“Got to stop you there,” the attorney said. “There are a few technicalities you boys aren’t aware of. Gloria Franco took ownership of Alessandro’s eyewear company decades ago. He’d apparently given it to her as a gift, and for whatever reason they continued to let you believe he was managing it. She took a few precautions, setting up trusts and savings bonds, that sort of thing, all right? But look, it was arranged for an independent entity to ghost manage the company in the event of her death. Should Alessandro die, become physically or mentally incapacitated—you get the point—the responsibility to maintain Futuro as a privately held company, take it public or dissolve it entirely would fall on the two of you equally. It’s protection.”
“Our father’s MIA,” Nate said. “Santino and I don’t believe he’s right in the head, but who can confirm whether he’s incapacitated at all if he can’t be found?”
The attorney flipped pages, frowned down at the paperwork. “After a twelve-month waiting period, ownership would transfer. If you want to speed up the process, you’ll find out where he’s hiding. If you want to go for insanity—I’ll say it one more time—you’ll find out—”
“We get it,” Santino said. But he wasn’t concerned with hanging on to a family-owned company. If Al had ever seen in himself the mental slippage that others could see, then he’d had to consider the insanity route. What did he have to gain by vanishing and leaving behind all of his possessions?
Again, the thought occurred that Gian DiGorgio was involved.
Outside the conference room, Santino and his brother walked in silence. Nate wore his anger quietly, but the gritty despair screamed in the restless clenching of his fists and the jumping lightning streak of a vein above one eyebrow. “I didn’t look after Dad. She asked me to.”
“Mom?”
“Yeah. She asked me to do that, then we lost her, then I took some steps back. I didn’t walk into his warfare. You did that, moving back into the house.”
“A houseful of staff made stuff convenient when I was trying to get back on my feet,” Santino said.
“Nah, you can hang on to the ‘good son’ badge, Santino. He loved you for taking care of the family. He was proud of you.”
“His love and his pride put me on a surgeon’s table, man. I don’t want to hear all that. I want to find him. I’m in limbo, on hold like Futuro. I have to face him.”
“What if you can’t face him?” Nate stopped him in the hall, his voice low. “We never said this, but it’s been three weeks now and I can’t sleep through a damn night anymore because I’m thinking that this is more than just a man on the run. I got my woman sitting up at night with me, trying to convince me that I can’t start grieving that man until I know he’s really gone.”
A week had passed since he’d traveled to the Seychelles. Bindi had nothing to report. Neither had Zaf nor Cecelia Whit. But that didn’t mean his father was dead. People said dead men tell no tales. They hadn’t met Alessandro Franco. In the flesh he wreaked trouble. Beyond the grave he’d be merciless.
“Go home,” Santino said to his brother. “Go home and kiss your woman and tell her she’s right. You can’t grieve him yet.”
Nate hesitated, shooting a hand through his short hair. “Don’t say you’re in limbo. Dad said that right after Mom died, and you know what he did.”
“Married, divorced, married, divorced.”
“Yeah. Don’t do that. Don’t get married without warning me first.” He looked him in the eye then. “’Cause I’m giving you that respect now. Charlotte. I’m going to marry her.”
Santino could’ve asked if Nate knew was certain he could trust her, could’ve advised him to hold off on account of what he’d been told about her DEA friend’s involvement in forcing open the Pandora’s box that had held all kinds of diseased secrets. Instead he said, “She sits up with you at night when you’re stressing. Damn straight, you’re going to marry her.”
“I’m moving on. You compared yourself to Futuro—take it. You and I don’t need the money, but your life’s in intermission, man, and it’s time to change that.”
Santino had grown his NFL income and hadn’t been as roughed up with bad business endeavors as many former players. His finance analyst suggested he capitalize on the circumstances of his retirement and open a physical therapy center. His sports agent kept coming to him with commentator offers, but the man now knew Santino wanted to be back on the field. He wanted his feet back on the turf, and not even his brother knew his undertakings and that an NFL comeback might be the only sense of rightness that would let him sleep through the night.
