“Naturally,” she said, reaching for the salt box. “But where is the woman you have here with you. I assume this is who you mean when you speak in the plural?”
“I’m here,” Dana said, strolling out of the laundry with Guaio in her arms. “Just look at this stuffed feline. I found him serving himself lunch out of the cat food bag.”
“Petrarca!”
Bella abandoned the salt box and hurried forward to take her cat from Dana. “There you are, my precious. What a relief to see you. Your mama has been so very worried. She would murder Rico with her bare hands if he harmed a single hair on your beautiful body.”
Andrea was relieved to see humor brightened Dana’s eyes instead of insult at being ignored for a cat. He performed the introduction with a wave of his knife, and then diced tomatoes while on guard against the possibility that Bella might show her claws.
He need not have worried.
“You are the American who saved my Petrarca?” She took the hand Dana held out to her, but drew her close for the usual double kisses of greeting. “What happiness to meet you. I so feared I would not, that you might have gone before I arrived. But I see Andrea is looking after you. He is all obligation, my brother, so concerned for everyone who comes into his orbit. I hope you have enjoyed your stay here on the island?”
The look Dana sent him was a trifle arch, yet still amused. She did not appear to hold it against him that he omitted telling Bella he had abducted her. “Oh, yes,” she said. “Immensely.”
Andrea clenched his teeth, swearing silently as he felt himself respond to the undertone of sensual content in that last word. Immensely, indeed!
“But this terrible sirocco! You cannot have enjoyed that,” Bella went on, heedless of everything except her own concerns. “How I hate this wind! And the sand, faugh! We did not have sand in Naples, and so I set out not knowing how it would be. I could not hire a helicopter, for none would take off, so came on by boat. Thank God it was over by the time we landed, so Tommaso could come for me in the golf cart when I called. But now I see sand is everywhere in the house. I sent Tommaso to tell Luisa she must attend to the cleaning.”
“She may begin after lunch.” Andrea let her know by the tone of his voice that he would tolerate no more interference.
“Certo, my dear brother. I meant after we have eaten your so delicious pasta.”
Bella rattled on at once, inquiring into every detail of the accident on the coast road, the appearance of the men in the boat, and the attempt to carry off Guaio. She shuddered and exclaimed over Dana’s courage in fighting off the attackers until Andrea’s arrival, and combed her pet’s hair with her long, brown nails all the while.
Guaio mewed plaintively and followed Dana with his blue eyes. It was clear he would rather be in her arms, a feeling Andrea well understood. Still he hoped Guaio remained with his mistress for the sake of peace.
Dana moved around the prep table, coming to a halt on the opposite side from Bella. Andrea gave her a slanting glance, thinking she looked cool and put-together, even if her linen shift was more than a bit wrinkled. Her hair was even back in its pony tail.
She was beautiful and altogether desirable, but he much preferred her naked.
She flushed a little under his gaze, and busied herself sweeping up the peelings from the onions, garlic and tomatoes. Tipping out the trash bin, she started to rake everything inside.
She glanced down, but then looked up again with wide eyes. Her gaze centered on his waist where his tan line could plainly be seen since he’d had no time to tie the drawstring of his linen pants as well as usual.
Without doubt, she had seen his boxers in the trash.
The pink tip of her tongue came out to moisten her lips while her eyes turned dark. The movements of his knife ceased.
“Andrea? Are you going deaf? I asked if you have bread to go with the spaghetti.” Bella tapped the toe of her expensive shoe on the stone floor, but her bright gaze darted from him to Dana and back again.
He gave his sister a caustic look. His mind was not on bread. He wished her a hundred miles away while he wondered if the stainless top of the prep table was too chilly for the fantasy that had slammed into his brain.
“Never mind, I will look for it,” Bella said while a slow smile tilted her mouth. “Yes, and for a nice Chianti, as well. What is pasta without bread and wine?”
