Lucia in Love

by Heather Graham

  Ryan stopped kissing Lucia for just one moment, and his eyes sparkled as they met hers. “I’m sure a tarantella will be just fine.”

  Lucia grinned. “A huge orchestra and a half dozen attendants?”

  “Two dozen, if you want.”

  “Oh, Ryan.”

  “Oh, Lucia.”

  He kissed her again, and everyone on the dock applauded.

  EPILOGUE

  It was a fabulous wedding.

  The bride wore white with a delicate diamond tiara and a pearl-studded train that swept to the floor. The groom was impeccable in black tux, pleated peach shirt and bow tie.

  There were three flower girls, Tracy was the littlest, and she more or less waddled down the aisle. There were eight ushers, and eight attendants. Joe was the best man, and Dina was maid of honor.

  Henry Lorenzo was there to walk his daughter down the aisle, wearing a pleased smile beneath his graying mustache. He had met his daughter’s intended and closely watched the two of them together, and he thought that this time it was right for her. This was really amore, the kind that lasted forever.

  Patience was sitting in the front row with the Three Graces, and they cried through the entire ceremony while their husbands tried to hush them.

  When the ceremony was over, the fun began. Hundreds of people had been invited to the reception. There was an orchestra to play every type of music, and Henry had also hired a smaller band, which moved around during the orchestra’s breaks, playing requests.

  The champagne flowed, and the food kept coming forever. There was sausage and pepper, and lasagna, and tortellini, and veal, and eggplant, two large roasts and endless vegetables and large platters of fruit.

  Then there was the wedding cake, a huge, five-tiered mountain of snowy white, with a dark-haired bride and a tawny groom standing on top, looking into one another’s eyes.

  It was wonderful. When the bride and groom cut the cake, the groom “accidentally” smeared the bride’s face, and, in turn, had his lashes fringed with white frosting. The children found that the highlight of the day, and the twins laughed until Theresa was afraid they were going to be sick.

  There was shouting and whistling when Ryan removed Lucia’s garter, and more laughter when Dina caught the bouquet. There was applause when Henry Lorenzo led his daughter out to the dance floor, and even more again when he turned her over to her new husband.

  Then there was a bit of silence as the newlyweds danced, because they really were beautiful. They were so much in love. It showed in their eyes, and in their laughter.

  Watching them, the Three Graces and Patience sighed. Giles, sitting with his grandmother, smiled smugly. “Isn’t it great that she married him, Nana? Now we get to go to the beach cheap every year!”

  “They’re not going to be living at the beach year round,” Patience warned her great-nephew. “They’ve bought a lovely old house in Charleston, and they’ll be there most of the time.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Faith said. “You know young people these days. Fly here, fly there. Why, I’m sure they’ll be in Atlanta constantly, Patience.”

  “Of course,” Patience agreed.

  “And surely they’ll come up to Boston to see us all the time, too.”

  “Oh, surely. It’s his home.”

  “Ah!” Hope warned. “But wait and see. When they start their own family, they’ll have to settle down a bit.”

  Patience pleated her skirt. “Don’t be silly, Hope. She’ll have me! Oh, I just can’t wait to hold that dear little baby in my arms! I’ll get to be a grandmother at last.”

  “Patience, my love,” Henry Lorenzo said, standing behind his wife and setting his hands on her shoulders, “they’ve barely spoken their vows. Let’s give them a bit of time, shall we?”

  “Yes, Henry, but look at that twinkle in his eye.”

  “I’m trying not to. That’s my daughter out there, you know.”

  Patience could not be dissuaded. “I just know they’ll have a precious little baby very soon!”

  Out on the dance floor, the bride and groom were having a very similar discussion. Ryan whirled Lucia around and thought that her eyes had never looked so warm and soft, so dark and beautiful, as they did today. She was always stunning, but never more so than today. Her gown fit her like a glove, her hair gleamed like satin, and her smile gave a special radiance to the sensual beauty of her features.

  Her smile suddenly turned mischievous.

  “What’s that for?” he asked her.

  She shook her head.

  “I know. Just think, you’re entire family is out there, and I get to take you home with me anyway.”

  She shook her head. “Not home. We’re leaving for California, remember?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “Ryan!”

  “It doesn’t really matter to me where we go. Tonight I get to take you home to lie down with me forever.”

  “Ryan, that’s lovely.”

  “You’re still grinning.”

  “Well, I was just thinking…”

  “What?”

  “I could have twins, you know. Grandma Armantelli was a twin.”

  “Twins?”

  “Or just a boy. Or a girl.”

  “How soon?”

  Lucia laughed. “Not that soon! I was just thinking. My mother is just dying for grandchildren.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m ready whenever you are.”

  “And I’m ready whenever you are.”

  She leaned her head against his shoulder. “We’ve got lots and lots of time to think about it.”

  They danced in bliss for several seconds, and then Ryan stiffened. “We could have a daughter.”

  “Yes.”

  “And she could be gorgeous just like her mother.”

  “Thanks!”

  “And she could grow up and sneak into some masher’s apartment at night.”

