“What?” she gasped, on an explosion of soft, incredulous laughter.
“Marry me,” he said again. “If not for my sake, then for Nicola’s. Help me give her the kind of home she deserves, so that when she comes to visit, she knows she belongs and is loved.”
“No….” Her answer floated on the soft night air with quiet finality. She pressed the tips of her fingers to his mouth and shook her head so that the candlelight caught the sun-streaked strands of her hair and turned them to shimmering gold. “No!”
At that, a terrible black emptiness spread through him. “I ask for too much, then?”
“You don’t need to bribe me to love you for anyone’s sake but your own, Gabriel,” she told him reproachfully. “I already love you for yourself. I think I have loved you since the moment I first saw you.” A sigh shook her, making the folds of her dress stir and shift softly. “But to marry you…?”
He captured her other hand also and squeezed them both between his, so hard he could feel each delicate bone in her fingers. “Why not?” he said, hope flaring within him like fire. “Why not?”
She gave his question long thought before answering, “You’ve told me often enough that I’m not like Marcia.”
“I wouldn’t be asking you to become my wife, if you were, tesoro!”
“But I’m not as sophisticated as your friends, either. I like nice things, of course—pretty clothes, a comfortable home, the occasional night on the town—but I don’t need to be constantly entertained. I’m happy living a quiet life, most of the time.” The look she turned on him was heartbreaking in its candor. “I’m a house-in-the-suburbs-with-children kind of woman, Gabriel, not a blue-blood socialite.”
“And I’m a man who loves you.”
“We’re too different.”
“We’re the same in the things that count.”
“Janine De Rafaelli doesn’t think I’m good enough for you, and she’s probably not the only one of that opinion.”
“Who’s Janine De Rafaelli?” he muttered, letting go of her hands to cup her face and draw her closer. “And who the devil cares what she thinks?”
Her mouth trembled under his and he felt her pushing weakly at his chest. “People will say it’s too soon, that you’re on the rebound.”
“What you say is all that matters to me,” he said, and kissed her again, deeply and at length.
She tasted of passion and goodness, surely two of the most desirable qualities any woman could possess. But both rarely occurred together, and he considered himself among the most fortunate of men that he’d found them in her.
“I know you have a life in Chicago, a career, friends, family,” he said when, breathless, they drew apart. “I know I’m asking you to give all that up for a man whose track record as a husband leaves much to be desired, but—”
“Gabriel,” she interrupted.
“But there’s a difference,” he rushed on, feeling as if he were trying to hold water in his hands and was helpless to stop it leaking away. He was not used to feeling helpless. “I did not love Marcia—”
“Yes,” she said.
“No, I did not! What I feel for you is as different from the attraction that drew me to her as night is from day. It doesn’t begin to—”
“Yes, Gabriel,” she said again.
He stared at her, confused. “Why do you keep saying that?”
“Because I thought it was what you wanted to hear.” She reached up and pressed a soft kiss on his mouth. “So, yes, Gabriel, I will marry you.”
Something broke apart inside him then. His heart lifted, and his spirit flew free, soaring up into the clear, star-filled night, and casting aside the heavy chains of regret to which it had been shackled for so long.
If he’d always known Marcia had been a mistake from the outset, he knew with even greater certainty that, this time, he’d made the right choice. Filled with a humility entirely foreign to him, he kissed Eve’s eyes, her nose, her jaw, her mouth, with holy reverence.
“La mia tesoro,” he vowed, “I promise you on my most solemn word that you will never live to regret having said that. Te amo, my lovely Eve—not just now, in the heat of the moment, but tomorrow, and forever.”
She thought he’d taught her everything there was to know about her body’s capacity for passion, but she’d neglected to include love in the mix, and the difference was like that between water and champagne. Supper forgotten, they went upstairs to feast on the wonder of their newfound happiness. To talk in hushed tones of their hopes and dreams.
“How many children shall we have, cara?”
