He shook more hands, accepted more condolences and, after a while, had to fight against telling the lawyers, the doctors, the shopkeepers and the endless stream of politicos that there was no need to tell him how sorry they were that his old man was gone when the truth was that Amos had pretty much always been gone from his life.
The gathering took on the kind of party atmosphere such things generally did.
Johnny poured his third or maybe his fourth Jack Daniel’s and wandered away from the crowd. He walked through the rooms and looked at them through the eyes of a stranger. There were few good memories, and little of his childhood. His old bedroom had become a guest room. As if this enormous house needed yet another guest room, he thought as he let the warmth of the whiskey slip down his throat.
The old football posters were gone. So were his helmet, his awards and trophies.
Johnny Wilde might never have lived here.
It was different when he went across the hall and opened the door to what had been Alden’s room.
The hair rose on the nape of his neck.
Here, time had stopped.
Alden’s clothes hung in the closet. His framed academic awards were on display. There was a neat stack of textbooks on his desk. A framed photo of the parade grounds at West Point hung over it; there was a smaller photo next to it, taken when Amos and Alden had made a visit to the Point during Alden’s freshman year in high school.
The picture was of Alden standing next to the famed Sedgwick Monument.
Legend had it that if a cadet was in danger of failing a final exam and went to the monument at midnight in full dress uniform, he’d pass the exam if he spun the moveable spurs on Sedgwick’s horse.
John smiled.
He had a picture of himself beside the same statue, moldering in a box somewhere…
Christ.
His smile faded.
Had he ever had a life of his own? Had he been destined to take Alden’s place not only from the day of the accident but from the day of his birth?
It was a stupid thought. A chilling thought. And, shit, what was he doing here? His father was dead. Who gave a damn? They had never loved each other. And he hated this place, hated the memories, hated who he was or who he might have been, because when he let himself think about it, his life was like—it was like those nested Russian dolls. Halvorson had bought one for his niece when they’d been in Moscow a year or so ago. They’d chuckled at how one doll had stacked within the other so that you never actually knew if you’d reached the final one…
“John?”
Johnny swung around and saw Connie Grimes standing in the open doorway.
“Connie. What are you doing here?”
She cleared her throat. “I was at the funeral and I came here to, you know, pay my respects… I didn’t mean to intrude.”
“No,” he said quickly, “you aren’t intruding at all. I’m just—I’m surprised to see you, that’s all.”
“I’m sorry about—”
“Yeah. Sure.” He paused. “So, how’ve you been?”
“Good. Fine. I’m an OR nurse at Madison General.”
“Hey. That’s great.”
“I hear that you’re a major now. Is that right?” She smiled; her smile was as unchanged as the rest of her, pure Connie, a little shy, a little hesitant, but honest and warm. “I’m not very good at reading those stripes or bars or whatever you call them.”
“A major, yes. That’s me. Crazy, right?” He lifted the glass, swallowed the rest of the whiskey in one gulp. “It’s good to see you again.”
“It’s nice to see you again, too.”
“Yeah. About that.” John licked his lips. “I should have been in touch. I meant to, but—”
“You don’t have to explain.”
“But I do. That—that last time we saw each other—”
Her face reddened.
“I didn’t expect anything more than that night, John.” She gulped in a breath of air. “I loved being with you. It was—it was—it was very nice.”
“Very nice,” he said solemnly.
The color in her face deepened.
“What I meant is—”
He grinned. “What I hope you meant is that it was fantastic.”
Could she blush any harder?
“It was. You know that it was. For me, anyway.”
John put down the empty whiskey glass. Teasing her was fun—he got a kick out of all that sweet innocence—but she deserved better.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get something to eat.”
“Oh, I’m not hungry. I mean, everything in the dining room looks wonderful, but—”
“Not here.” He strolled toward her and reached for her hand. “I noticed a new restaurant in town. Bailey’s Something.”
“Bailey’s Barbecue.”
“Right. Just what Texas needs. Another barbecue joint.”
Connie looked up at him and laughed. It was the same old laugh he remembered, as honest and open and warm as everything else about her.
“There’s another new place a couple of miles outside of town, but I don’t know if you’d like it.”
“Just tell me it isn’t all about quiche.”
She laughed again. Something seemed to melt around his heart and he laced their fingers together.
“Well, I can’t do that. They do serve quiche. And salads. And—”
“And there are ferns sprouting from the walls. What the hell. I’ve always liked barbecue.”
“Me, too,” she said.
Half an hour later, they were eating ribs and coleslaw. And sharing memories of the town and of their high school years.
An hour after that, she was in the car, waiting for him while he made a quick stop at the drugstore, and then they were in her bed, having the kind of plain-vanilla sex that he had not had with Angelica, and why in hell was he thinking about Angelica now?
These were two very different women and he was a very different man with each of them.
