“In this case, my friend, the mother doesn’t have a leg to stand on, and has only herself to thank for it.”
“You’ll still be a foreigner in a foreign land, fighting a foreign system.”
“Not so. I intend waging this battle on my own turf. Nicola has dual citizenship and is living here—”
“Temporarily.”
“Permanently, if I have any say in the matter. And given her complete lack of interest in our daughter, Marcia might not bother to contest my application.” He leaned his elbow on the table between their two chairs. “And if she does,” he said in a chilling voice, “I have enough people who’ll attest to her callous indifference to Nicola’s welfare—including her own cousin. Eve might not have liked me much when we first met, but she’s solidly on my side now, and my trump card—although I’d prefer not to have to play it.”
Nico nodded. “No question but that Eve’s a fine woman by anyone’s standards. That she happens not only to be a blood relative of the child, but also your future wife, is certain to carry a lot of weight with a judge.”
“Si, things couldn’t have worked out better in that respect. She came on the scene at exactly the right time, and how fortunate for my daughter that she did. Eve is excellent mother material. Nicola will be better off by far in her care.”
“Nico, that was Steven on the phone!” Carolyn’s voice preceded her into the room by only a fraction of a second. Quicker than light, Eve moved out of sight behind the open door. Not that Carolyn would have noticed her anyway; all her attention was focused on reaching her husband and flinging her arms around his neck. “Darling, we have a grandchild. Jane gave birth an hour ago, to a lovely healthy boy weighing seven pounds, eleven ounces!”
In the furore of excitement that followed, it was a simple matter for Eve to slip out of the room and pretend she’d been elsewhere in the house. To slump against the wall in the hall outside, as the truth of what was really going on between her and Gabriel ricocheted through her like a spurt of gravel hitting glass.
Pain clenched at her heart in an unforgiving fist. She felt cold all over. Dead. Except that she was still breathing. Still feeling. Still hurting.
All that passion, that tenderness, that so-called love was about taking Nicola away from Marcia, and using Eve to do it.
I don’t know how Gabriel’s going to cope when Nicola goes home…but he’s a strong, resourceful man. I’m sure he’ll find a way, Marjorie Ripley-Jones had said, that night at the opera. And how right she’d been! He’d coped better than anyone could have predicted.
Be careful…he’s a shark…he’ll eat you alive if you let him…do anything to get his own way….
“Ahh!” She clapped a hand to her mouth to stifle the cry that tore loose within her.
Marcia had tried to warn her. Why hadn’t she listened? What sort of naive fool was she, to have bought for one minute the idea that Gabriel really loved her for herself, and not for what he thought she could give him?
“This calls for a toast. Ring for Roger and get him to bring us more champagne,” she heard Carolyn say. “And where’s Eve? I thought she’d joined the two of you.”
“I’m right here,” she said, forcibly dragging herself out of the abyss of grief into which she’d tumbled. And oh, how utterly calm she sounded! Amazing what the human spirit could do when it had to. Hers was rallying commendably. “What’s all the fuss about?”
“Cara,” Gabriel called out, hurrying to meet her, “you’re just in time to help us celebrate. Carolyn and Nico have a grandson.”
“That’s wonderful!” She hoped the smile she pasted on her face looked a lot more genuine than it felt. “Congratulations!”
“From both of us,” Gabriel said, slipping his arm around her shoulder and giving it a squeeze.
It was all she could do not to cringe from his touch. She’d have loved to slap his hand away; to fling her glass of champagne in his face and tell him what he could with his phony demonstrations of affection.
But to behave so badly in front of the Santoros, when they’d been nothing but kind to her, was unthinkable. So she kept her smile in place and when Nico went to refill their glasses, covered hers and said, “Thank you, but no! It was delightful to see you both again, and I thank you for a delicious dinner, but this is a family occasion and I think we should leave you to celebrate it alone.”
Carolyn and Nico exchanged glances, the kind shared by a couple who loved and trusted one another completely. “Well,” Nico said, “we do have a few phone calls we should make. If you’re sure—?”
“We’re sure,” Eve said, then added much more sharply than she’d intended, “Come along, Gabriel!”
His raised eyebrows told her he’d noticed her tone and didn’t much like it. Probably no one had spoken to him like that since he was a child—if then! But he was enough of a gentleman not to take issue with her in front of their hosts.
“We must meet again soon,” he said, all suave Italian charm as he kissed Carolyn on both cheeks and shook Nico’s hand. “We have a great deal to celebrate in both our families.”
Much you know! Eve thought bitterly, sweeping ahead of him down the front steps to the forecourt.
“So, cara,” he began, the very second his car swept through the iron gates to the road, “did you have a good time tonight?”
“Lovely, thank you.”
“You seem a little tired. A little out of sorts, almost.”
“Do I?” Aware of his sideways glance, she turned her head and made a pretense of admiring the passing scenery. The Santoros lived on a very picturesque stretch of coast.
“Did you and Carolyn have a good visit upstairs?”
“Yes. She’s a lovely woman.”
He whistled tunelessly under his breath a moment. “What did you talk about while you were gone?”
