by Dianne Drake
“Baldassares have friends everywhere. I know a good chef not far from here…”
“One who’s sure to cook the meal that will seduce me into bed,” Catherine snapped. “Is that what this is about, Dante? Do you want to conquer me again? Once wasn’t enough for you?”
He tried to look hurt, tried to look concerned, but it simply did not work. The Dante Baldassare who had seduced her, even more than the eggplant involtini, had broken through, and he held out his hand in gesture for her to sit. “The only thing I want to conquer tonight is a good meal, and a good champagne to celebrate being together again. I’d like to think that we could be friends, Catherine.”
“Except that we’re not together,” she insisted, refusing to accept his invitation to be seated. “Not in the sense you want to be.”
“How do you know what I want?” he asked.
“Fame, fortune, women…doesn’t that about say it all?” She’d read the celebrity magazines from time to time, seen his picture with various different women. Beautiful women. Women who knew their way around the life he lived now. Not women like her, who only knew their way around a medical chart.
He chuckled. “That does say some of it, I’ll admit. I do like the lifestyle, Catherine. I won’t lie to you about it, or pretend it’s not a part of me, because it is. Always has been. When I was young, I was a part of it because of my family. It was theirs and I reaped the benefits. But now I have that lifestyle on my own because of what I’ve done, and I’m not going to apologize or make excuses.”
“You used to have so many expectations about medicine, Dante, and the kind of life you would have as a doctor. What happened to those?”
“Those were expectations of a life that didn’t come to be.”
“I always thought that life would have made you happy.”
“It would have,” he said, his voice giving over to a little melancholy. “I think I might have been a good surgeon, and I did want that.”
“Doesn’t it make you sad that you gave it all up? Don’t you ever miss it? I mean, I don’t know what I’d do if I had to quit medicine.” She’d wither away. What she did defined who she was. Some might think that was too consuming, but it was the way she chose to live her life, and if she was too consumed, so be it.
Dante thought for a moment, the grin that had been on his face suddenly vanishing. “Sometimes it does make me a little sad. I liked being a doctor, and every now and then I think about going back to it someday, when I’m finally too old to climb into a race car. But I don’t know if that will happen. My father is getting older and with his heart condition he’ll need someone to run his part of Baldassare Racing one day. And so many people depend on the racing team as a livelihood. It’s a prosperous enterprise, with dozens of people working for us. A lot of responsibility to lot of people.” He shrugged. “I’d be happy being a surgeon, or even a country doctor, but sometimes we don’t get everything we want, do we?”
“So we make the best of what we have,” she finished for him. As a child, that had been her life. Been her mother’s life, too. Always making the best of things. “But you’d be a doctor again, if you could?” That did surprise her, but yet, remembering the Dante Baldassare she’d once known, it did not. He’d wanted to be a doctor more than anything else, and maybe there was some of that desire still lingering in him.
“I’ve never not been a doctor, Catherine. From the day I received my certificate, I’ve always been a doctor. Just not one actively practicing.” He gestured again for her to sit. “And having Gianni with me, the one thing I’ve learned more than anything is that the happiness we have in life is not about the things surrounding it but the people in it. The rest of it doesn’t matter so much. Now, are you going to join me?”
“And Gianni?” she asked.
“He talked about you this afternoon, about the new friend he met in the hall. He liked you, said you are a very nice lady. I thought about teaching him the meaning of accomplice, since you sneaked him back in the room when I’d told him not to go out.” Dante wheeled over to pull the chair out for Catherine. “But I got into trouble myself when I was that age, and that’s part of the growing-up process—learning to get yourself out of your messes. Being resourceful, which he was.”
Catherine laughed. “Yes, he was. He’s just like you, Dante.” Dante as a father—it was a new concept for her, but one that fitted him well. He was a good father who saw reason on both sides. He would inspire confidence in Gianni. Unfortunately, like her father had done, she feared he would also inspire the cold, down-to-the-marrow kind of fear that wouldn’t go away.
“He convinced me that taking a swim is a healthy thing to do, so what could I say? The boy’s persuasive. Didn’t he persuade you to protect him in his little adventure?”
“He’s like you,” she said again as she sat down, taking care not to brush up against Dante. This had to be a meal with distance. That was the only way she could get through it. “Always breaking the rules. And always so charming when trying to fix his messes. I think it must be a natural gift for the Baldassare men.”
Dante uncorked the champagne, poured two flutes full, and handed one over to her. As much as she tried not to brush her hand against his as she took it, his fingers did slide ever so gently across the back of her hand, causing her to suck in a razor-sharp breath. For a moment she felt fire, felt the tingle of a wild spark ignite the flesh on the back of her hand and spread up her arm.
