By comparison, Baron was but a pale imitation of his predecessor. Not as searingly sensual. Not as wickedly humorous. And never as irresistible. But oh, so much less dangerous to love!
She relied on his steadying influence, his calm reason. He never made her feel as if she were teetering on a ledge, thousands of feet above a raging river. With him, she felt safe.
And not so very long ago, she’d thought that would be enough. She’d believed the days of wild, unfettered passion, like the turbulent teenage years, were something she’d outgrown; that she was ready for a more serene affair of the heart.
“Well, Chloe?” her mother persisted. “Just how much does Nico have to do with the way you’re feeling?”
She took a last look at Baron. A late afternoon breeze blowing in from the sea played tag with his thinning hair and crept under his shirt to make a sail out of it. He tucked the shirt neatly into the waist of his trousers, and passed his hand over his hair, restoring both to order.
But Nico remained impervious, untouched. If Baron was the harbor which offered shelter from life’s passing storms, Nico was the lighthouse, squarely facing whatever the elements chose to fling at him; daring them to defeat him, and relishing the challenge of the battles that might entail.
“He’s got everything to do with it, Mom,” she said, “which is exactly what you were hoping would happen when you invited him to stay here. But I’m not falling for it—or him. Not again. He’s an adventurer, an irrepressible optimist who always comes back fighting, no matter how slender the odds of his winning. And that’s not how I want to live my life anymore.”
“Then everything’s running according to plan?” The Prescott mother paused between sips of wine, and surveyed the company seated around the large patio table. The remains of the salmon Nico had cooked lay on a platter on a serving trolley, along with what was left of a tossed salad and a bowl of small patate, which he’d steamed and smothered in butter and oregano. “The wedding’s taking place as scheduled?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?” the groom inquired, reaching for Chloe’s hand—a move which had Nico gnashing his teeth in envy.
“Oh, there’s always the possibility of a slip-up somewhere between saying ‘yes’ to a proposal, and ‘I do’ to a marriage, Baron.”
“Not for us,” Baron informed his mother. “Next week at this time, Chloe and I will be in the Bahamas at the Atlantis Resort, dining on fresh Caribbean lobster, after a day of snorkeling with schools of tropical fish in the Paradise Lagoon.”
“So that’s where you’re going.” She sniffed delicately. “Since it’s to be a summer wedding, I’d hoped you might choose to spend your honeymoon at the lake. You know how lovely it is there, at this time of year, how warm the water is, and how much you always enjoy swimming in it. What does the Paradise Lagoon have that’s so very different from that?”
“Spend our honeymoon at the lake with you and Dad? You’re not serious!”
“Well, not with us exactly. There are, after all, two cottages on the property, so you’d be quite alone, most of the time.”
“Newlyweds usually like to be alone all the time, Myrna,” the meekly mannered husband pointed out.
She set down her knife and fork, and regarded him sourly. “I might agree, if this were their first trip down the aisle, but spending a small fortune on a splashy honeymoon for a second marriage strikes me as being almost as tasteless as the bride wearing white.”
“It just so happens that Chloe’s dress is white,” Charlotte said. “And I’m sure she’ll look perfectly lovely.”
“Actually, it’s closer to off-white, Gran,” Chloe murmured.
“As it should be,” la madre ruled. “Under the circumstances.”
Up to that point, he’d been content to sit back and observe. At this last remark, though, Nico decided Chloe’s future mother-in-law had aired enough opinions on matters that were none of her business, and appointed himself to put an end to them. “I introduced Chloe to Venice on our honeymoon, but we didn’t spend any time swimming in the canals, did we, cara?”
“Hardly,” she replied, sending him a killing glare. “They were filthy.”
“What else did you expect?” Myrna Prescott served up another disparaging sniff. “Venice always did carry its own distinctive…odor. The place has become such a cliché with tourists that they’ve completely ruined it.”
