The room was just the way it had always been. Big. Dark. Furnished in impeccably poor taste with paintings of saints and madonnas and God-only-knew-who on the walls. Heavy drapes were pulled across the French doors and windows that led to the garden.
Cesare, seated in a thronelike chair behind his mahogany desk, gestured for Felipe to leave them.
“And close the door,” he said, his voice hoarsened by decades’ worth of cigars.
Dante sat in a chair across from his father, long legs extended and crossed at the ankles, arms folded. He had dressed in a long-sleeved navy sweater and faded jeans; on his feet were scuffed, well-worn sneakers. His father had never approved of such clothes—one reason, of course, that Dante did.
“Dante.”
“Father.”
“Thank you for coming.”
“You summoned me. What do you want?”
Cesare sighed, shook his head and folded his perfectly manicured hands on the desk.
“‘How are you feeling, Father? What is new in your life, Father? Have you done anything interesting lately?’” His bushy eyebrows rose. “Are you incapable of making polite conversation?”
“I know how you’re feeling. Hale and hearty, despite your conviction you’re approaching death’s door, just as I know whatever might be new in your life is best left unmentioned.” Dante smiled coldly. “And if you’ve done anything interesting lately, perhaps you should entertain the Feds by telling it to them, not to me.”
Cesare chuckled. “You have a good sense of humor, my son.”
“But not much tolerance for BS so let’s get to it. What do you want? Is this another session of ‘I am dying and you must know certain things’? Because if it is—”
“It isn’t.”
“Straight and to the point.” Dante nodded. “I’m impressed. As impressed as I can ever be, by the likes of you.”
Cesare flushed. “Insults from two sons, all in one morning. It is I who am impressed.”
Dante grinned. “I gather your conversation with Rafe was so pleasant he decided to leave through the garden rather than spend an extra minute under your roof.”
“Dante. Do you think you might grant me time to speak?”
Well, well. A new approach. No barking. No commands. Instead, a tone that bordered on civility. Not that it changed anything, but Dante was, he had to admit, curious.
“Sure,” he said politely, checked his watch then met the old man’s eyes. “How’s five minutes sound?”
A muscle knotted in Cesare’s jaw but he kept silent, opened a desk drawer, took out a manila folder and slid it toward his son.
“You are a successful investor, are you not, mio figlio? Take a look and tell me what you think.”
Damn, another surprise. That was as close as his father had ever come to giving him a compliment. Clever, too. The old man surely knew he couldn’t resist opening the folder after that.
The sheaf of papers inside was thick. The top sheet, labeled Overview surprised him.
“This is about a ranch,” he said, glancing up.
“Not just a ranch, Dante. It is about Viera y Filho. Viera and Son. The name of an enormous fazenda in Brazil.”
Dante’s eyes narrowed. “Brazil?”
“Si.” His father’s mouth twitched. “You have heard of the place, I assume?”
“Very amusing.”
“The ranch covers tens of thousands of acres.”
“And?”
“And,” Cesare said with a casual shrug, “I wish to purchase it.”
Dante stared at his father. Cesare owned a sanitation company. A construction company. Real estate. But a ranch?
“What the hell for?”
“It is, according to those documents, a good investment.”
“So is the Empire State Building.”
“I know the owner,” Cesare said, ignoring the remark. “Juan Viera. Well, I did, years ago. We, ah, we had some business dealings together.”
Dante laughed. “I’ll bet.”
“He came to me for a loan. I turned him down.”
“So?”
“So, he is ill. And I feel guilty. I should have—” Cesare’s eyes went flat. “You find this amusing?”
“You? Feeling guilt? Come on, Father. This is me, not Isabella or Anna. You don’t know the meaning of the word.”
“Viera is dying. His only son, Arturo, will inherit the property. The boy is unfit. The ranch has been in the Viera family for two centuries, but Arturo will lose it, one way or another, before Viera is cold in the ground.”
