Dante's Honor-Bound Husband

by Day Leclaire

  “It doesn’t bother you that drugging and kidnapping me was the only way you could achieve your ends?” she asked. Maybe if she kept him talking, it would give her time to think…and plan a way out of this.

  “Drugging you wasn’t the only way, just the most expeditious.”

  He took his eyes off the road long enough to frown in her direction. It occurred to her that if she had any hope of escaping her present predicament, she’d be wise to pretend the drugs had a stronger hold on her than they did. Otherwise, he might decide to administer a little more and she’d never get away. She closed her eyes with a soft sigh and allowed her head to roll to one side.

  “So sleepy,” she murmured.

  He trailed the back of his hand along the curve of her cheek and it took every ounce of self-control to keep from flinching. “Trust me. By morning you’ll wonder why you held me off for so long. And by tomorrow afternoon…”

  “By tomorrow afternoon…?” She deliberately yawned out the question.

  “We’ll be engaged.”

  She lifted a hand to her forehead. “I…I don’t understand.”

  “Once I explain what happened to your grandfather, abashed and contrite that we allowed passion to overcome Dante propriety, your family will demand I do the honorable thing and marry you. In fact, I’ll insist it’s the only reasonable solution.”

  She stiffened in outrage. What the hell did he know about honor? She almost asked the question, keeping her mouth shut at the last instant. Being a chiacchierona as her family affectionately called her—a chatterbox—wouldn’t help in her current situation. Restraint and discretion would.

  “I seem to remember hearing that Luc and Téa found themselves in a similar predicament—caught in the act—and Primo insisted they marry immediately,” David continued with a pensive air. “I’m sure he’ll be even more insistent with his only granddaughter, if only to uphold the family honor.”

  “And if I tell my grandfather you drugged me?” She fought to keep the sharpness from her voice and ask the question in a vague, confused manner.

  He chuckled. “You won’t remember that, any more than you’ll remember this conversation.”

  He pulled into a gas station, the only spot of brightness along the remote stretch of road. Darkness poured from the interior of the cement block storefront. No help there. Nor from the closed and padlocked service bay doors. But the pumps were lit and available for credit card purchases. Maybe someone else would stop for gas. Someone who could help her.

  He turned in the leather seat to face her. “Before you fall back asleep, I have one final question for you.”

  “Can’t. Too tired.”

  “Ah, ah, ah,” he scolded, giving her a little shake. “You can sleep after you answer my question.”

  She made a feeble gesture for him to continue before allowing her hand to flop back onto her lap. “What?” She deliberately slurred the word.

  “Where’s Brimstone?”

  She blinked, staring at him blankly, unable to make sense of the words. And not because of the drugs. “What?”

  “The Dante fire diamond, Brimstone. Where is it?” he asked urgently. “My sources tell me it disappeared. What happened to it?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He swore in Italian. “Don’t give me that. It’s practically a Dante legend. My father told me all about it and he got it straight from Vittorio Romano.”

  Vittorio. Constantine’s father. “I…I don’t know anything about it.”

  “It was supposed to go to the Romanos after your cousin and Ariana married. But it never did.” He paused, speaking more to himself than to her. “Unless that bastard, Constantine, financed Romano Restoration with it. I can’t imagine any other way he could have done it in so short a time. Not with my father blocking his every attempt to get a loan.”

  She forced out a yawn. “I’m so tired…I don’t understand a word you’re saying.”

  He took a moment to think it through. “If Romano has the diamond, he wouldn’t be here, sniffing after you. And despite what my sources say, you don’t just lose a fire diamond as valuable as Brimstone. Which means…” His focus returned to her. “Does your family still have the diamond? Is that why Romano’s here? That’s it, isn’t it? He’s hoping to romance it out from under you by marrying into the family.”

  “Never heard of Brimstone,” she mumbled.