“I don’t consider myself a tourist, Signora,” he said evenly. “I have lived all my life in Verona, La Città degli Romeo e Giulietta. You might not be aware that it forms part of the Venetian arc. Although there exists friendly rivalry between the two cities, they are close neighbors and I have spent many satisfying hours exploring the treasures of Venice.”
“And is that where you learned to cook salmon like this?” She very pointedly pushed aside the food she’d barely touched.
“That I learned from my mother. Veronese traditional cuisine relies heavily on seafood.”
“Far too much garlic for me, I’m afraid. I find it quite overpowering.”
“Perhaps you’ll find dessert more to your taste,” Chloe said, rushing to keep the peace. “We’re having tiramisu.”
“More Italian cuisine? Good gracious, my dear, if you’re so fond of the country, I can’t imagine why you want to marry a North American and settle down here. You’d be much happier over there.” She mopped her mouth with her napkin. “I’ll pass on the dessert, thank you. All other considerations apart, I’m watching my weight.”
As you should! Nico told her silently. Dio, but the woman was a viper! And her son, was he as much under her thumb as the husband, who merely sat there looking imbarazzato, instead of being man enough to speak up and silence her?
Jacqueline, catching his eye and giving a barely perceptible shake of her head before quickly looking away again, spoke up then. “In my opinion, both countries have a great deal to offer.”
“And Jacqueline should know,” the well-meaning but bird-brained godmother, Phyllis, piped up. “She stayed for weeks when Chloe had her little boy.”
“You have a son?” Scandalized, the virago turned on Chloe, who sat frozen in pale-faced misery.
“Er…Mother…” Baron began. “This isn’t something—”
But she silenced him with a peremptory flap of her hand. “You’re surely aware, Chloe, that Baron has absolutely no interest in bringing up a child of his own, let alone someone else’s?”
A pity she was a woman, Nico thought, containing himself with difficulty. Had she been a man, he’d have lunged across the table, grabbed her by the throat, and shaken her like a rat.
To his credit, Baron looked thoroughly outraged. “Drop the subject right now, Mother,” he ordered, a surprisingly steely edge to his voice.
“I will not! You can’t expect me to stand back and watch you enter another marriage doomed before it starts, not after—”
“Do not concern yourself, Signora,” Nico interrupted harshly, cut to the quick by Chloe’s whimper of distress, and the way she appealed to him for rescue, her eyes so wide and wounded that his own heart clenched in pain for her. “Your son will not be inconvenienced by mine.”
“Oh.” The Prescott woman blinked. “You mean, the boy lives with you, in Italy?”
“You could say so. He is buried in the graveyard of a church close by my home in Verona.”
A moment’s silence spun out before Jacqueline spoke. “We can take our coffee inside, if you prefer. I’m finding it rather chilly out here.”
At that, at last, the husband spoke up. “Thank you, but we won’t impose on your hospitality any longer, Mrs. Matheson. I’m afraid we’ve already overstayed our welcome. Come along, Myrna. Let’s leave these people to enjoy what’s left of the evening if, in fact, that’s still possible. Baron, we can take a taxi if you’d like to stay.”
“No,” he said. “I’ll drive you. Chloe looks ready to collapse. I think she’s had enough for one day.”
The gaze he cast on Chloe, full of
tenderness, caused a stab of regret to spike through Nico. This Baron was a good man at heart; a likable man. And he loved Chloe. He wasn’t to blame for things going wrong between them, and he deserved better than to be left standing at the altar.
But Nico knew better than anyone that it wasn’t always possible to control fate. Sometimes, bad things happened to good people.
“Well?” Jacqueline regarded him anxiously when, having seen the visitors off, they escaped to the kitchen on the pretext of clearing up the remains of the meal. “What did you think of that performance?”
“That the not-so-good Signora Prescott has made up my mind for me,” Nico said, the anger still simmering. “She does not want her son to marry your daughter, cara, and after tonight’s episode, I will do my best to see that she gets her wish.”
