Marco wasn’t her husband anymore and she wasn’t part of his future.

She forced herself to act, and she held her hand out. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Princess Marilena. And congratulations, too.”

Princess Marilena inclined her head, but didn’t take Payton’s hand. “Thank you, Payton. We’re very much looking forward to the wedding. The ceremony will be at the Duomo,” she said, referring to the city’s famous Gothic cathedral. “The reception will probably be here.”

“I’m sure it’ll be beautiful.” The words were beginning to stick in Payton’s throat and no one else said anything.

The silence grew weighted and Payton realized Marco and Princess Marilena were exchanging curious glances.

Marco straightened. “Payton was suggesting that the three of us have dinner together sometime—”

“A lovely idea,” Marilena charmingly agreed, her voice beautifully modulated. “We really should get to know each other.”

Marco’s heavy eyebrow lifted. “Unfortunately, getting acquainted will have to wait. Payton, you’ll forgive us if we sneak out? We have dinner reservations.”

As Marco assisted Marilena into the passenger seat of his Ferrari, a car he’d bought himself a month after Payton moved back to America, he found his thoughts returning to his ex-wife.

She was different, he thought. She even looked different. Something had happened. Something had changed. Was she having money trouble? Man trouble? Was it something with the girls?

And just like that he realized he’d just made another tactical error. She shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t have allowed her into his house. She was trouble. She’d been trouble from the very get-go.

As he started the car, Marilena reached out to rest her hand on his thigh. “Don’t worry so much. Everything will be all right, Marco. Everything will be just fine.”

His eyes met hers and he lifted her hand and kissed it. Yet even as he kissed the back of her hand, his thoughts strayed once more to Payton. Payton had a way of getting under his skin, unsettling him. And she was doing a damn good job of it right now.

In an effort to keep her mind off Marco, Payton set to work emptying the girls’ knapsacks, sorting out the toys and chunky books from the tangled bits of clothes.

It was odd being back in this house, she thought, folding the tiny lilac and sky-blue cardigans and stacking the delicate sweaters on top of the matching striped cotton leggings.

Although Marco’s father had died two years before Payton met Marco, the villa still embodied the great late Franco d’Angelo. Which made it especially painful when Marco moved out and left her and girls behind in his family house.

For the first few months she was alone in the house, she tried to keep up the pretense that she and Marco were fine. She tried to keep it together for the girls, too. But theory and reality are two different things.

In the end, she couldn’t do it. After their volatile separation, she couldn’t manage to be in the same room with Marco and act casual. She couldn’t make polite conversation at one end of the salon while he stood at the other.