“Excellent.”
“Yes. I thought so, too. Because—”
“My attorney’s name is Peter Reilly.”
Dante blinked. “Huh?”
“His office is on Seventy-second Street. He handled any modeling contracts that were outside the purview of my agency.”
“Gaby. What are you talking about?”
“I have been thinking, Dante. About our…our situation.” Do not cry, she told herself fiercely. Just because he’s confirmed all your worst fears, just because he’d sooner do anything than introduce you to his family, you are not to cry!
“Yes,” he said slowly, “so have I. That’s the reason I just explained things—”
“And a fine job of it you did,” she said, and told herself how well she was doing. “I shall ask Peter a special favor, that he meet with us at his office tomorrow, even though it is a Sunday at, let us say, two in the afternoon.”
“For what?” Dante said, totally bewildered.
This cold little speech, the frigid glare, that was what a man got for telling a woman that as rough as it was going to be, he wanted to take her to his brother’s wedding? Tell his entire family he loved her? Tell them that she’d borne his child, that there would be another wedding as soon as they could get to the clerk’s office Monday morning?
“For what?” he repeated, his eyes searching her face.
“For drawing up a payment schedule for what I owe you.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“About resuming my own life,” Gabriella said. “You see, I have been thinking things over. And it is time that happened. This has been very nice but—”
“Very nice?”
“You have been most kind to me. Of course, it would have been better had your attempt to buy the fazenda gone through.”
“Better,” he repeated, his voice low and dangerous. “Buying you the fazenda would have been better than bringing you to live with me?”
“Well, yes. It would have taken me a very long time to repay you but the fazenda was my home—”
“And this is not.”
There was a terrible coldness in his voice. She wanted to put her arms around him, tell him that she had never been happier than she’d been the past days, that she wished, with all her heart, his home could really be her home, too…
“No,” she said, struggling to hold on to what little pride she had left, “it is not.”
They stared at each other while the silence of the chill night built around them.
Then Dante nodded.
“I’ll want my attorney at this meeting.”
“Certainly. I will give you my lawyer’s address and telephone number.”
“Do that.”
He turned on his heel. Walked inside, grabbed his jacket, took the private elevator to the lobby and walked briskly into the night. When he got back, hours and hours later, his bed was empty.
Gabriella was in the guest suite.
Exactly where she should be, he thought grimly, and poured himself the first of the several brandies he figured he’d need before he could tumble into merciful sleep.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SUNDAY dawned bright and sunny.
A perfect day for a wedding, someone would probably say, but Dante knew better. It was a perfect day for a man to wake from a dream and realize he’d come within a heartbeat of putting his head in a noose.
He loved his brother, but better Rafe than him.
Dante showered, shaved, dressed and got out the door without seeing Gabriella. His mood was grim, but he wasn’t sure why it should be, considering he’d barely escaped making the biggest mistake of his life. There was such a thing as carrying Doing The Right Thing too far.
He certainly hadn’t been on the verge of asking her to marry him because he loved her.
Love?
Dante shuddered as he stepped from a taxi outside the unassuming little church in the Village where Rafe’s wedding was to take place. Yesterday he’d done a good job of half convincing himself what he felt was love, but the truth was, love had nothing to do with it. Responsibility. That’s what he felt for her. He was a decent man, she’d given birth to his child.
That was all there was to it.
Dante looked around as he straightened his tie. No cops. No Feds. None he could spot, anyway. Rafe would, at least, be free of the kind of attention Cesare almost always received. This was Rafe’s day, for better or for worse—no pun intended. He’d smile, toast his brother and his bride, then head for his meeting with Gabriella, her attorney and Sam Cohen. He’d phoned Sam at 6:00 a.m., and though Sam had grumbled, he’d said yeah, okay, he’d draw up the necessary documents—child support, child visitation—and hustle over to the two-o’clock meeting.
So, everything was a go. Have a meeting, move on with life. Today’s agenda, in a nutshell.