No, he wouldn’t be moving on from professional football, but he’d be moving forward with his life.
“I got to go,” he said to Nate. “I know a woman who needs to move on.”
*
The bushes were different. That was the only physical change Santino detected about the Franco family mansion when he parked his truck in the wide driveway. They’d been cut down to circles and slim cylinder shapes, and no longer had the uniqueness or personality they’d had when a certain woman had lived here.
All while Bindi was trying to sculpt the house to become her home, he’d battled her. He’d resisted her influence, refused to see past the surface, concerned himself with the fact that she hadn’t been the right woman for his father. He should’ve been sharp enough to realize that his father hadn’t been the right man for her.
Though he kept his entry keys, Santino entered the house as though he were a guest. It wasn’t his home. Nadia, who greeted him graciously at the door, with her uniform pressed and spotless as though she still had an employer to answer to, wasn’t his housekeeper. But he’d come here to change that.
“What can I do for you?” Nadia asked, allowing him to drift from one room to the next.
He almost stepped into the room that held the baby grand piano, almost walked right in and started playing. He almost forgot, just that suddenly, that this place wasn’t his home and the piano wasn’t his to touch. “You can come work for me,” he said to her, facing her in time to see the crease of wrinkles deepen on her forehead. “I have a condo that’s half the size of this house and only half as clean. You can save me, Nadia.”
She smiled. “Santino, I’m not leaving until I’m forced out. The house still belongs to your father.”
“It won’t for long. I want to see you taken care of.”
“It’s about loyalty.”
“God, Nadia, the era’s ended. Dad’s not your boss anymore.”
The housekeeper settled her hands on his cheeks, patted the bristly stubble with the heels of her hands. “You have this beard, but you’re looking like him now. You and Alessandro wear tiredness the same.” She sighed. “My, but both so handsome. My loyalty isn’t to him. It’s to Gloria.”
“Mom wouldn’t have asked you to stay here forever.”
“Of course not. She was my friend, and smart as a whip.”
Smart as a whip. “Did she tell you about Futuro?”
“There were two heads of household when she was alive. She stood beside your father, not behind him.” Nadia finally nodded her confirmation. “I knew she controlled the company and wanted a soft place for you and Nate to land, if it came to that. But I don’t think it was because she didn’t trust her husband.”
“He gambled—hell, he taught Nate and me cards and had Gian schooling us in table games. If he was hooked all along, he curbed it for Mom.”
“Suppose he turned to it after she died. That’s what my heart says, and I feel sorry for him. Grief took too much from that man.”
“Are you still here because of sympathy?”
“No, I told you—for Gloria. She asked me to help her maintain a home for her family. I’m still doing that. You left before, Santino, and didn’t come back to stay until after the injury. But you did come back.”
“The house is wrapped up in Dad’s mess, Nadia. You will have to leave.”
“Until then, I’m staying.
Let me do this for Gloria. I want to know that I made every effort to keep my word to that lady. Okay, Santino?”
“All right.”
She lightly slapped his cheeks, smiling kindly, then turned for the kitchen. “Now get in here and eat something. You’re all muscle-bound now, but you’re not eating enough. Or sleeping well. I can tell, you know. I’ve a good mind to feed you turkey so you can rest.”
“Is that the tryptophan thing you’re talking about? Yeah, that doesn’t work on me. I can eat turkey, if you got it, but I’m still going to be wide-awake and bothering the hell out of you until you get out of this place.”
Nadia sighed. “I don’t have turkey, smart-ass. That was a bluff.”
“So I called your bluff and you’ve got nothing to back it up?” He tsked. “Tell you what. I’ll settle for that box you and the others packed up for Bindi Paxton. You still have it?”