  Lucia lifted her eyes to his and laughed delightedly. “And maybe that masher will be a brilliant builder and architect and a sensitive and charming man, just like his soon-to-be father-in-law. And maybe she’ll marry him and live happily ever after.”

  “You think so?”

  She smiled and kissed his lips, and her eyes were dazzling. “Well, first we have to go off on our honeymoon and spend hours and hours acting like newlyweds. What do you think?”

  “I think it sounds absolutely delightful,” Ryan said, and he stopped dancing and pulled his new wife into his arms and kissed her tenderly.

  A soft “Ah!” came from the crowd.

  “Oh, isn’t that just beautiful!” Faith sniffed.

  Patience waved her arm in agreement. She couldn’t speak, because she was crying again.

  It was amore, Henry Lorenzo decided, and that was that.

  * * * * *

  “[Heather Graham] stands at the top of the romantic suspense category.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham delves deep into the city that never sleeps in her heart-thumping New York Confidential series:

  Flawless

  A Perfect Obsession

  Complete your library with the spine-tingling Krewe of Hunters series, featuring the FBI’s elite team of paranormal investigators:

  Phantom Evil

  Heart of Evil

  Sacred Evil

  The Evil Inside

  The Unseen

  The Unholy

  The Unspoken

  The Uninvited

  The Night is Watching

  The Night Is Alive

  The Night Is Forever

  The Cursed

  The Hexed

  The Betrayed

  The Silenced

  The Forgotten

  The Hidden

  Haunted Destiny

  Deadly Fate

  Darkest Journey

  And discover the electrifying Cafferty & Quinn series, where an antiques collector and a private investigator investigate
New Orleans’ most unusual crimes:

  Let the Dead Sleep

  Waking the Dead

  The Dead Play On

  Order your copies today!

  “Dark, dangerous and deadly! Graham has the uncanny ability to bring her books to life.”

  —RT Book Reviews

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  Keep reading for a sneak peek at New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham’s next thrilling novel,

  A PERFECT OBSESSION

  Join FBI agent Craig Frasier and criminal psychologist Keiran Finnegan as they track a madman who is obsessed with perfect beauty.

  CHAPTER 1

  “Horrible! Oh, God, horrible—tragic!” John Shaw said, shaking his head with a dazed look as he sat on his bar stool at Finnegan’s Pub.

  Kieran nodded sympathetically. Construction crews had found the old graves when they were working on the foundations at the hot new downtown venue, Le Club Vampyre.

  Anthropologists found the new body among the old graves the next day.

  It wasn’t just any body.

  It was the body of supermodel Jeannette Gilbert.

  Finding the old graves wasn’t much of a shock—not in New York City, and not in a building that was close to two centuries old. The structure that housed Club Le Vampyre was a deconsecrated Episcopal Church. The church’s congregation had moved to a facility it had purchased from the Catholic Church—whose congregation was now in a sparkling new basilica over on Park Avenue. While many had bemoaned the fact that such a venerable old institution had been turned into an establishment for those into sex, drugs, and rock and roll, life—and business—went on.

  And with life going on….

  Well, work on the building’s foundations went on, too.

  It was while investigators were still being called in following the discovery of the newly deceased body—moments before it hit the news—that Kieran Finnegan learned about it, and that was because she was helping out at their family establishment, Finnegan’s on Broadway. Like the old church/nightclub behind it, Finnegan’s dated back to just before the Civil War, and had been a pub for most of those years. Since it was geographically the closest establishment to the church with liquor, it had apparently seemed the right place at that moment for Professor John Shaw. They’d barely opened; it was still morning, and it was a Friday, and Kieran was only there at that time because her bosses had decided on a day off following their participation in a lengthy trial. She’d just been down in the basement or cellar, fetching a few bottles of a vintage chardonnay for her brother, ordered specifically for a lunch that day, when John Shaw had caught her attention, desperate to talk.

  “I can’t tell you how excited I was, being called in as an expert on a find like that,” the professor told Kieran. “They both wanted me! They, I mean in Henry Willoughby, president of Preserve our Past, and Roger Gleason, owner and manager of the club. I was so honored. It was exciting to think of finding the old bodies—not the new body. But then…opening a decaying coffin and finding… Jeannette Gilbert! And the university was entirely behind me, allowing me the time to be at my site, giving me a chance to bring my grad students here. Oh, my God! I found her! Oh, it was….”

  John Shaw was shaking as he spoke. He was a man who’d seen all kinds of antiquated horrors, an expert in the past. He fit the stereotype of an academic, with his lean physique, his thatch of wild white hair, and his little gold-framed glasses. He held doctorate degrees in archeology and anthropology, and both science and history meant everything to him.

  Kieran realized that he’d been about to say once again that it was horrible, like nothing he’d ever experienced. He clearly realized that he was speaking about a recently living woman, adored by adolescent boys—and heterosexual males of all ages—a woman who was going to be deeply mourned.

