by Kate Walker
He forbore to point out that was as much by her choice as his, and said reasonably, “Come with me for a change. Show Sebastiano the city of his birth. Go shopping and visit the museums. It’d do you good.”
“Tag along like an extra piece of luggage?” she scoffed. “No, thanks! I’ve had enough of being made to feel small and insignificant. I’d rather stay here.”
He knew her run-in with his mother lay behind her response, and if he was half the man he liked to think he was, he’d have shown more understanding. But he had bigger issues to resolve. The company his great-grandfather had created was hemorrhaging money and it had to be stopped. So instead of giving her the reassurance he knew she needed, to his horror and later regret, he heard himself roar, “Well, at least you can always call on the obliging Monsieur Gauthier to keep you company if the nights prove too long and lonely.”
She blanched. “What?” she gasped.
“You heard me.”
“Yes,” she said after a pause, her eyes welling with tears. “I imagine half the island probably did.”
Doing his best to moderate his tone, he said, “You’re not the only one who’s tired of our being apart more than we’re together, Maeve. If I wanted to live like a bachelor, I wouldn’t have married you in the first place.”
“Perhaps that was your big mistake,” she said, struggling to keep her voice steady. “But since you did, and since you have so little trust in me, perhaps the best thing you can do is put an end to what was never a love match in the first place.”
And leave the door open for some half-assed wannabe artist to move onto his turf? Like hell! “Regardless of the reason for our marriage, the fact remains that it happened, and I have done my best to make it work. You have unlimited freedom and the wherewithal to enjoy it pretty much however you please. So forget any ideas you have of walking out on it. That is not, nor will it ever be an option.”
“Watch me!” she spat. “I don’t care how rich and famous you are, I will not sink back into that pathetic, browbeaten creature I once was, just for the privilege of being the great Dario Gabriele Costanzo’s charity bride.”
“I didn’t marry you because I felt sorry for you, Maeve.”
She swiped at the tears running down her face. “Oh, we all know very well why you married me,” she said bitterly. “You had to do the right thing.”
“Yes. Doing the right thing has always been important to me.”
“Then how do you explain this?” Seizing a tabloid magazine lying on the coffee table, she thrust it at him. It fell open at a photograph showing him leaving a restaurant apparently in the company of blond, tanned beauty wearing a white dress so minuscule, it was barely decent.
“I can’t,” he said, tossing the magazine aside. “I won’t lie to you. When I’m away, I’m frequently entertained by business men and their wives, many of whom are extremely attractive, but this woman is not one of them. I have no idea who she is nor, to my certain knowledge, have I ever so much as spoken a word to her.”
“You didn’t spend much time speaking to me, either, the night we met,” she sobbed, “but that didn’t stop you from—”
“I’m well aware how that night ended, Maeve. I made a mistake and I’m doing my best to live with it. But if you’re determined to point fingers, let me remind you that at least some of the blame lay with you. All you ever had to say was stop.”
Livid with himself and with her, he left her then, stopped just long enough to grab his briefcase from his desk, and strode out to the car. Within the hour he was onboard the company jet, headed for Milan.
The next afternoon the police contacted him. There’d been an accident. A car had spun out of control and gone over the edge of a cliff, some five or six kilometers from the villa on Pantelleria. Sebastiano had suffered minor injuries, Maeve was clinging to life, and the driver, Yves Gauthier, was dead.
CHAPTER TEN
GLOOMILY, Maeve watched as the aircraft gained height and headed due east over the Mediterranean. Too soon the Tunisian coastline sank into the hazy sunset distance and the black dot that was Pantelleria assumed more distinctive shape and color.
The day had flown by. She’d woken first and spent a minute or two inspecting the man she’d married. His face was more vulnerable in sleep, making him appear less the powerful business magnate. She loved the lean, firm line of his jaw, even dusted as it was with new-beard growth, and the way his black hair, normally so well behaved, spilled riotously over his forehead. She loved his strong neck, his dark, dense lashes that were enough to make a woman weep with envy, the sweeping arc of his eyebrows. She loved his mouth, its shape, its texture and its amazing talent as an instrument of seduction.
