by Penny Jordan
The questions carved an ever-deepening hollow behind his breastbone, one that he pitilessly ignored.
“The man who would be my grandfather was married,” she continued. “His wife was very sick. They had a daughter and he didn’t feel he could leave either of them. That’s what he told Mamie. I don’t know if it was the truth, but Mamie loved him.” A smile of wistful affection quirked her lips. “Until the last day of her life.”
“Odd that you didn’t inherit her sense of loyalty, given how much she meant to you.” It was a nasty thing to say, but he didn’t like how easily she was drawing him into her poignant little web.
She took the insult with a tiny sniff of hurt, then opened guileless eyes and responded, “My Italian blood must have led me astray.”
He ground his teeth. “You have no concept what kind of lion you’re riling, do you, cara? I may wear bankers’ suits, but I know how to scrap.”
She paled a bit as she carefully wiped her fingers on the cloth napkin he’d provided, but she didn’t intimidate. Her gaze was level when she met his.
“Honestly, Paolo? There’s only one thing you could do to truly hurt me. That would be to take this baby away from me. I don’t think you’d harm either of us and it doesn’t sound like you want to fight me for it, either. You’d have to admit it’s yours, and you hate me too much to do that.” Her lips went bloodless as she pronounced that. Her eyelashes flickered as though she didn’t quite understand how that could be.
While he caustically wondered how she imagined it could be otherwise.
For five years she’d been tossing shimmering ropes of curiosity at him even as she attached herself to Ryan. When he’d met her, he’d been days away from his own marriage, but unable to let the wolves prowling the bar they’d been in to consume her. He’d pulled her and her cousin into his booth while he waited for Ryan, entranced by Lauren’s shy, understated wit and killer legs. When Ryan had arrived, Paolo had expected his friend to remove with her cousin to Ryan’s hotel room, but no. His friend had turned his good-ol’-boy charm on Lauren and she had blushed under the attention of two men.
Engaged, there was nothing Paolo could do but warn his friend against being cavalier with an obvious virgin. He’d been shocked six months later when Ryan had announced he was marrying her, partly because Paolo hadn’t realized they’d kept in touch. By then he’d been so deeply entrenched in the loss of his father and minimizing the damage of his marriage imploding, he’d convinced himself that whatever attraction he’d felt toward Lauren had been a bachelor’s last hurrah.
Then he’d glimpsed her arriving at the church and the magnetism had been even stronger than he’d remembered. Unbalanced by it, he’d blurted out a hasty are-you-sure lecture to Ryan that had gone nowhere. Inexplicably, Paolo had been filled with rage as the vows were spoken. The entire ceremony had become a living hell, his abominable desire for Lauren growing like a snowball careening down a hill. He’d tried to drink it away, unable to make sense of his reaction while longing for the evening to be over.
Then Lauren had followed him outside, looking like the most delectable innocent ever sacrificed to a man’s basest hunger. Ryan’s hunger. Paolo had kissed her. The hard, passionate kiss they’d shared burned on his lips and conscience to this day.
If she hadn’t returned his ardor all of this would be different, but she’d kissed him as though he was the only man she would ever want, and that had made everything worse. He hated her for letting the kiss go on too long, for escalating behavior he’d put down to intoxication and grief into something unforgettable. He inwardly cringed from the weakness it represented and the hurt he—they—had caused people he cared about.
The degradation never left him. Best man. To this day, no one else had asked him to hold the position, always joking it wasn’t in the groom’s interest. Of course he hated her for that. Charleston was merely fuel to the fire while this fiasco with a baby made it impossible for him to feel anything toward her but animosity and suspicion.
“Your silence says everything, doesn’t it?” she said with a little quaver in her voice. “That’s fine. As I said, the baby is my only vulnerability so unless you decide it’s yours, you’re completely powerless to touch me.” Setting aside her napkin with a hand that shook, she secured her dress with crossed arms and stood to turn her back. “Could you close the hooks so I can go to my room?”