  And she hadn’t. But she sure as hell intended to ask about it the minute she got herself out of her current predicament. She shuddered. Assuming she could. Please, God, let someone come.

  His gaze pinned her in place, sharp and ruthless. “Fine. Pretend you don’t know. It won’t change a thing. Once I’ve married into the family, it won’t matter, anyway.”

  “’Kay.” She closed her eyes and slumped in her seat.

  “Gia?”

  She didn’t so much as twitch.

  “Gianna!”

  She kept her breathing slow and deep. She never realized how much effort it took to feign sleep when her heart galloped like a racehorse and panic threatened to consume her. She must have convinced David, though. She heard him push a button near the steering wheel which she gathered released the gas tank cover, then he opened the car door and exited. Peeking from beneath her lashes, she held her breath while he circled to stand at the rear of the car with his back to her and removed his wallet from his pocket, extracting a credit card.

  She wouldn’t get a better opportunity. She’d watched him start the Jag any number of times. It didn’t require a key. She simply had to apply the brakes, then push the “start” button on the console between the two seats. Once the engine fired, a knob popped up which controlled the gear settings. After that, matters might get a bit more dicey.

  The instant David inserted his credit card in the gas pump, she moved, slinging her legs over the center console and sliding into the driver’s seat. She jammed the door release lever with her elbow, locking all the doors. Next she hit the brake with both feet and slapped the start/stop button on the console. The Jag purred to life. Just as she’d seen countless times before, the gear knob released.

  Behind her, she heard David shout. Not that she listened. She turned the button from P for Park to D for Drive. Now for the tricky part. To drive a car for the second time in her entire life. Taking a deep breath, she hit the gas.

  The Jag responded with a throaty roar of enthusiasm and leaped forward, careening across the cement lot toward the road. She fought to contain the power, jerking the wheel one way and then the other. The Jag responded to every movement—and then some. She attempted to compensate for her oversteer, overcorrected instead, and the back of the vehicle fishtailed, the tires screaming at her mistreatment.

  Slow down, slow down!

  But for some reason she couldn’t peel her foot off the accelerator. She was too desperate to escape to let up. Just before she reached the road the right side of the car hit a curb, sending it spinning. It made a half dozen 360s across the two-lane road before clipping a tree with its rear end. Metal shrieked, airbags exploded around her. Then silence descended.

  The Jag had come to rest facing the gas station. She’d made her escape, all right. She’d gotten a solid two hundred yards down the road. For a split second, she and David stared at each other. Then with a shout of fury, he charged in her direction.

  Gianna fought for breath. This was not going to end well.

  “Calistoga?” Constantine punched the name into his GPS. “Where the hell is Calistoga?”

  “This I do not know,” Vittorio Romano responded. The connection faded for a brief moment then kicked in again. “The business associate mentioned a fancy lodge that the d’Angelo boy owns near this Calistoga. He uses it to entertain clients.”

  For once, the nine-hour time difference between Italy and California had worked to Constantine’s advantage. It might be after midnight for him, but it was bright and early in the morning at the Romano palazzo. “A suite
at the Ritz. A mansion. A Jag. Now a lodge. I have to tell you, Babbo. All these years we’ve been doing something wrong.”

  “Something right,” his father corrected. “I have been hearing rumors about the d’Angelos and their banking practices. Creative accounting is the term being thrown about. Soon, all of Firenze will be talking. It won’t be long before they are talking in San Francisco, too.”

  “Too bad the rumors couldn’t have hit the States a couple of months ago,” Constantine muttered. He checked the GPS. “Okay, I’ve found Calistoga. Do you have an address?”

  “No. But I am still waiting for information from another source.”

  “Call me as soon as you hear anything.”

  Constantine didn’t waste any more time. Once more the late hour worked to his advantage and he drove onto the Golden Gate Bridge in record time. If he broke every speed record out there, he could make it to Calistoga in under an hour. That would still put him a solid thirty minutes behind d’Angelo. Maybe longer.

