The Fiancée Caper

by Maureen Child

  But he wasn’t ready. He didn’t want to forget her. Didn’t want to see her leave. Not yet. Even as those thoughts and more raced through his brain, he admitted silently that he hadn’t counted on this. Hadn’t thought that a woman he’d caught burgling his home could come to mean so much to him in so little time. Hadn’t thought to guard the heart he had been sure was unreachable.

  And now, he would have to pay for that miscalculation.

  Thinking fast, he approached her, one long stride at a time. “Come with me to London,” he blurted out. “We will stay at my home until we have the right plan for getting the necklace.”

  She shook her head sadly and that just annoyed him. How dare she give up and walk away? He took another step closer and noted that she took a step back in response. He ignored it.

  “Then we will go to Monaco together,” he said, hoping to entice her. “As Rico pointed out we make a good team. Together, we will relieve Jean Luc of the jewels he stole. Together, cara.”

  A small, sad smile curved her lips briefly. “London. Monaco. You. It all sounds wonderful.”

  “Then stay,” he demanded.

  “No. I can’t.”

  “Tell me why.” He reached her, dropped both hands on her shoulders and held on to her when she would have tried to get away from him again. “Tell me.”

  She tipped her head back to meet his eyes and he read regret in those beautiful grass-green depths.

  “Because if you tried to steal back the necklace I asked you to get and then you were caught and sent to prison I’d never be able to live with myself.”

  He laughed, a short, sharp bark of laughter shot through with derision. “Caught? Corettis are not caught. Ever.”

  “There’s always a first time and I won’t risk it,” she said quickly.

  “There is more to this, that you aren’t saying,” he muttered, searching her eyes, knowing that her feelings and emotions were crashing around inside her head and heart as much as his own were inside himself.

  “Yes,” she admitted, still looking up at him even as she pulled herself free of his grasp. “Gianni, you’re a thief. Yes, yes,” she said quickly before he could correct her, “former thief. But still a thief in your heart. Just as I’m always going to be a cop in mine.”

  “What does any of that signify?” He narrowed his gaze on her.

  She pushed her hair back from her face, blew out a breath and said, “In the last week, so many things have changed for me. The world I used to know so well now seems foreign to me after meeting you. Your family. This place.” She shook her head and sighed. “But this isn’t real. It’s not my world. Any of it. I was raised with respect for the law. It’s who I am. It’s practically in my DNA. If I lose that, then who am I?”

  “Why would you lose what you are?” His words were tight as he reached for her again and came up empty when she sidestepped him.

  She glanced down at the ring on her finger and slowly slid it off and held it in the palm of her hand. “This ring pretty much says it all. It belongs to some woman I’ve never met. It was stolen from her and held as a trophy then given to me to pretend a life that didn’t exist.” Sadly, she looked up at him as she took his hand and placed the ring in it. “It was all make-believe, Gianni. It was just more of the now that you’re so fond of.”

  He felt the heavy weight of the diamond in his hand and thought he might crush it to dust if he gave in to the urge he felt to smash his fist over it. “There’s nothing wrong with now, cara,” he said.

  “No.” She walked past him and he didn’t try to stop her. What would have been the point? “But sooner or later, now becomes the past and all you’re left with is the memory.”

  Gianni gritted his teeth and looked down at the ring she’d returned to him. For the first time since the night he’d stolen it, the diamond held no beauty. It might as well have been a piece of glass. Cold. Lifeless.

  “And Gianni?”

  He looked up at her, paused just inside the adjoining bathroom.

  “I’ll leave the photos of your father with you. I don’t want you to worry. Nick won’t go to prison because of me. Not now. Not ever.”

  When she closed herself up in the bathroom, Gianni was left alone in the twilight of the shadowed bedroom. It shamed him to admit that while she had been saying goodbye...he hadn’t given his father’s freedom a single thought.

  Eleven

  “I can’t believe you’re leaving.” Teresa hugged Marie tightly the next morning.