  Jeannette Gilbert. Media princess. The model and actress had disappeared two weeks ago after the launch party for a new cosmetics line. Her agent and manager, Oswald Martin, had gone on the news, begging kidnappers for her safe return.

  At that time, no one knew if she actually had been kidnapped. One reporter speculated that she’d disappeared on purpose, determined to get away from the very man begging kidnappers for her release, her agent and manager, Oswald Martin.

  Kieran hadn’t really paid much attention; she’d assumed that the young woman—who’d been made famous by the same Oswald Martin—had just had enough of being adored and fawned over and told what to do at every move and decided to take a hiatus. Or it might have been some kind of publicity gig; her disappearance had certainly ruled the headlines. There were always tabloid pictures of Jeannette, dating this or that man, and then speculation in the same tabloids that her manager had furiously burst into a hotel room, sending Jeannette Gilbert’s latest lover—gold-digger, as Martin referred to any young man she dated—flying out the door.

  In the past few weeks the “celebrity” magazines had run rampant with rumors of a mystery man in her life. A secret love. Kieran knew that, but only because her twin brother, Kevin, was an actor—struggling his way into TV, movies, and theater. He read the tabloids avidly, telling Kieran that he was “reading between the lines,” and being up on what was going on was critical to his career. There were too many actors—even good ones!—out there and too few roles. Any edge was a good edge.

  While all the speculation had been going on, Kieran couldn’t help wondering if Jeannette’s secret lover had killed her—or if, maybe, her steel-handed manager had done so.

  Or—since this was New York City with a population in the millions—it was possible that some deranged person had murdered her, perhaps even someone who wasn’t clinically insane but mentally unstable. Perhaps this person felt that if she was relieved of her life, she’d be out of the misery caused by being such a beautiful, glittering star, always the focus of attention.

  It was fine to speculate when you really believed that someone was just pulling a major publicity stunt.

  Now, Kieran felt bad, of course. From what she knew now, it seemed evident that the woman had indeed been murdered.

  Not that she any of the facts other than that Jeannette had been found in the bowels of the earth in a nineteenth-century tomb, but it was unlikely that Jeannette Gilbert had crawled into an historic coffin in a lost catacomb to die of natural causes.

  “It was so horrible!” John Shaw repeated woefully. “When we found her, we just stared. One of my silly young grad students screamed, and she wasn’t the only one. We called the police immediately. The club wasn’t open then, of course—except to us, those of us who were working. I was there for hours while they grilled me. And now…now, I need this!” His hand shook as he picked up his double-shot of single malt scotch to swallow in a gulp.

  He was usually a beer man. Ultra-lite.

  It was horrible, yes, as Shaw kept saying. But, of course, he realized he’d be in the news, interviewed for dozens of papers and magazines and television, as well.

  After all…

  He’d been the one to find Jeannette Gilbert, dead. In a coffin, in a deconsecrated church now turned into the Le Club Vampyre. Well, that was news.

  The pub would soon be buzzing, especially since it was on the other side of the block from Club Le Vampyre.

  The whole situation, aside from the grief of a young woman’s untimely death, was interesting to Kieran. In her “real” job, she worked as a psychologist and therapist for psychiatrists Bentley
Fuller and Allison Miro during the week. But, like her brothers, she often filled in at the pub; it was kind of a home away from home for them all. The pub had been in the family—belonging to a distant great-great uncle—from the mid-nineteenth century. Her own parents were gone now, and that made the pub even more precious to her and her older brother, Declan, her twin, Kevin, and her “baby” brother, Daniel.

  So, while Declan actually managed the pub and made it his life’s work, she was employed by doctors Fuller and Miro, Kevin pursued his acting career, and Danny strove to become the city’s best tour guide. And they all spent a great deal of time at Finnegan’s.

  The tragic death of Jeannette Gilbert would soon have all their patrons talking about this latest outrage regarding Le Club Vampyre. They’d been talking about it now and then for six months, ever since the sale of the old church to Dark Doors Incorporated. The talk had become extremely glum when the club had opened a month ago. A club! Like that! In an old church!

  The club had, of course, been the main topic of conversation yesterday, when the news had come out that unknown gravesites had been found—and Professor John Shaw had been called in.

  Of course, people were still talking about the old catacombs today. Not that finding graves while digging in foundations was unusual in New York. It was just creepy-cool enough to really talk about.

  Creepy-cool was fine when you were talking about very old gravesites.

  Because they were old—they were the earthly remains of people who’d lived—and died—long ago.

  Not the newly deceased.

  At the moment, though, Kieran was one of the few people who knew that the body of Jeannette Gilbert had been discovered. Kieran was among the first to find out; that was because she knew Dr. John Shaw, professor of archeology and anthropology at NYU, famed in academic circles for his work on sites from Jamestown, Virginia, to Beijing, China, very well. He and a group of his colleagues had met at Finnegan’s Pub one night a month as long as she could remember.

  When she’d see him looking so distressed, she’d ushered him into one of the small booths against the wall that divided the pub’s general area from the offices. She’d gotten him his scotch—and she’d sat down with him so she could try to calm him down.