“And how did she react to what you told her? That she’d be meeting us all at once?”
“I just told you,” Dante said impatiently, “I never got that far. I just told her that—I told her that—” His face turned white. “Merda!”
“What?”
Dante shot to his feet. “I was preparing her for the big Orsini scene, but it must have sounded as if I were telling her there wasn’t a way in hell I’d bring her with me today.”
“The big Orsini scene?” Nick said, but Dante was already racing for the door.
Falco and Nick looked at each other. “He really loves her,” Falco said.
“Sure seems like it.”
“We could have left him in the dark.”
“I know.”
“But opening his eyes was the right thing to do.”
“Still…”
“Still, another one bites the dust.”
Nick shuddered and slipped from the booth.
“Man,” Falco said, “don’t tell me you’re bailing, too?”
“I’m going to get us a bottle of Wild Turkey.”
Falco nodded. “An excellent idea,” he said, and decided they could wait until the bourbon was half-gone before they tried to figure out what in hell was happening to the Orsini brothers.
The beautiful morning had given way to a rainy afternoon.
New York plus rain. A simple equation that added up to no taxis in sight.
“Hell,” Dante said, and started running.
A bus plowed by, the wheels spraying him with dirty water, and pulled in at a stop when he was halfway to his destination.
“Wait,” he yelled, picked up his speed. He made it to the just-closing door, slipped and tore a very expensive hole in the very expensive left leg of his very expensive trousers.
Who gave a damn?
He got off the bus at Fifty-seventh Street, dashed into the store—open, thank God—and was outside again in less than ten minutes. A taxi was just pulling to the curb, a silver-haired gentleman was about to step into it. Dante tapped him on the shoulder.
“If I don’t get this cab,” he said, “I might just lose the woman I love.”
The old guy looked him over, from his soggy Gucci loafers to his drenched Armani suit to his rain-flattened hair. Then he smiled.
“Good luck, son,” he said.
Dante figured he was going to need it.
Gabriella’s attorney’s office was—it figured—on the top floor of a building that housed what seemed to be a nonworking elevator.
He didn’t give it a second try. Instead he took the old marble steps two at a time, stopped at the top only long enough to catch his breath and run his hand through his hair. Pointless, he thought, looking down at the puddle at his feet. Then he opened the office door and walked inside. The waiting room was empty, but straight ahead, through an open door, he could see a conference table. Gathered around it were Sam Cohen, a portly bald guy in tweed who had to be Gaby’s lawyer.
And Gaby.
His Gabriella.
His heart did a stutter-step. Here you go, Orsini, he told himself. This is your one shot at the rest of your life.
“Gabriella.”
They all turned and stared at him. He knew he had to look pretty bad. Sam Cohen’s mouth dropped open. So did the other attorney’s. Gabriella turned pale. She took a quick step toward him.
“Dante,” she said, “meu amor, what happened to—” She stopped dead. Her chin rose. “Not that I care.”
But she did care. The look on her face, the tremor in her voice, that wonderful word, amor…She cared. He just had to convince her that he cared, too.
“Gaby,” he said, his eyes locked to hers, “sweetheart, please. Will you come with me?”
He held out his hand, held his breath…
She walked slowly to him. She didn’t take his hand.
But he knew it was a start.
It was still raining.
Gabriella was wearing a raincoat, but the rain was already turning her gold-streaked hair wet and dark.
“Where are we going?” she demanded.
“Just into the park. See? The Seventy-second Street entrance is right across the way.”
She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “On a day like this?”
“Gaby.” Dante framed her face in his hands. “Please. Come with me.”
She looked at him again. His hair was plastered to his head. His beautiful dark lashes were wet. Water dripped off his Roman nose. His suit would never be the same again and his shoes…
Her heart, which had felt as heavy as a stone since last night, seemed to lift just a little in her chest.
“Gaby,” he said again, and then he lowered his head to hers and kissed her, lightly, tenderly, and even as she told herself his kisses meant nothing to her, she gave a little moan at the softness of his kiss. “Sweetheart. Come with me, I beg you.”
So she did.
She kicked off her shoes, because how could you run in the rain wearing four-inch heels? And this time, when he reached for her hand, she let him take it.
He led her into the park, empty of everyone but a couple of glum-looking dog walkers. The rain was coming down harder; they ran faster and now she could see they were heading for The Boathouse restaurant. Was it open? It was. At least the lounge was, but Dante drew her straight out onto the wet, deserted terrace.
“Sir,” a voice said.
Dante ignored it.
“Sir,” the voice said again.
Dante turned around, said a few words she could not hear to a waiter who looked at him as if he’d gone insane, but then the man laughed, said sure, if that was what he was determined to do…
And then they were alone.
