Convenient Brides (4 page)

“I publicly embarrassed him. He is a very proud man—too proud, some, including you, might say. But he was always a
loving father, and it hurt him very deeply when I showed myself to be less than deserving of his affection, let alone his trust.”

“You appear to get along well enough now. How did you redeem yourself?”

“I accepted responsibility for my actions. Instead of taking for granted the privileges that came of being the son of wealthy parents, I started earning them. I took my intended place in the family business.”

“Sat behind a fancy desk in a fancy office, and dished out orders to underlings, you mean?” she said scornfully.

“No, Caroline. I started at the bottom, taking orders and learning from men often younger than myself, and worked my way into a position of authority only after I’d earned their respect. To coin a phrase often used in America, I smartened up.”

“Better late than never, I suppose.”

This time, he understood her tone, and the oddly closed expression on her face. “Yes,” he said. “And that brings me to a subject we’ve both avoided mentioning, except briefly. I refer, of course, to the night of my brother’s wedding.”

She went to pull her arm free of his. “I really don’t want to talk about that again.”

Trapping her hand, he said, “I’m afraid we must. At the very least, allow me to apologize. I deeply regret having behaved the way I did. I’m afraid I treated you very unfairly that night.”

“You did a lot more than that!” she cried heatedly, then clapped a hand to her mouth as if she’d accidentally bitten off the end of her tongue and was trying to stem the flow of blood.

Curious at her outburst, he said, “What do you mean, Caroline?”

“Never mind,” she mumbled. “It doesn’t matter.”

“If it can cause you such distress all these years later, it certainly does.” Tugging her to a stop, he turned her to face him. “What were my other sins?”

“Well, you’re so proud of how smart you are, so figure it out for yourself, for heaven’s sake!” All flushed and flustered, she glared at him. “It wasn’t just that night, it was…it was the next day…and the next week.”

Again, she seemed on the brink of some revelation which, at the last second, she thought better of. “But we were together just that one time, Caroline.”

“Yes, and you couldn’t have made it any clearer I’d better not expect a repeat performance!”

“Did you want one?” he asked, refusing to acknowledge the untoward stirring of desire such a prospect inspired.

“Absolutely not!” she said, vehemently. “But that was no reason for you to parade another woman under my nose.”

“There were always other women in those days,
cara.
”

“And you made it abundantly clear that I was just one of them.”

“
Mea culpa!
My behavior was inexcusable.” He cupped her chin, again forcing her to meet his gaze. “But without trying to shift blame, I feel justified in pointing out that you were not entirely without fault. You let me believe you were sexually experienced when, in fact, you were anything but.”

“I’m surprised you even remember!”

“Such bitterness, so long after the fact, is out of all proportion to the incident,” he said, regarding her thoughtfully. “What aren’t you telling me, Caroline? What’s been eating at you all this time, that you’re still so full of anger toward me?”

She grew very still, and very pale. “Nothing. Seeing you again, here on this island, just brings everything back, that’s all.”

“What do you mean by ‘everything’?”

“You…laughed at me. Made me feel inadequate…hopeless at sex.”

“Then I should have been horse-whipped. You were a novice, yes, but you were enchanting, too. Ethereal in a gauzy confection of a gown that made you look like a princess.”

And with skin as fine as purest silk…and flesh so firm and tight that a man would have had to be made of stone not to respond with blind, untempered passion…!

“Never mind trying to flatter me at this late date, Paolo,” she said coolly. “I know I made a fool of myself.”

A vicious streak of desire licked through his blood. “What if it isn’t flattery? What if I’m finally admitting to a long-overdue truth? You’re a beautiful woman, Caroline, and I don’t believe for a minute that I’m the first man to tell you so.”

She blushed and ran the tip of her tongue over her lower lip, drawing his eye to the delicious curve of her mouth, and leading him to wonder how many men had tasted it in the last nine years. She was more than beautiful; she was exquisite. Fine-boned, delicately featured…and seductively feminine, in a refined, understated way. How had he managed to dismiss all that, the first time around?

She held the collar of her coat close to her throat and shivered, although her color remained high. “I think I’d like to go inside now.”

