“Your name?”
“Bianca D’Alessandro. I’m part of the Bellamy family. More or less.” She was desperate enough to grasp at any straw.
It was good enough, however, to convince the watchman. He flicked off his flashlight. “Well, you know,” he said by way of apology, “you can’t be too careful. Lot of shenanigans going on at Swan’s Folly, especially today. Worked for this hotel for the last thirty years, hired on when Mr. Knox was just promoted from bellman to head of the company by way of his marriage to Mrs. Knox, don’t you know. Never seen anything like this. Never.”
Bianca drew the afghan even more tightly around her, feeling like a fool for standing there talking to a man she didn’t even know while wearing only a bra and underpants and slacks and an afghan. She smiled brightly. “I really must go,” she said.
“Sorry to have bothered you,” he replied, and he resumed his rounds, swinging the flashlight as he walked.
Well. That was a close call.
She rushed along the path, getting out of breath and thinking that Neill had too much of a head start on her. As she was rounding the curve toward the hotel manager’s house, she heard a giant va-room and had to jump out of the way as a shiny red vintage motorcycle with a sidecar almost mowed her down. She recognized it as the one stored in the orchard shed.
On it was Neill. The sidecar was empty.
“Get in,” he said tersely.
“I’ll do no such thing,” she said. But on the seat of the sidecar she spied her blue sweater. Not that she could see it all that well, since she still clutched her rapidly dehydrating right contact lens in her right hand.
“We have some talking to do,” he told her.
“I don’t want to talk.” She lunged for her sweater, but she made one crucial mistake: she used the hand that had been holding the afghan together. It fell to the ground and she stood there in her lace bra and slacks.
“I hate to resort to blackmail,” Neill said, dangling the sweater in front of her eyes. “But you can have this if you’ll go for a ride with me.”
“Is this your motorcycle?”
“No. It’s Mom’s. She said I could ride it.”
It was cold standing there without her sweater. Neill held it just beyond her reach. If she tried to snatch it, he’d only yank it away. His eyes gleamed, and she knew it was no use to argue. Anyway, she’d already talked herself out of one tight situation tonight. She could talk herself out of another if necessary. She scooped up the afghan and climbed in the sidecar, which, she noticed distractedly, smelled pleasantly of old leather.
As Neill impatiently gunned the engine, Bianca struggled into her sweater. When she’d buttoned all the buttons all the way to her neck in case he got the idea that she was coming on to him, which she had no intention of doing, he tossed her a pair of goggles and said, “Put these on.” He pulled on his own pair of goggles and one of those old-fashioned leather motorcycle helmets that covered his hair and buckled under the chin. “Here,” he said, tossing her one. She hesitated only a moment before putting it on and stuffing her hair up under it.
As she buckled it, she said, “Where are we going?”
“Anywhere where we can have a private conversation away from this place,” he growled, and then they were bumping along the road, over the bridge and past a group of wedding guests with their mouths hanging open.
“I don’t think they recognized us. The helmets and goggles,” he shouted. The gates were already open for a departing guest, and they spun through, kicking up a spurt of gravel as Neill skidded past the guest’s Mercedes and onto the two-lane road heading away from town.
Bianca, scared out of her wits as they picked up speed, clung to the sides of the sidecar. “Has it occurred to you that there’s a speed limit around here?” she yelled.
“So what?” Neill yelled back. Bianca scrunched down low in the seat and closed her eyes. She didn’t want to look. Not that she could see much with only one contact lens still in her eye. She didn’t know what had happened to the other one.
She opened her eyes for a peek when she inhaled diesel fumes. Ahead of them loomed a Mack truck, a tractor-trailer rig.
“You’re not passing it!” she screamed.
“Watch me,” Neill said.
He pulled out into the other lane and made a wide arc around the truck. Bianca held on for dear life.
“Where are we going?”
“Away from this nuttiness!”
“We’re making our own nuttiness and I don’t want to be part of it. You’re going to kill us—Tia needs at least one parent and I suggest it should be me!”