“I hope you succeed!” Jacqueline pressed the tips of her fingers to her forehead, as if to block out the worries besetting her. “That awful business about Luciano just about put Chloe over the edge.”
“So I saw.” He seized her hands and gave them an encouraging squeeze. “Don’t despair, mia suocera cara. There is hope yet that we can avert disaster.”
“Oh, I hope so.” She worried her bottom lip. “But we have only five days, Nico. What if it’s not long enough?”
“We can’t control the passage of time. We must work with what we have.”
“But Chloe’s pride’s on the line, and she’s so torn she doesn’t know which way to jump. What do we do if she digs in her heels?”
“That’s no reason for us to give up. What is it you say in English—the large lady has yet to join the opera?”
She smiled for the first time in hours. “It’s not over until the fat lady sings!”
“Then how fortunate,” he said, drawing her into a hug, “that all the women in your household are so slender!”
CHAPTER FIVE
Monday, August 24
SHE awoke early, almost before the sun rose. Not that she’d slept much. Who could have, after yesterday’s disastrous evening?
Quietly, so as not to disturb her mother and grandmother, she dressed in a pair of old shorts and a top, slipped through the side door behind the garage, and followed the trail through the woods, to the little clearing at the edge of the bluff where she’d played as a child. The tree house of her girlhood had long since disappeared, but the stone bench she’d loved as a teenager was still there, stained in places with a fine coating of moss, and covered with the remains of last year’s fallen leaves.
She swept them aside and, hugging her elbows, sat down facing the water. For long minutes, she remained utterly motionless, letting the peace and tranquility soak into her bones, in the hope that it might clear her head. Her mind was cluttered with such chaos, her emotional resources so exhausted, that she couldn’t think straight.
A squirrel, traversing a low-hanging branch, squatted on its haunches and regarded her from bright, inquisitive eyes. A nose-twitching rabbit popped out of the underbrush to snack on the sweet grass edging the path. To the southwest, the San Juans floated on a bank of morning mist; islands lifted straight from the pages of a fairy tale and set down on the shimmering blue sea. And all of it coming together to create the perfect setting for a happy-ever-after ending.
Was such a thing still possible for her and Baron? she wondered. Could she emerge from the maze of memories and confusion in which she was lost, and find her way back to him?
Suddenly, the squirrel chattered indignantly and scooted up the tree trunk, alerting her to the fact that someone else had approached. The rabbit froze momentarily, then hopped away to safety. A second later, Nico dropped down on the bench next to her.
Chloe wasn’t really surprised to see him. Somehow, no matter how far apart they might be in miles or mood, they’d never quite severed that special intuitive connection of two people who’d once known one another so intimately that they anticipated each other’s every thought. That he was there beside her now was strangely comforting; the one constant in a world gone suddenly haywire.
He didn’t speak and nor, for a while, did she. They simply sat side by side, and stared across the curve of Semiahmoo Bay to Mount Baker’s snowy peak, rising majestically south of the border, in Washington. Finally, without looking at him, she said, “How did you know where to find me?”
“I was walking in the garden, and saw you leave the house. I would have followed you immediately, but you seemed very pensive, and I sensed you needed some time alone.”
“I did.”
“Has it helped?”
She lifted one shoulder. “No.”
“You’re brooding about dinner, yesterday?” He made a noise deep in his throat; a growl of disgust. “The infernale mother of the groom, she needs to keep her mouth shut.”
“It’s not about her, Nico. She lives over three thousand miles away. We’ll seldom see each other.”
“No, it is not about her,” he said, his gaze still focused on the view. “It is about you, sì?”
“Yes.” A sigh shook her. “I have to learn to let go, to wipe out the past and concentrate on the future. I know that, up here.” She tapped her forehead, then let her hand slide to her breast. “But I can’t accept it here.”
“It is not easy to erase a portion of one’s life.”
“Yet you’ve managed it.”
“You think so, la mia bella?” She felt, rather than saw his glance shift to encompass her. “You are mistaken. I have merely come to terms with those things I cannot change.”