“Nothing much,” she said. “What did you and Nico talk about while we were gone?”
If he heard the irony in her voice, he chose to ignore it. “Business matters, mostly. I value his advice.”
That about covered it, she supposed. Marrying her was nothing but a business arrangement—one that was about to blow up in his face!
“Have you thought anymore about setting a wedding date?”
“No,” she said. “I wasn’t aware there was any hurry.”
“But you know, tesoro, that I am a most anxious bridegroom.”
“Then you’ll have to learn a little patience. Weddings can’t be put together overnight. It’ll take time to contact everyone in my family—my parents…Marcia.”
He didn’t so much as blink at the mention of her name. He simply shrugged and dropped the subject. They didn’t speak again until they arrived at the villa, and she thought she’d escaped further inquisition.
She should have known better. When she went to get out of the car, his hand shot across the console and closed around her wrist in an iron grip. “D’accordo, cara, enough of this! You’re not going anywhere until you tell me exactly what it is that has you looking as if you found a wasp in your underwear!”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
HOW about a viper in my bosom? she was tempted to reply. But the immediate urge to throw his ulterior motives back at him had cooled. Much as she hated evasion, she decided that speaking her mind in this instance wasn’t necessarily the best thing. There was more at stake here than her wounded feelings. A baby’s future hung in the balance, and Eve wasn’t about to stand idly by and let Nicola become the pawn in what promised to be an ugly custodial tug of war.
“Eve?” His tone and his grip gentled. Releasing her wrist, he ran his hand up the back of her neck and toyed with her hair. “Cara, please talk to me.”
“Not tonight,” she begged, mortified by the leaping response of her blood. Her brain might know he was despicable, and her heart might feel so crushed she could hardly bear the pain, but her body still craved his touch.
His breath cruised over her cheek, teased her ear. “You’re tired, and I�
�m an insensitive brute not to have realized it sooner. We slept hardly at all last night, were up early this morning, and here it is, almost tomorrow already. And so much has happened in between.”
She nodded miserably. Yes, indeed, Gabriel! More than you can begin to know!
He slid from behind the wheel and came around to open her door. “Shall I carry you upstairs?”
“No!”
Her reply shot out with more emphasis than his question warranted. But for pity’s sake, if she wound up in his arms, he’d almost certainly wind up in her bed, and where would her moral outrage end up then? Buried alive under an onslaught of indecent sexual craving, that’s where! Besides, she had other plans for the night.
“O…kay.” He spoke with the refined forbearing of a man confronted by a raging case of PMS. “Just as you like, my love. May I walk you to your door?”
“Of course.” She smiled with false enthusiasm. “I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.”
He made it easy for her to avoid him over the next two days. “I’ve been called to London, to fill in as keynote speaker on water conservation at an international conference,” he told her, stopping by the nursery early the following morning. “The man originally slated for the job came down with laryngitis at the last minute. I’m booked on a flight out of here at ten and won’t be back until tomorrow night. I’m going to miss you like the devil, cara, and hate leaving you here alone.”
“Don’t worry about me,” she said. “I won’t be alone, and I’ve got plenty to do.”
“Planning the wedding, si?” He leaned against the nursery door, and snagged her by the waist. “Shopping for a bridal gown, perhaps?”
“No,” she said, resisting the tug of sexual longing pervading her senses. “There’s no hurry on that.”
“For me there is. If I had my way, we’d married today.”
Not when he found out what she’d done, he wouldn’t! He wouldn’t be able to get rid of her fast enough, then.
“You still look tired, cara. Did you not sleep well?”
“No,” she said, the tenderness in his voice making terrible inroads on her composure. How she kept herself together was nothing short of miraculous.
“Nor I.” He nuzzled her neck. “I missed having you beside me.”
She stiffened, and squeezed her eyes shut to hold back her tears. Even when she had every reason in the world to hate him, still she wanted him, and the thought that they’d never again make love left her blind with misery.
He released her. Held her at arm’s length, his smile not quite as confident as usual, his eyes just the tiniest bit watchful. “We’ll have a late dinner together tomorrow, yes? Spend the evening at home?”
She nodded and pressed her fingers to her mouth to control its trembling. The tears would have to wait. If she started crying now, she’d never stop.
He frowned. “Eve, everything is all right between us, isn’t it?”
With a mighty effort, she gained control of herself. “Everything’s exactly the same as it was last night, Gabriel,” she told him, and wondered how she could have lived for twenty-seven years without realizing that truth could, when necessary, wield a lethal double edge.
He’d always prided himself on being able to keep his private and professional lives separate. But over the next two days he found his mind frequently wandering from the very tangible problem of water conservation world-wide, to the elusive sense that all was not well on the home front.
Although everything appeared the same on the surface, something had changed—a minor earthquake too slight to register on an emotional Richter scale. But the subtle shifting left everything a little bit off-kilter, and instinct warned him damage of some sort had occurred. In the end, it commanded his attention to such a degree that he opted out of the last afternoon’s conference activities, and took an early flight back to Malta, arriving at the villa just after six.
“Where is everyone?” he asked, bumping into Beryl in the back hall, on his way from the garage.