She wanted to be calm about this, wanted to force her face to remain expressionless, but if Dante still owned the powers of observation he had all those years ago, then he’d already noticed her subtle reaction to him. He’d seen the slight shiver, understood the barely perceptible recoil. Maybe even felt her pulse quicken. He was polite not to mention it, however, even though, when she finally risked a glance at him, he was staring at her, his eyes penetrating something far deeper than her skin. “I…um…I like him,” she finally managed to force out. “Like I…um…mentioned earlier, you’re doing a good job…um…raising him.”
“I didn’t make you this nervous the very first time we went out,” he said. His voice was so quiet it nearly blended into the shadowed ambience. “In fact, I thought you were pretty bold for an American woman, going to bed with me on that first night.”
“Bold?” she asked, recalling that evening. They’d known each other six hours and for five and a half of those hours she’d babbled on about things he cared nothing about, giggled over things that weren’t funny, and spilled white wine in his lap. She didn’t remember any part of that as being bold. “I call it being a twit. I don’t normally do things like that.” First time, only time. After Dante, she’d been overly cautious. In fact, she’d dated Robert Wilder for nearly three months before she’d even allowed him the first kiss. The rest had come on their wedding night, which definitely hadn’t been the mark of a very bold woman, since the pace of their relationship had been all her choice.
“But a cute twit.” Dante placed the champagne bottle back on ice then held up his flute for a toast. “Here’s to being a twit,” he said, leaning over to chink his glass against hers. “The sexiest twit I’ve ever known.”
“You only say that because you want me now and you know you can’t have me,” she said as she moved the flute to her lips. She smiled as the champagne bubbled up to tickle her nose. “And you’re remembering what you’ll never have again.”
“You think I want you?” He arched a playful eyebrow.
Rather than answering right away, she sipped the champagne, enjoyed the taste of pure luxury on her tongue for a moment. Honestly, she was the one who wanted him, a fact that sipping champagne with him only heightened. “Of course you want me,” she finally replied, trying to ignore the real truth of it all, hoping she wasn’t being too obvious about it or giving herself away. “Or else, why all this?” She gestured to the beautifully set table and the elegant food that had been catered.
“To spend an evening with an old friend, perhaps
?”
“We were many things to each other, Dante, but I’m not sure you could count being friends among them. You never even told your family about me, or about our engagement.”
“Because I wanted you to be there. I knew they would love you and I wanted you to be part of the celebration. That’s all it was. Not some contrived plot or exclusion. I like the new, sharper edge to you, Catherine. It becomes you. But the distrust doesn’t.”
“If I seem distrustful, that’s because it’s necessary. I’ve come a long way in a short amount of time, and it would be easy to become vulnerable. Where I am, what I’m doing…there’s no place for vulnerability, the way I used to be vulnerable. And I was, Dante. We both know that.”
But your vulnerability was always one of the nicest parts of you.”
She thought about that for a moment, then shook her head. “No, it was then, but it’s not now. Unless you’re someone who wants to take advantage of me.”
“There’s no reason to suspect me of anything because I never wanted to take advantage of you, Catherine. I’ve always thought that what we had together was good for us both. Was I wrong about that?”
“You weren’t wrong, Dante. It was good. Maybe better than anything I expected. Or wanted.”
“So you married a man who wasn’t what you expected or wanted, and he broke your heart?”
No, her husband hadn’t been the one to break her heart. But she would never say that to Dante. “Should we wait for Gianni to come back before we eat, because the aroma of the eggplant involtini is making me ravenous?”
The sooner she ate, the quicker she could leave. Something she thought necessary, as her feelings right now weren’t that different from what they had been that first night they’d dined together. And look what had happened then!
CHAPTER SEVEN
DINNER WAS a lackluster affair, and their conversation throughout was largely kept off anything personal. They talked about the clinic and the work that was being done there, the surrounding countryside, various old colleagues from Boston. All of it was very polite, all very neutral, almost to the point of being clinical. It certainly wasn’t what he’d expected from his evening. No, he hadn’t planned on their brief time together turning into anything like they’d had before. But he’d expected much more than this.
He thought back to their first evening…he hadn’t planned on it being romantic for a first date, but what he’d got had been a shocker. No candles and soft music. No champagne and caviar. He recalled pizza, no meat to suit Catherine’s vegetarian diet. And white wine…from her paper cup into his lap. They’d eaten out of the cardboard box, cross-legged on the floor, looking across the coffee-table at each other. Her medical texts books had been spread out everywhere, as had medical journals and magazines. Her flat had been testament to the fact that she was serious about what she did, and Catherine had literally taken her hand and brushed a stack of books off the coffee-table so they could eat. Brushed them right off onto the floor onto a pile of other books. And he’d loved it! Loved that spontaneity.
But Catherine’s wall had been up from the moment she’d walked into his suite this evening until the moment she’d walked away, never relaxing even a little. Such a disappointment, although he’d told himself he had no expectations. That he was as wrong for her as her husband had been.
Now it was an hour after that ordeal was over, and Dante was left to wonder why he’d even bothered.