  “I have to go while I can still force myself to do it,” Marie told her. Her conversation with Gianni the night before still rang in her mind. As did the memory of him silently getting dressed and leaving the suite. He hadn’t come back all night. So Marie had been alone in the darkened suite for hours, with nothing to do but rethink every moment she’d spent with Gianni.

  How had she done so much, felt so much, in little more than a week? It should have been impossible to love like that so quickly. And yet...walking away from Gianni was the hardest thing she’d ever had to do. Saying goodbye to Teresa wasn’t much easier.

  The penthouse apartment was flooded with sunlight, glancing off the jewel-toned colors that filled the room. Funny, but Teresa and Rico’s home was so familiar to her now that Marie knew she’d miss it, too, when she was gone. As she would miss her friend.

  “But you love Gianni,” Teresa said softly, watching Marie’s face for a reaction.

  “I do.” She shook her head. “At least, I think I do, but it’s barely been more than a week since I met him. Love doesn’t happen that quickly.”

  Teresa laughed a little. “How long does it take, I wonder? One week? A year? Ten? Or perhaps only a moment when eyes meet. No, Marie. There’s no hard-and-fast rule to love. It simply is. And when you find it, you know it.”

  True. All true. She already knew she loved Gianni, Marie had simply been trying to convince herself that she didn’t. Because walking away from him was already the hardest thing she’d ever done. Admitting that she was throwing love away would only make it more difficult.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she whispered.

  “It’s all that matters,” Teresa argued. “And Gianni loves you, too.”

  Marie’s head snapped up and her gaze met Teresa’s. Hope billowed inside like a parachute catching the wind, but just as quickly, that hopeful wind died and the parachute crashed back to earth. “You don’t know that,” she said.

  “Of course I know. My brother is easy enough to read when you’ve spent a lifetime doing it,” Teresa told her. “I see him with you. I hear more laughter from him than I’ve heard in years. Seen more...excitement with the world around him. And that is because of you.”

  If Marie believed that, maybe she could find a way to make this work. Sadly though, she didn’t believe it. He’d asked her to stay. To go to London and Monaco with him. But that invitation without love behind it felt...hollow. Gianni hadn’t said anything about love—of course, her mind taunted, neither had she. But the point, she argued silently, was that love had never been put on the table, so to speak. They had had an affair. A fling. A summer caper of chasing jewel thieves, where they’d lived lives of sensual abandon, putting the outside world on hold while they indulged themselves in a fantasy.

  Now the fantasy was over.

  “He doesn’t love me,” she said firmly, wanting to convince herself of that to make the leaving a bit easier. “And that’s okay, Teresa. Really. I’ll be fine, I just...have to go.”

  “My brother is an idiota,” Teresa said softly, using an Italian word that Marie had no trouble translating.

  Wryly, she smiled and hugged the other woman again. “When Matteo wakes from his nap, kiss him for me, will you?”

  “Of course,” Teresa promised. “And you will come back? To visit me?”

&nb
sp; “I will,” Marie lied and hoped that this time her lying skills had been believable. Marie could never come back to Tesoro. The memories of her time here with Gianni would make it impossible to so much as breathe. “And if you ever get to New York, call me, okay?”

  “I will.” Teresa sighed a little as if she, too, realized that the chances of their seeing each other again were slim to none.

  Then Marie left the penthouse while she could still make her legs work. Every step felt as if she were pulling her feet out of mud as she laboriously moved into the elevator and punched the button for the lobby. Once downstairs, her leaden legs moved her out of the hotel to the shuttle that would get her to the docks, where a launch boat was waiting to take her to St. Thomas for her flight back to grim reality.

  * * *

  “You should be happy!” Paulo was clearly stunned at Gianni’s lack of enthusiasm over the fact that he had been able to burn the pictures of his father exiting the Van Court estate.

