The Real Rio D'Aquila

by Sandra Marton

  “I don’t know. It was on the spur of the moment. It was nothing—”

  “Nothing?”

  “Yes. No. It was—it was a harmless prank.”

  “A prank,” she said, through bloodless lips.

  “We were strangers. We were never going to see each other again. And then—and then—”

  Dante stormed toward Rio, eyes blazing.

  “You SOB,” he snarled, and hit Rio with a fist that felt as if it were made of iron.

  Rio staggered back but his eyes never left Isabella’s.

  “I wanted to tell you. I tried to tell you. Even tonight—”

  “A prank,” she whispered, while her heart shattered. “Pretending to be someone you weren’t. Telling me we were in his house when it was yours. Telling me stories about how you’d come to be working for him—”

  “Isabella, please, I beg you—”

  “And—and you—you made love to me …”

  A sob broke from her throat. Rio groaned and reached for her; Dante put a hand in the center of his chest and pushed him back.

  “Iz,” Dante said harshly, “Anna’s outside. Get out of this house, go to her and wait in the car.”

  “No,” Rio shouted. “Don’t listen to him. Stay where you are. Let me talk to you. Let me explain—”

  “You already did,” Isabella whispered. “You said it was nothing. You said it was a prank.”

  “I wanted to tell you. A dozen times. A hundred. But—”

  “When?” Isabella said brokenly. “Before you seduced me? Or after?”

  Dante hit him again. It was a good, solid shot. Rio, who was a boxer, could have put Dante down with one blow. Instead, he snarled with pain, anger and rage.

  At himself.

  “I made a terrible mistake, cara. What I did was wrong. And not admitting to it sooner was cowardly but—”

  Isabella had stopped listening. He could see it happen, that she was gathering herself together, leaving him behind. She had never looked more beautiful than now, standing straight and proud, her chin lifted, wearing the cotton throw as if it were a queen’s cloak.

  “Orsini,” Rio said desperately, “give us five minutes alone.”

  “Not in this lifetime,” Dante growled. “Iz? We’re leaving, baby. You just take my arm and—”

  “Amazing,” Isabella said. “Here I thought I was the one playing games.”

  Rio blinked. “What?”

  “A caretaker. A man who lives in another man’s home, eats another man’s food, takes another man’s orders.”

  “No. I’m telling you, I am—”

  “Oh, I believe you. You’re Rio D’Aquila.”

  Isabella’s voice had turned chill and smooth. She smiled, and told herself that all she had to do was get through the next couple of minutes and then this would all be nothing more than a bad dream.

  “And I—I enjoyed our little idyll but the thing is, if I’d know who you really were, I’d probably never have bothered with you in the first place.”

  She saw the man she knew as Matteo narrow his eyes. Good. Better than good. But it wasn’t enough. She wanted to put the knife in deep and then give it a twist.

  “I mean, men with lots of money, you know, power brokers like Rio D’Aquila, are a dime a dozen in my world.” She forced a smile; she hoped it held amusement and not anguish. “But guys with dirt under their nails, studs like Matteo Rossi—”

  “Izzy,” her brother said softly, “honey, it’s okay. Just go outside to Anna.”

  “Dante can tell you,” she said, putting her hand on her brother’s rigid-with-fury arm, praying he wouldn’t spoil the lie. “I’m not exactly the little innocent you decided I was.”

  “Iz.” Her brother’s voice was rough. “Iz, honey—”

  “I wanted something different. Well, Matteo Rossi was different. And—and it was fun,” Isabella said, and prayed her voice would not break into the same tiny shards as her heart. “But you used me. You lied to me. And I’ll despise you for it, for the rest of my life.”

  Rio’s face had gone blank. Isabella looked at her brother.

  “Dante,” she said, “leave him alone. He’s not worth the effort.”

  Somehow, she made it to the door. She heard Dante say something sharp and ugly. Then they were outside, where the air was cool and clean and she could let the darkness enfold her.

