“I am always right,” he declared with brash but charming certainty. “And you should always listen to me.”
“Don’t gloat! Nobody needs to hear, I told you so, especially not a woman facing a fashion crisis.”
“Then we’ll shop together.”
“Oh, right! As if that’s how you want to spend your Saturday!”
“It’s true I had other things in mind,” he said, the innuendo behind his words so unmistakable that a flash of heat shot through her. “But I am a patient man, and a little deprivation now will merely enhance the pleasure to come later. So finish your breakfast, cara mia, and let’s be off. I will take you to the most elegant boutique Valletta has to offer, and you will model for me.”
But the most elegant boutique was, as she’d suspected, far beyond her means in terms of affordability. “I’m wasting everyone’s time coming in here,” she protested, dragging her heels as he led her under a canopied entrance and into a shop where even the hushed atmosphere reeked of expense.
“It can’t hurt to look,” he replied, brushing aside her objections with a careless gesture.
Just then, a salesclerk materialized from the rear of the shop, a tall, elegantly thin woman with black hair swept up in a classic chignon. When she saw Gabriel, her face lit up in a smile that put the sun to shame. “Signor Brabanti!”
“Ciao, Rosamunda. Come sta?”
“Bene, bene! E lei?”
“Molto bene, grazie.” He cupped Eve’s elbow and drew her forward. “Rosamunda, this is my very dear American friend, Signora Caldwell, and we’re here to buy a gown. What do you have to show us?”
Rosamunda’s glance swept approvingly over Eve. “For such a figure, I have everything!” She nodded to a love seat upholstered in oyster colored silk. “Si accomodi, Signor Brabanti, and I will have Filomena bring you a mimosa. E lei, signorina, da quest parte, per favore—come with me, please.”
She flung back a heavy brocade drapery to reveal a carpeted dais perhaps a foot high, and showed Eve into a large mirrored dressing room equipped with a chair, footstool and small dressing table. “So, signorina,” she said, “what is the occasion?”
“A theater date and a dinner party—and I feel it’s only right to tell you up-front that one outfit will have to serve for both events, and I can’t afford anything too extravagant.”
Rosamunda’s response was much like Gabriel’s. “First we find the gown, then we worry about the price,” she decreed, handing her a delicate cotton kimono. “Remove your outdoor clothing and slip into this, then we will look at your options.”
The options were beyond gorgeous—and, Eve was sure, so far beyond her budget as to be laughable. But to shimmy into the pleated chiffons, the smooth-as-cream silks, the luscious beaded crepes, was too tempting to pass up. And once she’d been buttoned or laced or zippered into a creation, nothing would do but that Gabriel had to see her in it.
He lounged on the little sofa, enjoying his mimosa, and patiently sat through the fashion show. Finally, when they’d narrowed the choices down to six, his only comment was, “They are perfection on you, every last one! So how many do we take home with us?”
“Only one, Gabriel,” she said, thanking providence that she owed nothing on her credit card.
“So choose your favorite.”
“Then I think the black lace.” At least her black silk pumps with the rhinestone buckles would go with it, and she wouldn’t have to spend money on another pair.
“Hmm,” he said thoughtfully. “You do not care for the purple?”
“I love them all, but I’ll be happy with just the black.”
He shrugged, and finished off his wine. “Then it’s decided, and we can enjoy a long lunch at a little place I know of down on the waterfront.”
“I’d like that,” she said, grateful that he didn’t embarrass her by offering to pay for her purchase. “I’ll be ready in a couple of minutes.”
“Take your time, cara. Now that you have the gown, there’s no hurry. We have the rest of the day to enjoy at our leisure.”
What he didn’t tell her was that the ‘little place down on the waterfront’ was his sixty-foot private yacht, and that after they’d been served lunch on the aft deck—an incredible feast of chilled cucumber and mint soup, cold lobster, crusty Italian bread still warm from the oven, and a fruit and cheese plate, all washed down with champagne—he dismissed his crew and conducted her on a tour of the rest of the boat.