  There was no more threat against the elder Coretti. The family was safe. The woman who had put all of this in motion was even now on her way back to the States. And yet...Gianni could find no relief inside him.

  Instead, there was a tangled knot of desolation in the pit of his belly. No amount of the very good scotch Rico was providing could chase away the cold that had seeped into every vein and cell in his body. And his brain gave him no peace, either. It simply replayed that last scene with Marie over and over again, as if living through it once hadn’t been enough.

  He still couldn’t believe she’d walked away. From him. No woman had ever walked out on him and he didn’t like it. He’d thought for sure he could get her to stay, but he’d failed at the most important task he’d ever set himself.

  “Leave him alone, Paulo,” Teresa muttered.

  That man laughed shortly and lifted his bottle of beer. “Why are you all acting as though you were at a funeral? She’s gone. The threat is gone. It’s over and done, we should be celebrating.”

  “Paulo,” their father said softly, without taking his gaze from his oldest son, “there is much you don’t know.”

  “For instance?”

  Nick Coretti sighed, glanced at his youngest son and said, “For instance, you have no idea what it feels like to truly love.”

  Gianni’s head snapped up at that statement and his gaze fixed on his father. “Love? Who said anything about love?”

  Nick frowned and clucked his tongue. “Apparently, no one. But you should have.”

  “Thank you, Papa!” Teresa gave her oldest brother a withering glare. “It’s exactly what I told him an hour ago.”

  “And I told you to mind your own business,” Gianni said softly.

  Rico laughed from the end of the couch. “You think she’ll do that? Do you even know your sister?” When Teresa’s elbow plowed into his stomach, Rico winced, but grabbed her and pulled her up against his side.

  “My family is my business,” Teresa retorted, then stabbed her index finger at Gianni. “You should not have let her go.”

  His mouth twisted and his teeth clenched to keep inside all of the hot words that wanted to pour out. Looking at his baby sister, Gianni shied away from the fierce light of battle gleaming in her dark eyes. Teresa was a Coretti through and through, no matter that her last name now was King. And if she thought she was right, she wouldn’t be stopped.

  “What was I supposed to do?” Gianni countered, swallowing the last of his scotch, then leaning forward to set his empty glass on the coffee table in front of him. “She wanted to leave.” Just saying it aloud sent ripples of shock through him.

  “Of course she didn’t want to go,” Teresa said, exasperation coloring her words. “You are such a man, Gianni. Couldn’t you look into her eyes and see she loved you?”

  His heart jolted, but he wouldn’t believe it. “If she loved me she would have stayed.”

  “Did you tell her your feelings?” Nick spoke quietly, but as always, when their father had something to say, everyone listened.

  “I don’t know my feelings, Papa,” Gianni admitted, though it was humbling. He jumped to his feet, stalked to the terrace doors and stared out at the moonlight shattering on the water’s surface. “I asked her to stay and she said no.”

  “You gave her no reason to stay, Gianni,” his father said.

  He’d offered her his home. Travel. Adventure. What more could he have said? Marie was gone. On a plane, probably close to landing in New York by now. She was alone and he wondered if she thought of him. If she regretted leaving. Anger sizzled inside him, burning at the knots in his belly until they were hot coals, blistering his soul.

  “I feel such delusione,” Nick said on a sigh.

  Gianni looked back at his father. “Disappointment, Papa? Why? I got the photos Marie had. You’re safe. The family is safe.”

  “Basta. Enough.” Nick waved his hand in the air, brushing away Gianni’s words like so many gnats irritating him. “That woman would not have turned me in and surely you know that.”

  “She was a cop,” Paulo said loudly enough that Nick turned to glance at him. “She would have done it, Papa.”

  “No.” Nick shook his head solemnly. “She would not hurt Gianni so.”

  “Finally,” Teresa muttered, “a Coretti with a brain.”

  Gianni shot her a fulminating stare, then shifted his gaze to his father. “This isn’t about love, Papa. It’s about choices and she made hers. She chose to return to New York. She couldn’t separate me from the life I once lived, so she left.”