  “Izzy,” someone said, “oh, Izzy, baby …”

  “Anna,” Isabella whispered.

  Anna’s arms opened wide. She flew into them and then, only then, was it safe to give way to racking sobs.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ISABELLA knelt in the middle of her sister’s penthouse garden, carefully pulling weeds and deadheading spent flower blossoms.

  She was dripping with sweat, her back ached, the light-headedness and vague nausea that had plagued her for the past couple of weeks seemed ever-present, but she’d be damned if she’d give in to a summer virus when she had so much work to do.

  Summer could be tough in New York.

  Pavement. Concrete. Skyscrapers that created man-made canyons trapped the heat and reflected it back with the ferocity of a gigantic convection oven.

  The result was predictable.

  Horns blared, tempers rose, pedestrians wilted.

  So did plants. Isabella always warned her clients about that.

  “Plants are living things,” she’d say. “They need food some of the time and unless they’re succulents, they need water all of the time, especially in summer.”

  She gave them handsome calendars filled with instructions on caring for their gardens if they didn’t hire her to do it for them and when summer arrived, she emailed cheerful reminders to water, water, water.

  Some people, she thought grumpily, didn’t get the message.

  An end-of-season heat wave had the city in its cruel clutches. Isabella’s phone rang and rang with desperate pleas for help.

  My hydrangeas are dying!

  You know that green and yellow shrub with the funny leaves? Well, the leaves are all brown and now they’re falling off!

  And there was always her favorite complaint: Really, Ms. Orsini, we are very upset! You said these flowers would last forever!

  Nothing lasts forever, Isabella had finally told a caller after one angry voice mail too many.

  Because, of course, nothing did.

  “Hell,” she muttered, and sat back on her heels.

  She was not going there.

  Ridiculous, that after four weeks she could still say something, see something, hear something and just like that, the entire horrible interlude with Rio D’Aquila would pop into her mind.

  The Horrible Interlude.

  Isabella snorted, ran the back of her hand over her dripping forehead, then gave another dig to a particularly hardy weed.

  It sounded like a bad movie title but what else would you call what had happened? Interludis Horribilis?

  She laughed.

  Not bad, she thought, not at all bad—and then her throat tightened and what had started as laughter turned into a lump and she heard herself make a pathetic little sound, really pathetic, painfully pathetic—

  “Izzy, for God’s sake, what are you doing out here?”

  Isabella shaded her eyes with a grimy hand and looked up. Anna stood over her, looking cool and elegant in a silk suit and high heeled pumps.

  “Anna,” she said brightly. “You’re home.”

  “It’s after six. Even lawyers know when to knock off for the day. What are you doing?”

  “Playing in the dirt. Or trying to save your pansies. Which does it look like?”

  “What it looks like,” Anna said, “is that you’re trying to get sunstroke. For goodness sake, come inside. Those pansies are fine. You said so yourself last week.”

  “Exactly. Haven’t you touched them at all since then? Thinned them out? Weeded them? Watered them?”

  “Draco did.”

  “Nobody did. Honestly, Anna—�
�

  “Honestly, Izzy, enough is enough. Get up and come inside.”

  “Ask me nicely and I might.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not a child, Anna. I know you mean well, but—” Isabella sighed. “Never mind. Just give me another couple of minutes.”

  “You’re very prickly lately, Iz.”

  “I’m not prickly at all,” Isabella snapped. Anna rolled her eyes and Isabella let out a long breath. “Look, I don’t want your flowers to die, okay?”

  “So you had to pick the hottest day of the year to give them a manicure?”

  “It’s not a manicure. And this was the first chance I had to come by. I’ve been so busy with other idiots that—”

  “Other idiots?” Anna folded her arms. “That’s really nice.”

  “Hell,” Isabella said wearily. “Okay. Point made. It’s time to call it a day.”

  “Good. Come sit inside and we’ll have some iced—Izzy?” Anna grabbed Isabella’s arm as her sister swayed like a sapling in a breeze. “My God, you’re white as a sheet.”