Dante took a steadying breath, plastered what he hoped was a smile to his face and went up the stone steps into the old church.
At first he saw no one. Maybe, just maybe, Rafe had come to his senses…. Forget that. He could hear voices. His mother’s, high and excited. His sisters, laughing and chattering like magpies. His brothers’ low rumble. Another deep breath, and Dante headed for the small changing room where his family was gathered.
“Dante, mio figlio,” his mother shrieked, and embraced him in a hug that almost killed him.
“You finally got here,” Anna said, but she tugged at his tie and kissed his cheek.
“We’d almost given up hope,” Isabella added, but she smiled and kissed him, too.
His father gave him an inquisitive look.
“Dante.”
“Father.”
“Was your trip successful?”
Dante’s mouth thinned. “This isn’t the time to discuss it,” he said coldly, and turned to Falco and Nicolo, who grinned.
“Hey, man,” Falco said.
“Glad to see you made it,” Nick said. “Where the hell have you been, anyway?”
“Away,” Dante said.
Nick raised an eyebrow, but Rafe saved the day, grabbing him and saying, “Can you believe I’m doing this?”
Even Dante could tell the question was rhetorical. Rafe was smiling, and when he slid his arm around the waist of a beautiful, dark-haired stranger and drew her forward, the look he gave her was so filled with happiness that it put an ache in Dante’s heart.
Had his eyes glowed that way each time he’d looked at Gabriella the past week? Hers had glowed when she’d turned them on him, but it had been a lie. All she’d ever wanted was that damned ranch…
“This is Chiara.”
His new sister-in-law smiled shyly.
“Dante,” she said softly, “I am very pleased to meet you.”
She hesitated. Then she leaned in, stood on her toes and kissed his cheek.
Hell. She was starry-eyed with love, and that feeling came again, as if a hand had reached into his chest and grabbed hold of his heart. But then the organ began playing, Anna and Isabella rushed to Chiara’s side and the next thing Dante knew, he was standing at the altar with his brothers.
The ceremony was brief. The women all cried. Rafe took his wife in his arms when the time came and kissed her with a tenderness that made Dante’s throat tighten.
He swallowed hard. Gabriella had done one fine job, leaving him so confused that even he found today’s events touching.
The reception was at their parents’ home, in the big conservatory Cesare had built a couple of years ago.
Anna teased him about looking so grumpy.
“You could, at least, try looking happy,” Izzy said. “This has been like a fairy tale!”
There were no fairy tales, Dante wanted to tell her, not in real life, but he smiled, said it sure was, picked up a flute of champagne and wandered over to Falco and Nick who were standing in a corner, looking out at their father’s sea of withered tomato plants.
“Man,” Nick said, sotto voce, “
I think I’m on wedding-cake overload.”
Falco agreed. “I’m glad Rafe’s happy but if he tells me just once more how it’s time I found myself a wife—”
Dante put the champagne flute on a table.
“How about we go someplace where nobody’s gonna talk about the joys of matrimony?”
His brothers grinned.
Twenty minutes later, they were in their usual booth, the last one on the left, at The Bar.
The Bar wasn’t fancy even though it was in a fancy location.
The reason was that the location had once been just a step up from a slum.
Back then, The Bar had been called O’Hearn’s Tavern and was a neighborhood hangout downstairs from the hole-in-the-wall apartment Rafe had rented. But the brothers had liked the place. The beer was cold, the sandwiches and burgers were thick and cheap, and the no-nonsense ambience suited them just fine, though they’d probably have flattened anybody dumb enough to use the word ambience to describe the atmosphere.
Then, right about the time the four of them pooled their resources and their skills to start Orsini Brothers, the area began to change. Tired old tenements, including the one where Rafe had lived, were gutted and reborn as pricey townhouses. An empty factory building became a high-priced club. Bodegas became boutiques.
Clearly, the Orsinis were about to lose their favorite watering hole.