  His hands tightened on the steering wheel. If he thought about what was happening to her, what d’Angelo might be doing right now, he’d go insane. Focus. First, he’d focus on getting to Calistoga as quickly as possible. Then he’d focus on finding Gianna. But the instant he found her and ensured her safety… David d’Angelo would regret ever touching his woman. Or any other woman, for that matter. He planned to see to that.

  Personally.

  Move, move, move!

  Gianna thrust open the door and erupted from the Jag. At the last instant she remembered her cell phone. Flinging herself across the driver’s seat, she batted the deflated airbags out of her way and snagged her beaded handbag from the passenger side floor. Sparing a swift glance in David’s direction—heaven protect her, he was close—she darted into the forest along the side of the road.

  Rain pelted her. It soaked her dress, causing it to cling to her legs, making running awkward. Worse, bushes grabbed at her ankles, threatening to trip her up. But it was her mile-high heels sinking into the boggy earth that ultimately did her in. She went down, the wet, needle-strewn ground absorbing the impact of her fall and cushioning her rolling descent into a shallow depression. A small, shocked cry escaped before she could suppress it. She could only hope the rain muffled the sound.

  As it turned out the fall saved her from discovery. David crashed through the underbrush practically on her heels. She heard him standing directly above her, his breathing harsh and ragged from the exertion of chasing after her. He would have seen her if she weren’t enveloped by the heavy, protective darkness of the depression.

  “Gia! Don’t be an idiot,” he shouted. For the first time since she’d known him, his Italian accent came through loud and clear. It was nowhere near as smooth and lyrical as Constantine’s, but coarse and discordant. “Come out. This is all some hideous mistake.”

  Gianna didn’t so much as breathe. Sure thing. She’d come on out and he could explain the mistake while he…how had he put it? The words came back to her through the lingering effect of the drug he’d poisoned her with. While he allowed passion to overcome Dante propriety. Yeah, right. Not a chance in hell. She closed her eyes like a child hiding from the boogeyman. If she couldn’t see him, he couldn’t see her.

  He thrashed back toward the Jag and swore. “Look what you did to my car.” He called her a name in Italian, one she hadn’t heard before. Probably best she didn’t know what it meant. “Do you have any idea how much it’ll cost me to have this fixed?”

  Slowly she stood and kicked off her heels, deciding that going barefoot, no matter how difficult, made more sense than risking a twisted ankle or broken leg. If that happened, she’d be at David’s mercy. She squinted through the rain. In the darkness, the woods appeared impenetrable.

  She was wet and cold, with bracken clinging to her skin, hair and clothes. She could only hope that the dirt helped camouflage her. She held her arms out in front of her so she wouldn’t run blindly into a tree and stepped gingerly across the forest carpet. Rocks and sticks littered the area and she winced at the scrape and poke. Little by little, she slipped deeper into the woods.

  She didn’t want to stray so far from the road that she couldn’t find her way back. But she also didn’t dare stay close enough that David might find her. In the distance, she heard the Jag start and hoped she hadn’t damaged it so badly he couldn’t leave.

  Please, leave!

  Lights flickered across the trees and then stopped, shining directly toward her. She instantly dropped to a crouch behind a huge, thick evergreen, possibly a redwood. The car door popped opened and slammed closed, and David’s shadow flashed across the path of the headlights. He hurried into the woods once again, using the high beams to guide him.

  Gianna hugged the tree, shivering, its rough bark cutting into her exposed skin. Until that moment she hadn’t realized how cold she was. Maybe fear or adrenaline had kept her from feeling anything else. No doubt reaction was setting in. She didn’t dare move, knowing he’d find her instantly if she did. All the while he came closer, making a beeline in her direction. Could he see her? Sense her? Had he found the trail she’d left through the brush? Unable to help herself, she rocked back and forth, a whimper of terror building in her throat. Please let him give up and drive away, she prayed. Please.

