“He did search for me, remember?”
Nick waved that away. “You pricked his pride when you left him, my darling. It is understandable. No man would care for losing such a lovely woman from his life. But it’s now five years. I believe it’s time you stop worrying about this man.”
Five years or five minutes. Rico was the kind of man who never left a woman’s thoughts.
Besides, her father didn’t know everything that had happened between her and Rico. Some things she hadn’t been able to share, not even with her family.
Watching her father now, looking like the lord of the manor as he stared out over the luxurious view spread below him, she thought that under any other circumstances, he and Rico might have been friends. They were two of the most stubborn, willful men she had ever known.
And realizing that meant she had to admit she was fighting a losing battle. Dominick Coretti would never leave a job half-finished. And now that he had begun to infiltrate the guests at the Castle, he wouldn’t leave until he was good and ready.
Which made him a sitting duck for Rico. Every hotelier in the world knew the Corettis. They weren’t invisible. They were simply so good at what they did, there was never any evidence against them. They were high profile, wealthy and they didn’t hide in out-of-the-way spots. Nick Coretti, like all of those who came before him, believed in living his life to the fullest. The fact that he did it with other people’s money didn’t change anything.
Ordinarily Teresa might have worried that coming here herself would give up the game because Rico would notice her. But her family was here. In plain sight. And now diamonds were missing. Rico would put the two together.
Her father stood, poured more champagne and stepped to the wrought-iron lace of the balcony railing. He might have been enjoying the view, but Teresa knew him well enough to know that he was looking not at the resort, but at its guests. He would be scoping them out, looking for his next target—assuming he hadn’t already chosen one.
For all his charm, Dominick wasn’t a man to be crossed. As head of the Coretti family, he might as well have been a general ordering his troops around. When he made a plan, that was it. The rest of the family fell in line.
Except for Teresa. As a kid, she’d been intrigued by the Coretti family legacy. As a teenager, she’d begun wishing that they could stay put in their house outside Naples. That she could belong, instead of traipsing all over Europe. They never stayed in one place more than a month and only came back to their home base occasionally, so it was impossible to make friends. Teresa and her brothers had been homeschooled and along with the usual—history, math and such—had taken classes on lock picking, safecracking and forgery. By the time the Coretti children were adults, they were each prepared to carry on the family dynasty.
That was when Teresa had taken her stand. Her father had raged and argued, her mother had wept and her brothers hadn’t really believed she would do it. But in the end, Teresa had become the one Coretti in generations who hadn’t joined the family business. Which made her a puzzle to her brothers and an irritation to her father.
“You’re making too much of this, Teresa,” he chided now with a sad shake of his head. “This is no different from any other job, and when we have finished, we will be gone. With no one the wiser.”
“You’re wrong, Papa,” she argued again. “You don’t know Rico as I do. He’s a dangerous man.”
Dangerous to her, anyway.
That got Nick’s attention. “Did this man harm you in some way? If he did—”
“No.” She interrupted him quickly. The problem, she thought, was that the Coretti family had a history with Rico that her father knew nothing about. And now wasn’t the time to tell the story. “He didn’t hurt me. But Papa, he won’t allow thieves to operate in his place. He’ll find you and when he does…”
“What can he do?” Nick laughed a little and sipped at his champagne. “He will have no proof of anything. You should know better, Teresa. The Coretti family is not so easy to catch.”
“Obviously it is not as difficult as you might wish.” A deep, familiar voice spoke up from directly behind her.
Teresa went absolutely still.
She would know that voice anywhere.
With a weird mixture of dread and anticipation, she slowly turned and looked into the eyes of Rico King.
Copyright © 2013 by Maureen Child
ISBN-13: 9781460322789
THE DIPLOMAT’S PREGNANT BRIDE
Copyright © 2013 by Merline Lovelace
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