  “I’m—I’m okay. I got up too fast. The sun. And being on my knees all this time—”

  Anna put her arm around Isabella and led her into the cool comfort of the penthouse living room.

  “Sit down on that chair. I’ll get some water.”

  “I’m filthy,” Isabella said shakily.

  “Sit down,” Anna said in her best courtroom voice.

  Isabella sat.

  The room was spinning and her stomach was somewhere just slightly south of her throat. She bent forward, shut her eyes and took long, deep breaths.

  Okay. She’d have to deal with this summer virus.

  Because it was a summer virus. It had to be.

  “Here you go.”

  Anna pressed a tall glass of iced water into Isabella’s hands. She drank it slowly. Over the past few days she’d learned, the hard way, that when she felt like this, even a drink of water might trigger a gag reaction.

  “Better?”

  Isabella nodded. “Yes, thank you. Much better.”

  “It’s a good thing I came along when I did. You’d still be out there, working in the Sahara and saving our pansies.” Anna peered at her younger sister. “You look like hell.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” Anna said briskly, taking the glass from Isabella. “You take a nice cool shower, I’ll give you something to wear and then we’ll have a glass of Pinot Grigio while we wait for Draco to come home. We’re having broiled halibut for supper and—Izzy?”

  Isabella ran for the powder room and made it just in time to slam the door and bend over the toilet before her stomach emptied itself of the crackers and chicken soup she’d managed to get down for lunch.

  She flushed the bowl. Washed out her mouth, washed her hands and face. Her reflection was not reassuring. Her cheeks were colorless, her hair was wild—and the worst was yet to come.

  She had to face Anna.

  A long, deep breath. Then she opened the bathroom door. Her sister was standing right outside, arms folded, expression grim, looking exactly the way Isabella felt—

  As if the world as they both knew it was about to end.

  “You’re pregnant,” Anna said flatly.

  Isabella tried for a laugh. “You certainly have a way with words.”

  “You,” Anna repeated, “are pregnant.”

  “I just said—”

  “I heard what you said, and it wasn’t ‘no, I’m not.’ Answer me, Izzy. Did that lying SOB get you pregnant?”

  Isabella narrowed her eyes. “He didn’t ‘get’ me anything! I’m a grown woman. I’m responsible for myself.”

  “Damnit, answer the question! Are you pregnant?”

  “This is not a courtroom, and I am not on the witness stand!”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning …” Isabella’s shoulders slumped. “Meaning, I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

  “Read my lips. I mean, I—don’t—know.”

  “How can you not know? Have you missed your period? Have you seen a doctor? Bought an EPT? It is not possible to answer a question like, ‘Are you pregnant?’ by saying, ‘I don’t know.’”

  “It is, if you’re a coward.”

  “Oh, Iz …”

  “See? This is why I didn’t want to tell you. That ‘oh, Iz,’ as if you were thirteen and I were twelve and I’d just spilled your favorite nail polish all over your favorite sweater.”

  “Izzy, honey—”

  “And that. That look. That tone. ‘Izzy, honey,’ meaning ‘Izzy, you pathetic little incompetent, you sad underachiever, what have you done now?’”

  Anna threw up her hands in defense. “I never—”

  “Maybe not, but that’s how it always sounds.”

  “How what always sounds? Izzy—”

  “And that’s another thing. My name is Isabella.”

  The sisters stared at each other.

  “We need to talk,” Anna finally said.

  Isabella nodded and Anna led the way to the kitchen. Isabella sat at the glass-topped table. Anna poured another glass of iced water and gave it to her, started to pour water for herself, muttered “to hell with it” and instead took an opened bottle of Pinot Grigio from the fridge and poured herself half a tumbler of it.

  Then she plopped into a chair opposite Isabella’s.

  “I have never,” she said softly, “not once in our entire lives, thought you were anything less than smart, capable and altogether competent. Okay? I mean, let’s get that out of the way first.”