It was perhaps one o’clock when they went below deck, and close to four when they emerged into the sunlight again. Three hours of total, utter magic during which she learned that the previous night hadn’t been some sort of fluke. He was an inventive, passionate lover and she…oh, any fears she might have harbored that she couldn’t respond fully to him were quickly laid to rest.
Her inhibitions melted in the heat of his embrace. His bold seduction inspired her to return in full measure the same overwhelming waves of ecstasy he dealt out to her.
She loved the supple texture of his skin, its taste, its scent. She loved the hissed intake of his breath when she raked her fingernails lightly up his thighs; the shudder that overtook him when she captured his penis between the palms of her hands and held the tip prisoner with her mouth.
“You are the most exciting woman I have ever known,” he groaned, the sweat gleaming on his brow, “and you are killing me!”
But most of all, she loved the way their bodies came together, how instinctively they slid into perfect rhythm without either of them having to say a word. The quivering, shimmering acceleration within her body as he brought her to the brink of fulfillment, the shattering destruction of his magnificent strength when he could hold orgasm at bay no longer…they transcended life as she knew it and left her suspended halfway to heaven.
After the third time, he lay beside her, spread-eagled on the rumpled sheets of the master cabin’s big bed, and panted, “We were designed for one another, tesoro.”
She couldn’t answer him. Dared not. Because again, the only words filling her love-dazed mind were I love you!
He turned his head and looked at her from slumbrous eyes. “I want to sail away with you, find an uninhabited island, and spend days walking naked with you along the sand, swimming naked in the sea. I want to feed you ripe fruit and lick away the juices that run down your beautiful breasts. I want to lie naked beneath the stars with you, stand in the moon-dappled sea, buried tightly within you, with your legs wrapped around my waist, and let the waves serenade us with their song.”
He reached across and pressed his hand to her heart. “I want to stop time, la mia Eve. It races too quickly toward an ending I’m not ready to face.”
And there it was, the one great flaw in their romantic idyll. Already, she had been in Malta over two weeks. In another month, she would be gone.
Rosamunda had promised the black dress would be sent out that afternoon, but when Eve let herself into her suite just before five, she found not one box laid out on her sofa, but six, all bearing the boutique’s distinctive logo embossed in silver on the navy lids.
Believing it to be a case of mistaken delivery, she picked up the phone. But, “No mistake,” Rosamunda assured her. “They are the gowns you selected as your favorites.”
“You must have misunderstood. I can afford only one. I’m afraid I’ll have to return the other five.”
“Not at all, signorina,” Rosamunda said serenely. “Signor Brabanti has taken care of everything.”
On the contrary, he’d managed to ruin a hitherto perfect day! Amazed at how easily the sweet aftertaste of love could turn sour, Eve politely hung up the phone, even though what she most wanted was to slam it back in its cradle in a fury, and went in search of Gabriel.
She found him on the terrace, reading the day’s mail. On her approach, he glanced up with a smile that would ordinarily have left her melting. But it faded pretty rapidly under the hail of dress boxes, tissue paper and designer gowns she dumped in hi
s lap.
“What the devil—! Have you lost your mind?” he exclaimed, making a grab for the length of beaded cream satin shimmying down his legs.
“Have you lost yours?” she fired back. “Just where do you get off, going behind my back and ordering a load of clothes you know I can’t afford?”
“Non importa,” he said carelessly. “I have paid for them.
“And you think that makes it okay?”
“Why not? I buy a gift for the woman I admire. Where is the sin in that?”
She wanted to shake him! “A gift is a trinket, a scarf, a photo frame. Six designer gowns—”
“Five,” he said, with maddening good humor. “I let you pay for the black lace. The rest are from me because we’ll be seen together often, and I want to show you off.”
“I’m not a toy poodle, Gabriel, and I’m most definitely not your mistress!”