“Hang on! We’re going to go someplace quiet where nothing is happening!”
“You mean where there are no Bellamys?”
“Exactly.”
She slumped back into her seat, contemplating this. As he passed a convertible containing two people sitting very close to each other, she admitted to herself that Neill wasn’t driving recklessly, just fast.
This stretch of highway was deserted; they were getting farther and farther away from town. Above, the sky ran silver behind a half-moon, bathing the countryside in a wash of lambent light. She supposed it was what she had always wanted, to ride beside Neill in the moonlight, but in a motorcycle sidecar? It was ludicrous, it was wild. She started to snicker.
Neill glanced down at her. She couldn’t see his eyes behind the goggles. “Something wrong?”
She was laughing out loud now. Everything was wrong. And yet something was right. She couldn’t explain it, not while they were rushing along at she didn’t even know how many miles per hour, running away from the non-wedding of the year and assorted crazy people.
“Bianca?”
She glanced up at him just in time to see the shape of a large boxy truck materialize around the curve ahead. It was moving slowly, too slowly.
“Neill!” she screamed, and he swerved just in time to avoid hitting it. She looked back as the truck slammed on brakes and suddenly angled off the road, jolting noisily down into a shallow ditch and up the bank on the other side. It stopped just short of a tree, and a wiry little man hopped out.
Neill, stunned, nevertheless slowed and turned the motorcycle around, and they went back to the truck. As soon as Neill stopped the cycle within the range of the truck’s headlights, Bianca jumped out of the sidecar. It seemed to be snowing, an incongruous sight on a midsummer night.
She pulled off her goggles and ran to the little man, who was surveying a blown tire on the truck with an air of resignation. “Are you all right?” she cried.
He looked at her through the falling snowflakes. “More or less,” he said, heavy on the irony.
“You!” said Neill, rushing up. “You’re the man I hitchhiked back from the lake with last night!”
The man looked at Neill. “Well, well, well,” he said. “Neill Bellamy, right?”
The two men shook hands. “Bianca, this is Tully. Tully, this is Bianca.”
“I thought you’d be at the wedding,” Fully said.
“There wasn’t any wedding,” Neill said.
An outraged squawking emitted from the back of the truck. Bianca squinted through the snow and saw crates filled with something alive. Chickens! They had almost hit a chicken truck! That explained the snow, which was actually feathers. Neill spit one out of his mouth.
“I’m going to call my son, get him to come out and bring the spare tire. Had to take it out of the truck so I could haul these birds.”
“Tully has a day job, but he hauls chickens to market at night. That’s how he happened to come along when I was hitchhiking back from the bachelor party,” Neill explained.
“Oh,” said Bianca. She removed the leather helmet and tossed it into the side car. When Tully went to the cab of the truck to phone his son. she sank down on the low stone wall.
“Well, so much for privacy,” Neill said. He rested one leg beside her on the wall. “I hope you don’t mind if we wait with him. I might nee
d to ride for help if his son doesn’t come.”
“Oh, he’ll be here,” Tully said, sounding more cheerful. “After he watches the late news, he said. You folks hungry?”
“We just ate,” Bianca told him.
“Well, I’ve got a can of spaghetti in my truck. I could build a little fire, heat it up.”
“We don’t get spaghetti much in Colombia,” Neill said with interest.
Bianca sighed. She got plenty of spaghetti in Italy. In fact, she wished she were there at this very moment. She would be in her own bed, sleeping. She wouldn’t have to put up with a non-wedding or moonlighting chicken haulers or Neill Bellamy.
Who was looking down at her with eyes that held an expression of tenderness.
Tenderness? Where did that come from?
“You’re being a good sport, Bianca,” he said.
“I don’t feel like a good sport. I feel like I’d rather be somewhere else.”
“Maybe this will help.” He strode over to the sidecar and pulled out a bottle of champagne that she recognized as the Cristal they had opened at his cottage. “I brought this.” He also produced two glasses. As an afterthought, he brought Bianca the afghan and draped it over her shoulders.