“That woman?” Nadia made a rude noise, pretended to spit. “Ah, I understand. The house has been feeling off since Alessandro brought her here, and now I know why it still does. Yes, her things are in a box off the main hall.”
“Hey, Nadia.”
“Yes?”
“We can’t blame her for what went wrong. I thought I could, but I was wrong as hell for it.”
Without comment, the housekeeper left the kitchen then came back shortly afterward with a packing box that contained a layer of…stuff. It wasn’t clothes or jewelry, but a scatter of items from a miniflashlight to a palm tree key chain. Pawing through, discovering a tiny wooden tic-tac-toe game, he thought about how Bindi had looked standing on Villa Soleil’s veranda with candlelight touching her and that incredible “should I smile or shouldn’t I?” smirk.
Prying into her privacy and taking the fast track to learn about her past, Santino had cheated himself out getting to know her. He deserved that sense of loss. She was more than a means to an end, and damn, did he want to see her now.
Santino’s phone vibrated, and he pulled it from his pocket.
Speaking of Bindi Paxton, according to her text message, she needed a favor.
*
Twenty-four hours hadn’t passed yet, but Bindi considered her friend Toya missing. The evening before Toya had swept out of the apartment, kissing her son on the head and thanking Bindi for agreeing to babysit while she took care of something.
Bindi hadn’t pressed her for particulars. “Something” was what they said to be vague, to say, “It’s none of your business and I don’t feel like sharing.” She’d gone out for somethings twice over the past week, gathering camera-phone photos to send to the bloggers, who’d forgiven her Los Angeles fail and had offered her the opportunity to redeem herself with fresh material.
Last night after she’d forgone a yoga workout to feed Toya’s son and rock him to sleep, she’d put the boy in the crib his mother had bought the day after they’d moved in. Then she’d gone to bed with a baby monitor beside her where a man should be. When sunshine and Holden’s angry wails had awakened her early this morning, she’d stumbled from her bedroom to find the sofa vacant and no sign of Toya.
With no car seat, Bindi had been grounded the entire day. Feedings and diaper changing and pep talks to a child who might not understand her words but would sense her worry had interrupted her pacing and redialing of Toya’s cell phone number.
She hadn’t wanted to drag authorities into the situation prematurely or reach out to Asher Messa. If Toya was fine and police caught a scent of child abandonment, her ex-husband would only have more ammo to annihilate her in their already nasty divorce.
So she’d made a decision that she hoped wouldn’t end up a ginormous mistake.
Bindi peeked over the edge of the crib, where Holden rested peacefully. He should be peaceful now—fifteen minutes ago he’d regurgitated on her shirt. Since the first thing she’d grabbed to throw on was a designer high-low top, she hoped his tummy was settled. For the seventh or eighth time since she’d texted Santino, she looked at their conversation on the screen.
I need a favor.
In under a minute he’d responded. Name it.
A car seat. Something that’ll fit a 6 mo. old.
Then, Okay.
Santino hadn’t asked for her address, and she’d figured he wouldn’t have to, because if he knew the color of her luggage then he probably knew where she was staying, as well.
Refusing to start pacing again, Bindi sat on the sofa but sprang up again at the grating sound of the buzzer.
“I’ve got that favor you asked for,” Santino said through the intercom, and Bindi sagged against the wall.
He came through for me.
They weren’t friends, were bound by an alliance to find his father and were absolute trouble together, but he’d come through for her.
Bindi opened the door at his knock, and caught her breath at the sight of him standing in the hall wearing a suit and holding a new-in-box infant car seat. When he set the box down just inside the door, she was so damn glad. Because his arms were free now to hold her.
She knew he would.
She knew, as she lurched forward and kissed him, that he’d stand right there and hold her.
*
“Are we going to talk about that kiss?”