“Mistress?” He made a pathetic attempt to appear injured. “Where did such a thought come from? You are a woman of great loveliness and deserve to be surrounded with lovely things, cara mia.”
“I’m sorry if what I wear embarrasses you,” she said acidly, “but I’m afraid you’ll either have to put up with it, or else leave me home when you go out in public.”
“You do not embarrass me,” he declared, trying to stuff the gowns back into their boxes. Without much success, she noticed with grim delight. “So much fuss about a few clothes! I thought we’d progressed beyond such foolishness.”
“If, by that, you’re implying that you’re prepared to pay for sleeping with me—”
“Dio, but the woman has a talent for turning a man’s words around and biting him with them!” Patience thinning noticeably, he tossed the boxes and their contents to the terrace floor. “Here, take the damned things and throw them over the cliff, if it’ll make you feel less insulted.”
“I’ve got a better idea. Send them back to the boutique.”
“And be made to look a fool?”
“You’re already a fool in my eyes.”
He heaved the sigh of a man much misunderstood. “If you will not accept them as a gift from a man to a woman he greatly admires, then consider them the token of a father’s gratitude. You brought my daughter to me and have taken the most conscientious care of her, and I am deeply indebted to you on both counts.”
“I don’t need compensation for looking after a member of my family.”
He threw up his hands and let out a stream of unintelligible Italian she swore was enough to turn the air blue. “I am not paying you off, you ridiculous woman! I am trying to show you in what high esteem I hold you!”
“That’s not how I see it.”
He rolled his eyes. “How is it possible that two women can share a blood tie and yet be so different? Had I presented your cousin with five gowns, her only question would have been, Why not ten?”
“Well, if you haven’t yet figured out that Marcia and I are about as different as any two people can be, you’re more than a fool, you’re downright stupid!”
The last of his good humor faded to a scowl. “Have a care, my darling,” he advised her silkily. “You’re testing my patience. There’s a limit to how many slights you may cast at me without retaliation.”
“Really?” Although the look in his eyes warned her she was indeed stepping on thin ice, she tossed her head scornfully. “What are you going to do about it, Gabriel, spank me?”
“Tempting though the idea is, no. Nor am I about to offend Rosamunda by returning her merchandise.”
“Then you’d better hope the next woman you take to bed wears the same size I do!”
He waited just long enough for the silence to scrape along her nerves and let the inexcusability of such a comment sink home. She’d gone too far. Much too far. And she knew it.
So did he. “I take great exception to that remark, Eve,” he said with studied restraint. “I take very great exception to it.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, embarrassment scalding her cheeks. “I’m afraid I let myself get carried away.”
“Perhaps we both acted too hastily,” he replied, heading back inside the villa, and she knew he talking not just about the dresses, but the previous twenty-four hours, too. “Perhaps we don’t share the same kind of understanding, after all.”
A flash of panic seized her. She was angry with him, yes—but not to the point of ending things between them. “Please don’t walk away, just because we disagree on something,” she begged, the sense that something full of incredibly beautiful promise was slipping between her fingers. “Please, Gabriel, let’s try to work this out.”
He paused just inside the doorway and spared her a glance so impersonal that her blood ran cold. “I just did— with a marked lack of success, I might add. I am not a man to grovel, Eve, and you appear to be a woman unable to differentiate between a gift and a bribe. That being so, it would seem there’s little left for either of us to say.”
She barely saw him for the next three days. He’d send Beryl to the nursery, with instructions to bring Nicola down to visit with him. From her balcony, Eve watched as he strolled in the garden with his daughter in his arms, or sat working on his laptop while she napped on a blanket under the shade of the trees. Twice he took her off in his car and was gone for several hours.
Freed from her baby-sitting responsibilities, Eve did a little sightseeing, swam in the saltwater pool, lounged on the sun-splashed beach, and caught up on her reading. In other words, she tried to fill the empty hours, but found time hanging heavy on her hands, and a cold ache in her heart that no amount of sunshine could ease.
