Convenient Brides (14 page)

“Yes…well…” Regrouping, she took a breath and continued. “I didn’t have a daddy to help me, and I was very young, only just nineteen—”

“That’s old,” Gina said flatly.

“I suppose, when you’re only eight, it is, but I wasn’t quite old enough to look after two babies by myself.”

Looking more suspicious by the second, Clemente said, “So what did you do, sell us?”

“No, darling. There wasn’t enough money in the world for that. Instead I gave you to my sister, because she had a husband who could be your daddy, and a house where you could live, and because she loved me so much that I knew she’d love my babies, as well. But it made me very sad to say goodbye to you. I wished so much that I could keep you.” Her lower lip quivered. “I missed you every day, and cried for you every night.”

“Why didn’t you have a daddy for us? Did he die, as well?”

Her glance met Paolo’s, then flickered away. “No. I just didn’t tell him I had you.”

“Why not?” Clemente persisted.

Like a deer caught in the headlights, she raised her eyes to Paolo again. “At the time, I didn’t think he’d want to know.”

“Does he know now?”

Again, that hunted, helpless look crossed her face. “Yes. And he’s very angry with me for causing so much trouble in the family.”

“I’m angry, too!” Gina, always the more volatile of the two children, jumped up from the sofa. “I don’t care if you borned me. You’re still not my real mother and I don’t care if you don’t marry Zio Paolo, because I hate you! And if you try to make me come to America with you, I’ll run away!” She charged across the room and flung herself at Paolo. “I’m staying here with Zio and Nonna and Nonno.
They’re
my real family, not you!”

“Gina,” he said, gently unwinding her from his leg, “don’t you want to know who your father is?”

She looked up at him, her big brown eyes stormy. “I already know! It’s my daddy.”

“Your
other
father,” he amended, crouching down to her level. “The one who’d very much like to introduce himself to you and your brother.”

Clemente inched across the library to join them. “Do you know where he is, Zio?”

“Yes.” His eyes stung embarrassingly and he had to swallow twice before he could go on. “He’s right here in this room, and he loves you very much.”

For a moment or two, his children stared at him blankly. Then, as the impact of his words sank home, their expressions underwent a change, from uncomprehending to amazed; from fearful to relieved.

“You?” Clemente exclaimed in hushed tones.

“Mmm-hmm. Afraid so.”

Gina speared him with a scathing glare. “You made us with
her?
”

“Hey,” he said, stroking his knuckles up her soft, sweet cheek. “Whether or not you like it, Caroline is your birth mother, and as your birth father, I won’t let you be rude to her. Whether or not you’re ready to accept it, nothing changes the fact that she gave you the best parents in the world when she let your mommy and daddy have you.”

“I suppose.” Gina chanced another look Caroline’s way. “If you don’t marry my uncle, will you go back to America?”

“Probably,” Caroline said. “Unless—”

Gina grabbed hold of his leg more tightly. “Promise you won’t make us go with her!
Promise,
Zio Paolo!”

“That’ll never happen, unless you want it to,” he assured her. “We’ll have to work out something else.”

Something else?

Alone in the library, with no stomach for dinner or company, Caroline stared into the fire. Her children had left the room without so much as a single glance her way. She’d heard their voices, low and tearful, fading down the hall as Paolo took them to the dining room. And even though they’d given her no reason to think they might, she’d waited on tenterhooks, praying that before they went to bed, they’d come back to say good night. Now, with the clock approaching ten, hope had died and she was left with the realization that she’d lost everything that mattered the most to her: her fiancé, her children, her future. She didn’t even have a place to hide, she thought, exhaustion seeping into her bones, because the mere idea of spending the night in the room awaiting her, with her honeymoon trousseau neatly stowed in suitcases she’d never use, and the wedding dress she’d never wear hanging in the old-fashioned wardrobe…well, it was unthinkable.

A log shifted in the fireplace, sending new flames shooting up the chimney. Something on the corner of the library table caught their reflection. Her engagement ring, she realized, left where she’d placed it.

“Discarded just like me,” she whimpered, heaving herself to her feet to retrieve it, and cringed at the whining self-pity she heard in her voice.

If her life had come crashing down around her ears, she had only herself to blame. She’d known from the outset why Paolo had asked her to marry him. Even if sex
had
entered the picture in grand fashion, his proposal had had nothing to do with love, and everything to do with convenience. If only she’d kept that reality in the forefront of her mind, instead of drifting into the fantasy land of
what if?
the conversation she’d overheard wouldn’t have had the power to derail her so completely.

She cupped the ring in the palm of her hand. It was perfect—the
only
perfect thing in her relationship with Paolo, and
perhaps that should have been enough to warn her that it didn’t belong on the finger of a woman capable of lying so unforgivably to the man she planned to marry.

