by Carol Grace
She'd left. She was gone. She must be in the air now, flying over Rome in his sister's clothes, on her way back to her husband. He felt empty and tired and more alone than he ever had. All around him couples were saying goodbye, families were reuniting, and he was alone. No wife, no family. No one to meet, no one to see off. No one to tease or talk to or wipe her tears away or even kiss goodbye. Not that he was here to kiss her goodbye. After all, she'd walked out on him. Again.
Anne Marie was sitting on a stool at the counter of a coffee bar when Marco came up behind her and sat down next to her. She choked on her coffee and set her cup down with a thump. She clutched her ticket in her hand. She had no luggage. She'd given Isabella her clothes back, except for the stretch cotton pants and linen shirt she was wearing and the cashmere crewneck sweater tied around her shoulders that Isabella had insisted she keep. “For souvenirs,” she'd said, after she'd kissed her on both cheeks and sent her off with a sad, worried expression. Anne Marie was also wearing a pair of sunglasses to hide the tears she couldn't stop from falling.
Now that Marco was there, they came faster than ever, running down her cheeks into her coffee. With a loud sigh, he reached for his handkerchief and gave it to her.
“What is it now?” he asked. “Don't worry, I'm not going to arrest you or kidnap you. You won't miss your plane.”
“Then what are you doing here?” she asked, making an ineffectual swipe of his handkerchief against her cheek.
“I came to say goodbye.”
“You've said it, now you can go.” She averted her gaze so she wouldn't see his bloodshot eyes, the lines of fatigue around his mouth; so she wouldn't feel sorry for him, so she wouldn't let him see how much she cared about him. Because if she really looked at him, she wouldn't be able to tear her eyes away. Then he'd see, as he always could see, what she was really feeling. He'd see how much it hurt her to know she'd fallen in love all by herself. How much she didn't want to leave.
“Are you going back to your husband?”
“No.”
“Then why are you going?”
“Why would I stay?”
“You haven't seen everything.”
“I've seen enough.”
“You haven't seen my house.”
“You can send me a picture. Give me the address so I know where to send your handkerchiefs.”
He wrote it on a napkin and she took off her sunglasses and looked at it. “This is in San Gervase?”
“On a cliff overlooking the sea. I don't go there much, and it needs work. The lemon trees need pruning and the roof has to be replaced.”
“What about the inside?” she asked, curious in spite of herself. “Is there light wood and yellow and blue tile?”
“Not now.”
“Are there tomatoes growing in the garden?”
“Nothing's growing. Not this summer. So there's really nothing to recommend the place, except the view and the location. Handy for me, since I'll be working in town, but otherwise...” His voice was flat, almost morose.
“You could fix it up,” she suggested.
“What's the point? Living alone doesn't appeal to me anymore. I'd ask someone to live with me, but I can't.”
“Why not?”
“The place is too much of a mess. It needs some tender loving care...and so do I.”
A small, teary smile tilted the corners of her mouth.
“I need you,” he said, his gaze boring into hers. “I want you. I want you to paint the inside of my house blue and yellow, and plant tomatoes and open that bookstore you wanted. Of course you'd come home for lunch every day.”
“Go on.”
“And so will I. We'll eat al fresco and we'll make love on a blanket under the olive tree. I love you, Ana Maria. You know I never believed in love, but I do now. Don't go. If you go I'll come after you. I'll stand in your garden in California and sing love songs to you in Italian until you come out. I'll buy your son a Vespa and he can spend the summers here and be the great-grand-son Nonna has always wanted. Say something,” he said. He reached over and gently removed her sunglasses. “Anything.”
She opened her mouth but no words came out. She was stunned. She was delirious.
“Did you just say...” she murmured.
“I said I loved you. And I'm asking you to marry me and live with me for the rest of our lives. But there’s something I haven’t told you. Don’t say yes until I tell you that my grandfather left me some money.”
“That’s nice,” she said with a catch in her voice.
“It’s more than nice. It’s a small fortune. I’ve never told anyone else.”
She tried to speak, to tell him how touched she was. Not about the money, but that he trusted her and loved her enough to tell her his secret. Not that it made any difference whether he was rich or poor. But her throat was so tight she couldn’t say a word.
She promised herself she'd never cry in front of him again, but she was so overwhelmed with gut-wrenching emotion she couldn't stop. The man she loved had just proposed to her. He said she was going to live in a house by the sea in Italy, then he casually mentioned that he was rich. She thought about Marco on her front lawn, singing songs in Italian with the neighbors hanging out of their windows, and her tears turned to laughter.
He slid off his stool, took her in his arms, and kissed the tears off her cheeks. No one looked their way, no one stared in shock when their kisses turned passionate at the coffee shop counter at eight o'clock in the morning. Or when he took out a small black box and put a diamond ring on her finger, the first diamond she'd ever had. And no one would have been surprised if they'd known that the man had just proposed to the woman he loved, and she'd said yes.
After all, this was Italy.
The End
Read More Books by Carol Grace
Welcome to Paradise
In this best-selling romance, Heiress Chloe Hudson arrives at the ranch she inherited to find a cowboy in her bathtub!