More than all that, she loved the inherent strength of him, the kind that had to do with something other than muscle and sinew. She might not remember their past relationship, but she knew instinctively that she could count on him. He was not a man to shirk his duty, renege on a promise or betray a friend. Although undoubtedly handsome as a god and sexier than was good for him or her, his real beauty came from within, and that was what she loved most about him.
Love…a word so often spoken without thought for what it should mean, yet sometimes the only word that would do, even if she couldn’t recall it ever having crossed Dario’s lips since their reunion. Yet perhaps that wasn’t so strange, given that although they’d been married for over a year, because of her illness she’d really only known him for the last few weeks. Was it possible to fall in love with him all over again in so short a time, or was the up-swell of emotion he aroused in her something her heart remembered, even if her brain did not?
He stirred, stretched and raised his eyelids to half-mast, as if the weight of their lashes was more than they could be expected to cope with so early in the day. “Buon giorno,” he muttered, his voice so raspy and sensual that she tingled all over. “You have the look of a woman with much on her mind.”
“I was just thinking.”
“About?”
“What I’d like for breakfast.”
“Come up with any ideas?”
“Yes,” she said, drawing the sheet down past his waist and very precisely placing the tip of her forefinger exactly where she wanted it to go on his very male anatomy. “I’d like you.”
His gray eyes darkened. “Help yourself, amore mio. I’m all yours.”
After such a start to the morning, the famed mosaics in the Bardo Museum, which they visited later, weren’t nearly as impressive as they might otherwise have been.
“I don’t want to go back there,” she said now, the words falling into a silence broken only by the hum of the airplane’s engines.
Dario looked up from the newspaper he was reading. “That’s not what you told me yesterday. Yesterday you were captivated by Tunis.”
“You don’t understand,” she said. “What I mean is, I don’t want to go back to Pantelleria. Please, Dario, can’t we go straight to Milan instead? I want to see my other home, and I can’t believe you’d rather be trying to run your end of the business from the villa when it would be so much more efficient and convenient to be at the heart of things at corporate headquarters.”
“Are you sure you’re ready for such a radical step?” he asked her doubtfully. “Milan’s a big city, and there was a time that you preferred the slower pace of life on Pantelleria.”
“Not anymore,” she said, with an inward shudder. “Antonia and the rest of the household staff have been most kind, and I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but I want to be around people who don’t look at me as if I’m some sort of walking freak, or treat me as if I might break if I don’t follow the exact same routine every day. Plus, we’re almost into the second week of October now, and you said yourself there’s not much to do on the island once summer’s over.”
“True. And with the fall fashion season getting underway in Milan, you’d enjoy seeing what’s on the runway, I’m sure.”
The chance to witness creative desi
gn at its most innovative transfused her with a well-remembered excitement. “Oh, I would!”
He rolled up the paper and regarded her thoughtfully.
“What?” she said, wishing she could read his mind.
“I’m wondering if there’s something else you might be interested in, as well. Next Saturday is our company’s annual benefit to raise awareness of Parchi Per Bambini, my great-grandfather’s children’s charity, which is as important today as it was when he first introduced it. There are now more than a hundred playgrounds in the poorer areas of various cities around the country, but not as many as we’d like to see, especially in the south. It’ll be quite the gala occasion. How do you feel about attending it with me?”
“I’d love to.”
“Think twice it before you say that. The whole family will be there, which you might find overwhelming since it’ll be like meeting them all for the first time.”
She grimaced. “Except for your mother. She and I, if you recall, already renewed our acquaintance with a singular lack of success, I might add.”
“Sì. Except for my mother.”
“Well, I have to face her again sooner or later, and the same goes for the others.”