He didn’t move, eyeing that slender back where the punishing marks were fading. Her shoulders seemed to have fallen a notch and that made something teeter in his chest before he quickly closed off to anything like mercy or regret. Focus.
Nevertheless, he tasted a hint of self-contempt that he had it in him to be cruel to a woman, even one who wasn’t as defenseless as she looked, but he had a lot to safeguard.
“My family is in government, cara,” he reminded gently. “I’m hardly powerless. I’d hate for you to endure a long flight only to be turned away by customs.”
She spun slowly, her spine stretching as she lengthened it with umbrage. “You wouldn’t.”
Try me, he dared with an unflinching gaze, feeling a catch of the old, reckless Paolo who had gambled too often in too many ways. It filled him with elation.
“Be a good girl and go back to Quebec,” he cajoled, adding a smile of condescension for good measure.
Her nostrils flared as she drew in a breath like a cloud gathering volume. Her fists closed into angry knots of white against her bare, upper chest as she kept her dress pinned to her front.
“Don’t you dare,” she said from between clenched teeth, “tell me to rattle around that empty mansion again. That’s all I’ve done for months and I’m sick of it!”
Her quiet ferocity should have warned him off, but it stoked his inward excitement, priming him for a badly needed contest of wills.
“I’ll do what I please,” he stated with quiet brutality.
“So will I! Ryan was supposed to send for me after Mamie died and instead—” She stopped herself. Her gaze averted as her face crumpled into anguished struggle to overcome unvoiced, but very intense pain.
Ryan had disappeared.
Paolo’s desire to punish her evaporated in a wrench of grief and self-disgust. Her pain hurt him. If she broke down, he didn’t know what he’d do. He couldn’t hold her, couldn’t touch her. He knew that way led to madness.
“Lauren,” was all he could say. He leaned forward, unable to help that her name came out like an entreaty. Don’t fall apart. Don’t make me bed you again.
She took his murmur of her name as an attempt to persuade.
“No,” she refused truculently. “I won’t do it, Paolo. I spent all those years with Mamie because I wanted to and I don’t feel like I gave up my youth the way everyone said I would, but I do recognize that I have only this tiny window between now and when the baby will tie me down. This is my time and I’m taking it. Don’t try to stop me by having me questioned at the airport. You won’t like what I tell them.”
Her harsh threat, so surprisingly effective, chilled him to the bone. He couldn’t take it lightly. “You’re bitchier than you look,” he muttered with unmitigated contempt.
Lauren jerked as though that verbal slap had landed well, but tossed her head to shake it off. “I don’t want to do it. It’s up to you. I didn’t come here to start a war. I’ve told you, I don’t want anything from you. I’ll try to keep the secret as long as I can. Despite—”
Her voice caught and she hugged herself tighter, swaying a little.
He glanced at the plate and calculated she’d had two sections of orange and a bite of banana, chased by a little soda. Damned fool. He stood, prepared to catch her again.
“Despite the circumstances under which this baby was conceived, I’m happy about it,” she rushed to say.
What circumstances were those? his most cynical side long
ed to demand. Better that than dwelling on a memory so bittersweet he couldn’t let it out of its vault. He had to keep his attention on not taking her claim at face value. Paternity could be established in time but the reality of today was, no matter who had fathered her baby, once the pregnancy became evident, the world would look to him as the culprit.
And until he knew indisputably that it was his, he didn’t intend to be accused of it.
“My dress?” she prompted, turning her back again.
“How will you get out of it once you’re alone?” He slipped off his tuxedo jacket and dropped it across her shoulders, swamping her narrow back and making her look younger and more innocent than he could stand.
“There’s nothing I can say or do to keep you from going to Italy?” he demanded.
“I leave tomorrow. It’s a done deal.”
“Cosi sia,” he muttered. So be it. At least she’d be out of the States, the country that would be most scandalized by a pregnancy that spoke of a betrayal against their national hero.