Meanwhile, Tully was building a campfire on the other side of the wall.
“Tully,” called Neill. “Have you ever had Cristal?”
“Cristal?” said Tully. He frowned at the bottle. “You mean it’s a kind of wine?”
“Champagne,” said Neill.
Tully shrugged. “I’m a beer kind of a guy, but I’ll be glad to try some.” He went to the truck and came back with a plastic cup.
They climbed over the wall and sat down around the fire. Tully had arranged a few stones on which he had set an enormous can of spaghetti and meatballs so that the flames licked at the bottom of it. Soon the spaghetti sauce started bubbling merrily, whereupon Tully produced paper plates and plastic forks and dished out plates of spaghetti all around.
“I always carry provisions. You never know when something like this might happen,” he said. In the back of the truck, the chickens’ squawking had abated considerably.
Bianca, not having much appetite, stared down into her glass. Beside her, Neill ate voraciously, the light from the campfire playing across his strong even features.
“So why wasn’t there a wedding?” Tully asked conversationally.
Neill stopped eating so that he and Bianca could exchange glances. “Mostly because we’re Bellamys,” Neill said.
“Oh, you mean this was that big society wedding? The one with the helicopters and everything?”
“That’s the one,” Bianca said.
“So you know the Pretzel King?”
“I’m his son.”
Tully considered this. “Those are mighty good pretzels. I’ve been eating them since I was a kid.”
“So have I,” Neill said with a slight laugh. “And since you like them so much, Tully, I’ll tell you what. I’ll send you a box of them.”
“Great. And you, Bianca. You’re the Pretzel King’s daughter?”
Bianca didn’t want to go into all the gnarls and knobs of the Bellamy family tree and she certainly didn’t want to be reminded that she’d ever been a temporary leaf on it. “No, not exactly,” she hedged.
Neill dished out more spaghetti. “I asked Bianca to marry me tonight,” he said.
Bianca froze. She hadn’t expected this. Why would Neill bring this up with some guy they hardly knew? What was he thinking?
Tully regarded her seriously over the rim of his plastic cup. “Did you say yes?”
Bianca set her spaghetti plate down on the ground and said, “No.”
“Hmm,” Tully replied. He studied Neill for a moment. “Seems like you could do worse, young lady, although I admit it’s none of my business. I mean, Neill here seems like a nice enough guy.”
“Well,” Bianca began.
“Why did you say no?” Tully asked.
Neill shot a cagey look at her out of the corners of his eyes. “Yeah, Bianca, why’d you say no?”
She inspected a chicken feather stuck on the knee of her slacks. “I had reason,” she said finally.
“You had reason!” exploded Neill, for once looking as if he were losing his cool. “I’d say you had plenty of reason to say yes, too.”
She shot him a look of pure venom.
“Like that baby back at the Ofstetlers’,” Neill went on.
“Ahem,” said Tully, interrupting. “Exactly what does a baby have to do with this?” “Ask her!”
“It’s our baby!” Neill shouted. “Ask her!” Bianca couldn’t see him for the tears in her eyes. She blinked them away, wondering if she could figure out how to start a vintage motorcycle. She could make a run for it, leave these two guys to their canned spaghetti and their champagne.
Tully’s voice was kind. “Now, little lady, no need to get all upset over this. If you’ve got a baby, and it’s also his baby, it seems like you better talk about this marriage proposal.”
“I’m tired of talking. When it comes right down to it, he’s just another Bellamy,” Bianca said bitterly.
“I guess that’s not meant to be complimentary,” observed Tully. He tossed a handful of twigs on the fire.
“I can’t help being born a Bellamy,” Neill said heavily. “I can help acting like one, though. And that’s why I want to marry you and give our daughter a decent home. Is that unreasonable?” He turned to Tully as he said it.
“Home, family, those are good things. If I didn’t have a son, for instance, who’d be coming to pull me out of this ditch?” Tully laughed and slapped his knee.