“You didn’t feel that way a couple of weeks ago.”
“A couple of weeks ago I hadn’t rediscovered my marriage.” Or fallen in love with her husband all over again. But perhaps it was too soon to tell him that, so she said instead, “I’m not the same woman I was back then.”
“No, I don’t believe you are. You’re emerging from a chrysalis into a butterfly more than ready to spread her wings.” He slapped the newspaper against his knee. “D’accordo! It’s a date. I’ll send for the company jet and we’ll fly to Milan in the morning.”
At last, no more marking time! Elation and relief fizzed through her blood like champagne. She was a step away from rediscovering the other half of her lost life; hopefully one free of covert glances from anxious domestics, and secrets hidden behind locked doors.
“Well, this is it.” Stepping out of the elevator, which they’d entered from a sunny private courtyard, Dario flung open the double doors to the penthouse.
Maeve stepped into a small marble foyer and paused, more than a little dazzled by what lay beyond. If the island villa was luxurious, this residence was palatial. Gleaming hardwood floors and paneled white walls graced an entrance hall grand enough to host a sixteenth-century masked ball. At one end, a spiral staircase rose to a gallery, above which a beveled glass dome flooded the entire area with natural light.
Apparently unnerved by her silence, Dario touched her arm tentatively. “If you’re concerned at being left alone, I’ll cancel my meeting,” he offered, referring to the inflight phone call he’d received after they’d left Pantelleria.
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “What do I have to be nervous about? The place isn’t haunted, is it?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“Then go with an easy mind.”
“The meeting shouldn’t last more than an hour or two, but call if you need anything. My assistant will put you through right away. Meanwhile, pour yourself a glass of wine and make yourself at home while I’m gone. I called ahead and had the maid service stock up the refrigerator. Better yet, take a nap. We left Pantelleria pretty early and you’re probably tired.”
Tired? She’d never felt more energized in her life, at least that she could recall. “Really, Dario, stop worrying. I’ll be perfectly fine.”
“All right, then.” He hugged her and dropped a kiss on her mouth. “We’ll go somewhere nice for lunch when I get back,” he promised, the look in his eyes suggesting lunch wasn’t the only thing he had in mind.
“I look forward to it.” She shooed him away, eager to reacquaint herself with her sort-of-new home. “Now go!”
She waited until the elevator doors whispered closed behind him before passing through the entrance hall and an arched opening flanked by marble pillars to the living room—except so mundane a term scarcely did justice to the gracious expanse confronting her.
Elaborate white moldings stood in stark contrast to walls covered with burgundy-colored silk damask. Oil paintings, some portraits, some landscapes, hung in heavy carved frames. Thick ivory carpets cushioned the floors. An ebony grand piano stood in one corner, its highly polished lid reflecting the graceful fronds of a tall areca palm in a Chinese jardiniere. The remaining furniture was antique, Italian provincial mostly, with the sofas and armchairs upholstered in cream silk brocade. In the center of one wall was an elegant marble fireplace. The remaining walls boasted French doors that opened onto a wrap-around terrace with breathtaking views of the Duomo.
Pillared archways on either side of the fireplace gave access to a formal dining room large enough to seat a dinner party of twelve. A magnificent chandelier hung above the long table, its crystal prisms shooting fiery sparks in the bright sunlight. A butler’s pantry connected this room to a superbly outfitted kitchen with a small but charming breakfast room set off to one side. There, another door opened directly into the big entrance hall.
Upstairs were three bedrooms each with its own marble bathroom. A four-poster occupied pride of place in the master suite, which also had a recessed sitting area set up with two armchairs. More ornate white molding show-cased deep-ocher walls, with matching watered-silk drapes at the tall casement windows.