At least she’d never confessed to her love for him. That was one secret she had managed to keep to herself, and thank God for it! She couldn’t have endured Paolo’s indifference to such a revelation, or worse, his pity.

Suddenly the door opened and Paolo appeared, carrying a tray. “You missed dinner,” he remarked, his tone so devoid of emotion that it gave no clue to his mood, “so I brought you something to eat.”

“Thank you, but I’m not hungry.”

“Starving yourself isn’t going to solve anything, Caroline.” He advanced into the room and proffered the tray. “You can manage a roll and a little cheese and antipasti, I’m sure.”

But just the sight of food left her queasy. “No,” she said, turning her face away. “I really couldn’t eat a thing.”

“Something to drink then. We could both use a shot of something strong.” He moved to the table and she heard the clink of the heavy crystal stopper as he removed it from the decanter of grappa waiting to be served with the after-dinner coffee. “Will you join me?”

“Why not?” She didn’t much care for the stuff, but she’d have swallowed drain cleaner if it would dull the pain.

He poured an inch of the liquor into two glasses and joined her by the fire. “Are you up to talking?”

Listlessly she took the glass. “Is there anything left to say?”

“We can hardly leave things as they are, Caroline. Regardless of how we feel about each other right now, we have two children to consider.”

“Have you been with them all this time?”

“Yes. It took a while for them to fall asleep.”

She took a sip of the grappa and grimaced as it burned its
way down her throat. “I’m not surprised. They’re miserable and upset, and who can blame them?”

He flung himself down in the chair opposite hers. “They don’t know what to feel, how to react. Just when they thought they could count on their world coming together, it’s fallen apart. Again.”

“And all because of me.”

He studied the liquid swirling in his glass. “I’d say we’ve both managed to make a royal mess of the situation.”

“Probably because it was never about us in the first place.”

“Oh, it was about us all right,” he said flatly. “Let’s not deny our relationship blossomed beyond anything we’d first anticipated. But somewhere along the way, we forgot the children were the primary reason we decided to marry, and as a result, we hurt the ones we supposedly were trying to protect. It’s going to take a long time and a great deal of patience to rebuild their trust in the two people they should most be able to count on.”

“Is that even possible, Paolo?”

“In all honesty, I’m no longer sure it is. But this much is certain—I will not have my children’s lives subjected to any more upheavals. They’ve been traumatized enough, and it ends now. Tonight has changed everything.”

Absently smoothing the ball of her thumb over the diamond she still held in her hand, she looked across at him, hollow with pain, and saw her own anguish mirrored in his eyes. “Whatever we might have had…it’s gone, hasn’t it?”

“Well, you tell me, Caroline,” he said, bleakly. “Is there any reason I should argue the point? Do you see any way to pick up the pieces and put them together again?”

H
OW DID
the old saying go?
You can glue together a plate that’s been broken, but the cracks will always show, and it will never be the same as it was before. Never again as strong or beautiful.

“If I could wave a magic wand and make everything better, I would,” she told him on a sigh. “I wish…oh, I wish for so many things, Paolo, but most of all, that I could turn back time and do things differently.”

“I wish for the same, but it’s too late for that. So I ask you again, can you see a way to pick up where we left off, and salvage what’s left of the plans we made?”

Could she? The ramifications of his question tore at her.

Could she look at Clemente and Gina every day, and see her children, yet know that when they looked at her, they saw not their mother, but someone masquerading in the role?

I hate you…I hate you…!

Dear God, could she hear those words from her daughter again, and not die from the pain of it?

“Well, Caroline?”

“Have you discussed such a prospect with the children?”

“No. They don’t deal well with uncertainty. And in the event that you and I manage to reconcile, I won’t pretend they’ll readily accept it. They’re wary and resentful. In their
eyes, you intruded on sacred ground when you laid bare the truth about Vanessa and Ermanno. Warming up to you again will take some doing, but it’s happened once already, and it can happen again.”

“I suspect earning their trust—and yours—is going to be the more difficult task.”

“That, too.”

Exactly! She’d loved him from the day she met him, but to tell him so now wouldn’t ring true, because why wait until she had nothing left to lose before she risked all by baring her soul? No, the time for that kind of admission was when she could say the words without sounding desperate or needy. When she could be brave enough to say the words and not expect anything in return.

Desolate, she cupped her elbows and hugged herself against the chill that pervaded her despite the roaring fire. A bone-deep weariness had penetrated, dulling her mind, numbing her body. “I’m not sure I have the right to try,” she said sadly. “In all honesty, Paolo, so much has happened tonight that I’m not sure about anything anymore.”