So, they bought O’Hearn’s. Stopped calling it that, started calling it, simply enough, The Bar. They had the leather booths and stools redone, the old wooden floor refinished and kept everything else unchanged: the long zinc bar, the battered wooden table tops, the thick sandwiches and burgers, the endless varieties of cold beer and ale.
Only the bartenders knew Rafe, Dante, Nick and Falco owned it. They wanted it that way. Their lives were high profile; The Bar was not…although, to their amazement, it became what was known as a “destination,” which made the four of them laugh. It was where they often got together Friday nights and whenever they wanted to down a few beers, relax and talk.
Right now, though, nobody was relaxing. And that was Dante’s fault.
The bar was shadowed, as always. Comfortable, as always. A Wynton Marsalis CD played softly in the background. The bartender, unasked, had brought Nick a bottle of Anchor Steam, Falco a Guinness, Dante a Belgian white. Their usual drinks, their usual booth, the usual cool jazz…but the atmosphere was tense.
Nick and Falco kept looking at each other, raising their eyebrows, rolling their eyes toward Dante.
What the hell’s going on? they were saying in every way that didn’t require speech, because neither of them wanted to ask. Dante’s mood was, in a word, grim. His silence, his flat stare, the very set of his mouth made that painfully clear.
Still, even a brother’s patience went just so far, and at last Falco decided to go for it.
“So,” he said briskly, “you took the last couple of weeks off, huh?”
Dante looked up. “You got a problem with that?”
Falco’s jaw shot forward. He started to answer but Nick silenced him by kicking him in the shin.
“Just asking,” Nick said.
A muscle knotted in Dante’s cheek. “I flew to Brazil last week. And took this week off. Okay?”
“What’s doing in Brazil?”
The muscle in Dante’s cheek took another jump. “I bought a ranch.”
Falco and Nick looked at each other. “A ranch?”
Falco’s question sounded more like “Are you nuts?” but Dante could hardly blame him. His brothers were trying to figure out what was going on. Well, hell, who could blame them? So he nodded, drank some beer, then looked across the table at the two of them.
“Correction. I almost bought a ranch. It was the old man’s idea. I went down to buy it for him.”
“Our old man was gonna buy a ranch?” Falco cackled. “That’s a joke, right?”
“Actually,” Dante said, after a beat of silence, “I ended up trying to buy it for myself.”
“You were going to buy a ranch,” Nick said, shooting Falco a worried look.
Dante drank some more beer. “Not for myself, exactly. For—for someone.”
The brothers waited. Finally, Falco sighed. “Do we have to guess?”
“You remember a year ago? A little more than that. I was dating a woman.”
“Wow,” Nick said, “that’s amazing. You, dating a—”
“Her name was Gabriella. Gabriella Reyes. A model.”
Falco nodded. “Yeah. Tall. Hair a lot of different shades of gold. Spectacular legs. And what appeared to be one amazing pair of—”
“Watch your mouth,” Dante growled.
His brothers raised their eyebrows.
“You want to tell us what’s going on?” Nick said.
“No,” Dante snarled…
And told them everything.
When he was done, nobody spoke.
He could see his brothers trying to take it all in. Hell, he’d have done the same in their place. A woman from the past. A baby. A ranch in foreclosure, a sneaky lawyer, an option that expired in twenty-four hours. It sounded like an old Western movie, except it was real.
Finally Falco cleared his throat.
“You’re sure the kid is yours?”
“I’m sure.”
“Because remember that time, years ago, Teresa Whatshername—”
“Gabriella is not Teresa Whatshername,” Dante said sharply.
“No, no, of course she isn’t. I only meant—”
“I know. Sorry. It’s just—It’s tough, you know?”
Nick leaned forward. “So, let me be sure I understand it all. You have a son.”
“Cutest and smartest kid you ever saw,” Dante said softly.
“But the woman who gave birth to him—”
“She has a name,” Dante said, his voice sharp again. “Gabriella.”