Just she and Dante, and the rain.
Just she and the man she loved, would always love, in this place where she had foolishly opened her life to him, where she had foolishly admitted, if only to herself, that she loved him.
Why had she come with him? Why had she done again that which she had vowed she would not do, let Dante sweet-talk her into something that would seem wonderful for the moment and, ultimately, leave her weeping?
“Gabriella,” he said, reaching into his pocket, taking out a small blue box…
She staggered back.
“No!”
“Gaby. Sweetest Gaby…”
“What is it this time?” she said in a horrified whisper. “A diamond pin? I do not want it!”
“It isn’t a pin. It isn’t a goodbye gift, baby. Take it. See for yourself.”
“A gift to buy me back, then? Do you truly think I would permit you to do that? That I would let you—let you buy me, as you have tried to do these past two weeks…”
“Honestly, Gabriella…”
“Honesty be damned!” She was weeping now; salty tears running down her face and mingling with the sweet rain. “You are the least honest man I know, Dante Orsini! You made me think—you made me think that someday, someday you might…you might—”
“I love you.”
“You see? There you are, lying again. If you loved me—oh, Deus, if you only loved me…”
She began to sob. Dante caught her in his arms, whispered her name, kissed her again and again until, at last, she kissed him back.
“I hate you,” she whispered.
He smiled. “Yes. I can tell.”
“Honestly, Dante—”
“Honestly, Gabriella.” He drew back, just enough so he could lift the tiny package between them. “This is for you, sweetheart. Only for you, forever.” He kissed her again. “Please,” he said softly. “Open your gift.”
She opened the little blue box only to silence him, to give herself time to get her emotions under control, telling him all the while that he had wasted his money, that she did not want whatever was in that box…
What was in that box was a diamond solitaire ring.
Gabriella stared at it. Then she stared at her lover. His smile was alm
ost as bright as the diamond.
“I love you,” he said. “I adore you. I always have. I was just too much a coward to admit it.” It was wet on the terrace but what did that matter? Dante went down on one knee. “Marry me, Gaby,” he said softly. “And let me make you happy forever.”
She laughed. She wept. And when he rose to his feet to take her in his arms and kiss her, she flung her arms around his neck and kissed him back with all the love in her heart.
EPILOGUE
THEY were married in the same little church in Greenwich Village where Raffaele and Chiara had taken their vows.
Gabriella wore her mother’s wedding gown. She had discovered it tucked away in the attic of the house in which she had grown up the weekend she and Dante flew to Brazil so he could finalize the purchase of the fazenda, which Andre Ferrantes had finally agreed to sell to him.
Gabriella said she had all a woman could ever want, she didn’t need the fazenda to be happy, but Dante insisted Viera y Filho had to be hers. Hers, and their son’s.
So, as Dante told his brothers, he’d made Ferrantes an offer he couldn’t refuse. His brothers had laughed, though in truth, the offer had simply been for two hundred thousand dollars more than Ferrantes had paid for it. The man was a bully and a brute, but he wasn’t a fool.
And so, Gabriella wore her mother’s wedding gown. Her new mother-in-law’s veil. “A tradition, si?” her new sister-in-law said.
“A tradition, sim,” Gabriella agreed, and the women smiled as they embraced.
Raffaele, Nicolo and Falco were Dante’s best men. Anna, Isabella and Chiara were Gabriella’s maids of honor. Daniel, adorable and smiling, observed the ceremony from the protective arms of his happy, weeping grandmother.
Cesare stood silent, an enigmatic smile on his face, saying nothing to anyone until late in the day, when the reception in the Orsini conservatory was coming to an end.
“Nicolo,” he said, walking up to his sons, “Falco, I would like to talk to the two of you.”
“Father,” Falco said, “it’s been a long day.”
“Right,” Nick said. “It’s getting late. We can talk another—”
“In my study.”
Falco and Nicolo looked at each other. Nick shrugged.
“What the hell,” he said.
Falco nodded. “Probably the same old same old about how he’s getting on in years—”
“And the safe is there, the financial records are here—”
The brothers laughed and walked to the study door. Felipe, their father’s capo, seemed to materialize from out of nowhere.
“You first,” he said to Falco.
Falco and Nick rolled their eyes. Then Falco stepped into the room, Felipe closed the door and stood outside it, arms folded.
Nick sighed, and settled in to wait.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-4446-1
DANTE: CLAIMING HIS SECRET LOVE-CHILD
First North American Publication 2009.
Copyright © 2009 by Sandra Myles.
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Dante: Claiming His Secret Love-Child Page 16