He met her gaze and held it steady, his calm gray eyes telling her she was not alone, and that whatever surprises the evening might bring, he’d be beside her and together they’d cope. He made it possible for her to breathe air into her beleaguered lungs and unclench her fingers, which lay knotted in her lap. Because of him she was able to return Edmondo’s smile, murmur her thanks and not mind too terribly much that Celeste barely managed to acknowledge the toast without gagging.
At length Edmondo sat down again, and general conversation resumed as a melon-and-prosciutto appetizer, the first of several courses, was presented. A delicate chicken consommé came next, followed by artichoke salad with capers brought all the way from Pantelleria, then scampi on a bed of braised endive. Before the entree, palate-cleansing basil and lime sorbet appeared in thimble-size stemmed glasses.
Somehow, Maeve was able to manage it all without dribbling, drooling, using the wrong fork or otherwise embarrassing herself—this, despite having Celeste watch her the entire time like a hawk waiting to pounce on a rabbit. Of course, it helped that throughout the feast, Dario also captured Maeve’s glance and smiled a private little smile, one so loaded with sensual promise that she was almost able to ignore Celeste’s hooded scrutiny.
Between courses, with a lift of one eyebrow and a meaningful nod at other couples gliding around the floor to the strains of the orchestra, he invited her to dance. She melted dreamily in his arms, her pretty dress floating around her ankles like morning mist, and lost herself in the spicy scent of his after-shave and the firm reassurance of his body pressed close to hers. She wished the evening would never end, at the same time that she wanted it to be over so that they’d be alone again.
He scattered tiny kisses against her brow. Held her ever closer and told her how proud she made him, how beautiful she was. And when the chandeliers dimmed and the music slowed to a sultry beat, he drew her closer still and whispered other things in her ear. Shocking, sexy, outrageously thrilling things not meant for anyone else to hear.
With his every wicked word, desire built, streaming through her blood and leaving her body and spirits soaring. Suspended in breathless anticipation.
Perhaps she soared too high. How else to account for her clumsiness when she returned to the table after a particularly stirring slow waltz, and somehow managed to knock over Lorenzo’s wine? One second she was easing into her chair, preparing to enjoy the medallion of filet mignon on her plate; the next, the glass was tilting in precarious slow motion and the contents spilling out to leave the front of her gown stained a dark purplish-red.
“Oh, my goodness!” she cried, mopping ineffectually at the river of wine still trickling into her lap. “Lorenzo, I’m so sorry.”
“Not at all,” he insisted with impeccable courtesy. “My fault entirely.”
But it wasn’t. She knew it, and so did everyone else at the table, except for Giuliana, whose seat was empty. A well-bred commotion arose: Dario summoning a waiter to rectify a situation beyond repair; Edmondo gently insisting such things happened and no one was to blame; Lorenzo apologizing needlessly, again and again. And a sudden hush from nearby tables as attention shifted to the drama unfolding at the Costanzos’.
Maeve shriveled inside and wished she could die. Aware of all eyes on her, the anonymity she craved again denied her, she muttered her excuses, stumbled awkwardly to her feet and fled, her brief Cinderella reign at an end.
The ladies’ room, smothered in the scented silence of gardenias, was as elegantly appointed as the ballroom. Low white leather benches on spindly legs fronted a long marble vanity topped by a beveled mirror. Crystal wall scones shed a flattering light.
Too much light! One glance at her reflection revealed with glaring accuracy in its unwinking surface, the extent of Maeve’s fall from grace. Her dress was ruined. The wine had seeped right through the chiffon to the silk lining, putting paid to any far-fetched notion she’d entertained that sponging it with cold water might be able to effect a miracle. She could have wept.
Behind her, the door whispered open and to her added horror, Celeste appeared. Ah, no, Maeve thought in despair. Not this, not now!
Her mother-in-law glided across the thick carpet, subjected Maeve to a pitying stare and, without so much as a word, took a wand of lip gloss from her beaded purse and applied fresh color to her mouth.
Her silence condemned more thoroughly than any verbal attack she might have launched. Unable to bear it, Maeve said haltingly, “It was an accident, Signora Costanzo.”
Celeste snapped her lipstick closed and leaned forward to inspect herself in the mirror. “You’re rather fond of accidents, it would seem,” she drawled.
Maeve sucked in a shocked breath. “Are you saying you think I did this on purpose?”
“I think you’re a magnet for disaster, which follows you wherever you go. The pity of it is, it touches the people around you, as my son has discovered to his cost.”
Chagrined, Maeve said, “Have I never managed to do anything right in your eyes?”
“You used to dress well enough at least to look the part of a Costanzo wife.” Celeste’s gaze skimmed over her, coldly, pitilessly. “Now you can’t even do that.”
Although Maeve stood at least three inches taller than her mother-in-law, at that moment she felt herself shrink into an old, all too familiar insignificance. “I have tried to fit in,” she said.
Celeste let out a snort of contempt. “You will never fit in. You’re a nobody.”
“You’re quite right,” Maeve said, stung into retaliating. “I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I come from very humble origins. But my parents had their priorities straight. They understood what common decency was all about, and instilled in me a sense of humanity you completely lack. What kind of woman rejects another for something beyond her control? More to the point, what kind of mother are you, that you refuse to accept your son’s wife?”
