“Chiami un’ambulanza!”
“I’m a doctor. Let me take a look at her.”
“I don’t need an ambulance or a doctor, Gabriel,” she whispered urgently, lifting her face to his. “I just need to get away from here. Please!”
He took a long hard look at her before nodding agreement. “She’s fine,” he told the crowd, bundling her into the car. “A little shaken up, but not hurt. Grazie! Thank you for your concern.”
He pulled the car into the stream of traffic and, before long, the bright street lights gave way to the moonlit stretch of coast road heading out of the city. Eve huddled in her seat, delayed shock leaving her trembling like a leaf.
Noticing, Gabriel flicked a dial on the dash that sent a current of warm air fanning around her ankles. “Are you going to tell me what really happened, cara?”
“I already did,” she said, teeth rattling despite her effort to stop them.
After a series of swooping curves, the road straightened out into a long, flat stretch. He pressed down harder on the accelerator. The green glow from the instrument panel outlined his profile in grim relief.
“I don’t think so,” he said flatly. “The woman I know doesn’t give in to suicidal impulses without good reason.” He waited a nanosecond. “Did someone push you?”
“Not in the way you mean.” The contessa, she realized, hadn’t been among those shocked into expressing concern for her safety, which was a wise decision on her part. Given the chance, Eve might have scratched the woman’s eyes out, and wouldn’t that have made for colorful headlines in tomorrow morning’s newspaper!
“Then how? Stop talking in riddles and explain yourself!”
“Your dear friend, the Contessa De Rafaelli, if you must know,” she said, sufficiently irked by his imperious tone to toss caution to the winds. Let him find out what kind of friends he had! “She doesn’t like the idea of you being seen in public with me and voiced her disapproval for all to hear.”
“And you allowed that to make you risk being killed or maimed for life?”
“You didn’t hear what she said.”
“So tell me, word for word.”
“No,” she said, her rush of anger subsiding as quickly as it had arisen. “It’s not worth repeating.”
“If it caused you the kind of distress that had you almost under the front wheels of my car, it most certainly is! So tell me yourself, or I’ll wring the words out of her, one pain-filled syllable at a time.” He drew in a hissing breath. “On the other hand, perhaps it’s better that I don’t know, or I might be tempted to wring her miserable neck instead, and I hardly consider her worth serving time for.”
“Exactly,” Eve said. “So let’s just forget it.”
“Oh, I won’t do that,” he said grimly. “I’ve known Pierone since we were both boys in school, and I’d hate to lose his friendship, but I’ll make a point of avoiding his wife in future. And if he asks me why, I’ll tell him.”
“There’s no need. I won’t be here all that much longer.”
“Are you so sure of that, cara?” he asked, reaching for her hand.
More than the car heater filled her with warmth at that. “No,” she said, suddenly compelled to speak honestly. “I’m not sure of anything since I met you.”
“Then let us find a way to rid you of your doubts.” Without taking his eyes off the road, he raised her hand to his lips. “When I’m looking to escape the frantic pace of life in Valletta, I go to my retreat on Gozo. It’s a quiet and simple place, no servants to speak of, little in the way of luxury, but very beautiful and very peaceful. I would like to take you and Nicola there for a few days. If you agree, we can leave in the morning and stay until Monday.”
Four whole days without fear of running afoul of Janine De Rafaelli’s vicious tongue? “It sounds heavenly!”
“Then it’s arranged. We’ll leave early and not come back until it’s time to dress for dinner with the Santoros.”
With that to look forward to, it didn’t matter that when they arrived at the villa, she went to her suite alone.
“I would come with you,” he said, snaring her by the waist when she reached the foot of the stairs, “if it weren’t that already it’s past midnight.”
“And that Beryl’s baby-sitting and sneaking you past her would be next to impossible.” She looped her arms around his neck and leaned into his solid male warmth. “I rather think she’ll be glad to be rid of us for a few days. We’ve created enormous upheaval in her routine.”