“Let me get this straight. You expect me to believe your motives are purely altruistic? That you want to buy this ranch to save it?”
“I know you do not think highly of me—”
Dante laughed.
“Perhaps I have done some things I regret. Don’t look so shocked, mio figlio. A man nearing the end of his life is entitled to begin thinking about the disposition of his immortal soul.”
Dante put the folder on the desk. This was turning into one hell of a strange day.
“I ask only that you fly to Brazil, look things over and, if you deem it appropriate, make an offer on the ranch.”
“The market’s going to hell in a hand basket and you expect me to set aside my work, fly to South America and make an enemy of yours an offer he cannot refuse?”
“Very amusing. And very incorrect. Viera is not my enemy.”
“Whatever. The point is, I am busy. I have no time to stomp around in cow manure just so you can assuage a guilty conscience.”
“This is a far simpler thing than I asked of your brother.”
“Yeah, well, whatever you asked him, I’ll bet he told you what I’m going to tell you.” Dante shot to his feet. “You can take your so-called conscience and—”
“Have you ever been to Brazil, Dante? Do you know anything about it?”
Dante’s jaw tightened. The only thing he knew about Brazil was that it was Gabriella Reyes’s birthplace, and what the hell did she have to do with anything?
“I’ve been to Sao Paulo,” he said coldly. “On business.”
“Business. For that company of yours.”
“It’s called Orsini Investments,” Dante said, even more coldly.
“It is said you are excellent at negotiating.”
“So?”
His father shrugged. “Why ask a stranger for help when one’s own son is considered the best?”
A compliment? Pure bull, sure, but, dammit, it hit its mark. Why not admit that?
“Well,” Cesare said, on a dramatic sigh, “if you will not do this thing…”
Dante looked at his father. “I can only spare a couple of days.”
His father smiled. “That will surely be enough. And, who knows? You might even learn something new.”
“About?”
Cesare smiled again. “About negotiating, mio figlio. About negotiating.”
A world away, more than five thousand miles southwest of New York, Gabriella Reyes sat on the veranda of the big house in which she’d grown up.
Back then the house, the veranda, the fazenda itself had been magnificent.
Not anymore. Everything was different now.
So was she.
As a child on this ranch, she’d been scrawny, all legs and pigtails. Shy to the point of being tongue-tied. Her father had hated that about her; the truth was, she couldn’t think of anything about herself that he hadn’t hated.
This place, the verandah, had been her sanctuary. Hers and her brother’s. Arturo had been even less favored by their father than she had been.
Arturo had left the ranch the day he turned eighteen. She had missed him terribly but she’d understood, he’d had to leave this place to survive.
At eighteen, Gabriella had suddenly blossomed. The ugly ducking had become a swan. She hadn’t seen it but others did, including a North American who had seen her on a street in Bonito, doubled back and handed her his business card. A week la
ter she’d flown to New York and landed her first modeling assignment. She’d loved her work…
And she’d met a man.
She’d been happy, at least for a little while.
Now, she was back at Viera y Filho. Her father was dead. So was her brother. The man was gone from her life. She was alone in this sad, silent house, but then, one way or another, she had always been alone.
Even when she had been Dante Orsini’s lover.
Perhaps never as much as when she had been Dante’s lover, if she had ever really been that. She had warmed his bed but not his heart, and why was she wasting time thinking of him? There was no point in it, no reason, no logic—
“Senhorita?”
Gabriella looked up into the worried face of the ama who had all but raised her. “Sim, Yara?”
“Ele chama lhe.”
Gabriella shot to her feet and hurried into the house. He was calling for her! How could she have forgotten, even for a moment?
She was not alone. Not anymore.
CHAPTER TWO
HE FLEW to Brazil by commercial jet. Falco was using the Orsini plane.
Based on the way they were dressed, he figured that most of the other passengers in the first-class cabin were going to Campo Grande on vacation. The city was near something called the Pantanal. His travel agent had started gushing about the area’s trails, the canoeing, the amazing variety of wildlife.