Celeste turned white around the mouth. “You have the effrontery to lecture me about how a mother should behave? You, who has turned over responsibility for her—”
“That’s enough, Madre!” Suddenly Giuliana was there, inserting herself between them. “Not another word, do you hear? Maeve, mia sorella la più cara, Dario sent me to find you. Come with me now.”
“No,” Maeve said, standing her ground. “Not until she finishes what she started to say.”
“It is not my mother’s place to say anything,” Giuliana insisted, grasping her by the elbow and marching her to the door. “This is between you and Dario. Let him be the one to answer your questions.”
Shaking from the aftermath of her confrontation with Celeste, Maeve whispered, “How can I face him? This evening is such an important occasion for your family, and I spoiled it.”
“You did no such thing.” Opening the door, Giuliana almost shoved her out to where Dario waited. “Get her away from here,” she told him urgently. “In fact, get her out of town quickly, before our mother finds a way to finish what she just started. Enough damage has been done for one night.”
He nodded, wrapped Maeve’s velvet evening cape around her shoulders and ushered her from the hotel to his chauffeured car parked in the forecourt. Bundling her into the backseat, he climbed in after her, slammed closed the door and told his driver, “A Linate.”
Linate was the airport where the corporate jet had landed on its arrival from Pantelleria, her island prison. “Are we going back to the villa?” she asked in numb resignation.
“No,” he said. “We’re going back to Portofino, where we began.”
“Why bother? It won’t change who I am.”
“You’re my wife.”
“Take a good look at me, Dario,” she said, throwing open her cape, while the tears she’d so far managed to suppress flooded her eyes. The city streetlights flashed intermittently over her ruined evening gown, turning the stain dark as blood. “I’m a pathetic misfit.”
He folded her hands between his and chafed them.
“It’s only a dress, Maeve,” he said gently. “Not worth getting upset about.”
“Oh, it’s about so much more than that, and we both know it. It’s my life, disguised under a veneer of high-society money and sophistication to hide who I really am underneath. Your mother’s right. I don’t belong with a man like you. You should let me go and find someone from your own strata of society to be your wife.”
“It’s much too late for that.”
“Why?”
He hesitated, and she realized how often he’d done that in response to her questions over the last weeks, as though he had to launder his answer before daring to utter it.
Beside herself, she struck out at his arm with her fist. “Tell me!” she cried. “If it concerns me, I have the right to know.”
“Okay!” He threw up his hands in surrender. “But not until we get to Portofino. You’ve waited this long to hear the whole story. Another hour or two isn’t going to make any difference to the outcome.”
He’d called ahead for a helicopter to transport them to Rappallo, and for one of his sailing crew to open up the yacht and have a car waiting to drive them the short distance from the heliport to Portofino.
Maeve was shivering by the time they’d taken the dinghy out to the big boat and climbed aboard, though whether from the cool night air or sheer misery was hard to determine. Not that it made any difference to Dario. He’d held out long enough and it was time to come clean. Peruzzi could say what he liked about waiting for nature to take its course, but Peruzzi wasn’t the one watching Maeve come unraveled.
Taking her to the aft salon on the promenade deck, he filled two mugs with the hot chocolate he’d ordered prepared, then carried them to where she huddled on the couch and sat down next to her. “Here,” he said. “This will warm you up.”
She brought her hands out from under her cape and wrapped them around the mug. “Thanks,” she said dully. It was the first word she’d uttered since her impassioned plea for the truth, during the drive to Linate.
Her gaze flickered around the salon, and after a while she spoke again. “Is this room where we began?”
“Not quite. We spent that night on deck.”
“Tell me about it.”
So he did, leaving out nothing. No point trying to whitewash the facts at this stage. He’d behaved badly and she might as well know that from the start.
She sipped her hot chocolate and listened without interrupting until he finished, then said, “So we had sex the first night we met?”
“I prefer to say we made love.”
Her face registered her disbelief. “How could I have done that? I’d never been with a man before.”
“I know,” he said.
“Being saddled with a novice couldn’t have been much fun for you.”
“Fun isn’t the word that comes to mind, Maeve.” Taking her mug, he set it with his on the low table in front of them and clasped her hands. “Even in your innocence, you were passionate and generous, and I couldn’t resist you. But I admit I was taken aback when I realized I was your first lover. You were twenty-eight at the time and beautiful. How is it you were still a virgin?”
“I didn’t have much time for romance. I was too busy building a career.” She looked at him almost shyly. “I’m glad there’s only ever been you.”
Had there? Or would she remember another lover, before the night ended?
“So what happened next?” she went on. “Did we know right from the start that we were meant to be together?”
Hearing the sudden lilt in her voice, he averted his gaze. “It didn’t happen quite like that. You left for home a few days later and I didn’t expect to see you again. But I found you weren’t easy to forget.”
“Forgetting’s always easy. It’s the remembering that’s hard.”
Thinking back to the day he’d proposed, he had to admit that in a way she was right. He’d give his right arm not to remember what happened next….