“How many would you like?”
“If they’re all like you, then eight would be a good number. But if they’re like me, we should be content with just one.” He leaned over her, cast a lingering glance down her body, from her head to her toes. “You are beautiful…the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known.”
It wasn’t true, but she didn’t care. If she was beautiful in his eyes, it was enough. She slid her hand over his hip, down his flank, then swept it across his lower belly. He was hard and pulsing; ready for her.
She lifted her hand and he watched her, his eyes a searing, molten-blue, as she touched herself, then drew her finger, damp with a woman’s honey, over the length of his penis. It almost tipped him over the edge. With a strangled groan, he covered her, and buried himself deep.
Passion outrunning reason, desire more avid than sense, she met his thrusts, tilting her hips to possess all his mighty strength. Wrapping her legs around his waist and melding him to her so that she was forever stamped with his imprint. Again and again in the hot Mediterranean night, they made love, then lay entwined amid a tangle of sweat-drenched sheets, rendered mindless of anything but each other.
Always before, he’d used protection. But not that night. Nothing came between them, least of all a thin sheath of rubber designed by men of science to counteract nature’s most basic instinct. That night, they flew with the gods.
The next morning, she sat propped against the pillows and fed Nicola her first bottle of the day, while he went downstairs to make coffee and dispose of last night’s untouched meal. By the time Fiora showed up, grim-faced as ever, they were dressed and downstairs, and behaving respectably.
But it wasn’t easy, and they escaped as soon as they decently could, to a quiet cove out of sight of the house. There, they lazed the day away, making plans, making love.
“Remember I talked about doing this?” he murmured against her mouth, locked tight inside her as he rode the sultry waves, while Nicola napped under the shade of a beach umbrella.
“I…remember…” Eve’s answer fell away in a gasp as the now-familiar knot of tension wound tighter and tighter in her body, then snapped and left her bathed in a shower of sun-splashed stars.
“How soon will you marry me?” he wanted to know, when they lay sprawled on the sand, enjoying a picnic lunch of cheese and fruit and bread, washed down with homemade cider.
“How soon would you like?”
“Yesterday,” he promptly said, and she laughed at the unsmiling solemnity of his reply.
“Will you settle for a month or two from now?”
“If that’s your final offer. Where shall we hold the wedding? Would you like it to be Chicago?”
“No,” she said. “I love Chicago, but it’s not home.”
“Where is, then? The place where you grew up?”
“Not anymore. My parents divorced during my last year of university. Now my mother lives in Denver, near my grandparents, and my father moved to North Carolina with his new wife.”
“If you’d like it,” Gabriel said carefully, “we could be married in Malta. I’d be happy to fly your family and friends over here—and before you slap me for trying to buy you off again, let me remind you that you’re no longer just my daughter’s aunt or Marcia’s cousin. You’re my future wife, and what’s mine is yours.”
“A wedding in Malta would be romantic,” she s
aid, picturing it in her mind’s eye. The ceremony in an ancient stone church, with the bells ringing out over the city. Her in white satin and him in a gray morning suit, hands clasped, laughing and running through a shower of confetti to the limousine. A reception in the garden at the villa, surrounded by friends, family, flowers, all dappled by the ever-present sunlight—oh, yes! Happy the bride the sun shines on!
“Is all this really happening, Gabriel, or am I dreaming?”
“Oh, it’s real, cara mia,” he said. “A dream come true.”
And for the next three days, it was.
They arrived back in Valletta late Monday afternoon, in plenty of time to get ready for dinner with the Santoros. Beryl was waiting to meet them, full of her usual good humor.
“I’ve missed this little thing,” she said, scooping Nicola into her arms. “And you, too, Eve. I don’t relish the thought of how empty this place is going to be when you leave.”
Although Eve was practically bursting at the seams with the news, she and Gabriel had agreed to hold off telling of their engagement until he’d bought a ring, and a formal announcement had appeared in the newspapers. So she made do with a smile and a cryptic, “It might not be quite as bad you think.”
