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Rico could not imagine a woman of her youth and beauty marrying a man in his sixties for love.

      Whilst Rico hadn’t had as many dollars in the bank as Renée’s late husband at that stage, he’d still been well-heeled, with the potential for earning more in the years to come, which had since proven correct. His little cooking show—as Renée mockingly liked to call it—was now syndicated to over twenty countries and the money was rolling in, with more business ventures popping up each year, from cookbooks to product endorsements to his more recent idea of franchising A Passion for Pasta restaurants in every major city in Australia.

      Aside from his earning potential, he’d also only been twenty-nine back then, brimming with macho confidence and testosterone. In his sexual prime, so to speak.

      Rico liked to think Renée would have fallen into his arms, but he knew he was just kidding himself. He’d been split up from Jasmine for two years now, his divorce signed and sealed over a year ago, and Renée’s negative attitude to him hadn’t changed one bit. If anything, she’d grown more hostile to him whilst his desire for her had become unbearably acute.

      It pained Rico to think that she found nothing attractive in him whatsoever. In fact, she obviously despised him. Why? What had he ever done to her to cause such antagonism? Was it his Italian background? She sometimes sounded off about his being a Latin-lover type, all hormones and no brains.

      Rico knew there was more to himself than that. But not when he was around her these days, he accepted ruefully. Lately, whenever she turned those slanting green eyes on him and made one of her biting comments, he turned into the kind of mindless macho animal she obviously thought him. His ability to play poker suffered. Hell, his ability to do anything well suffered! The charm he was famous for disappeared, along with his capacity to think.

      Aah, but he could still feel. Even as his blood boiled with the blackest of resentments, his body would burn with a white-hot need. That was why he was avoiding his nemesis this weekend. Because Rico suspected he was nearing spontaneous combustion where she was concerned. Who knew what he would do or say the next time she goaded him the way she had last night?

      ‘Now, if you’d married someone like Dominique, Rico,’ Renée had remarked after Charles announced his wife was expecting, ‘you’d have a baby or two of your own by now. If you’re really as keen on the idea of a traditional marriage and family as you claim, then for pity’s sake stop dilly-dallying with the Leannes of this world and find yourself a nice girl who’ll give you what you supposedly want.’

      Rico had literally had to bite his tongue to stop himself from retorting that he took women like Leanne to bed in a vain attempt to burn out the frustration he experienced from not being able to have her.

      Somehow, he’d managed an enigmatic little smile, and experienced some satisfaction in seeing her green eyes darken with a frustration of her own.

      Mark one up for Rico for a change!

      But for how long could he manage such iron self-control? Not too much longer, he suspected.

      Charles and Ali wouldn’t know what hit them if and when he exploded. Rico might have been born and brought up here in Sydney, but he was Italian through and through, with an Italian’s volatile temperament.

      A peasant, Renée had once labelled him. Which was quite true. He did come from peasant stock. And was proud of it!

      Rico’s other two Friday-night poker-playing partners were blue-blood gentlemen by comparison. His best friend, Charles, was Charles Brandon, a few years older than Rico and the owner of Brandon Beer, Australia’s premier boutique brewery. Ali was Prince Ali of Dubar, the youngest son of an oil-rich sheikh, dispatched to Australia a decade before to run the royal Arab family’s thoroughbred interests down under.

      Both men had been born into money, but neither was anything like the lazy, spoilt, silver-spoon variety of human being whom Rico despised.

      Charles had spent years dragging his family firm back from the brink of bankruptcy after his profligate father died, leaving Brandon Beer in a right old mess.

      That achievement had taken grit, determination and vision, all qualities Rico admired.

      Ali didn’t act like some pampered prince, either. He worked very hard, running the thoroughbred stud which occupied over a thousand acres of prime horse land in the Hunter Valley. Rico had seen with his own eyes how hands-on Ali was with running and managing that complex and extremely large establishment.

      It had been Ali, actually, who’d brought the four poker-players together. He was the breeder of Flame of Gold. After she’d won the Silver Slipper Stakes, the three ecstatic owners and one highly elated breeder had had a celebratory dinner together. Over a seafood banquet down at the quay, they’d discovered a mutual love, not just of racehorses but also of playing cards. Gambling of various kinds, it seemed, was in all their blood. They’d played their first game of poker together later that night and made a pact to play together every Friday night after that.

      Being ill or overseas were the only excuses not to show up at the presidential suite at Sydney’s five-star Regency Hotel every Friday night at eight. That was where Ali stayed each weekend, flying in from his country property by helicopter late on a Friday and returning on the Sunday.

      Rico smiled wryly when he thought of how, when he’d been hospitalised with an injured knee after a skiing mishap last year, he’d insisted that the others come to his hospital room for their Friday-night poker session. The evening had not been a great success, however, with Ali having a couple of security guards trailing along.

      Looking back, he could see that his own insistence on playing that night, despite his handicapped condition, highlighted his rapidly growing obsession with the merry widow. He hadn’t been able to stand the thought of not seeing her that week. Now he wasn’t sure if he could stand seeing her again at all! He was fast reaching breaking point. Something was going to give. And soon.

      Rico’s stress level lessened slightly once the more densely populated suburbs were behind him and his eyes could feast on more grass and trees. He breathed in deeply through his nostrils, smelling the cleaner air and smiling with fond memories as the city was finally left behind and he drove past familiar places. The small bush primary school he’d attended as a child. The creek where he’d gone swimming in the summer. The old community hall where he’d taken dancing lessons, much to his father’s disgust.

      As far back as he could remember, Rico had been determined to one day be a star. By the time he turned twelve, he’d envisaged a career on the stage in the sort of singing, dancing, foot-stomping show he adored. But whilst his dancing technique was excellent, he’d grown too tall and too big to look as elegant and graceful as shorter, leaner dancers. On top of that, his singing left a lot to be desired. Once that career path was dashed, he’d focused his ambition on straight acting, seeing himself as an Australian John Travolta. People often said he looked like him.

      His early acting career had been a hit-and-miss affair, especially after he’d failed to get into any of the élite and very restricted Australian acting academies. He did succeed in landing a few bit parts in soaps, plus a couple of television advertisements and one minor role in a TV movie, but at a lot of auditions he was told he was too big, and too Italian-looking.

      Although not entirely convinced, Rico finally began looking more at a career behind the camera rather than in front of it. Producing and directing became his revised ambition, both on television and in the booming Australian film industry. He learned the ropes as a camera and sound man, working for Fortune productions, who were responsible for the most popular shows on TV back then. He watched and observed and learned till he decided he was ready to make his own show.

      With backing from his large family—Rico had three indulgent older brothers and five doting older sisters—he started production on A Passion for Pasta, having noted that cooking and lifestyle programmes were really taking off. But the Australian-Italian chef he hired for the pilot episode turned out to be a bundle of nerves in front of the camera, with Rico constantly having to jump in and show him what to do, and how to do it.

      Despite

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