“In the nursery, and if you’re smart, you won’t waste any time getting up there,” she informed him darkly.
Before he could inquire what she meant by that, she disappeared into the kitchen and let the door shut slam shut behind her. But she’d said enough for his uneasy suspicions to crystallize into forbidding certainty. Dropping his briefcase and travel bag outside the study, he took the stairs three at a time.
Not bothering to knock, he let himself into Eve’s suite. In passing through on his way to the nursery, it occurred to him that although nothing was out of place, her sitting room looked different.
“Eve?” His disquietude inching up another notch, he strode through to the nursery, needing to hold her in his arms and see for himself that everything was all right.
But she wasn’t there waiting for him, and when he saw who was, he knew why the hair on the back of his neck had been standing up from the minute he set foot in his house. “What the hell are you doing here?” he barked.
“Oh, dear! Not pleased to see me, Gabriel?” Marcia asked, rocking placidly in the chair, with Nicola on her lap. “What a shame!”
“Answer the question, Marcia. Why are you here?”
“I’ve come to take Nicola home, of course.”
His jaw must have dropped because before he could answer, she went on, “I don’t know why that should come as such a shock, caro. You didn’t really think I was going to let you steal my baby, did you?”
“I really didn’t think you gave a damn,” he said flatly. “I still don’t.”
“Then you greatly underestimate a mother’s love.” She smiled, and he wondered why he’d ever found her attractive. She was hard as nails and about as lacking in emotion as a brick. “I hear you’re planning to sue for custody, Gabriel.”
“Who told you that?”
“I did,” Eve said, and spinning around, he found her standing in the open door to her bathroom, her face paler than death.
Marcia’s laughter rang out, brittle as glass splintering on stone. “Congratulations, cuz! I’ve never known anyone able to take the wind out of his sails the way you just did!”
“Shut your mouth!” he roared, and even as his world imploded around him, he found a tiny atom of pleasure in the way his ex-wife shrank back in the rocking chair. But it was short-lived and confronting Eve again, he asked the only question that mattered. “Why?”
“Because you left me no choice.”
“No choice? Dio, Eve, I thought you loved me!”
“Then I guess we’re both fools, because I thought you loved me.”
He threw up his hands, totally out of his depth. “I don’t know what I’ve done to make you doubt that.”
“Then let me explain.”
“Not here.” He jerked his head at Marcia. “Not in front of her. We discuss this in private.”
She shrugged and led the way to her sitting room. Following her, he realized suddenly why it looked different. She’d removed all her personal possessions, and two suitcases stood on the floor near the double doors.
“All right,” he said, facing her across the coffee table. “Let’s have it.”
“I heard you telling Nico Santoro that you were going after custody.”
His heart plummeted at that, but he took care not to show his dismay. “And you don’t think I have just cause?”
“I don’t care whether you have or not. Just because you’ve divorced Marcia doesn’t mean I have. She’s still my cousin. She always will be. And I’m not about to remain silent while you go behind her back and try to take her baby away from her.”
“If you were this strongly opposed to my actions, why didn’t you confront me at the time?”
“Because I know how persuasive you are, Gabriel.” She tried to laugh, and ended up catching her lower lip between her teeth in an attempt to stifle a sob. “After all, look how you convinced me you loved me, how you wormed your way into my trust, when all you were really doing was using me.”
“And just how do you arrive at that far-fetched conclusion?”
“I heard you bragging that with me now solidly on your side and testifying on your behalf, you’d be a shoo-in to win. And please don’t insult my intelligence by telling me I misunderstood.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Her pupils flared and she gave a little gasp. “You’re not even going to try to deny it, are you?”
“I might be an utter blackguard by your standards, my dear, but I’m no liar. You’ve correctly interpreted seventy percent of what you overheard. As for the rest of your accusations—all that business about love and trust…” He snapped his fingers, a wild black fury overtaking him. “Why would I waste my time trying to change your mind on that, if this is your idea of loyalty to the man you’re supposedly engaged to marry? I don’t want or need a woman like that in my life. Once was enough!”
She almost flinched, but rallied at the last second. “What you need,” she snapped, stalking to the desk to retrieve something from its drawer, “is a dog trained to do your every bidding without question. Put this around its neck when you find one. Or else save it for the next fool who falls for your phony Latin charm.
The diamond necklace flew through the air. “I wouldn’t dream of it, Eve,” he said, deftly catching it just before it crashed against the wall. “I don’t believe in hand-me-downs. When I find a woman with whom I want to spend the rest of my life, she won’t have to settle for anyone else’s cast-offs. Although I have to say, after my experiences with you and your cousin, I’m anything but anxious to enter the matrimonial sweepstakes again. I don’t seem to have much luck in choosing a winner.”
“Or else,” Marcia sneered from the doorway, “you get what you deserve.”
“If that’s true,” he replied, not deigning to acknowledge her presence by affording her even a cursory glance, “I’ll end up with permanent custody of Nicola. Because whatever else my shortcomings, I’ve proven myself to be a thousand times better parent than you’ll ever be, and no judge in his right mind will award her to you.”
The Brabanti Baby Page 16
