A horrible reality Gaby hated to think about. “But if they raised her as their own, why didn’t she take on their name instead of calling herself Trussardi?”
“Maybe one of the parents couldn’t accept the child wholeheartedly and reminded her she wasn’t their blood.”
“It might explain why she ran off with my great-grandfather at the first opportunity.”
Luke put the book and magnifying glass back on the table. “Whatever the explanation, we now have a name and something to go on. I want to talk to the caretaker. He must be in his seventies. If there are any present day Ridolfis living in Loretello, he’ll know of them.”
Unbelievably, Luke seemed as caught up in the excitement of solving this mystery as she was. Before they left the church, the caretaker had given them directions to the farm of one Carlo Ridolfi.
Once they were in the car, however, guilt assailed her. “Luke, I’m more grateful for your help than you’ll ever know. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a miracle you came across a name that could have been my relative. It’s enough to have learned this much, b-but we should be getting back to Urbino.” Her voice caught.
When he didn’t say anything, she bent her head. “I’m leaving early in the morning and still have things to do.” Being in his company like this was tearing her apart.
At her words, an almost ominous stillness pervaded the atmosphere. “You’re not going anywhere until we find what we came for.”
Shaken, she murmured, “But that might not be possible.”
“We’ll see,” was all he would concede, sending a thrill of alarm through her body.
CHAPTER SIX
BY THE time they found the Ridolfi farm on the outskirts of Loretello, the late afternoon sun had lost a little of its heat. Luke shut off the air conditioner and lowered the windows so they could breathe the luscious scent coming from the vineyards lining the road.
The tile-roofed farmhouse rested on a hillside surrounded by well-tended crops of vegetables planted in perfect lines. A middle-aged farmer working down one of the rows heard their car and waved.
After a brief exchange which she couldn’t follow, Luke translated. Apparently the man named Lorenzo said they would find his father, Carlo, over the other side of the hill tying vines.
Once more the car followed the meandering lane until they arrived at another stretch of vineyard. Here they came upon the short, leather-faced family patriarch in dark beret and white shirt sleeves. He looked at least eighty years old, yet worked with the speed of his son.
Luke got out of the car and walked over to him. For the next ten minutes Gaby stayed put, watching and listening in rapt attention as the two men conversed back and forth, using their hands to demonstrate everything they were saying. A long time ago she decided that if you tied an Italian’s hands, he wouldn’t be able to talk at all.
When she saw Luke unexpectedly put a hand on the old man’s shoulder and shake the other one in a firm grip, her heart rate accelerated because she had a feeling he’d learned something important.
Luke’s black eyes held a triumphant gleam as the two men walked toward the car. The old farmer’s mouth broke into a broad smile when Luke introduced her as Gabriella.
“What have you found out?” she cried, hardly able to contain her excitement.
“Carlo’s great uncle once removed was Vittore Ridolfi. Apparently Vittore was the outcast of the Ridolfi clan who farmed a piece of family property in the next valley.
“The story goes that as a young man, he had a bit of a wild streak and went to Rome for a fortnight. When he returned, he brought back a young woman who’d already had a baby by another man.”
“Amalia! Then that means my great-grandmother might have been born in or around Rome.”
Luke nodded. “Yes. He insisted on marrying her, but the family refused to recognize the child. When the girl, Gabriella, grew up, she ran off with an American and was never seen again. It broke the mother’s heart. They died childless.”
“Oh—” Gaby’s eyes smarted painfully. “How sad for them when my great-grandmother was so happy in her own marriage.”
Luke expelled a breath. “Carlo says the girl was known to have her mother’s red hair. She was also reputed to be a great beauty, just like you.” His voice sounded thick.
She knew he was only passing on the other man’s compliment, but his tone made it so personal, her body trembled.
As if Carlo understood what was going on, he nodded and pointed to her hair. More Italian poured out of him. When he finished talking, a slow smile broke a corner of Luke’s mouth, dazzling her with his masculine beauty.
“Carlo is delighted to learn that you are her great-granddaughter. One day soon he would like to gather the family for a picnic to meet you and hear all the details. There are twenty-five to thirty relatives still living in the environs.”
She swallowed hard. “Tell him I would love that, but since I’m leaving in the morning, it’s impossible.”
Lines slowly marred his handsome features before he began another translation. The old man listened with a frown.
“He says you must come back.”
She didn’t dare meet the fierce intensity of Luke’s gaze. “Maybe one day.” It was a struggle to keep her emotions contained. “Would you ask him if I could see the place where she was raised?”
More conversation ensued. “He says the original shell of the farmhouse is still standing, but nowadays the inside is used for storage by one of his cousins. He has given you permission to walk around and do whatever you like for as long as you like. I’ll take you there now.”
With tears trickling from her eyes, Gaby thrust her hand out the window to shake Carlo’s hand. To her surprise, he leaned forward, cupped her face and kissed both cheeks.
“Squisita, signorina—” he murmured over and over again amid a volley of other words she didn’t understand. When he finally let her go, she sat back in the seat, blushing outrageously from his spontaneous display of affection.