Andrea heard the departing click of his sister’s heels. He returned to his cooking, scooping diced chunks of tomato onto his chef’s knife and tossing them into the sauté pan. He sniffed the aroma then added more herbs, not because he thought they were needed but because it was his sauce, his kitchen, his meal for Dana.
When he turned from the range, she was watching him. Hunger lingered in her clear brown eyes, but he did not think for a moment it was for his spaghetti. He breathed deep, regretting the interruption of their idyll yet again. And he willed his too-obvious appetite for her to subside, all the while knowing it was unlikely.
They ate on the terrace, as the wind had died away, just as Bella had said, and the sun appeared so bright it might have been sand-blasted to a high polish. It was a surprisingly relaxed meal with Bella on her best behavior. She even brought her knitting project to the table, a fine lace shawl in gray wool spun with metallic silver to which she added stitches whenever she put down her fork.
The only strained moment occurred when Guaio insisted on sitting at Dana’s feet to be fed with tidbits from her plate. Though the cat had never shown the slightest urge for pasta before, he ate lengths of spaghetti from her hand as if they were basted with catnip.
“You need not feel slighted, Bella,” Andrea said. “Guaio prefers Dana to me as well.” He understood the cat only too well since he would also have enjoyed being fed by Dana.
“I wish you will not call him that,” his sister said with a pettish frown. “His name is Petrarca.”
“Yes, of course,” he murmured, “though I’m not sure he will answer to it now.” He reached to scratch behind a brown ear with one finger. “Will you, boy?”
After lunch, Luisa, Tommaso and a pair of extra women arrived from the village. They took over cleaning the kitchen, as well as clearing the sand from the villa. Andrea, Bella and Dana lingered on the terrace, well out of their way. Lemon sherbet soon appeared, along with coffee and mineral water. They sat back in their chairs, enjoying the light fare, the breeze, clear sand-free air and each other. The three of them were still at the table under the pergola when they heard the dull roar and whopping beat of an approaching helicopter.
Andrea, mindful of the plane that had buzzed the house before, rose and walked from the shade, narrowing his eyes to track the aircraft. Its colors marked it as belonging to a lease fleet, and it made for the helipad as if directed by someone who knew the island’s topography.
The chopper settled in a maneuver that signaled an experienced pilot at the controls. The blades slowed. The side door eased open. A dark-haired man, square-built and solid in tobacco brown pants and matching sports shirt, stepped out.
“Che Diavolo!” Bella exclaimed in disgust, setting her knitting on the table and rising to her feet. “What is he doing here?”
The question was almost lost as the helicopter revved up and took off again the instant its passenger was clear. Andrea glanced at Dana met his gaze with a question in her eyes.
“Not the devil, but Rico,” he explained, his voice laconic. “You are about to meet my sister’s husband.”
“How dare you show your face here?” Bella shouted before the man was halfway across the lawn. “I should call the police! You deserve to be in prison for what you have done. I can’t believe you have so little concern for me and my family that you would bring hired guns into this business between us. It is a madness greater than I would ever have dreamed, even of you!”
“Ciao, Bella,” her husband said, his voice dry yet strained as he mounted to the terrace from the side steps.
“Don’t come near me,”
she cried, retreating behind a chair.
“Bella, my love—”
“Do not ‘Bella, my love’ me, you cretin.” She turned toward Andrea. “Tell him to leave. Make him go away.”
“Well, Rico?” Andrea moved to block his brother-in-law’s advance.
“I had to come, had to see Bella and you and the American lady.” Rico glanced beyond him to where Dana had remained in her seat. Disturbed by the arrival of the helicopter, perhaps, Guaio had leaped into her lap and was reclining there, kneading her knee. “This is she?”
“As you say.” The introduction Andrea made was brief and barely civil.
“Signorina,” his brother-in-law began before switching to heavily accented English, “I must thank you with all my heart for preventing the capture of my wife’s beloved pet, and this not once but twice. If the men sent by my father had succeeded, I would be without hope. You have done me a service beyond price.”