This time, when he left town for Geneva, where he and Halvorson were now posted, he kissed Connie goodbye and said he’d keep in touch. She said that would be lovely, but she said it in a way that told him she wasn’t counting on it.
* * * *
He meant to phone or at least write, but when he got to Geneva, half a dozen things were happening at once. The primary one was that Halvorson’s staff was relocating to the Netherlands for a few months. Half a dozen junior officers and another half dozen civilian clerks reported directly to John; there was no time to do anything except to start organizing his people and files.
He thought of Connie often.
He thought of Angelica, too.
He cared about both women; each, in her own way, meant something to him, but he knew he’d made a mistake with Angelica, letting her all but move into his place in Sicily, and a mistake with Connie, making love to her again after so much time had passed.
Women could be strange creatures. What if one or the other or, God help him, both of them overestimated their places in his life?
Jesus.
Was this the definition of a cad? Was a guy who slept with two different women within a couple of weeks a self-serving SOB?
No. No, of course not.
He was a bachelor.
He had not made any promises to either one.
The very definition of bachelorhood was that a man wasn’t committed to one single female. He could date as many women as he liked. Sleep with as many as he liked. No promises asked, none given.
A logical conclusion except occasionally, in the middle of the night, when he found himself wondering if it would seem quite that logical or convenient if the women didn’t live on separate continents.
Finally, after almost two months of more sleepless nights than could possibly be good for a man, he faced reality.
He could sleep with both women or with neither woman.
They didn’t know about each other, but he did. It was—it was an
uncomfortable feeling, kind of the old sailor-with-a-girl-in-every-port thing, except he wasn’t a sailor, he was a major on the staff of a general, and if he kept his nose clean, he’d sooner or later have an eagle on his shoulder.
Halvorson made it clear that he was moving up and moving fast.
He’d write to Connie. Phone Angelica. Or phone Angelica and write to Connie. It’s been fun, he’d say, but—
But what?
Nothing he could say would make either woman happy.
A mess.
This was a mess, and he’d have to deal with it soon—but first, there was the move to the Netherlands, where they all had to settle into their new offices. He had more and more responsibility, too; Halvorson relied on him for virtually everything.
He put off writing the notes. Making the phone calls.
Another couple of months went by.
“Take a week off, my boy,” Halvorson said, and winked. “I might just have a surprise for you when you get back.”
A promotion.
John knew it.
He was excited as he considered where to spend that week. The Canaries? Morocco? And then he thought, dammit, he had a handsome place in Sicily; there was no reason to stay away.
He could make his position clear to Angelica in person. Or maybe he’d be lucky. Maybe she hadn’t put anything more into their wild week together than it deserved.
An air force jet took him to Palermo, where he’d garaged his Ducati.
It was a glorious day; he rode fast, the wind in his face, his thoughts already miles ahead, imagining what it would be like to see Angelica again.
Would she be pissed off at his months of silence? Would she rant and rave? Would she be involved with someone else? Or would she tumble into his bed again?
She’d tumble, he decided.
She definitely would. And what could be wrong with one last tumble?
He was feeling pretty good by the time he reached his place. He parked the bike and then, whistling happily, he went up the old stone steps to the front door, key in hand…
Except, he didn’t need the key.
The front door flew open.
“Brutto figlio di puttana bastardo,” Angelica snarled, and launched herself at him, arms out, hands fisted.
He had no time to react.
She punched him in the jaw. Punched him twice, bam-bam, left hand-right hand.
Johnny staggered back, but not from the blows.
He staggered because even a fool like him could see that his Sicilian spitfire was hugely pregnant.
CHAPTER TEN
Johnny Wilde stood on the rocky cliff overlooking the sea behind his Sicilian vacation home.
Vacation home?
He almost laughed.
Prison was more like it.
The woman he’d taken to his bed for one exciting, sex-filled week a handful of months ago was carrying his child.
His child.
Maybe.
Johnny frowned and made his way slowly down the cliff to the narrow strip of sand below.
Was it his? A lot of time had gone by. Angelica liked sex, and there were lots of young men in this village, lots of older ones, too.
And she was hardly a nun…
“Shit.”
She’d been a virgin when he met her. If she’d wanted to screw around, she’d have done it by the time she came to him on that beach.
“Face it,” he mumbled as he kicked a small sea-polished stone into the water. “The kid is yours.”
His.
A child.
A responsibility.
And what could he do about it?
“Nothing,” he said.
Was he in such bad shape that he was talking to himself?
He knew Angelica would never consider ending the pregnancy. He wasn’t even sure he’d want her to end it. He had no particular religious leanings, but snuffing out a small life just because it was inconvenient…
Inconvenient?
It was a death knell.
Once word got out, his career would be over. No question about that. If he was very, very lucky Halvorson might let him resign. If he wasn’t lucky…
Johnny shuddered.
Disgraced. His reputation. His name.
Alden’s name.
Which was nuts.