Stretched across the rear passenger bench in her Jeep Grand Cherokee and adjusting Holden Messa’s cap while Santino leaned in from the opposite side to secure the rear-facing car seat’s harness, Bindi thought it’d be easier to avoid his question if he weren’t close enough to maul again. “Your hands are in my way,” she said when their fingers brushed and she quickly reached to straighten the soft cap on the baby’s head. He was snug and safe in the cushioned seat and watching her so calmly that she felt a little bit elated and a whole lot nervous that he trusted his young life to her.
She had no reason to linger in this position, but she was gravitating toward the comfort that she had no business finding in either of these males. It was too easy to form an attachment to a baby, but what was her excuse for the weird, undefined bond materializing between her and a man who’d brought a car seat to her door? “They’re huge. You could palm basketballs with those.”
“Yeah, actually, you’re right,” Santino said, and when she shot a glance at him, he was watching her steadily. “I can put them someplace else, if that’s what you want.” With a click, he fastened the five-point harness’s buckle and settled that hand on her shoulder. “Is that what you want? Me to touch you here?”
The touch was a hybrid of gentle and bold—just enough to give her a whiff of sensual possibilities and a hint of promise. Instantly lulled, she let her eyes start to drift, then felt his fingers move to her lips. She kissed one knuckle, then the next, then added the lightest of bites to the inside of his wrist before she got herself together. “Stop it.”
Withdrawing, he said, “If we’re not going to talk about that kiss in your apartment, I’ve got some more questions. For instance, whose baby is this?”
You mean all your sophisticated tracking couldn’t clue you in that Toya Messa and her infant are my new roommates?
In the apartment, when she’d finally stepped back from their kiss and immediately started buzzing around to collect her friend’s son and the diaper bag and the checklist she’d printed from the Shopping for Baby page of SoYoureaMommy.com, she’d assumed he wouldn’t make an issue of her action. It was more of a reflex anyway. It wasn’t as though she’d drummed her fingers together and meditated jumping him at the door.
When he hadn’t demanded any explanation, just cradled the baby so expertly that she’d been ashamed to silently worry that he might hold the infant as he had held a football, she’d thought he wasn’t interested in the details of any mishaps she’d found her way into.
But he’d only been biding his time.
“What I know for certain is that you weren’t pregnant when you lived in Henderson. Surrogate? Adoption?”
“He’s not mine,” she said, easing out of the car to shut the do
or.
Late in the afternoon, the parking lot of her building was at its busiest, as most of the tenants worked night shifts. Some women toted out garment bags and makeup cases; others urged young backpack-carrying kids to hurry along and watch for traffic.
Her phone dinged, signaling a text message. She clutched her phone. Toya!
I’m okay.
Bindi quickly punched a response. Where are you?
A reply came quickly. Somewhere.
That wasn’t going to wash. Somewhere didn’t apply for a woman not coming home to her child.
Bindi repeated her previous question, but the phone didn’t ding.
“Get in,” she said to Santino when he shut his door. “If you want answers, you’ll have to come along for the ride. The truck will be fine and we won’t be gone long.”
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere very, very ordinary. Although to a high roller it might seem foreign. We’re off to Target. The baby needs things.”
“I’ve been to Target,” he said, settling in the passenger’s seat beside her. “Tabitha had a personal shopper hook her up with everything from shoes to soap, but I figured it was less of a hassle to get my own stuff. When I want a bag of chips, I get a bag of chips. It never made sense to draft a proxy.”
“And you braved a mob of football fans every time?”
“Sometimes. It’s part of sports and entertainment though.”
Bindi activated the child-lock system, turned the key, glanced through the rearview mirror at another woman’s precious baby and suddenly felt different. Motherly? Responsible? She couldn’t pin it. “Well, Santino, the baby who drooled on your suit is Holden Messa. His father owns Messa Technologies, and last week his mom popped up in front of my apartment looking for a place to stay. So while Toya and her ex-husband get their problems worked out, she and I are bringing up baby. She’s been gone for a while and I want to track her down, but the baby’s running low on some things.”
Mine Tonight Page 12
