The Italian’s Wife

A “King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid” version of the ever-popular, opposites-attract romance trope

Rio Lombardi, the 29-year-old billionaire owner of Lombardi Industries, has been in a relationship with his fiancée, Christabel Kent, for the past two years. She is a world-famous, 30-year-old supermodel who is a media darling with a good-girl public image. Her only fault that Rio has observed—in the relatively limited face-to-face time they’ve spent together since they both travel extensively for their careers—is that he has occasionally observed her drinking to excess. Thus, for all this time, he has remained comfortably convinced that he knows exactly who Christabel is. Until the night he discovers he never really knew her at all.

When Rio flies in from out of town a day earlier than expected and surprises Christabel at her lavish London apartment, he walks in on her cheating on him with a married, female friend. Worse, it is obvious, from what Cristabel lets slip, that this affair has been going on for a while. In a blithely cynical ploy aimed at placating her fulminating fiancé, Christabel makes the specious claim that her cheating on him with a woman is no big deal, because it isn’t with a man. Then she further scandalizes Rio when she brazenly suggests that the two of them try out a threesome with her female lover. He is a monogamous type, who has never cheated on Christabel, and they have never discussed having a polyamorous relationship, let alone agreed to it. He breaks their engagement, jumps back into his chauffeured limousine, and aimlessly drives around London, filled with pain and loathing at Christabel’s unforgivable betrayal. He declares to himself that he could not have chosen a worse fiancée had he decided to marry a total stranger.

Holly Sansom is a naïve, poorly educated country girl who was born and raised on a farm in Somerset. When she was 18 years old, she fell for a good-looking, fast-talking, 25-year-old named Jeff Danby. After several months of an on-again-off-again dating relationship, she got pregnant the one and only time they had sex, the night before he left town to go to London. It was a humiliating and physically painful experience, and it only happened because Jeff plied her with booze and relentlessly pressured her. He promised marriage and said he would send for her, but he never did. When Holly confessed she was pregnant to her parents, a very conservative tenant farmer and his homemaker wife, they shamed her terribly and sent her away, before her pregnancy began to show, to stay with an aunt in Manchester. They told her she could not come home unless she gave up her baby for adoption. But once Timothy was born, Holly couldn’t bear to part with him. Instead, she went to London and tracked down Jeff, whom she hadn’t yet told she had gotten pregnant and had borne his child. Rather than fulfilling her rosy fantasy of welcoming her and Timothy with open arms, Jeff screamed at her, struck her, and threatened to do even worse if she ever told anyone he was Timothy’s father. Over the following seven months, completely at sea in the big city, and unable to go home, Holly has had nothing but bad luck. Her progressive, downward, financial spiral has led her to where she is the night the story opens, homeless, destitute, and terrified Social Services will, at any moment, take Timothy away from her.

Holly is wandering the streets of London, coatless on a very cold night, with eight-month-old Timothy, who is well bundled up in a baby carriage, when a huge limousine comes around the corner just as she is crossing the street. She frantically shoves the carriage out of the way of the vehicle in an attempt to save her baby’s life. In the process, she trips, falls, hits her head on the pavement, and is knocked out. Fortunately, the limo barely misses running her down.

Rio leaps out of the limo and is stunned at the sight of a beautiful redhead in worn clothing lying on the ground. She looks no more than 16 or 17, and he wonders at first if she is dead. He summons an ambulance from a ritzy, private hospital funded by the Lombardi Foundation, a family charity he finances. Rio feels great compassion for Holly and her baby. As she lies, clean and bandaged, in a comfortable hospital bed in a private room, with Timothy warm, fed, and safe in a little cot beside her, Rio assures her he will do everything in his power to help her and her son. In addition to the concussion Holly has sustained, the attending physician takes Rio aside to gravely informs him that Holly and the baby would very likely have died of hypothermia before the night was through if not for the incredibly lucky break of their encountering Rio.

The next morning, when Rio swings by the hospital to check on Holly, he is outraged to spot her flaming red hair as she skitters across the parking lot. She shouldn’t be out of bed, and she is obviously sneaking away somewhere with the baby. When he confronts Holly about her risky choice, she tearfully admits she overheard someone in the hospital say that a representative from Social Services would be coming to see her. She is terrified they will take away her baby and put him in foster care. Determined to prevent any more calamities happening to the vulnerable 20-year-old and her baby, Rio impulsively brings Holly and Timothy to stay at his ritzy, London townhouse.

This emotionally compelling LG novel is the ultimate extreme of the “opposites attract” trope, a “King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid” story. In this moving love story, LG brilliantly achieves the ultimate goal of every romance novel—which far too few authors manage—convincing the reader that these two people are soulmates. Though Holly is far beneath Rio socially in terms of education (no school past 16 vs advanced degree), finances (broke vs billionaire), and background (unpolished country mouse vs. sophisticated city panther), the arc of their relationship is explored so convincingly, I totally believed in the lovely HEA this story delivers.

Rio is one of my all-time favorite LG heroes. His tender care of baby Timothy is very moving. But at the same time he is also very much a classic, HP, alpha hero. And though Holly is at the lowest place she can get in the social pecking order, even so, she is not a spineless doormat, and her devotion to her baby is very admirable. Finally, the affectionate, nurturing interactions of Rio and Holly with adorable baby Timothy are highlights of this book.

I have read and enjoyed this romance novel many times over the years, and it is a real keeper.

I rate this book as follows:

Heroine: 5 stars
Hero: 5 stars
Subcharacters: 5 stars
Romance: 5 stars
Writing: 5 stars
Overall: 5 stars