  Her prayers were answered a moment later. In the distance she heard the sound of an approaching vehicle, something large and heavy. A truck? With the damaged Jag skewed across the road so it could face the woods, chances were excellent the driver would stop to help.

  David froze at the sound, not more than a dozen feet away. He must have come to the same conclusion she had about the approaching vehicle because he swore violently. “Fine. Freeze to death for all I care, you crazy bitch,” he shouted. She heard him retreat at a swift clip as the truck lumbered closer. “But you’re paying for the damage you did to my car, you hear me?”

  He really was insane. She couldn’t think of any other explanation for such irrational behavior. She heard the car door slam and he gunned the engine repeatedly before taking off. Something metallic banged and rattled along behind the Jag. Maybe the rear bumper or the muffler. It must have come loose because she heard it bounce along the road before clattering onto the shoulder as David roared away. An instant later, the truck flashed by and disappeared. No help from that direction.

  She waited for endless moments, straining for any hint that David might have changed his mind and returned. Then she remembered her cell phone. She leaned her forehead against the tree trunk and fought back a hot rush of tears. She’d dropped her purse at some point during her escape, probably when she’d fallen down the incline. Gathering herself up, she dropped to the ground on hands and knees and began to search.

  Inch by agonizing inch, minute by bone-freezing minute, she worked her way toward the depression, fanning her hands through the bracken littering the forest floor. More than anything, she wanted to curl into a ball and weep hysterically. She didn’t dare. She didn’t think she’d last through the night if she lost control now. But she was close, so close to giving up and giving in. Then her hand glanced off the slick beads of her purse.

  Shock was setting in, along with a numbing cold. Her fingers shook so hard it took three attempts to open the stubborn clasp of her handbag. Even when she managed that, she could barely hold on to the phone. She didn’t have a hope in hell of punching out a number. It took her an instant to realize David must have switched her phone off while she’d been unconscious. It took her full concentration just to get it powered back on. The instant it flared to life, her cell phone gave a soft beep warning that her battery was running low.

  No. Oh, no, no, no! This was not happening. She literally would not be able to handle it if her phone died now. How many times had she drained the battery because she’d forgotten to plug it in? She suspected that wouldn’t happen again—ever. And how ironic that David’s turning it off, no doubt to keep any incoming calls from waking her, had pre
served the last of the cell’s battery power.

  She managed to punch Redial with a trembling finger. An instant later Constantine answered. “Gianna?”

  She burst into tears. “Help.”

  Four

  Constantine raced into the service station at full speed and braked the Porsche to a screaming halt beneath one of the lighted gas pump overhangs.

  He scanned the area. Nothing. No one.

  Gianna’s cell had died midway through the call and he could only hope that he’d found the right gas station on the right road. The rain had subsided in the past fifteen minutes, easing off to a fitful mist. But that didn’t change the fact that she was out there somewhere in the wet and cold.

  He tore open the car door and burst from the vehicle. “Gianna?” he shouted. His voice bounced and echoed off the concrete lot and buildings, an eerie sound in the stillness of the night. “Where are you, piccola?”

  A movement across the street caught his eye and Gianna exploded from the undergrowth. She took one look at him, and his name escaped in a low, choked whimper. In the next instant, she lifted the drenched skirts of her gown to halfway up her thighs and raced barefoot across the street toward him, splashing haphazardly through the puddles in her path, the back of her dress making wet slapping noises against her bare legs. He froze for a split second, gut-wrenching relief fading in the face of horrified concern.

  He barely recognized her. Gone was the elegant woman he’d seen earlier in the evening, replaced by a filthy, bedraggled waif. Debris covered her from head to toe, dirt ground into what little he could see of the torn sweep of her skirt. Scratches gouged the pale skin of her arms and legs. And her feet… He swore silently. Her poor, bare feet. He didn’t know how she could walk, let alone run. Maybe the shock kept her from feeling the pain.