“Not at all,” Dana said evenly. “But are you saying it wasn’t you who tried to harm Guaio?”
“Never would I do such a thing. I could not, though I have no great fondness for him.”
“You dare to claim it was your papa, instead.” Bella said with disdain.
Rico spread his hands, reverting to Italian as he answered. “It pains me to admit it, but—”
“He is a despicable old Mafioso with ideas about women that belong in the Victorian Age. But you cannot put your dirty work off on him!”
“It was not mine, I tell you. Papa—Papa is desperate for the return of the collar your precious Petrarca wears.”
“What! This collar you gave him?” Bella glanced at the gem-studded collar the cat wore, as did they all.
“It’s about Guaio’s collar,” Andrea said in a quiet aside as she turned to him with raised brows. “It belonged to his father.”
Rico grimaced as he watched his wife. “I should never have taken it, would not have had I guessed its value. It seemed only a pretty bauble, one I had seen often on my papa’s desk as I was growing up. I never thought—had no idea what it meant to him.”
“But to go so far for such a paltry reason. It’s unbelievable.”
“There is nothing paltry about something set with twenty blue diamonds.”
“B-Blue—” Bella stuttered to a halt, obviously at a loss for words.
“Diamonds,” Andrea said to Dana with a gesture toward the collar. “Blue diamonds.”
“This? You’re sure?” She touched the gems inset in the leather with careful fingertips.
“So Rico says.”
Rico lifted his shoulders and let them fall as he stared from Bella to Dana and then to Andrea. “I see I must tell you everything. If I had come to you in the beginning, Andrea, things might have been different.”
“Yes, yes, just get on with it,” Bella interrupted with an impatient gesture.
“As you will.” Rico inclined his head. “It seems that some decades ago, in the 1950s, there was a jewel thief who targeted the wealthy English and Americans that wintered in Positano and Amalfi,” Rico began. “He terrorized those who lived in the big houses along the coast, for he came and went as they slept, eluded all guards, took only the best and rarest of gems. He was never heard, never seen—except for one time, and that by an elderly lady who said she only saw his shadow. The called him the Ghost of Amalfi.”
Andrea moved to stand beside Dana as he translated. This looked to be an involved tale.
“A cat burglar,” she said on a low laugh as she glanced up at him.
“You have it exactly right, Signorina,” Rico said with a small bow in her direction, “which is why—but I get ahead of myself.”
“Per favore, Rico!” Bella exclaimed.
“Si, si, my love,” he said, falling back into Italian. “The fame of this cat burglar grew ever greater for six long years. Then one winter the thefts stopped. The Ghost of Amalfi was not heard from again. By no coincidence, this was the year my grandfather, my papa’s father, met and married my grandmother, a lady as devout as she was beautiful.”
“Your grandfather was the burglar.”
“A career he gave up without regret, though he still had contacts, friends, relatives who had known him in those days, and who are also known to my papa.”
“Mafioso, just as I have always said!”
“Perhaps at one time, but no more,” Rico allowed with a pained expression. “But my grandfather kept for himself one small memento of those nights when he ghosted in and out of the bedrooms of the wealthy, a piece of tremendous value that was his private joke for his days as a cat burglar. It was as unusual as it was useless, so much so it might be used even now to connect him to those crimes of long ago.”
“My Petrarca’s collar.”
“Of a certainty, and a family treasure that he passed on to his son, my papa, when he died.”
“I begin to see,” Andrea said slowly.
“You would, of course, as you understand family honor. But I had never heard this tale, never knew about my grandfather’s past. When the collar came up missing, my papa was beside himself. I had to confess what I had done with this valuable piece that I thought was set with rhinestones, CZs, glass, anything but diamonds. I might have asked Bella to return it, but we were separated and she would not speak to me. My papa was desperate to retrieve the collar before it was recognized, and so—”
“So he sent men to kill him to get it?” Bella exclaimed. “Horrible!”