Beryl patted her cheek. “Well, love, you’d better promise to come back again, is all I can say.”
“Consider it a promise kept,” she said, sure her inner bliss was popping out of every pore and clearly visible to the naked eye.
But if so, Beryl didn’t notice. “You leave all that to me, and get yourself ready for tonight,” she ordered, shooing Eve aside as she was about to carry Nicola’s things to the nursery. “Since you’re not dining at home, I’ve got nothing better to do. Go on! You’ve got nearly two hours to make yourself beautiful. And not that it’s any of my business, but if I were in your place, I’d consider wearing one of those dresses still stacked in boxes in the corner of your sitting room.”
Well, why not? Eve thought, tempted less by the fact that being unofficially engaged to Gabriel made them somehow more acceptable, than she was by wanting to see his eyes light up and his gaze caress her in that special way that set her on fire all over.
She decided on a silky chiffon in varying shades of such a deep turquoise that it resembled the tumbling waves of the sea. Such a gown deserved to be teamed with diamonds or, at the very least, a string of good pearls, but since she didn’t own either, she left it to speak for itself, and didn’t even wear her rhinestone bracelet for fear it might snag the delicate fabric.
“My, but you look a picture!” Beryl exclaimed when Eve stopped by the nursery to say good night. “Fit to meet the queen!”
Gabriel, on the other hand, was struck speechless when she showed up in his study, where they’d arranged to meet. He swallowed a couple of times, adjusted his black bow tie as if it were choking him, and when he finally managed to speak, sounded as if he’d just gargled on ground glass.
“I…er, I have…something for you, cara,” he mumbled.
Mumbled? Gabriel Brabanti, who was never at a loss for words? “I have something for you, too,” she said, biting back a smile and standing on tiptoe to plant a kiss on his mouth.
He blinked, and she thought how handsome he looked in his black dinner suit, with his shirt so crisply starched that it all but crackled. This man is going to be my husband! she told herself for the hundredth time, the reality of it still not really sinking in. I am going to be known as Signora Gabriel Brabanti!
Clearing his throat, he turned to the desk and snapped open a narrow leather case to reveal a diamond collar perhaps an inch wide, set in platinum. “While you were dressing, I had my jeweler send this over,” he said, sounding a little more like his usual urbane self. “I consider it would go very well with what you’re wearing, don’t you?”
She stared at the necklace, too stunned to speak. It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen, and she didn’t want to think what it must have cost him.
“Let me put it on you,” he said, seeming to gather his wits in direct proportion to the speed at which she appeared to be losing hers. “I do believe it was made for a neck as slender and lovely as yours.”
It nestled against her skin, cold and smooth. She’d have touched it, if she’d dared, but it would have been sacrilegious to leave fingerprints on so fine a piece. “How does it look?” she finally managed to say, turning for his inspection.
“Exactly as I knew it would,” he said. “Absolutely perfect.”
“Are you going to make a habit of spoiling me like this, Gabriel?” she asked, afraid she was going to cry and ruin her mascara.
“Not every day, perhaps, but certainly often enough to remind you how very much I value you as my wife.” He reached toward the desk again, and she saw another, much smaller, square jeweler’s box half-hidden among the papers lying there. “I know we said we’d wait a few days, but I’m not a patient man, cara,” he continued, opening the box to reveal a diamond the size of a pea set in a broad platinum band. “Will you wear this tonight and let anyone who sees it recognize what it means, or would you rather choose something different—rubies or sapphires with diamonds, perhaps?”
She shook her head, again too overwhelmed to speak. When she’d first realized she was falling in love with him, she’d braced herself for disappointment and heartbreak, because aristocrats like Gabriel Brabanti didn’t fall in love with ordinary little nurses from Chicago, not when they could take their pick from the crème de la crème of European society.