Late on a stinking hot afternoon at the end of August, he stopped in Vancouver on his way from Seattle to Whistler. Tracking her down was simple enough. There was only one Maeve Montgomery, Personal Shopper, listed in the Vancouver business pages.
She lived in the city’s west end, on the sixth floor of a west-facing apartment building in English Bay. The beach was littered with sunbathers soaking up the rays when he arrived. Mothers unpacked picnic hampers and spread towels over huge logs washed up by winter tides. Children held their fathers’ hands and splashed in the shallow waves rolling ashore, their shrieks of glee occasionally rising above the muted roar of commuter traffic headed for the suburbs.
A pleasant enough spectacle of domesticity, but not something that held much appeal for him, he decided, searching for Maeve’s name in the list of residents posted next to the intercom outside her front door. There were too many beautiful women in the world for him to tie himself down to just one; women who understood how the game of love was played.
Is that why you’re here, because Maeve Montgomery’s one of those women? The question came at him out of nowhere just as he was about to buzz her number.
He stopped with his finger poised. What the devil was he thinking? They had nothing in common, beyond a night they both wanted to forget. Why would she want to see him again? More to the point, why did he want to see her? For a romp between the sheets, when he knew that’s all it would ever amount to for him? To boost his ego at the expense of hers, again?
Disgusted with himself, he turned away. At the bottom of the steps, a leggy blond in shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt had stopped to balance a brown paper sack of groceries on one hip while she fumbled in a leather bag hanging from her other shoulder. The setting sun silhouetted the elegant jut of her hip, the curve of her bosom, the rounded swell of her belly.
Preoccupied with finding whatever she was looking for in the purse, she didn’t notice him. But he had ample time to study her and what he saw filled him with black despair. The woman was Maeve, and she was unmistakably pregnant. About four and a half months along, he reckoned, recalling how his sister had looked at that stage when she was expecting Cristina. And the last time he’d seen Maeve had been in April….
He’d reached a critical point in his revelations. Either he plunged ahead with a truth that the experts had warned could crush her, or he stopped now and continued to pray for a miracle that he knew in his heart was not going to happen. Neither the island, Milan nor seeing his family again had triggered her memory. Portofino had been his last hope that he’d be spared having to tell her bluntly how they’d come to be husband and wife. And it, too, had drawn a blank.
Cool night air notwithstanding, he was sweating. Ripping off his bow tie, he undid the top two buttons of his shirt, strode out to the promenade deck and leaned on the rail, his chest heaving. The moon slid out from the shadow of the castello atop the steep hillside rising behind the town, and shed a pearly glow over the bell tower of the Church of San Giorgio. Closer at hand the sea lapped gently against the yacht’s hull. But overriding them all was the scene unfolding in his memory….
Unaware that she was being watched, Maeve had hitched her purse strap more securely over her shoulder, shifted the sack of groceries to the crook of her arm and climbed the steps, a set of keys dangling from her free hand.
He waited until she reached the top before blocking her passage and, removing his sunglasses, said, “Ciao, Maeve.”
She stopped dead, shock leaching the color from her face. Her mouth fell open, but no sound came forth. Her eyes grew huge and wary. At last, making a visible effort to collect herself, she asked faintly, “Why are you here?”
“I’d have thought that was self-evident. I’ve come to see you.”
As if “come to see you” conveyed a message vastly different from the usual, she tried unsuccessfully to hide her thickened waist behind the sack of groceries. “I’m afraid this isn’t a good time. I have other plans for tonight.”
“Cancel them,” he said flat
ly. “We obviously have matters to discuss.”
“I thought I made it clear the last time we were together that I have nothing to say to you, Dario.”
“That was nearly five months ago. Much has changed since then. For a start, you’re pregnant.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Plenty, if, as I have reason to suspect, it’s my baby you’re carrying.”
She tilted her chin proudly. “Just because you happened to be the first man I slept with doesn’t mean you were the last.”
“Quite possibly not,” he agreed, “but nor does it address the question of the child’s paternity.”
A crimson flush chased away her pallor. “Are you suggesting I’m the kind of woman who doesn’t know who her baby’s father is?”
“No,” he said pleasantly. “You came up with that improbable scenario all by yourself. And we both know you’re lying because that same kind of woman doesn’t wait until she’s twenty-eight to part with her virginity.”
“I’m twenty-nine now. Old enough to live my life without your help, so please go back to wherever you came from.”
“I don’t care if you’re a hundred,” he snarled, infuriated by her attitude. “I’m going nowhere until we’ve established if I’m the one who got you pregnant, so hand over your groceries, lead the way to your apartment, and let’s continue this conversation someplace a little less public.”
“Don’t order me around. I’m not your servant.”
“No,” he said wearily. “But we both know you’re the mother of my child, and whether or not you like it, that gives me the right to a lot more than you appear willing to recognize, so quit stalling and open the damned door.”
She complied with a singular lack of grace and rode the elevator to the sixth floor in mutinous silence. Once in her apartment, she flung open the doors to the balcony to let in what little breeze came off the water, then spun around to face him. “All right, now what?”
The Costanzo Baby Secret Page 13