"Hello, darlin,’” he says, "Welcome to Paradise."
She should have looked away. She should have run for her life. Chloe needs Zeb to run her ranch, but he has a plan - seduce the heiress and get the ranch for himself. Seduction - check. But the part about getting the ranch? Good luck with that.
Mr. Bowie, what are you doing here?" Chloe demanded.
"What does it look like?" he asked with a mocking smile.
"It looks like you're taking a bath in my tub, and I would appreciate it if you..if you..." What was wrong with her, letting the presence of a naked stranger making her mind go blank. She was a nurse, for heaven's sake. She'd seen naked bodies before, but not like this one.
"If I would make room for you?" he asked. "No problem. You look like you could use some hot water."
Again the frankly sexual gaze raked her body and caused her to have an instant and unwanted reaction.
http://www.amazon.com/Welcome-to-Paradise-ebook/dp/B004XTS2KE/ref=pd_sim_kstore_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2
Excerpt from
Trouble in Paradise
Chapter One
Quincy McLoud drove slowly down the narrow road that bisected the prairies of central Kansas. Ahead, as far as he could see, was the tall green grass of the land he used to own. The land he'd worked and expected to live on forever. Memories came flooding back, along with a sense of loss so strong he felt empty inside.
He stopped his truck as he approached the boundaries of the ranch. There on a hilly pasture above him, where hundreds of cattle were grazing, was a woman driving along in her truck as if she didn't have a care in the world. Very likely the woman he'd come to see. He got out of his truck and watched while she honked her horn and waved her arms.
"Hooo-eee," she yelled out the window, her voice echoing across the waves of grass. The cows came running, crowding eagerly against the truck when she stopped in their midst. They pressed so close she couldn't get out to empty the hay stacked in the flatbed. "Shoo," she yelled, but the cows didn't move.
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Even from a long distance he sensed her frustration. He could tell she didn't belong on a ranch, especially not on this ranch, and that encouraged him. Maybe she'd be willing to listen to reason once she understood the situation.
Impulsively he took the hill in long strides and, without speaking, unloaded the hay from the back of the truck while four women in designer jeans climbed out and eyed him with undisguised admiration. The cows meandered away from the truck to get to the hay and the driver opened the door and jumped down to face him.
"I suppose I ought to thank you," she sputtered, pink- cheeked and breathless.
He tilted his hat back on his head and studied her face. Wide blue eyes, no makeup, just a dusting of freckles across her cheeks and a sunburned nose. "I suppose so," he drawled, "but don't bother. It was my pleasure."
"It may have been your pleasure, but it was my job," she said, placing her hands on her hips. She had hair the color of golden wheat and wore it tied carelessly back in a pony-tail. But her eyes were as stormy as a Kansas sky in August.
"Sorry, ma'am, but it's hard to do your job when you're trapped inside your truck by a herd of cows."
"I wasn't trapped," she explained tersely. "I was allowing them to move at their own pace and not become agitated. Just using a little cow psychology," she added, while the four women followed the conversation by turning their heads from side to side.
Quincy's eyebrows shot up. So they were using psychology on cows.
Noting his surprise, she took a deep breath. "Thanks again, Mr...?"
"McLoud. Quincy McLoud." He held out his hand. Might as well start out on a friendly note.
She nodded and coolly shook his hand. "Abby Lawrence."
The name rang a bell, but he had to be sure. "You're the...?"
"Owner of the ranch."
Her handshake was firm, her palm sported a callus or two. So this was Abby Lawrence, the new owner of the Bar Z.
One of the women took advantage of the lull in the conversation to step forward. "You're the first, real, honest-to-goodness cowboy we've seen today," she said in a reverent tone.
"Really," he said as he looked than over. They seemed nice enough with their crisp, clean Western shirts and stiff, new leather boots. And maybe they were. It was the other woman who worried him. The woman who had what he wanted. "That makes us even," he countered. "You're the first cowgirls I've seen today. Where are the men?"
"This is Women's Week," Abby explained.
Quincy gave her an inquisitive look. Women's Week? What did that mean?
"At the Rustic Hills Retreat, we have a different theme every week," she explained.
And a different name, Quincy thought. His eyes wandered to the vast fields of tall grass. "Nice place you've got here."
"Thank you." A proud smile lighted her face as she surveyed the vast expanse of land. "I love it," she said simply.
"Love it?" he echoed, surprised at the passion in her voice. "How long have you been here?"
She tucked a strand of golden hair behind her ear. "About a year or so. I fell in love with this place the first time I saw it. Then I had to figure out how to pay for it."
Quincy noted the determined tilt of her chin, the full lips pressed tightly together. So it was love at first sight, was it? This wasn't going to be as easy as he'd hoped. She had a faraway look in her eyes that made him wonder where she'd gone. Suddenly she was back.
"Are you from around here?" she asked.
"Yep. I knew it when it was the Bar Z. A long time ago."
"Well, it was nice meeting you. We've got to be getting back."
Quincy's pulse raced. He couldn't let her get away so fast and yet he didn't know how to make her stay. "Just one thing," he said, stuffing his hands into his back pockets. "You don't really believe in love at first sight, do you?"