“You’ve made a real conquest,” Luke inserted wryly under his breath as he started the engine and they drove off. “He gave me his address. I told him you would keep in touch.”
“T-thank you,” she whispered, overcome with such deep love for Luke, she couldn’t find the words. To hide her feelings, she leaned her head out the window once more to wave at Carlo.
“Arrivederci!” he called after her, using the familiar form of the word goodbye, a word reserved for family and close friends only. It warmed her heart. She shouted the same word back to him and kept waving until they descended the next hill and she couldn’t see him anymore.
Settling back again, she let out a delighted cry to see another quaint farmhouse in the distance, sitting on a small knoll. Lush meadows interspersed with manicured cherry orchards spread to its foundation like the spokes of a wheel to its center.
She was looking at the playground of her great-grandmother. It was too perfect to be real.
“T-this is one of the most thrilling moments of my life.” Her voice shook. “I owe it all to you.” There were tears in her voice and eyes. “How will I ever be able to thank you properly?”
She heard his sharp intake of breath. “If you could see the look on your face, you’d know that you already have.”
He pulled to the side of the road. When he suggested they go for a walk, she was already out of the car, running toward the farmhouse.
The slanting rays of the sun cast long shadows as she made her way through the orchard. She remembered her great-grandmother talking about climbing trees, playing with her doll in the top branches.
Gaby noted that cherry trees were absolutely wonderful for climbing. Shaped like U-joints, the branches which grew low on the trunk made it a simple matter to attain one level, then another.
Near the farmhouse she saw one large, sturdy tree whose cherries hadn’t been picked on top. Perhaps it was a favorite of her great-grandmother’s. Unable to resist, Gaby left her purse in t
he grass and started climbing. Three-quarters of the way up she found a bunch of dark red fruit and ate the cherries right off their stems. “Hmm… These taste like ambrosia.”
Depositing the pips in her palm, then tossing them in the opposite direction, she plucked another spray. “Here—” she called to Luke, her mouth half full of sweet, ripe cherries. “These are for you.”
She dangled the bunch so he’d be sure to spot it. An imp of mischief prompted her to taunt, “If you want them, you’ll have to come and get them.”
He wouldn’t accept the challenge, of course, but she hadn’t been able to resist throwing it out. Somewhere eight to ten feet below the leaves, he was standing there waiting for her to come down.
A particularly gorgeous bunch of cherries lured her another foot higher. As she grabbed for it, she disturbed an enormous black and yellow queen bee whose buzz sounded like a small motor. She screamed in fright and suddenly the entire tree shook as Luke made it up the trunk in record time.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded, his dark head pushing through the leaves.
“A queen bee!” she screamed again as it tried to land on her hair. Ill with fright, she jerked to get out of harm’s way and almost lost her footing.
“It’s after you, all right,” he muttered. “Stay perfectly still.”
Trusting in him completely, she willed herself not to move, but the hideous whirring noise made her heart thud with sickening irregularity.
With a calm she could scarcely fathom, Luke broke off a good-size shoot of leaves and thrust the huge insect from her hair with all his force. A few strands were pulled from her scalp but she didn’t feel them.
All she knew was an overwhelming sense of relief as she watched the bee sail through the air in a great arc, stunned by the whack Luke had given it. Her body shaking out of control, she hurtled herself into Luke’s arms.
He crushed her against his chest. “That bee won’t be going anywhere for a while,” he assured her in a low, soothing tone, his face buried in her hair.
“Thank God,” she cried, burrowing into the warmth of his neck where she could feel a strong pulse beating frantically. “I’m allergic to bee stings.”
He bit out a smothered epithet. “Whatever possessed you to climb this tree?”
His hands moved over her back, sending tiny currents of electricity through her throbbing body. “I don’t know. I—I was so happy to have found her home I didn’t stop to think, and the cherries looked so tempting.”
He lifted his head, his black eyes doing a lightning-fast appraisal of her red-stained mouth. “There’s cherry juice everywhere. No wonder the bee came after you.” His voice sounded slurred.
Caught in a V of the tree, Gaby became conscious that her body was molded to the hard length of his. With no space separating them, she could feel the pounding of his heart, the tremors that shook his powerful frame.
“Mio Dio!” he vented a violent imprecation. “Talk about temptation…that heart-shaped mouth would drive a saint to commit the unforgivable.” Groaning in self-denigration he closed his mouth over hers, cutting off any possibility of escape.
After aching so long for this intimacy, Gaby was thankful to be trapped against his hard body with no place to go except to merge with him.
She knew this was a momentary aberration on his part. When he had satiated the desire which had temporarily flared out of control because they were wedged together, he’d let her go, regretting his weakness. They would return to Urbino and their separate lives, never to know this kind of exultation again.
But for Gaby, this was the supreme moment of her life. The man she wanted more than life itself was holding her, kissing her with breathtaking urgency. This moment would have to last her forever.