Dante had cut her short.
“Just book me into a decent hotel and arrange for a rental car,” he’d said curtly.
He was most assuredly not heading to South America for pleasure.
This was strictly business. His father’s business, and that he’d let Cesare push the right buttons ticked him off no end.
“Mr. Orsini,” the flight attendant said pleasantly, “may I get you something?”
Somebody to examine my head, Dante thought grimly.
“Sir? Something to drink?”
He asked for red wine; she launched into a listing of the choices available and he stopped himself from snarling at her the way he’d snarled at the travel agent.
“Your choice,” he said, before she could ask him anything else.
Then he opened his briefcase and read through the papers his father had given him.
They didn’t tell him very much that he didn’t already know. The Viera ranch ran thousands of head of cattle as well as a relatively small number of horses. It had been owned by the same family for generations.
A vellum business card bore the name, phone number and address of Juan Viera’s lawyer. A note in Cesare’s handwriting was scrawled on the back:
“Deal through him, not through the Vieras.”
Fine.
He’d call the man first thing, maybe even tonight. Brazilians kept late hours; the times he’d been in Sao Paulo on business, dinner never started much before 10 p.m. Whenever he called the lawyer, he would request an immediate meeting. He’d explain the purpose of his visit and make an offer for the ranch.
How long could that take? Maybe not even the two days he’d allocated for it.
He felt his mood lighten. With luck, he might be heading back to New York in no time.
It was midevening when he stepped off the plane.
Thanks to the time change, he’d lost two hours. Too late to phone Viera’s attorney and maybe that was just as well. All he wanted to do after the seemingly endless flight was pick up a car, get to his hotel, shower and eat something prepared by a human being instead of an airline catering service’s assembly line.
The hotel, in the town of Bonito, maybe twenty minutes from the Campo Grande Airport, met the requirements he’d laid out to his travel agent. It was comfortable and quiet, as was his suite. He showered, changed into a pale blue cotton shirt and faded jeans. Room service sent up a rare steak, green salad and a pot of coffee, and Dante settled down to leaf through the documents again.
Maybe he’d missed something the first time.
Ten minutes later he tossed the papers aside. No. He hadn’t missed anything. What he’d hoped to see was something about the filho of Viera y Filho. Why Cesare was so convinced that the son’s stewardship would lead to disaster. A hint as to why his father should give a damn.
But there was nothing.
Dante took a bottle of beer from the minibar, opened it and stepped onto a small balcony that overlooked a moonlit pool. He was exhausted but he knew he wouldn’t sleep. The long flight, the time change, the fact that he was still angry at being here…
If a man carved time out of a busy week to fly more than 5,000 miles, it should be for a better reason than running an errand he didn’t understand for a father he didn’t respect.
Like conducting business for Orsini Brothers. Or kicking back and enjoying a vacation.
Or locating Gabriella.
Dante scowled, lifted the bottle of beer and took a long swallow.
Where had that come from? Why would he want to locate her? For starters, Brazil was an enormous country. He had no idea what part she was from, no certainty she’d returned there. Rafe’s girlfriend, Miss Germany 2000-something-or-other, Rafe’s former girlfriend, a model the same as Gabriella, had once said that was what she’d heard.
Not that he’d asked, Dante thought quickly.
He’d just sort of wondered, out loud, if Rafe’s ex had known her.
Dammit, why was he even thinking about Gabriella? The affair had been fun while it lasted. A couple of months, that was all, and then she’d slipped out of his life or maybe he’d slipped out of hers….
Okay. So it hadn’t been quite like that.
He’d gone away on business, a trip Nick was supposed to make but Nick had had other things going on and Dante had offered to go in his place.
“You sure?” Nick had said. “Because I can just postpone this for a week…”
“No,” Dante had said, “no, that’s fine. I can use a break in routine.”