“It couldn’t have been that bad,” Marco said, sitting back in the overstuffed wingback near the window in Dante’s suite. He was eating leftovers from the crudités Catherine had barely touched—a culinary offering not easy to find at this time of the year in an area such as this. Especially the Belgian endive and the fennel bulbs. Her favorites. Odd tastes, but Dante had remembered that, and he’d hoped Catherine might at least have mentioned it. She’d regarded that effort with all the interest of someone choosing an ordinary cracker out of a tin, though, and hurried on to the main course.
Talk about a hint. Nobody had to hit Dante over the head with a plate of eggplant involtini to make that message perfectly clear. She hadn’t wanted to be there, and to prove that, she’d come and gone in less than an hour. And now his father was reaping the benefits of a meal Dante had thought would break a little of the ice between him and Catherine.
“It was worse. She ate three bites, then left. And I think if she could have eaten less and got out of here quicker, she would have.”
“And where was that Baldassare charm? I’ve seen you charm the ladies, Dante. You don’t have to work so hard to get what you want. It was only, what, three months ago, that you had that hot little duchess hanging on your arm? She would have appreciated this evening you laid out for Dr Wilder, and been eager to show her appreciation.” He took a bite of the endive and turned up his nose. “Appreciated everything, except this.”
“She wasn’t a duchess. She was a distant relative of one. The third cousin of a third cousin.”
“OK, OK, so not a duchess. But she had a royal lineage and she was definitely interested in your lineage, among other things.” He gave his eyebrows a wicked arch. “A Baldassare man knows these things without being told.” Tossing the endive back on the tray, he shook his head. “Or he should, but I’m beginning to wonder about you.”
“She was twenty-one, Papa. I was old enough to be her—”
“Lover,” Marco supplied, his eyes twinkling as he dragged one of the teardrop tomatoes through the balsamic dip, popped it in his mouth, then nodded his head in approval. After he’d swallowed, he continued, “And the one before that…she was that famous author. Best-seller lists, Dante. Your mama has read her books, and let me tell you, the way that woman writes those sexy love scenes…they make your mama blush. You should be so lucky to have a woman like that author.”
“I was research for her,” Dante quipped. “Racing research,” he clarified quickly. “For another book she’s writing.”
“It doesn’t matter why. All that matters is that you had your chance with her, like you had your chance with the duchess, and with all those others, any one of them begging to be a Baldassare woman. And here you are, going crazy over the one who must be crazy herself for not wanting you. It doesn’t make sense, Dante.” Marco faked a shudder. “She must not understand what it is to be wanted by a Baldassare.”
“Actually, I think she does understand. Which is why she wants no part of it. Or us.”
Marco turned a quizzical stare on his son. “Which is why you want her, no? It’s always such a challenge, isn’t it, to want the one you can’t have?”
Dante shook his head without answering.
“When you had an affair with this woman…” Marco started, but Dante held out his hand to stop him.
“I’ve never said anything about having an affair with Catherine,” he snapped.
“Let me finish before you snap at me again. What I was trying to say was that, when you had an affair with this woman—and you did have an affair with her, Dante, I can see it in the way you two look at each other—I believe it was an affair of the heart. I believe you fell in love with her. Am I wrong?”
“How long did it take for you to fall in love with Mama?” Dante asked, partly because he wanted to know and partly because he wanted to avoid answering the question. It was too complicated, too loaded with emotions he didn’t want to feel again.
“I fell in love with your mama in the time it takes to blink. I saw her, I blinked my eyes to make sure I wasn’t dreaming, and when I looked again she had my heart. Is that how it is with you, Dante? Because Baldassare men are very passionate that way when they find the one they love. It grabs on, and doesn’t let go.” He grinned. “Baldassare men are born with hot blood!”
Dante had blinked that first time he’d laid eyes on Catherine. Oh, how he’d blinked. Although he wasn’t sure how hard. The problem was, Catherine hadn’t blinked. Not then. Not now. And it didn’t make a bit of difference how passionate this particul
ar Baldassare man was when he fell in love—the woman didn’t love him back. Maybe she might have all those years ago, if only in a very small way. But he’d ruined that completely, and now she was making it perfectly clear that nothing from that time had smoldered, waiting to rekindle again. Nothing at all.
So much for the Baldassare charm.
“Have you looked in on Gianni tonight?” Cristofor asked, stepping out of the smaller guest room in the suite, where he’d been checking on the boy. “He seems a little warm.”
“He had a good workout in the pool,” Dante commented. “He was a little cranky when I helped him get ready for bed an hour ago, but nothing out of the ordinary. I think he was tired. Lots of exercise combined with being away from his normal routine.”
“Except the boy doesn’t have a normal routine,” Marco snorted over a helping of the eggplant involtini.
Dante regarded his father for a moment, opened his mouth to say something but instead answered Cristofor. “This is the way he acts when he’s tired. Nothing to be concerned over.”
“Except that he’s restless. Tossing and turning. Throwing off his covers.”