“And in danger of giving her a heart attack if she catches us like this,” he said hoarsely, sliding his hands to her hips and pulling her close. “Pack only a swimsuit, cara. I intend to see a lot of you, over the next few days.”
She inched up one stair so that she was more or less at eye level with him. He ran a slow finger from the juncture of her thighs to her throat. A tremor jolted from the pit of her stomach to land with seeping warmth between her legs, making her gasp.
He brought his lips to hers. “Go, before I embarrass myself,” he murmured, breathing the word into her mouth.
She backed away, her gaze locked with his in quiet joy. She had never felt so alive. Never so filled with hope.
She and Nicola joined him in the dining room just after eight the next morning. “We’re packed and ready to go.”
“Take your time over breakfast,” he said, bending over the back of her chair to plant a kiss on the crown of her head, and another on his daughter’s. “I have a couple of phone calls to make, but we’ll be out of here before ten.”
Once in the library, with the door closed, he picked up the phone and dialed. It rang twice at the other end before it was answered. “Anything new?” he asked.
“Not a word,” Gino Cattaneo replied. “It looks as if we’re going to have play hardball, Gabriel.”
“Do what you have to do, then. I’ll be away until after the weekend, but you can reach me through my cell phone if you need to get in touch.”
“And your daughter? Her doctor is pleased with her progress?”
“Delighted,” he said. “She’s thriving, and I intend to keep it that way.”
Reaching Gozo involved a twenty-minute ferry ride, and a drive lasting another half hour. This island, Eve saw at once, was quite different from Malta’s. Much greener, much more rural and unspoilt, with flat-topped hills, densely cultivated land, and rugged cliffs knifing down to beautiful secluded inlets.
Gabriel’s retreat turned out to be a restored farmhouse set on several acres, overlooking a peaceful valley to the east, a view of the sea to the west, and approached by a long, dusty track barely wide enough to accommodate his black SUV.
Wild poppies spilled around the perimeter of the house itself, but a neatly tended garden to one side was planted with tomatoes, lettuce and cucumbers. A grape arbor, heavy with clusters of ripe fruit shaded a small courtyard, and a small herb patch outside the kitchen filled the air with the scent of thyme and rosemary.
“Leave everything for now. I’ll get the luggage later,” Gabriel said, hoisting Nicola onto his shoulder and offering Eve his other arm. “Come inside and meet Fiora.”
As they approached the house, a fat tabby cat lazing in the sunshine on the front step rolled onto her back and squirmed in anticipation of a tummy rub. “Move over, Leila,” he scolded. “Can’t you see I’ve got both hands full?”
He pushed open the door with his foot and gestured for Eve to precede him inside. She found herself in a low-ceilinged room, with a stone floor covered by a woven rug, and bare whitewashed walls. A staircase rose up at one end, and an ancient fireplace stood at the other, unused on such a hot summer day. Instead the air was pleasantly cool.
“That’s because the walls are nearly a foot thick,” Gabriel told her, when she commented. “Just as well. We don’t have air conditioning here.”
The furniture was sparse but comfortable: a long couch with deep padded cushions, two armchairs, the kind a person could sink int
o and feel as if she were being held in a mother’s lap, a low table on which sat a pottery jar filled with flowers, and another, smaller table between the two chairs. A double pedestal desk, three shelves loaded with an assortment of books, a small stereo unit, and a couple of reading lamps completed the decor. “Keep going,” Gabriel urged, nodding to a door set in the middle of the fourth wall.
This led to a kitchen-cum-dining room at the back of the house. A scrubbed wooden table surrounded by four ladder-back chairs with rush woven seats took up much of the floor space. A wonderful old kitchen dresser filled one wall, its shelves crammed with mismatched crockery. Braids of garlic and dried peppers hung beside the open window, huge stone crocks stood in the corner, with, above them, a selection of copper pots and pans suspended from an iron rack.
From what she could see, painted wooden cupboards lined one wall of the scullery beyond, with the rest of the area taken up by a shallow sink and counter, an electric stove, refrigerator, and old-fashioned washing machine. A woman somewhere between seventy and a hundred—Fiora, she soon learned—stood at an ironing board, smoothing a heavy flatiron over white cotton sheets.