“Do I embarrass you by speaking so frankly?”

“No, but I’m surprised. We’ve been pretty much at odds ever since Paris. In fact, you’ve barely addressed a single word to me in the last four days, and now you’re suddenly full of compliments. Forgive me if I find that rather suspicious.”

“Perhaps,” he said, “I’m having second thoughts about you. Perhaps I’ve misjudged you. Isn’t that possible?”

“Possible.” She tilted her shoulder in a tiny shrug. “But not probable.”

“Then perhaps
you
misjudge me.”

“Equally possible, I suppose.”

“And just as improbable?”

“I’m willing to keep an open mind on the matter.”

A curious lightness filled him, blurring the sharp edges of
his grief. Tucking her arm firmly in his again, he said, “Then I propose we call a truce, at least for now.”

Thoughtfully she tipped her head to one side, a slight movement only, but it was enough to send her hair sliding over her shoulder in a fall of cool, blond silk. It took all his self-control not to catch it in his hand and let it spill between his fingers. “I guess it won’t hurt to try.”

He wasn’t quite so sure. All at once, none of the truths to which he held fast seemed quite as absolute anymore.

“I have decided we shall remain here for another week,” Salvatore announced, when the adults congregated in the day salon for coffee, after dinner. “This is a peaceful place, a place to start the healing.”

“Another week?” Callie glanced from Lidia, to Paolo.

Neither seemed inclined to question the head of the household.
Typical,
she thought.
The master speaks, and the other two jump to obey his commands.
“I’d hoped to be back home by then.”

Salvatore inspected her down the length of his aristocratic nose. “We have no wish to detain you, if you’re in a hurry to leave us, Caroline.”

“It’s not that I’m in a hurry, Signor Rainero. You’ve been more than kind hosts and I’m grateful. However, I have obligations in San Francisco.”

“And they are uppermost in your mind at this time, are they?”

How smoothly he managed to shift the context of her words and leave them cloaked in unflattering connotation! “Not at all,” she said, meeting his gaze defiantly. “But I came here in a hurry and left others to take over my responsibilities at work. I hardly feel entitled to be absent any longer than is absolutely necessary.”

“I understand.” He waved his hand as if he were bestowing a benediction. “You are a career person. I confess I had
forgotten. In my family, you see, the women are content to be wives and mothers.
That
is their career.”

“What happens to those who don’t want to marry or have children?”

“There is no such creature,” he said, scandalized. “To have a husband and bear his children is an honor no self-respecting Italian woman would reject.”

Callie couldn’t let such an arrogant, outdated remark go unchallenged. “You’re living in the dark ages, if you believe that! ”

Paolo directed a look at his father and smiled. After a barely perceptible pause, Salvatore smiled, too, albeit thinly, and said, “I daresay I am a little out of touch. Tell me what it is you do, my dear, that you find so absorbing.”

A little unnerved by his abrupt turnabout, she said, “I’m an architect.”

“You must be very clever. What is your area of expertise?”

“I specialize in the restoration of Victorian houses.”

“An admirable undertaking.” Salvatore nodded approval. “We are not so different in our thinking, after all, in that we both recognize the importance of preserving the past. You must have spent years acquiring the knowledge to embark on such a career. Remind me again where you attended school.”

“In the States,” she replied evasively, suddenly uncomfortable at being the center of his probing attention. He could nod his handsome head and twinkle his dark eyes all he pleased, but he had a mind like a steel trap, and it was busily at work trying to put her off balance.

Nor was he the only one. Not about to let her get away with such a vague answer, Paolo said, “You’re being much too modest, Caroline. As I recall, you won a scholarship to one of America’s Ivy league universities. Smith, wasn’t it?”

“Smith?” Salvatore sat up straighter. “Then it’s small wonder you don’t have time for marriage or children. It would be
a pity to waste such a fine education. How long were you there?”

“I wasn’t,” she said, desperate to steer the conversation into safer channels. “And I didn’t say—”

But Paolo cut her off. “You mean, you
didn’t
go to Smith, after all? Why ever not?”