This wasn’t about his brother, it was about him, but if things had gone the way they should have, if Alden had become an officer…
There had to be a way out of this situation. There had to be!
Right. There was. Marriage. A wedding band on his Sicilian mistress’s finger. Then he could take her with him to the Netherlands. To Halvorson.
General, I’d like you to meet my bride.
My bride-from-the-back-of-nowhere. My bride who speaks Sicilian, not Italian. My bride who mops up pasta sauce with chunks of bread she’s torn from the loaf with her hands and yes, that might be sexy and cute in a rustic setting, but it sure as hell wouldn’t go over big in an embassy ballroom.
Johnny sat down in the sand and buried his face in his hands.
Angelica didn’t even know he was in the army. She knew nothing about him. She’d asked, just once, what he was doing in Italy and he’d told her he worked for his government. When she’d tried to ask more, he’d kissed her and said he really couldn’t talk about his job.
“Ah,” she’d said in a sexy purr, “you are my James Bond.”
He’d laughed and said no, not very likely, and she’d put her mouth to his ear and whispered how exciting it was to sleep with a spy…
Johnny sat up straight. A spy. A secret life. A story woven from a cobweb of deceit.
“Gianni?”
He looked up. Angelica had come down the rocky cliff to the beach. They’d made up a couple of days ago; she’d apologized for calling him names and he’d apologized for not having been in touch—he’d invented some stupid story about being away on hush-hush government business—and they’d avoided the topic of her pregnancy altogether.
It couldn’t be avoided any longer.
Not with that great big belly hanging out in front of her.
She looked—she looked beautiful.
Her hair was a ribbon of dark silk in the hot glow of the sun; her eyes were wide and filled with despair.
An emotion he could not identify twisted inside him.
Jesus.
It was desire.
A month ago, a couple of days ago, if anyone had asked him if he could be turned on by a pregnant woman he’d have roared with laughter.
But he was turned on. She was incredibly lovely and the life in her belly was his.
“Gianni. Il mio cuore. What are we going to do?”
He reached for her hand, tugged her onto his lap, wrapped his arms around her.
“What does your nonna say about this??”
He had not thought to ask her until now; he watched as her mouth trembled.
“She is gone,” she whispered. “She became ill and—and she is gone.” She crossed herself. “It is for the best. If she had known… The disgrace…”
Later, he would chastise himself for having made the decision without thinking it through—just as he would also remind himself that it was the only decision possible.
“How would she have felt if she knew you were going to be my wife?”
She turned her face to his. “What?”
“I want you to marry me, Angelica. I want you to be my wife.”
“Your wife.” Tears filled her eyes. “Oh, Gianni! Gianni…”
“People here can know, but nobody else.”
“I do not understand. Our marriage is to be a secret?” Her lovely eyes flashed. “I am not good enough for the world to know I am your wife?”
He wove the story easily. She had been correct; he was a spy. It was the reason he spent his holidays in Sicily, where no one was likely to recognize him. No, he could not tell her in what city he was stationed; in fact, he never worked out of any one city for very long. An
d no, he could not take her to live with him. It would be too dangerous for her. For their unborn child. And, when she still protested, he sighed and said he didn’t wish to worry her, but it would also be dangerous for him.
“You and our child could be the threat an enemy could use to get me to do whatever they wanted. Do you understand? If they, if anyone knew I had a wife, a family, I would become terribly vulnerable.”
She nodded.
This was a tiny mountain village in a place forgotten by time, but she had seen movies. She understood that spies led lonely, deliberately isolated lives.
Johnny thought of the endless intelligence officers he’d met over the years, of how visible they often were; he thought of how only the few who lived in the dark underbelly of the profession that no one ever talked about lived the kind of existence he was describing.
He thought of how monumental his lies were, and then he thought of how necessary they were for Angelica, for himself and for their child, and he helped her up, rose to his own feet and led her up to the house, where he took her to bed and they made gentle love.
* * * *
They were married a little more than two weeks later.
He had feared marriages had to be performed by priests, but they didn’t.
The mayor of the village said the necessary words.
The only possible problem was in the documentation he needed. His passport. His birth certificate. He ended up using the real ones; he could not imagine that either document would somehow transmit information to the embassy, the army or to Halvorson.
But he needed to fill out something called a Dichiarazione Giurata and it required not a lie, exactly.
It required creativity.
One of the benefits of his job was that he worked with all kinds of people and all those people had contacts. He made up a tale about a friend of his, an American who needed a document notarized—the Dichiarazione Giurata—verifying that there was no legal reason he, the friend, could not marry.
“He’s divorced, it’s all legal, but he’s afraid his ex will go crazy if she finds out he’s getting married again,” Johnny explained, and the guy he was dealing with nodded in sympathy and put him in touch with someone who could help him.
A forger, basically, but he tried not to think about that.
In Wilde Country Page 14