How could she have known the turn her life would take? How could she have prepared herself for the riches suddenly pouring into her lap, not just the worldly kind, but the deeply emotional wealth that came of being adored?
“I wouldn’t change it for the world,” she quavered.
“Then give me your hand and let’s see if it fits.”
Unfortunately it turned out to be at least one size too big. Reluctantly he returned it to its velvet-lined box, and opened the safe hidden behind a section of bookcase.
“It would seem we must keep our secret a day or two longer, after all,” he said, placing the box on top of the envelope containing her and Nicola’s passports and plane tickets which she’d turned over to him for safekeeping, the night she arrived in Malta. “Come along, la mia fidanzata bella. If we’re to be no more than fashionably late arriving at the Villa Santoro, we’d better get a move on.”
“Just a second. I haven’t yet thanked you properly for this.” Her hand skimmed over the diamond collar. “Or for the ring. They’re exquisite, and I’m bowled over by your generosity.” She lifted her mouth to his, hoping her kiss told him how full her heart was, because no words could express it adequately. “Thank you, my love.”
“Prego, cara. Giving you pleasure is all the thanks I need.” He pulled her close for a second and third kiss, before releasing her with flattering regret, and guiding her out to the car.
After dinner, while the men sat out on the terrace and talked about whatever it was that men always found to talk about when their women weren’t around, Carolyn took Eve on a tour of the house.
“It’s really too large for us, now that our family’s grown up and married,” she said, leading the way up an elegant turn-of-the century staircase, “but we love it so, that it would be hard to see strangers living here. And since we’re about to become first-time grandparents—our daughter, who lives with her husband in England, is due to give birth at any moment—it’s quite likely that these empty bedrooms will soon be filled with the sound of children again.”
Following her into a room which, from the sporting trophies arranged on a shelf and the photographs mounted on the walls, must once have belonged to a boy, Eve said in all sincerity, “You hardly look old enough to be a grandmother.”
“Why, thank you, dear,” Carolyn said, an odd smile playing around her mouth. “And if you’ll forgive me for saying so, you hardly look like the same young woman I met just a few weeks ago. Gabriel tells me
he spirited you away to his country place on Gozo for a few days. Is that glow you’re wearing the result of long hours in the sun and sea, or is there another reason you’re so radiant that he can hardly keep his eyes off you?”
Eve couldn’t hide the telltale blush staining her cheeks. “Things have…changed,” she admitted. “Between Gabriel and me, that is.”
Carolyn laughed outright and perched on the edge of the bed. “I never would have guessed!” she teased, patting the space beside her in invitation for Eve to sit also. “And may I be the first to congratulate you. I know it’s not the done thing, saying that to a woman, but in your case it’s justified. I’d about given up hope that anyone could bring him out of his shell. He’s been so reclusive since his marriage ended, and when he learned there was a baby on the way, it nearly killed him. He felt terribly responsible, on both counts, and seemed unable to accept that he wasn’t entirely to blame.”
She reached out and folded Eve in an affectionate hug. “You’ve given him back his life, Eve, and I thank God for it.”
Just then, one of the house staff appeared from downstairs to tell her she had an overseas phone call, and she sprang up, her face alive with a mixture of excitement and anxiety. “That must be the baby news we’ve been waiting for!” she said, her breath catching. “Why else would someone be calling us at this hour? Will you excuse me, Eve? This shouldn’t take long. Go back down to Gabriel, if you like. He’s probably chafing at the bit anyway, at your being gone from his side for so long.”
He was doing no such thing. Was, in fact, in such deep conversation with Nico Santoro on the terrace that he didn’t even notice her hovering on the threshold of the room behind.
“So your mind’s made up, then?” Nico was asking him.
“Si.” He answered without a moment’s hesitation. “I don’t see what other choice I have.”
“You’ll be facing an uphill challenge, Gabriel. Trying to take a child away from her mother—especially during what the courts refer to as ‘the tender years’—is never easy.”
The Brabanti Baby Page 15