Taking her elbow, he steered her toward the elevator. She was tense in his grip, her weight leaning into his hold more than he expected and she was very pale. The evening had taken a toll. Perhaps the baby had, as well. An unwanted clench of concern firmed his grip on her arm.
At the same time, his mind raced. He had intended to be in the air first thing with Isabella, Vittorio and Vittorio’s parents, delivering Isabella to her parents’ immediately upon arrival. All his Christmas arrangements would have to be reviewed and reconsidered. His entire calendar for the next quarter, perhaps the next year. Perhaps his entire life. Damn you, Lauren.
“You’re landing in Rome?” he questioned gruffly.
She paused to glance up warily as they stepped into the elevator. “Milan. Why?” she challenged with suspicion.
“Milan,” he repeated under his breath, thinking it was both more and less convenient. His agile mind leapt to possibilities.
Thankfully, they saw no one on the way to her room. He took her keycard and opened her door while she shrugged out of his jacket and returned it. When she lifted a strained look to him, he saw only pouted, tender lips, and a melancholy shadow in her eyes. And yet the sensuality was there, the child-goddess yet to be awakened to her full potential. Those conflicting signals of innocence and sin fascinated him. He wanted to kiss her.
“You left Charleston so abruptly after the funeral. I never said—”
His heart clenched. “Don’t thank me, Lauren. I won’t like it,” he warned. And yet... No. He tamped down hard on feelings he never should have had, never should have given in to.
“Goodbye,” she finished with gravity. “I never said goodbye.”
The finality in her tone and the resolve in her expression grabbed him by the throat.
“Ciao,” he managed past the strangling fist. He was clinging to hostile suspicion and inescapable guilt like it was a life raft, trying to convince himself this would be goodbye if he could only prove the baby wasn’t his.
But he couldn’t say it. Not yet.
“Buona notte, bella.”
CHAPTER THREE
LAUREN DIDN’T SLEEP well. Paolo’s husky voice kept snapping her awake as he spoke her name in that sexy inflection of his, murmuring his throwaway endearments. He wasn’t beside her when she woke though, making the bed feel too expansive and empty.
She was such a fool. She’d slept alone more than she had alongside her husband, yet after one night with Paolo she now woke so lonely she wanted to die. What a dope.
She caught a few winks on the plane. International first class was a lot more comfortable than flying small-town air to see her mother in Manitoba or flying in a military aircraft to meet Ryan at his parents’ in Charleston. Funny that she’d flown dozens of times, but had never gone farther than a few states or provinces over.
The realization gave her pause as she waited for her luggage to arrive on the carousel. She was really here, in another country, being bold and independent. Her grandmother hadn’t been able to travel—or do much of anything, which is why Lauren had moved in with her at eighteen; Ryan had invariably wanted to visit Charleston when he had leave. The closest she’d ever come to striking out for adventure had been when her cousin, who was going to school in New York, had begged her to visit.
Lauren’s heart panged with pity for her timid, nineteen-year-old self. She hadn’t wanted to go, but her grandmother had made her. Lauren had been the worst shrinking violet in those days, trembling in her cousin Crystal’s skintight cocktail dress, dreading someone would peek past the loose hair she was hiding behind and discover she was underage. Upscale bars are where you find rich husbands, Crystal had said, insisting they go on the stroll for one. When the tall, dark, insanely handsome Paolo had approached, Lauren had been certain he was the owner coming to kick her out.
He’d offered to buy them a glass of wine.
Lauren had been stunned by his melted-chocolate eyes and her first experience of being hit on, even in an offhand way. Her entire being had become electrified by his admiring gaze. Incinerating with embarrassment, she had peeled her gauche stare from this dazzling man to look at Crystal—who’d accepted the invitation with élan. Gorgeous, wealthy men hit on her all the time.