All comfort and luxury aside, though, the most interesting item, at least to Maeve, was a silver-framed photograph she found on a bureau. It showed her and Dario at some social function that required them both to wear evening dress. Although the camera had captured only their heads and shoulders, his black bow tie, starched white dress shirt with its pointy collar and the silk lapels of his dinner jacket were visible, as was the opal and silver or platinum filigree pendant nestled in the vee-shaped neck of her off-the-shoulder dark blue gown. Dario was suave sophistication personified, his smile dazzling and assured. Maeve wore the look of a deer caught in the headlights.
“I had a lot more cleavage in those days,” she mused, taking a closer look at the picture, “and a lot more hair.”
A quick survey of her dressing room told another story. Numerous famous designers were represented in all their expensive glory, filling the mirrored closets with outfits to suit every occasion. Stiletto-heeled shoes, jeweled evening sandals and limited-edition ankle boots lined the shoe racks, with handbags to match on a shelf above. All were designer labels she’d long admired and even coveted, but never expected to own. That she did so now was, she recognized, entirely thanks to Dario.
Overwhelmed by his unstinting generosity, she retraced her steps through the various rooms. His largesse went much farther than the contents of her wardrobe. The opulence surrounding her exceeded anything she could have imagined and quite how she’d managed to wipe all memory of it from her mind defied explanation. The girl who’d grown up in a tidy little rancher in east Vancouver had come a long way, and once upon a time such splendor would have intimidated her. Now the rich, warm colors and sumptuous textures seemed to fold themselves around her and welcome her in a manner that the cool blues and grays of the villa on Pantelleria never had. She felt at home. Safe and secure. Mistress of her own house, with no dark shadows peering over her shoulder.
Grateful beyond words for Dario having agreed to let her come here and for giving their marriage another boost, she racked her brains, trying to come up with a way to show her appreciation. She wanted to present him with something that didn’t depend on wealth or position, both of which he had in abundance, but with a simple gift that came straight from her heart.
Finding herself back in the kitchen again, inspiration struck. As a teenager her other great interest, apart from designing and sewing her own clothes, had been cooking. Many a time she’d helped her mother make the big Sunday dinner, learning the importance of a light hand with pastry, the art of folding ingredients to create the perfect cake, and the secret of using herbs and spices to
turn an otherwise bland sauce into a treat for the tastebuds. But as the wife of Dario Costanzo, multimillionaire and international business magnate, she’d never so much as made toast. At least, not in recent weeks. But as of today that was about to change.
Dario had mentioned having the maid service stock up on supplies, but a quick inspection of the refrigerator revealed only wine, cheese, grapes and coffee beans. Granted, there were oranges and bananas in a bowl on the granite counter, and a selection of crackers and biscotti in the cupboards, but that didn’t exactly amount to what she’d call a well-stocked pantry, so she grabbed her purse and went shopping.
She found what she was looking for tucked into a narrow street behind the Plaza Duomo. A delicatessen with a few iron tables and chairs under an awning outside lured her over the threshold with the astonishing selection of gourmet foods she glimpsed through its open door. Braids of garlic hung from the ceiling. Olive oils, aromatic vinegars, foie gras, truffles and preserves lined one shelf; chocolates, another. Baskets of fresh bread stood on the counter. Trays of cooked poultry, smoked meats, cheeses and other dairy products were arranged in refrigerated display cases.
She made her choices and within the hour was home again, which, by her reckoning, left her exactly one hour more in which to whip together a meal and set the scene. She managed it all with minutes to spare before Dario showed up at half past one.
“What’s all this?” he asked, stepping out to the terrace and surveying the table she’d set with dark green linens, white china and a small arrangement of white roses she’d bought from a street flower seller.
She handed him a glass of chilled white wine. “I made us lunch,” she said, so proud of herself she was fit to burst. “I thought, seeing that it’s such a lovely day, it would be nice to eat here.”
“But I said I’d take you out.”
“I decided to save you the trouble.”
Mystified, he shook his head. “Costanzo wives don’t cook for their husbands.”