After a pause during which his gaze seemed to pierce her to the very core, he said, with heart-wrenching regret, “I can see that you’re not, and I won’t press you anymore tonight because, to tell the truth, I don’t have any answers, either. In an ideal world, we’d sweep aside our differences and go ahead with our plans, but too much damage has been done. We’re all bruised and hurting, and healing isn’t going to happen overnight.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“I propose we step back from the situation and give ourselves some breathing room. Just because there’s no returning to the way things were doesn’t mean we can’t learn from our mistakes and build something even better. But whether that’s possible, only time will tell.”

In other words, no promises, and only a very little hope. But at least he phrased it graciously enough to leave her with her dignity intact. She didn’t have to grovel or beg.

He left his seat and came to stand over her. “You’re wornout, Caroline,” he said, pulling her to her feet. “Go to bed and try to get some sleep. We’ll both see things more clearly after a good night’s rest.”

“I can’t sleep just yet. I’d rather sit here by the fire a while longer, and try to sort through my thoughts.”

“Then I’ll leave you to it and say
buona notte.
” He bent his head and dropped a kiss on her cheek. “We’ll talk again in the morning.”

Slumping back into her chair after he left, Callie felt the walls of the library close in on her in claustrophobic despair, and knew she had to get out of the house if she had any hope of restoring some kind of order to the chaos in her mind.

The children were asleep, and Paolo and his parents were talking quietly among themselves. She heard them as she crept past the salon door, Lidia sounding anxious, the men’s deeper tones reassuring, but all their voices too low for her to distinguish the exact words.

Just as well they were so preoccupied. It gave her the chance to sneak into her bedroom for her purse, then let herself out of the apartment and walk as far as the square on the corner, where she hailed a taxi.

Forty minutes later, she let herself into the villa on Lake Bracciano, which she and Paolo had bought just days before, when the future had looked full of promise. The new draperies she’d ordered hadn’t yet been installed, allowing the moon, rising full and bright over the lake, to shine through the windows. Not bothering to turn on lamps, she wandered from room to room.

Copper-bottomed pots hung from an iron bracket mounted on the beamed ceiling above the work island in
the kitchen. The two refrigerators, already stocked with basics, hummed contentedly side by side. Brass fireplace tools glimmered on the wide stone hearth. Blue and white dinnerware lined the shelves of the glass-fronted upper cabinets.

In the dining room, twelve damask-covered chairs flanked the banquet-size rosewood table. “We’ll use it when we entertain,” Paolo had said, when she’d questioned the need for something so ostentatious, “but for everyday meals with the children, we’ll eat in the breakfast room.”

The same flawless attention to detail greeted her at every turn throughout the house. Elegant furniture, gleaming floors, sparkling bathroom fixtures, pristine linens, tasteful accessories.

Perfect on the outside, she thought miserably, but ultimately empty at its heart because the absolute sense of security and trust that turned a house into a home, was lacking. Had it been just she and Paolo, they could have gone ahead with their plans, willing to risk failure. Willing to make mistakes, to fight and make up, and hope that, in the end, they’d succeed in forging an unbreakable bond.

But they were not just a man and a woman drawn together by a powerful chemistry. They were parents, and as such did not have the right to stake their children’s happiness on a game of romantic Russian roulette.

The only way they could ever stand before God and State, and exchange vows to love and honor one another until death did them part, was when they believed without a shadow of doubt that they could keep those promises.

That time was not now, and indeed might never come. And that, she realized sorrowfully, made her only choice clear. For now, at least, she had to love them all enough to let them go.

The decision made, she curled into a ball on the silk upholstered sofa in the formal drawing room, drained of all emotion. She didn’t move again until first light.

He heard her key in the lock and met her in the foyer when she let herself into the apartment, just after seven the next morning.

“Where the devil have you been?” he seethed, so beside himself with anxiety that he was tempted to shake her until her teeth rattled, at the same time that he wanted nothing more than to hold her in his arms and never let her go.“ Do you have any idea what kind of thoughts raced through my mind, when I discovered you’d left without a word to anyone?”

“I didn’t think you’d notice,” she said meekly. “I’m sorry if I worried you.”

Stunned, he stared at her, noting for the first time how crumpled her clothing was. Her eyes were shadowed, empty of life, her face so pale, her skin was almost transparent. Approaching her cautiously, he said, “
Dio,
Caroline, where did you spend the night?”

“I went to Manziana, to the villa on the lake.”

“
Our
villa?”

“Yours and your children’s,” she corrected him.

“They’re your children, too, for God’s sake! You’re their mother.”

“No.” She shook her head. “I gave them life, but that’s not enough to make me their mother.”

He raked a frustrated hand through his hair. “What are you saying, Caroline? That you’re walking out on them again, because you can’t stand having to be second-best to your sister?”

“I’m walking
away.
There’s a difference.”

“Then please explain it to me.”

“Although it kills me to leave them, at this point I think the best thing I can do for my children is to go back to the States.”