No use telling herself she couldn’t possibly have fallen in love with someone she’d known less than a month. Love, she was forced to conclude, wasn’t bound by anything as prosaic as time or logic; it had its own set of rules.
The designer gowns, meanwhile, reposed neatly in their boxes, in the corner of her sitting room. Moral scruples notwithstanding, she hadn’t been able bring herself to leave them lying crushed on the terrace. Bad enough she and Gabriel were at such serious odds, without the reason for their falling out being left on display to fuel the staff’s gossip. The only person she’d confided in was Beryl—and then only partially.
“Well, not that I don’t see your point in refusing to accept such an extravagant gift,” the housekeeper said, helping her layer the dresses in fresh tissue paper, “but it’s a pity to let them go to waste. Couldn’t you offer to buy them from him, a bit at a time, love?”
“It’d take me forever. They cost more than I earn in six months,” she said.
Then, on the Tuesday afternoon, Gabriel phoned her suite. “Is Nicola still napping?” he asked without preamble.
Juggling the phone, the baby, and a bottle of freshly prepared infant formula, Eve replied, “No. She just woke up and I’m about to feed her.”
“Please bring her down to my study when she’s finished,” he said and hung up.
If it wasn’t an outright offer of reconciliation, at least it was better than being treated as if she’d ceased to exist. On a wave of hope, Eve changed into a pale blue sun dress that made the most of her light tan, touched her lips with peach gloss, and presented herself as requested. But she got no farther than the study threshold before Gabriel relieved her of the baby and, with faultless but final courtesy, closed the door in her face.
An hour later, she was summoned downstairs again, this time expecting nothing. And once again was surprised.
“Please come in,” he said, ushering her into the room.
He and Nicola were not, as she’d supposed, alone. Another man, a stranger, sat at the big desk, an open briefcase at his elbow.
“I’d like you to meet Gino Cattaneo, an…associate of mine,” Gabriel began. “He’s agreed to help me locate my ex-wife. Her continued refusal to acknowledge my many messages, or to honor my request for Nicola’s medical records, is something I can no longer ignore. I find myself wondering if she’s met with some kind o
f accident.”
“Oh, I’m sure not!” Eve exclaimed. “You’d have heard if anything had happened to her.”
He permitted himself a small, cool smile. “Not necessarily. I’m not one of her favorite people, either.”
Eve had little doubt he was making veiled reference to their estrangement, but Gino Cattaneo left her no time to dwell on it.
“Tell me, signorina,” he said, pen poised over a pad of lined yellow paper, “have you had any communication at all with your cousin since you arrived in Malta?”
“None,” she told him. “I’ve left several phone messages, but haven’t received a reply.”
“Would you describe her silence as typical, given the circumstances?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been in this sort of situation with her before.”
“But you have always been close, yes?”
“As close as two people can be, with one living in New York and the other in Chicago. We saw a lot more of each other when we were children.”
“Ah, yes,” Signor Cattaneo purred, scribbling away. “And speaking of children, how would you explain her apparent lack of interest in her baby? Would you describe it as typical?”
“I’m not sure what you’re really asking me, Signor Cattaneo,” Eve said brusquely. “If you’re suggesting she doesn’t love Nicola, you couldn’t be more wrong.”
“How can you be so sure, signora? By your own admission, she’s made no attempt to check on her child’s welfare.”
“For a start, I’ve contacted her only through her office and she probably doesn’t pick up her messages more than once or twice a week.”
“Why go through her office? Why not get in touch with her directly? You surely have her cell phone number.”
“She’s on the road, moving every couple of days or so to another town. Given her extremely crowded schedule combined with the significant time difference between here and the United States, the odds of getting her and not her answering service are slim, even supposing her cell phone’s able to pick up a signal from here. And it has been only a little over two weeks, you know. Not exactly a lifetime.”
The Brabanti Baby Page 12