  Isabella used her damp glass to make a ring of intersecting circles on the tabletop.

  “You’re my sister,” Anna continued. “My baby sister, and—”

  “I’m your sister,” Isabella said, looking up. “And you’re mine. And I love you like crazy, but—”

  “But,” Anna said, “you’re all grown up. And I need to remember that.”

  “You do.” Isabella gave a little laugh. “Except when my stuff isn’t as grown up as I am, and I need to borrow your clothes or your car …”

  Her smile faded. Anna reached for her hand.

  “Which takes us,” she said gently, “back to the beginning.”

  Isabella nodded. “The old square one.”

  “You want to tell me about it?”

  Isabella hesitated. Then she swallowed hard.

  “More than anything,” she said, and the entire sad story tumbled out. It took a while, because she had not told anyone anything after Dante and Anna had brought her back to the States.

  But she knew the time had come.

  She told Anna how she’d gotten stuck in traffic en route to Southampton. How she’d gotten lost. The accident that had left her on foot. How she’d stumbled through the gate at Rio D’Aquila’s estate hours late.

  “And D’Aquila was waiting for you,” Anna said grimly.

  “I didn’t know who he was,” Isabella said. “He was just a guy.” A big, shirtless, gorgeous sexy-looking guy …

  “Go on.”

  Isabella cleared her throat.

  “We talked. And talked. He was—”

  “Rude. Insolent.”

  “Actually, he was charming. He was fun. And then—”

  “And then, he seduced you.”

  He kissed me, Isabella thought, God, he kissed me and I melted …

  “No. He didn’t. I—I left. And he came after me. It was dark by then and he said—he said he’d take me to the train station.”

  “But he didn’t, the no-good, testosterone-crazed SOB.”

  “He did. Trouble was, the trains weren’t running.”

  Anna snorted. “How could you have bought such a lie?”

  “It was true. The station was closed. So, he said I could spend the night—”

  “And then he seduced you.”

  “He showed me to a guest room and he gave me
something to wear. I was a mess, your suit all torn and dirty—and I’m sorry about that. I’ll pay you back—”

  “Forget the suit,” Anna snapped. “I’ll just bet he gave you something to wear, something left over from some other damsel in distress who’d spent the night in his—”

  “He gave me one of his sweat suits. And then we went to the kitchen—”

  “Naturally. Men like him always want a woman manacled to the stove with a skillet in her free hand.”

  “Anna,” Isabella said carefully, “you think you’re being just a little judgmental here? Actually, he did the cooking. But we never got around to eating much because—”

  “Because he sed—”

  “My God,” Isabella said, yanking her hand free of her sister’s, “will you let me talk? Because we quarreled. But you’re right. We did get around to seduction …” Isabella’s voice trembled. “And I’m not really sure who seduced who.”

  Anna stared at her sister. “Please,” she said, “please, please do not tell me you think you still feel something for this man!”

  “Of course not.”

  “Because he has the morals of the manure you use for fertilizer.”

  “I don’t feel anything for him, but he’s not—not …”

  “Izzy. I mean, Isabella, how can you say that? He seduced you, and don’t waste your breath saying you were equally responsible. You don’t know a thing about sex, Iz. And he—”

  “He knew everything,” Isabella whispered. “And it was—it was wonderful.”

  Anna Orsini Valenti looked at her sister. Ohmygod, she thought, and grabbed her hand again.

  “Isabella,” Anna said firmly. “You’re forgetting all the rest. He spirited you out of the States.”

  Isabella laughed.

  “Okay, so that sounds dumb. What I mean is, he took you away from everything familiar, everything that could have kept you safe—”

  “He kept me safe. I’d never felt that safe in my life. When I was with him, when he held me in his arms … Can you possibly understand what I mean?”

  Anna could. She had only to think of how it felt each time her husband touched her, and she understood.

  In fact, she was starting to think she understood everything.

  Her sister—her baby sister, though she wouldn’t make the mistake of calling her that ever again, had fallen head over heels for a rat.