  “Sciocco,” Nick said, pushing himself to his feet and crossing the room to face down his oldest son. “You’re being foolish. You look no further than where you must to avoid seeing the truth.”

  Gianni laughed shortly. “I see all the truth, Papa. She chose the rigid life of black and white and right and wrong. She couldn’t bend enough to see that all things are not so easily defined.”

  Marie was stubborn and defiant and he missed her already. Her absence tore at him, whittling away small pieces of his heart with every breath he took. Gianni knew that if nothing changed, soon he would be left with only an empty hole in his chest where his heart had once been.

  He would never have believed that he could feel so much for a woman who was so far from everything he had ever known. But there it was. Without Marie here, he felt as though even the air around him was flavorless. Drawing air into his lungs was simply a necessary exercise—not the delicious torture of inhaling her scent and holding it within him. God, he couldn’t even breathe without missing her.

  “What have I come to?” He whispered the words low enough that only his father, standing beside him, overheard.

  Nick lay one hand on his son’s shoulder and squeezed. “You’ve come to the place I prayed you would. You’ve found a woman, as I once did. Your mother meant more to me than my own life. Without her I was nothing. With her, there was everything.”

  Gianni shook his head and looked at his father. “But Mama wanted you. She chose to be with you.”

  “Not at first.” Nick winked. “She took some convincing,” he mused with a tender smile on his face. “And as I remember it, persuading her was very sweet indeed.”

  “Persuasion.” Gianni thought about that and looked back over the ocean. But instead of the endless sweep of sea and sky, he saw wide green eyes, a tumble of dark red hair and a luscious mouth curved in a secretive, lover’s smile.

  His eyes narrowed, his jaw clenched, he told himself that he had never once lost anything that was truly important to him. And he wasn’t going to start now.

  * * *

  Marie slapped the side of her window air conditioner and mumbled a curse when the darn thing hiccupped, then stopped altogether. “Perfect,” she muttered darkly. “Just perfect.”

  She cros
sed the narrow living room and turned her floor fan up to high. It didn’t make it cooler in the stifling heat, but at least it moved the hot air around. Not much consolation, but she’d take it. Through the open windows, came the sounds of the city, a low growl of traffic, honking horns and people shouting. Summer in New York was a far cry from the lovely trade winds on Tesoro.

  Back at the kitchen table, she sat down and took a sip of her iced tea and imagined it was that lovely peach drink she and Teresa had shared beside the pool. But she’d been back in New York for two weeks and it was high time she stopped thinking about her days on Tesoro.

  Bad enough that every night she dreamed about Gianni and the amazing sensations she’d discovered in his arms. She woke up every morning more tired than when she went to bed and with her body burning for a release it would never know again.

  She really couldn’t afford to start daydreaming about her temporary trip into the world of fantasy. It was over. Done. She was back to the life she knew. The world she’d been raised to expect. And her time with Gianni was as dead as her air conditioner.

  So she focused on the want ads in front of her. She needed a job, but she didn’t want anything...ordinary. She wanted something that would offer her adventure, excitement—everything she’d given up to return home.

  “God, I’m hopeless.” She glanced down at the classified section of the paper and sighed. Not many job listings promised to expand your horizons and that’s what she wanted. Marie only wished she had been able to have all of that and Gianni, too.

  But she knew she’d done the right thing—the only thing—in leaving. Neither of them had mentioned love. And she couldn’t have stayed with him, loving him, knowing he didn’t love her back. That was just asking for misery.

  But her heart ached and the thought of never seeing him again was enough to bring her to tears if she hadn’t already cried herself out two weeks ago.

  When the doorbell rang, she jumped up, eager for the distraction from her thoughts no matter who it might be. In a few short steps, she crossed the living room, threw open the door and then just stood there, mouth open, staring up at the man who starred nightly in her dreams.