"If s happened to me only once, when I saw this land."
"Uh-huh."
"You're not a cynic, are you, Mr. McLoud?"
"Not me." Why should he be cynical? His wife had sold his ranch out from under him, and sent him a check for half the amount along with a copy of the divorce papers she'd filed. Maybe this woman did love the place, but not as much as be did, or even as much as his old foreman. "Pop still here?" he asked.
"You know Pop?"
"We're old friends."
"Come back and say hello before you leave," she said.
"I'll do that." He touched the tip of his hat and nodded to the women. "Ladies," he said, and loped down the hill to his truck.
Abby stood staring after him, vaguely aware that the women had jumped back into the flatbed and were trying to decide whether the cowboy looked more like a young Clint Eastwood or the Marlboro Man. Abby couldn't say. The only thing she recognized was his attitude. The "I can do anything better than you" attitude. She'd been married for five years to a man with an attitude just like that. It had been five years of feeling that nothing she did was ever quite good enough.
For five years she'd played the role of the perfect wife. Three years of mind-numbing office jobs while Grant finished law school, two years of being a corporate wife and all-round doormat while he rose to full partnership. And then, when he'd gotten to the top she'd found that she'd been playing her role all wrong.
As the wife of a law student, she was acceptable, but as the wife of a full partner, she didn't quite measure up. Something about the way she wore her hair, the way she
didn't play bridge or shop at the right places, or didn't get pregnant on schedule to produce an heir.
Her ex-husband's new wife, his former secretary, would do better. She already had a head start on the pregnancy part. Bitter? To say that Abby was bitter was only part of it. She was bitter, but she had also been hurt, angry and completely devastated. It had taken her months to recover. But she had recovered and she wasn't about to let herself have a relapse. So the sooner Mr. Cynical left, the better.
She got back into her truck and started the engine. She had to get back to the ranch house with these women before the day was a total loss. They'd had trouble this morning giving the cows their shots, the cattle had spooked and broken a fence and the women had panicked. And now this. She'd planned to restore their confidence by letting than unload the truck and feed the cattle and then he had come along. The kind of man she was trying to avoid. Who was trying to help by doing her work and taking away her confidence. Not on purpose, of course. The man wasn't malicious. Just devilishly attractive and overly helpful.
After a bumpy ride back to the house, she saw he'd arrived ahead of than and was standing in front of the house staring at the front porch. If she hadn't noticed it before, she saw now that he was a real Western man, his body all angles and planes, his face shadowed by his broad-brimmed hat so that it was impossible to see the expression in his eyes.
She walked up to him, her hands in her pockets, wondering how the place looked to him. If he knew Pop, he'd probably been here before, and if he'd been here before he'd probably seen it in its heyday.
He stared at the sign over the door. "What does Rustic Hills Retreat mean? What are you retreating from?''
I'm not retreating from anything. I'm offering people a retreat to the peace and quiet of the country, the solitude of the prairie, to a kind of renewal of the spirit " She took a deep breath. Once she got started on the purpose of the ranch she had a lot to say, but one of the women interrupted her.
"We're going in for some coffee, okay?"
She nodded without taking her eyes from Quincy's suntanned face. "It looks a little run-down in spots," she said, following his gaze to the pen the cattle had broken through that morning. "But I have made improvements, a hot tub and... would you like to see the new bunkhouse?"
"Why not?"
He walked with her to the two-story building behind the main house. He'd taken his hat off and the sun shone on his face, highlighting his straight nose, wide mouth and firm jaw. He was tall, towering over her five feet ten inches. She opened the door of
the bunkhouse, wondering what he'd think of the new carpeting, the walls painted a pale yellow. Preceding him into the bunkhouse she told herself firmly that it didn't matter what he thought. She was on her own now, making her own decisions, subject to no one's approval.
"Is this where the ranch hands stay?"
"There are only two left, Rocky and Curly. They're out mending fences these days. We were losing cattle. But when they're here, they stay in the old blacksmith's cabin."
"How do you manage?"
"The guests do the work, or they will as soon as we get organized. You know how guest ranches work, don't you? We've been written up in several newspapers. I've even got a waiting list. Not everything works perfectly, of course...." She didn't mention the water heater breaking down, or the cook quitting, or the one woman who'd left before she'd even unpacked.
"Of course not," he said absently after a long silence during which his eyes took a tour of her body. Suddenly she was conscious of the smudges of dirt on her sweater and the tear in her jeans. She thought she saw a look in his eyes that said she wasn't up to the challenge. He wasn't the only one who thought that. But she'd show him and everyone else she could run this ranch and make a go of it.
She returned his scrutinizing look. He was attractive, if you liked the weather-beaten look, the eyes with a down
ward tilt, the spare frame that probably made women want to bake hot biscuits for him. He obviously belonged on a ranch, somewhere. Where, he hadn't said. He hadn't said much of anything. Just asked questions.
While she was studying his wide, expressive mouth and gray eyes, he reached out and removed a piece of hay caught in her hair. She gasped at the unexpected gesture. There was a strange look in his eyes. What was he thinking about? He snapped the piece of hay between his fingers, breaking the tension between them.