She spoke no English, so Eve wasn’t able to follow the conversation taking place between her and Gabriel, but she saw the way the servant’s dark, impassive eyes looked her over from head to foot, and had the feeling she didn’t meet with much approval. But when the old woman caught sight of Nicola, her face split in a near-toothless smile. The flatiron and sheets were left to fend for themselves, and she held out her leathery brown arms, crooning something in Maltese which Eve took to mean, What’s her name?
“Nicola,” Gabriel replied. then rattled off a few more words to introduce Eve.
“Ha!” She dismissed Eve with a curt nod.
To her shame, Eve wasn’t above hoping Nicola would spit up on the old crone, but the baby lay in her arms, contented as a well-fed kitten. “Well,” Eve said brightly, turning to Gabriel, “since I don’t seem to be needed here at the moment, why don’t I help you unload the car?”
“Don’t take offense at Fiora. She’s old and set in her ways,” he said, slinging an arm around her shoulders as they made their way back to the SUV. “Marcia left a bad taste in her mouth, but you’ll win her over in no time at all.” He stopped behind the grape arbor and tilted her mouth up to meet his. “And why are we here, anyway, if not for this?”
The kiss was delicious, and went a long way to soothing her ruffled feelings, but one question refused to go unanswered. “Does she live at the house?”
He shook his head. “She stays with her daughter in the village just down the road. And if you’d rather not have to deal with her, I’ll tell her to stay away while we’re here.”
“No, don’t do that. I don’t want to hurt her feelings.” She shrugged and laughed. “If I can survive the contessa’s unbridled malice, I can survive Fiora.”
Before she left for the day, Fiora had spread a checkered cloth over the outside table, and left a simple supper of sun-warm tomatoes, cucumbers, olives and freshly caught sardines drizzled with olive oil and oregano, accompanied by a loaf of crusty white bread and sweet butter, with fig tarts for dessert. When Eve came downstairs just after eight, Gabriel was there ahead of her, opening a bottle of wine.
To her surprise, his hair was damp and he’d changed from the khaki shorts he’d worn earlier to a pair of cream slacks and a navy polo shirt. Changing into clean clothes she could understand—they’d spent the afternoon on the beach and done more than a little rolling around on the sand. But that he’d bathed, too? There was only one bathroom in the farmhouse, and she’d spent the last half hour in there. Alone.
“Feel better?” he asked, greeting her with a kiss.
“Much,” she said. “A cool bath was just what I needed.” She touched his hair, and yes, it was damp. And he smelled of shaving soap and shampoo. “But where have you been, that you’re all spruced up? Not that I’m complaining, you understand. You clean up very nicely!”
He ran his hand up his jaw, testing its smoothness. “I boiled water, to shave at the scullery sink, and used the garden shower.”
“I didn’t realize there was a shower out there.”
“It’s for rinsing off after swimming in the sea, and hooked up to cold water only which is a good thing.” He curved one finger inside the elasticized band of fabric holding up her strapless dress. “Too many evenings with you looking like this, and I’m going to be spending most of time out there. What do you call this thing, anyway?”
She looked down at the long, loose garment, unsure how to answer. She’d made it herself, last summer, from yards of semitransparent Indian cotton she’d bought at a discount outlet. As a fashion statement, it fell sadly short of the mark, possessing neither style nor sophistication, but it was cool and comfortable during Chicago’s humid summer nights, and she’d thrown it in her suitcase, thinking it might serve equally well here. “It’s a sarong of sorts.”
“It’s a crime against humanity, you mean! How’s a man supposed to be satisfied with ordinary food when his woman looks good enough to eat?” He blew out a sigh and swiped a hand across his brow. “How about I pour us both a glass of wine, and we sit and admire the sunset while I compose myself?”
“The sun set about two hours ago, Gabriel!” she said, laughing.