“You’re denying me the chance to be better than most Bellamys, Bianca. I can’t believe you’d do that.”
“Well, you might as well,” she said.
They sat a while longer, watching the sparks fly up into the moonlight.
Tully said to Bianca, “I hate to think of that baby of yours going through life without a mommy and a daddy. It seems to me that every kid deserves both. Now I’m going to say something, and you can ignore it if you want, being since you’re never going to see me again for the rest of your life. On the other hand, if I have the chance to say it and don’t, I’m going to regret it. Bianca, I think you need to tell Neill why you turned him down and give him a chance to fix whatever the problem is.” This uncharacteristically long speech seemed to wear him out, and he leaned back and extended his legs toward the fire.
“I second that,” said Neill. He waited expectantly.
Bianca didn’t know why, but the things she couldn’t have said directly to Neill seemed easier to say out here in the open with another person present.
“Neill doesn’t love me,” she said into the silence.
Tully took this in quietly, but Neill leaped to his feet. “I don’t love you? Is that what you think?”
She stared up at him. “That’s what I think, all right.”
“But—”
Bianca appealed directly to Tully. “He says in one breath that he wants to play an active part in our daughter’s life, and then in the very next breath he talks about climbing Mount Everest when he could be visiting us in Paris or Rome. He says he wishes he could have been with me in the delivery room and then he starts talking about how I should adjust my life to fit his. He wants a relationship, but I should do all the adjusting. He wants to twist my life around like—like a Bellamy pretzel!”
Neill, fists clenched, went off and stood near the wall, gazing out into the night.
“And what do you have to say about that, Neill?”
“I love her.”
Silence. Then, “You do?” said Bianca.
He turned around, and much to her surprise, his eyes were welling with tears.
“I do. I thought you knew.”
“How would I know? You still haven’t said it directly to me.”
Tully cleared his throat, “Seems like those words are real important to women
.”
“I’ve never said those words to any woman. All my life I’ve watched my father tell one woman after another that he loved her until the words seemed devoid of all meaning. I made up my mind that I wouldn’t tell any woman I loved her. I never have and until now I thought I never would.”
Bianca rose slowly to her feet. She stood tentatively, not knowing whether to run to Neill or away from him, not knowing what any of this meant.
Neill’s heart was in his eyes as he looked at her across the space between them. “I love you, Bianca. I think I’ve loved you for a long, long time. Forever, maybe. I’ve lost too many people in my life and I can’t lose you too. I want us both to have the kind of home we’ve never had in all our lives—together. I want a chance to be a good father to our daughter. I want to marry you.”
Bianca was no longer aware of Tully sitting on the ground across the campfire from her, or of the chickens’ muffled clucking in the truck nearby, or of anything in the world besides Neill Bellamy and the way he was looking at her in that instant. She thought that as long as she lived she would never forget the light in his eyes, or the tears shimmering there, or the expression of abject devotion on his face as he spoke the words that would make her his for the rest of her life.
“I—don’t know what to say,” she said. Neill’s head tilted quizzically, and it wasn’t until she realized that he didn’t understand what she’d said that she realized she had spoken in Italian.
“I don’t know what to say,” she repeated, this time in English, and at that Neill walked to where she stood in front of the fire, lifted both her hands in his, and raised them to his lips. He kissed them and said, “Say yes, Bianca. Please.”
It seemed as if, in that brief instant between his request and her answer, all of her life beforehand flashed in front of her eyes. She saw herself as an awkward teenager, braces on her teeth, waiting for Neill to speak to her at their parents’ wedding reception, and she felt all the disappointment her teenage self had experienced when he’d acted like she didn’t exist. She remembered the times he’d come home from college and refused to play tennis with her, going off with some buxom girl of his own age instead. She recalled that night a year ago in the gazebo when she’d given herself to him totally and completely, and how she’d almost picked up the phone so many times to call him and tell him she was pregnant, and then that they had a daughter. But all those disappointments evaporated in the joy of this moment, the moment she’d thought was an impossibility.
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