“What does it matter?” she shot back irritably. “The point I’m trying to make, if you’d do me the courtesy of letting me finish a sentence, is that I never said I didn’t want children. In fact, I shortly hope to take on just such a responsibility, and very much look forward to doing so.”

“You’re getting married?”

“You’re pregnant?”

Almost simultaneously, Salvatore and Paolo fired the questions at her.

“Neither,” she said, aware that she’d painted herself into a corner. But there was no escaping it now, not unless she wanted to give the impression she didn’t care what happened to her niece and nephew, and really, what was the point in delaying the inevitable?

Bracing herself, she said, as tactfully as she knew how, “I’m talking about Gina and Clemente. I know this probably comes as a shock to you, and please be assured I’m not trying to be deliberately hurtful, but I’m well able to provide a home for the twins in the States, and I’m wondering if their living with me might be good for them, at least for a while.”

Lidia’s coffee cup fell from nerveless fingers, and spread a dark stain over the sofa’s pale silk upholstery. “Oh, Caroline, why would you say such a thing?” she wailed softly, her face crumpling. “Do you think we do not love them enough? That we will let them forget their mother?”

“No, Lidia,” Callie said gently. “I know how dearly you love them. But I love them, too, and I believe I’m wellequipped to take their mother’s place.”

“The hell you are!” Salvatore roared, slamming his hand flat on the coffee table as Lidia buried her face in her hands. “You foolish woman, do you seriously think we will stand idly by and allow you to tear our grandchildren away from the only home they’ve ever known—and not only that, but to live with a woman who puts career before home and family?”

“Those are your conclusions, Signor Rainero, not mine. I wouldn’t dream of relegating the children to second place. Just the opposite, in fact. I’d take an extended leave of absence from my work, and devote myself entirely to looking after them. As for tearing them away from you, that’s utter nonsense and the furthest thing from my mind. I hope you’ll visit them often. But I also believe a complete change of scene will benefit them at this time. I think learning something of their mother’s country—learning its customs, seeing where she grew up, things like that—will help preserve her memory more indelibly for them.”

“What you believe or think is of no consequence, young woman!” Salvatore informed her blackly.

“Father,” Paolo intervened, shaking his head at his parent in what struck Callie as a distinctly cautionary manner, “be sensible and calm down before you have another heart attack. And you, Momma, dry your tears. Caroline is merely expressing an opinion to which she’s obviously given careful thought, and frankly, what she’s suggesting isn’t entirely without merit. She
is
the closest substitute for Vanessa, after all, and could well fill her empty shoes better than you’re willing to recognize.”

But his father, purple with rage, was beyond sensible. “You’re taking her side against us?” he bellowed. “Where’s your sense of loyalty, man?”

“Exactly where it’s always been, with you and the children. But they’ve suffered enough, without ending up being the pawns in an ugly tug-of-war, which is why I propose we direct
our energies to finding a compromise that will satisfy everyone.”

Lowering his voice, Salvatore said with such deadly emphasis that Callie’s blood ran cold. “What need is there to talk of compromise when I know full well, as do you, that those children belong to us in a way that supercedes any claim this Johnny-come-lately aunt thinks she might have?”

“What if I can prove differently, Signor Rainero?” Callie said, goaded past all caution. “What if I plead my case before a family court judge, with evidence to support my claim?”

Hissmileresembledadeath’sheadgrimace.“Thenprepare for a long and fruitless battle, my dear, because there is not a court in this country that will uphold a foreigner’s right to interfere in the upbringing of children of Italian citizenship.”

Sick with fear, she said, “Those children were born in the United States and are half American.”

Cursing, Salvatore lunged up from the sofa, and strode to where she sat on the other side of the coffee table. “They have no ties to America,” he thundered, looming over her threateningly. “They are Italian in every way that counts.”

Paolo immediately intervened by pushing his father aside none too gently. “That’ll do,
le mio padre!
You resolve nothing by browbeating our guest in such a fashion, and have said enough.”

A timely reminder, Callie thought, realizing belatedly that she, too, had said more than enough. Salvatore wasn’t the only one at fault. For all that she’d not intended it to be so, she’d allowed herself to be provoked into speaking rashly and inflicting pain, and for that she was sorry.