On a little moan of desperation she surrendered herself, denying him nothing, offering him everything in a kiss that blotted out time, space, conscience…
What she couldn’t say in words, she said with her lips, her hands. She was starving for him and would gorge herself on his mouth for as long as he allowed this mindless ecstasy to continue.
Gaby had so little experience with men, she had no idea what she was doing. Right now she was driven by sheer, primitive, female instinct. The man she wanted was about to disappear from her life, never to be seen again. Until he thrust her away from him, she would show him just exactly what he meant to her.
“Gabriella—” he groaned her name as if it had been ripped out of him, his hands possessive and exploring. When she felt his mouth against the pale, scented skin of her neck, coherent thought ceased. She yielded so completely to his demands, they moved as one living entity.
The black hair she’d longed to touch filled her hands. Intoxicated by his enticing male scent, her mouth followed where her fingers trailed, pressing feverish kisses to his throat, ears and eyes.
Blinded by passion, her lips memorized the lines and angles of his face, the sensuous curve of his compelling mouth. Wild with desire, she couldn’t get enough of him.
In such a euphoric state, she suffered shock when he suddenly wrenched her forearms from around his neck, breaking their kiss so abruptly, she cried his name out of deprivation, her blue eyes hurt and uncomprehending.
“For the love of God, Gabriella—” She heard his tortured whisper before he started cursing savagely in his native tongue. “You will descend the tree first, per favore. Now!” he demanded when she hesitated.
Trembling from the force of her emotions, Gaby had to make herself do his bidding, but the going down was almost an impossibility. She was forced to cling to each branch for a minute while her body swayed, still giddy from reaction to his touch.
Here and there her skirt caught on a twig, lifting it thigh-high as her shapely leg searched for another foothold. When she realized that this was the reason Luke had insisted she go ahead of him, her face reddened in embarrassment.
By the time she’d reached the ground, total recall of the uninhibited way she’d responded to him in the treetop turned the upper half of her body scarlet.
Good heavens, what a trembling, love-crazed mess she was! If either of the Ridolfis could see her now, they’d know exactly what she’d been doing. Her hair was a mop of dishevelment from Luke’s questing hands and mouth. There were traces of lipstick and cherry stains on her white top.
To her consternation, her heart refused to resume its normal beat rate. She was breathing as if she’d just run a marathon, and her lips were swollen and tender from the explosion of passion Luke had unleashed.
Behind her she felt him jump to the ground. “I’ll meet you at the car,” was all he deigned to say in a gravelly tone before leaving her on her own.
Startled, she turned to watch him, a dark, lean figure whose long, swift strides emphasized emotional as well as physical distancing from her.
She should have been ashamed of her wanton behavior. But how could she be when those moments in his arms had been so perfect? There was no denying he’d been an equal partner in the experience, that he’d been as witless as she during that fusion of mouths and bodies and souls.
At least her soul was involved, her heart cried in agony. According to Giovanni, Luke’s soul had been reserved for God.
She wasn’t so naive about men that she didn’t know even a man of the cloth could be tempted to enjoy lovemaking in the purely physical sense without his emotions becoming involved. Given her out-of-control response, he’d succumbed to what she’d blatantly offered because Luke had his human side, too. Only the fact that they were in a tree prevented the inevitable from happening. But the experience hadn’t changed his life out of all recognition. He’d been able to walk away from her without once looking back.
She, on the other hand, still ached from longings he’d aroused but would never assuage. What really terrified her was that she might remain in this untenable condition for the rest of her life.
For the moment her only resource was to take a little time to compose herself before she returned to
the car. She had her pride and wouldn’t allow him to see what he’d done to her.
Reaching for her purse, she tidied herself as best she could with her hairbrush and lipstick, then pulled out her instamatic camera. For the next few minutes she snapped various views of the farmhouse and orchard.
To her chagrin, she had a feeling every picture would be blurry because she was shaking so hard. Her family might be overjoyed with the visual evidence of her great-grandmother’s home, but they’d want an explanation for her less than expert photographic prowess.
No one could ever know about this interlude with Luke. She would have to twist the truth and tell her family that a queen bee had been chasing her.
But that was the least of her worries. Right now she needed to deal with a much bigger problem. How was she going to face Luke who’d been sitting in the Maserati for a good fifteen minutes, no doubt regretting his momentary insanity and impatient to be gone.
It was late. Twilight had fast turned into evening. It stole over the colorful landscape, deepening the shadows, magnifying the serenity a hundredfold.
She should never have climbed that tree. While they’d been locked together, she’d lost cognizance of her world, ignoring the reality of the situation. Deep inside, Gaby had known there’d be a price to pay for tasting forbidden fruit. She just hadn’t realized how excruciating the pain would be. It was like tearing her heart out to leave this paradise where she’d experienced rapture.
More time was lost as she fought to keep her tears at bay, then made her way through the fragrant orchard toward the car.
The low, purring sound of the motor told her how anxious Luke was to return to Urbino. With yet another reason to feel guilty, she climbed in the passenger side. The second she shut the door, a fluid motion of his hand put the car into gear and they were off.
Second-Best Wife Page 8