“How did you do that?”
“By remembering the good times,” he said. “I was surprised at how many there were.”
She turned to look at him then, as if, by doing so, she could draw on his strength. It was a mistake. His gaze locked with hers and wouldn’t let go. It lured her very soul and, against her will, she found herself inclining toward him until his breath feathered over her face.
“And by refusing to concede defeat until the war is won,” he whispered, just a nanosecond before his mouth ghosted over hers in gentle persuasion.
She knew it was madness to let her lips cling; to close her eyes and submit without protest. Knew she should have turned aside at the last moment, and denied herself the illicit comfort of his kiss. It wasn’t as if he held her and refused to let her go. He didn’t touch her at all, except with his mouth. And then only barely.
But that was enough. Enough to remind her of how it used to be, before. Before it all went wrong.
When at last he pulled away, the terrible emptiness he left behind undid her. The floodgates opened, letting loose all the pent-up misery she’d suppressed for so long, and she burst into tears.
“Why are you crying?” he asked her gently.
“You know why,” she said, around the sobs turning her voice harsh and ugly.
“You’re thinking of Luciano?”
He remained so calm in the face of her distress, so completely in command of himself, that she flung the question back at him in anger. “Aren’t you?”
“Always,” he said. “But not in the way that you are. For me, the memories of our son, they shine, Chloe. I see him in the cool fresh air of morning, in the bursting open of flowers in the spring, the ripening of the grapes on the vine in early autumn. Everywhere I look, everything that touches me with its innocence and purity, reminds me of the great gift with which we were blessed. And I cannot believe such a gift doesn’t still live, somewhere, somehow, and that one day I’ll find him again.”
“I wish I had your faith,” she said bitterly, lifting the front of his T-shirt to wipe the tears from her face.
“I wish you had, too. I wish that you could heal.” His voice hardened. “Perhaps then you wouldn’t be racing headlong into a marriage for which you have no heart, with a man who cannot make you happy.”
She pulled away and glared at him. “What gives you the right to make such an assumption?” she cried, the sting of his rebuke more than she could bear just then. “You
don’t even know Baron.”
“But I know you—well enough to recognize how little you’re able to bring to this union. You have no raging hunger, no insatiable desire. None of the drive that makes you prepared to do whatever is necessary to hold on to him at all costs. You are in limbo, la mia inamorata.”
He was wrong. She was in hell, and had been ever since he’d walked back into her life! “That’s your male pride talking. You just can’t stand the idea that I’ve found someone new.”
“Not so! What I can’t stand is your self-deception. You used to be so honest, Chloe. When did you decide settling for second best was preferable to facing up to the truth?”
“I’ve never lied to Baron, or he to me. We’ve approached our marriage like mature adults, and are in complete agreement as to what we expect from each other.”
“And what is that, exactly?”
“For a start, neither of us wants children.”
“What if they happen anyway?”
“They won’t. Baron took steps to make sure of that.”
“Ah,” he said, that infuriating smile playing over his mouth again. “He agreed to a little surgical snip-snip, did he?”
“You don’t have to be so vulgar,” she snapped. “And you can wipe that smirk off your face, as well. Just because you’re bursting at the seams with agile little swimmers doesn’t mean a thing to me.”
“It did once, cara mia. As I remember, you were rather thrilled about it.”
“I’ve changed. The measure of a man has nothing to do with his sperm count.”
“Did Baron undergo the procedure to please you?”
“No. He made the decision before we met. He’s never wanted children.”
“He might not want them,” Nico declared, his tone taking on a brutal edge, “but if he marries you, he’ll end up being a father anyway, because that’s all you really want from him, isn’t it, Chloe? Someone to lean on, someone to take care of you and shield you. Does he know there’ll never be any grand passion between you, or are you doing such a good job of faking it that he hasn’t yet figured out you’re just going through the motions?”
The Moretti Marriage Page 6