“As you say. But you must understand he gave no order that the cat was to die. The men he entrusted with the task of bringing back the collar misunderstood.”
“You are quite sure?”
Rico looked uncomfortable. “Papa may have suggested it would be a good thing if the cat disappeared for a while. He knows poor Pertarca has been a bone of contention between us.”
“What did he think? That we would be reconciled in our grief?”
“Or you would realize I am a better husband when not wheezing from an allergy to cat hair.”
“Now you are suddenly allergic.”
“Not suddenly, no. I have been allergic all this time, my love. But how could I complain when Petrarca meant so much to you?”
Bella set one hand on her hip while waving the other in the air. “You really expect me to believe this nonsense that is coming out of your mouth?”
Andrea thought he might accept it if only because Rico lacked the imagination to come up with such a story on his own. More than that, he had the desperate look of a man fighting for his happiness. That his sister might relent seemed possible as well, if only because she had ceased to shout at him.
Noticing the inquiring look Dana turned in his direction, he realized he had failed to translate the last few rapid-fire exchanges. He would explain the details to her as soon as possible. For now, it seemed best that he referee.
To Rico, he said, “You told your father all attempts to take Guaio must cease?”
“Certo,” he answered fervently. “You will see nothing more of these men sent by him. On this, I have his word.”
“The collar will be returned to him, of course; the sooner, the better. You agree, Bella?”
His sister lifted an indifferent shoulder.
“Thank you, my heart,” Rico said fervently. “In return I swear to replace this collar with another. It may not have diamonds, but will certainly be a fine substitute.”
Bella was silent as she considered that statement. It seemed another good omen. Andrea turned back to his brother-in-law. “It was good of you to come in person to explain everything, also to trust us with this family secret.”
“How could I not after everything that has happened. I knew nothing of what my papa had ordered or I would have stopped it sooner. This I swear. As for the attempt to kidnap Petrarca, I am not so helpless that I need someone to arrange my life for me. Nor am I a man who would want his wife to come to him in grief, fear and trembling.”
“Fear and trembling?” Bella demand
ed as her face flushed with outrage. “That will never happen, this I tell you to your face! You have no more idea of what I am like as a woman than your old cretin of a father. You live in the last century, thinking you can explain everything and I will be putty in your hands. Why I ever married you in the first place is a great, great mystery!”
“You married me because I loved you desperately, my heart, and still do. You must listen to what I say now, for it is the truth! You are my one and only love and I have not looked at another woman since the day I first saw you. If you will but hear me, you must be convinced.”
“I don’t have to be convinced of anything,” Bella said, crossing her arms over her chest and glaring at him.
“But you will listen, yes? This time, you will listen?”
It seemed best to give Rico the privacy to plead his case, Andrea thought. Catching Dana’s eye, he tipped his head toward the steps that led down to the beach.
It was a relief when she rose, set Guaio on the floor and then moved with composure to join him. And yet something purposeful in her movements, combined with how quiet she had been during the turbulent exchange just past, made him wonder if he had made a mistake.
Chapter 9
The estrangement between Andrea’s sister and her husband was as good as over; Dana could see that easily enough. Bella was not the kind of woman to make it easy for Rico, but she seemed impressed by the way he flown to the island to make matters right. Her face had softened as he made his impassioned declaration of love, also. There was no reason they should not reconcile.
Andrea’s recounting for her of Rico’s explanation seemed to make sense. That he was inclined to accept it was also telling since he knew his sister’s husband well.
“How could Rico’s father think he could get away with what he did?” she asked as they strolled with the sea breeze lifting her hair and fluttering the long skirt of her sand-colored shift around her legs. “This is the twenty-first century, after all.”
The Amalfitano's Bold Abduction (The Italian Billionaires Collection) Page 15