So he’d flown to Rome or maybe it was Paris, and he hadn’t said anything about leaving to Gabriella because why would he? They were dating, that was all. Dating exclusively because that was how he did things, one woman at a time while it lasted, but dating was all it was.
While he was away it had hit him that the thing with Gabriella had pretty much run its course. He’d gone to Tiffany’s as soon as he got back, bought a pair of diamond earrings, phoned her, arranged to meet her at Perse for dinner.
He’d been uncommonly nervous through the meal. Ridiculous, when he’d been through moments like this many times before. Finally, over coffee, he’d taken her hand.
“Gabriella. I have something to tell you.”
“And I…I have something to tell you, too.”
Her voice had been a whisper. Her cheeks had been flushed. Hell. She was going to tell him she’d fallen in love with him. He’d lived this scene before; he knew the warning signs. So he’d moved fast, put the little box that held the earrings on the table between them and said, quickly, how fond he was of her but how busy things had suddenly become at work, how he wished her the best of luck and if she ever needed him for anything…
She hadn’t said a word.
The flush had left her cheeks. In fact, she’d gone white. Then she’d pushed back her chair and walked out of the restaurant, leaving the earrings, leaving him, just walked, head up, spine straight, never once looked back.
Dante tossed back the last of the beer, exchanged his jeans for shorts and went out for a run. When he returned an hour later, he tumbled into bed and slept, dream free, until the wake-up call from the front desk awakened him the next morning.
Eduardo de Souza, the Viera attorney, sounded pleasant enough.
Dante explained he was the son of an old acquaintance of Juan Viera and asked if they could meet as soon as possible.
“Ah,” de Souza said, on a long sigh. “And your father knows what has happened?”
That Viera was dying? That the man’s son was about to inherit the Viera ranc
h?
“Yes,” Dante said, “he does. That’s why I’m here, senhor.” He paused, unsure of how the lawyer would react. “My father wishes to buy the place from him.”
Silence. Then de Souza, sounding puzzled, said, “From whom?”
“From Viera. From the estate. Look, senhor, if we could meet to discuss this…”
“Indeed. I can see we have much to discuss…but little time in which to do it. I am, in fact, on my way to the Viera fazenda right now. Can you meet me there?”
De Souza gave him directions, told him to watch for a turnoff about thirty miles from town.
“The sign is gone, I am afraid, but you will know you are in the right place because it will be the only turnoff for miles in any direction. Just drive through the gate. It is perhaps one mile from there to the house.”
Dante found the turnoff without any difficulty. The gate was open, the gravel road ahead pockmarked with holes. After about a mile, a house and half a dozen outbuildings came into view. A corral stood off to one side of the clearing.
Dante frowned. The buildings, including the house, gave off a general sense of neglect. The corral enclosed only weeds. There were some vehicles in the clearing: a few well-used pickups, cars with mud caked on their wheels, and an enormous SUV, all gleaming black paint and shiny chrome. Stupid to dislike a vehicle, Dante knew, but he disliked this thing on sight.
Slowly he stepped from his car. This was a successful ranch? Maybe he’d taken the wrong road…
“Senhor Orsini?”
A short, stout man was hurrying down the steps, patting his sweating face with a handkerchief.
“Senhor de Souza?” Dante extended his hand. “It’s good to meet you, sir.”
“I tried to delay things, senhor, but there was some impatience. You understand.”
Delay what? Dante started to ask, but the lawyer clutched his elbow and hurried him into the house. Men stood in little clusters, arms folded. One man, huge in girth and height, dressed like a movie villain in black and puffing on a cigar that filled the room with its stink, stood alone. Dante pegged him instantly as the owner of the SUV. A wide staircase rose toward the second floor; in front of it stood a guy in a shiny suit, rattling away in indecipherable Brazilian Portuguese. Every now and then, one of the spectators grunted in response.
Dante: Claiming His Secret Love-Child Page 2