Indeed, the only light came from dozens of tea candles flickering in jars of water, scattered at random around the courtyard and under the grape arbor. A far cry from the elegant sterling gracing the dining room in the Villa Brabanti, to be sure, but the effect was as charming as if a host of fireflies danced in the night.
“I hadn’t noticed,” he said. “I’ve been too busy watching you.” He handed her a glass of wine and sat down next to her on a crudely fashioned bench made from the twisted branches of some kind of tree. “So, what do you think of my simple country retreat?”
“It’s charming! Every bit as peaceful as you said it would be. I can see why you’d want to escape here, every chance you get.”
“Marcia hated it.”
Eve laughed again. “She would! Not enough happening to keep her entertained. She’s a city woman to the core, never happier than when her high heels are clattering down the marble floor of the nearest shopping mall. Barefoot in the sand just isn’t her cup of tea.”
“But you didn’t seem to mind it.” He looked down at her painted toe nails peeping from beneath the flowing hem of her dress.
Following his glance, she saw that against their silvery-pink sheen, the skin on her feet took on the color of wild honey. Many more days like today, and she’d be tanned all over. “I didn’t. I loved it—loved being with just you and Nicola.”
“She was a pretty happy baby today, don’t you think?”
“Yes. And she went to sleep tonight like an angel, probably because…” She stopped, her throat aching suddenly and her voice trapped with the threat of tears.
Probably because she felt for the first time in her short, sweet life like a normal baby, wrapped in the love of two doting parents….
Except Gabriel was the only one entitled to that description, even if, to an outsider looking in, they’d appeared like a happy family. While Eve had folded towels and prepared the playpen into a makeshift crib in the smaller of the two upstairs rooms, Gabriel had sprawled on his back on the narrow bed and played with Nicola, tossing her in the air, tickling her, blowing kisses on the soles of her feet, and finally laying her on his bare chest with her little face pressed close to his.
The room had been filled with her squeals of glee and hilarious little belly laugh, and watching them, Eve’s heart had given a lurch. She’d yearned to gather them both to her; to be part of the laughter and yes, part of the tears that might fall sometimes. But she didn’t belong, not really. Nicola wasn’t hers, and Gabriel certainly wasn’t.
“Probably,” she said, eyeing him with mock severity when she trusted herself to speak again, “because you wore her out with your antics!”<
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He took her hand. “You really love her, don’t you?”
“Of course I do!” she whispered thickly.
He tightened his fingers around hers and pinned her in his direct blue gaze. “Tell me, la mia bella, is there any chance you might one day learn to love me, as well?”
CHAPTER TEN
HE SAW how he’d shocked her with his question. Her eyes flew wide and her delectable mouth dropped open, tempting him to cover it with his and thus delay the rejection he’d no doubt invited.
“Love you?” she said faintly, the glass of wine in her hand tilting dangerously and almost spilling on her dress. “Love you?”
He removed the glass and set it on the rickety table beside him. “Am I so impossible a man that such a notion is distasteful to you?”
“Impossible?” she whispered, in that same dazed fashion. “Distasteful?” Her hand drifted up, caressed his jaw. “Oh, Gabriel, if you only knew!”
“I know that you have stolen my heart,” he said, speaking with difficulty around the tightness in his throat. “I know that I don’t want to see you leave when your time here comes to an end. I cannot imagine how I’ll live in my house in Valletta, or here in this cottage, without the sound of your laughter haunting me.”
Too restless to remain seated, he sprang up from the bench and paced over the flagstone terrace. “This time limit hanging over our heads is driving me mad. I don’t want to be counting the days ‘til you leave me. I want to look forward to the hours, the years, to be lived with you by my side.”
“What are you saying?” Her eyes, huge as deep gray pools, tracked his every step.
He came back to where she sat, her spine straight as a ruler, the fabric of her dress falling gently over her slight curves. Dropping down beside her on the bench again, he caught her hand. Turned it over and studied her palm for a long time, before raising his gaze to meet hers.
“That I want more,” he said huskily. “That I want forever. I’m asking you to marry me, Eve.”
The Brabanti Baby Page 14