“Right. Gabriella. And she scammed you into buying this ranch—”
“Did I say that?”
“Well,” Falco said, “you don’t have to say it. From everything you told us, it’s obvious.”
“Nothing’s obvious,” Dante said coolly. “But, yeah, I bought the ranch for her.” He gave a mirthless smile. “Thought I’d bought it, anyway.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
“And the ranch is what she wanted.”
Dante shrugged. “Yeah.”
“So, no ranch. Instead, you brought her to New York. Moved her into your place. Accepted the kid as your own without asking for any proof—”
“The ‘kid,’” Dante said, his tone plummeting from cool to icy, “is named Daniel. And I don’t need proof. Gaby would never lie to me.”
“Right,” Nick said.
“She wouldn’t. And I don’t like the tone of your voice.”
Nick nodded. Falco cleared his throat.
“And you took all these days off because…?”
A little lift of the shoulders. “It just seemed the right thing to do.” Dante looked at Falco and Nick. Their expressions were benign, but something was lurking in their eyes, some truth they seemed to know and he didn’t. “Gabriella was new to my place,” he added. “New to the city.”
“No, she isn’t. She lived here. She worked here. You said so. She even knows your place, from when she dated you. So, try again, bro. You spent the time with her because…?”
Dante narrowed his eyes. “What’s your point?”
Nick sighed. “I don’t know, man. I mean, what could my point possibly be? You were ready to drop five million bucks on a ranch for a woman. You acknowledged her baby as yours. You brought her home, moved her in, spent every minute with her and you tell us the relationship didn’t mean a thing. Have I got the details right?”
Dante shrugged.
“You’ve got them right,” Falco said. He looked at Dante. “Then, how come each time one of us so much as hints at her being anything but perfect, you turn purple?”
/> “I do not turn purple.”
“He’s purple now,” Nick said lazily.
“He is, indeed,” Falco agreed. “And we haven’t even touched on why the lady’s leaving you.”
“No ranch. That’s why.”
“You don’t think it could have anything to do with the fact that she suddenly realized she was living her life, living her kid’s life, on your terms? That she has no money, no home, no anything here or back in Brazil that you don’t graciously choose to dole out, and—”
Dante slammed down his beer bottle. “You make it sound as if I trashed her life. But that’s not the way it was.”
Falco narrowed his eyes. “How was it, then?” he said very quietly, and Dante’s face all but crumpled.
“Oh, hell,” he whispered. He looked up. “I loved her. I still do. I’m crazy for her. I want to marry her. Wake up every morning for the rest of my life with her beside me.”
Nick arched an eyebrow. “But?”
“But last night, before I could tell her that, she turned cold as ice. Said it was time I met with her lawyer.”
Falco nodded. “Seems to me it’s one of two things happening here, bro. Either she’s tired waiting for her ship to come in—”
Dante lunged for him. Falco grabbed his wrist.
“Take it easy, man, unless you think you and me taking this outside will help calm you down.” Dante didn’t answer, and Falco let go of him and leaned over the table. “Or the lady loves you just the way you love her but she’s got her pride, she’s got the baby, and she’s decided she’d rather end this on her terms than wait for you to do it.”
“Why would she think that?”
“Maybe,” Nick said patiently, “because you haven’t said a word to her about what happens beyond today.”
“Maybe,” Falco added, “because of what you told us about how you broke up with her last time. The diamond earrings at dinner routine.”
Dante was bewildered. “That’s how we all do it.”
Falco nodded. “Exactly.”
“I don’t know. I mean, I wanted to bring her to the wedding today. Introduce her to everybody.” He gave a halfhearted laugh. “Of course, I warned her what it would be like, how rough it would be, what the old man is like, how Mama would probably go nuts learning she has a grandson, how the girls would swamp her, but before I could even finish talking, she interrupted, said she had no wish to go with me, that she wanted to discuss repaying the money she thinks she owes me…as if I’d take a dime from her.”
Dante: Claiming His Secret Love-Child Page 15