”
“Forgive me. I got so frustrated I didn’t know what else to do.”
“You’ve got all the right instincts, but you need to refine your technique to soccer or you’ll get thrown out of the game.”
“Hey, you two?” Rini called from a distance. “Are we going to play, or what?”
“I need to show her a few more moves before we start,” Guido shouted back.
Guilt swept over her as he helped her to her feet. Conscious of their clasped hands, she eased hers from his grip. As his eyes focused on hers, her heart skipped a beat for no good reason. “We’ll start with the lift, step and go.” He put the ball on the ground. “Use your foot to push it toward me and watch.”
Dea was loving this. She started moving the ball toward him. He lifted his foot as if to do a sideward motion. But it was a fake move. He stepped forward and drove the ball away from her. She groaned.
“Let’s do that again.”
She pushed the ball three more times, but he evaded her every time. “You’re amazing!”
“Not amazing. I’ve been doing this move since childhood.”
“No wonder Aldo idolizes you.” After four tries she got the hang of it.
“Okay. Now what’s the next move called?”
“You’re not tired yet?”
“No, but maybe you are.”
His hard jaw rose a fraction and he put his hands on his hips in a totally male stance. “This one is called the chip shot. Come toward me, moving the ball with your feet.”
She did his bidding and thought he would push the ball forward, but he chipped it instead so it flipped up, catching her off guard.
“Oh! I like that move. I want to try it.” But with her next effort, she used too much force and fell on her derriere. He chuckled and helped her to her feet.
“Try once more.”
Dea did her best and stayed upright.
“Bravo. You’re ready. Let’s try out those moves on them before they decide they want to go home.”
“You think I can do it?”
“We’re about to find out.” The way he smiled made him look like a devilishly handsome blond pirate with a wicked gleam in his eyes. How odd that she’d never dreamed of a tall blond pirate prince before...
* * *
The guys played goalie so the girls could battle it out. Guido hadn’t had so much fun in years and was silently betting on Dea to outplay Alessandra.
Right away it became clear that Rini hadn’t taught Alessandra any special moves. She could run and scrap, but Dea pulled a few moves on her with an expertise that shocked Guido. In the end, Team Scatto Roma took the honors over Team Montanari. Again he was surprised she’d caught on so quickly and he discovered he was proud of her.
Alessandra eyed the three of them. “Now it’s the men’s turn. You and I will play goalie, Dea.”
“I’m ready.”
“It’s too dark out,” Rini protested.
His wife smiled. “Since when has that ever stopped you? I’m counting on you to win for our side.”
Guido turned to his friend. “Come on. Let’s show the girls how the game is played.”
“You’re on.”
Before they spread out, Guido took Dea aside. “Try not to let the ball get past you. Do whatever you need to do.”
“I’m afraid Rini will kick it so hard I won’t stand a chance, but I’ll try.”