“Caroline—!”

“Listen to me, Paolo. Right now, they need you and your parents far more than they need me. They need the security you’ve always brought to their lives—the routine of the familiar.
They need to know that regardless of what happens down the line between you and me,
their
lives have regained the kind of stability they lost when Vanessa and Ermanno died. As things presently stand, I can’t give them that, dearly though I’d like to.”

And dearly though he’d have liked to argue the point, in his heart Paolo had to agree with her. First things first. The children took priority. “Why couldn’t we both have shown such wisdom sooner?” he muttered.

“Well, better late than never,” she said, showing far more acceptance than he was able to command. “So I take it you agree that I should go?”

“Would it make any difference if I said no?”

She smiled, a faded imitation of the kind of warm, open smile he was used to, and shook her head. “No.”

“Then I agree. When do you plan to leave?”

“As soon as possible. Today, if it can be arranged.”

“Well, go if you must, but know this—you and I are not finished.”

“I hope not.”

“We’ll keep in touch.”

“Yes, please! I want to know how the children are—how you are.”

He touched her face, stroking his hand down her cheek and along her jaw. “Same here,” he returned thickly.

She left that afternoon, and spent the long hours between Rome and San Francisco endlessly reliving the pain of her final good byes. Lidia’s tears and hugs and murmured sympathy. Salvatore, so gray in the face, she’d been ashamed that she’d hadn’t seen for herself that he was not a well man. The children, their gazes darting between her and Paolo, as if they feared they were to blame for things not working out.

“Are you really going back to America?” Gina asked, not
sounding quite as pleased about the idea as Callie thought she would.

“Yes.” Aching to take her daughter in her arms and never let her go, Callie made do with a brief hug and knew the feel of her child’s warm, sweet little body would forever remain imprinted on her heart. “It’s time, sweetheart.”

Clemente had tugged at her sleeve. “Does that mean we’ll never see you again?”

She’d exchanged teary glances with Lidia. “Oh, no! I’ll be back often to visit, and if ever you decide you want to come to see me, all you have to do is let me know the date and time, and I’ll be waiting for you.”

Gina pulled away, her lip quivering, her glare defiant. “Sometimes, you really make me want to cry, and don’t you know you’re not supposed to do that?”

“Yes,” she said. “And that’s why I’m leaving, because I don’t want to make anyone cry anymore.”

“We should get going now, if you don’t want to miss your flight,” Paolo murmured at her elbow, sensitive to the emotional storm about to burst. Over her objections, he’d insisted on driving her to the airport.

Misty-eyed, she hugged Lidia again, and pressed a last kiss on her children’s foreheads. Then, half-blinded by tears, she turned to Salvatore. “Goodbye, Signor Rainero, and good luck with your surgery,” she said, her voice shaking. “I really do wish you the very best.”

He cleared his throat and half made a move toward her. “You don’t have to leave because of me, Caroline.”

“I’m not,” she told him. “I’m leaving because of me.”

Nor did it end there. She had to get through that last scene at the airport, with Paolo. “Don’t come inside with me,” she said, as he drew up in front of the international departure building, and practically fell out of his car in an effort to escape
before she flung herself at him and sobbed all over his starched white shirt.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he retorted, and tossed the keys to the nearest parking valet. “I’ll come with you to collect your boarding pass, and walk you as far as the security gate.”

The first-class ticket he’d reserved made short work of checking in, but saying goodbye…? There was no quick and easy way to do that, not when he stood there, his gaze searching her face, and hers devouring his. Not when his mouth lifted in the ghost of a smile and he reached out to tuck a wisp of hair behind her ear.

And oh, most especially not when his hand slid around the back of her head and he inched forward for a kiss that should have brushed fleetingly against her cheek, but instead landed on her lips and lingered there, excruciating in its sweetness.

“Remember what I said before,
tesoro.
This is not the end, it’s merely a time-out,” he murmured, his dark brown gaze scouring her face.

“I hope you’re right,” she said, making no attempt to stem the tears. “But I came from a broken home. I know what it’s like to live with parents who put up with each other for the sake of their children. And it’s not true what the so-called experts say. A bad marriage isn’t better than no marriage at all. It taints everything it touches, especially the children. So unless we can both make the right kind of commitment to each other…”

“We can,” he said. “It’s just going to take time. Once the children have come to terms with everything—”

“You must board now if you wish to make your flight, s
ignorina,
” the attendant at the desk interrupted. “The pilot has been cleared for take-off and we’re about to close the gate to the aircraft.”

Callie nodded and turned to Paolo one last time. “See you,”
she said, the smile she almost managed dissolving into tearful misery.

“Si,”
he replied, and when she went to walk away, reached for her one last time. “See you, too, my Caroline.”