He was engaged, Paolo had confessed. But that doesn’t stop a man from enjoying pretty company while he waits for a friend. His friend had been Ryan.
Ryan hadn’t made her stammer and writhe with self-consciousness so she’d focused on him and tried to ignore that all her inner workings were fixated on the compelling man sitting so close to her.
Lauren sighed, wondering whether her life would have been different if she had said no to Paolo’s glass of wine. Or no to Crystal’s insistence that she come to New York.
Or yes to Paolo at the wedding reception. An image flashed in her mind of the way Paolo’s hair had fallen over his tortured brow when Ryan had come upon them in the garden, Paolo’s invitation to leave with him still hanging in the sultry air. Paolo’s resentful glare when Lauren had moved to her groom’s side to ease the animal tension radiating off both men, still chilled her.
She had thought the men might come to blows, but Paolo had been looking for a fight and Ryan had known it. He’d said so later.
She could still taste the tang of whiskey that had flavored Paolo’s tongue and had known his pass toward her had only been a drunken, impulsive act. He had made the overture yet she’d always sensed he blamed her for it. His anger still stuck and stung.
Ryan hadn’t blamed her, though. That probably should have been an indication that he wasn’t exactly invested in her fidelity. Instead, it had been three years before she started to get inklings he wasn’t the most faithful husband.
Did Paolo blame her for that kiss? Is that why he’d cut her in two at Ryan’s thirtieth, pithily dismissing her worries that her husband was fooling around? He’d made her feel so foolish for her suspicions, but if she’d gone on her instincts, she wouldn’t have still been married to Ryan when he was killed. She wouldn’t have the memory of Paolo’s gaunt, shattered look when he’d broken his terrible news that Ryan was dead.
She could live without all those other painful memories, but as anguished as her night with him in Charleston had started, she couldn’t regret it. Even in light of his hostility last night, and the likelihood that he’d only been using her in Charleston to curb his grief, she was grateful and happy they’d made love.
He wasn’t.
She had replayed last night in her head until she’d been ready to drink herself into oblivion, letting each inflection and livid glance score her again and again. He hated her for making him betray Ryan, and no wonder. As early as that first time she’d met the two of them, she’d seen a truly remarkable friendship, one born when they’d been children attending international schools where Ryan had been a
n army brat and Paolo the son of an investment banker.
On the surface it had all been playful one-upmanship. They’d competed for grades and saved each other’s lives countless times while risking their own in foolhardy cliff dives and motorbike races, but she could see there had been a foundation of unequivocal trust between them. Ryan might have forgiven Paolo for his moment of weakness at their wedding, accepting Paolo’s word that he was drunk and upset about his own marriage falling apart, believing Paolo’s vow that it would never happen again, but Paolo would never forgive himself.
Last night, Lauren had almost told Paolo that Ryan had cheated on her, but she knew from the one time she’d suggested it that Paolo wouldn’t believe her. And what kind of person spoke ill of the dead, especially to his best friend? Nevertheless, she couldn’t help thinking that Paolo might take a different view of their transgression in Charleston if he understood. She hated knowing he hated her.
But she hadn’t taken the chance to set the record straight and now she’d never see him again.
That realization, studiously avoided through the long night, suddenly impacted her strained, overtired emotions with blunt force, filling her with a swell of pain very much like grief. Hot tears gathered in her eyes and she dropped her face into her hands, edging toward a breakdown in an airport full of strangers a million miles from anything familiar.
“Signora?” A concerned male voice pulled her face from her hands.
As she jerked her head up, she saw her luggage go by. She reflexively stepped forward, trying to grab it before it went around again. The man, a conservative middle-aged Italian in a nondescript suit, retrieved it for her.
It was such an unexpectedly gallant thing to do it yanked her out of her maudlin self-pity and put a fresh smile on her face. He insisted on helping her all the way out the doors of the airport. By then she’d learned he was only in Milan for the day on business, returning to his family in New York for Christmas.