Читать книгу Brazilian Nights - Сандра Мартон, Carol Marinelli - Страница 10

GABRIELLA came slowly down the stairs, exhausted at the end of the long day.

At least the house was quiet. Yara had left; she had her own responsibilities.

Just as well. Gabriella wanted to be alone. There were memories in this house, some bad but a few that were good; she could, at least, gather them to her tonight.

She went from room to room, switching on the lights. She’d been up since before dawn. There was nothing she could do to restore the property from the years of neglect it had suffered, but she’d done what she could inside the house, cleaning and polishing as if for company, ridiculous when the only people who had been coming were those who had wanted to take it from her.

The bank’s representative. The auctioneer. Her attorney, who kept patting her on the shoulder and saying how sorry he was, yet never finding a single way to help her.

And Andre Ferrantes.

She shuddered.

Just thinking of Ferrantes sent a chill through her. He’d turned up, too. No surprise there. He’d sniffed after her like a wolf on a blood trail ever since she’d returned to the fazenda. Lots of sympathetic words. Lots of tsk-tsking. Lots of deep sighs.

But none of those things ever disguised the avaricious glint in his tiny eyes or the way he ran his tongue over his fleshy wet lips when he looked at her.

Today he’d finally made his move. Put his thick arm around her, his way of announcing his intentions to the world, that when he bought the ranch, she would be part of the furnishings.

Never, she thought grimly, plucking a throw pillow from the sofa and all but beating it into shape. No matter how badly she wanted this land, this house, no matter what the reasons, she’d sooner live on the streets than be in Ferrantes’s debt or, even worse, his bed.

The thought was enough to make her feel ill.

And then, the miracle. The second miracle, because the first had been hearing Dante’s voice, discovering him in the room, tall and imposing, hard-faced and intent. For an instant she’d imagined he’d come for her. Searched for her, found her, wanted her again.

Gabriella wrapped her arms around the pillow and shut her eyes.

Stupid thoughts, all of them.

He was here, that was all. She still didn’t know why he’d come; she only knew it had nothing to do with her. But his coming had still saved her. He’d bought the fazenda. For her. At least, that was what he’d said.

So far, that had not happened.

He had not gone to the advogado’s office to sign the documents de Souza said he would have to sign for the transfer of ownership. Instead he had vanished.

The lawyer had no idea where.

“Perhaps he returned to New York,” de Souza told her, shrugging his shoulders. “I do not know, Senhorita. I have not heard from him. I know only that he spoke with Senhor Ferrantes after their, ah, their disagreement.”

Gabriella tossed the pillow aside.

Disagreement? She almost laughed. Was that what you called it when two men went at each other with blood in their eyes? She had fled then, terrified of the consequences, of Ferrantes winning the fight…

Of the noise of it traveling up the stairs.

So she’d gone up to the rooms that were hers, stayed there until de Souza called her name. Everyone was gone, he’d told her, including the senhor from the United States.

“How did—how did the fight end?” she’d asked in a shaky voice.

“Senhor Orsini won,” the lawyer had replied with a little smile. Then his expression had sobered. “But he and Ferrantes had a private talk after. When it was done, the senhor drove away very fast.”

Without arranging to sign transfer papers. Without doing anything to fulfill that “no strings” promise.

Why? The question plagued her through the ensuing hours. She’d come at it from a dozen different angles but she still had no answer, only the nagging worry that though Dante’s initial intent had been decent, his machismo had gotten in the way.

That kiss.

The way he’d held her. Plundered her mouth. As if no time had passed since they’d been lovers. As if he still owned her. Not that he ever had, but that was the way he’d acted when they were together, as if she belonged to him even though she’d known he had no wish to belong to her.

Had it all been an act for Ferrantes? The kiss? The outrageous bid? The promise? The questions were endless, but the one that mattered most was the one she’d posed to de Souza.

“What do we do now?” she’d said.

That had earned her another little smile.

“We wait to hear from Senhor Orsini, of course.” The smile had turned sly. “It is good to have such a powerful man as a friend, yes?”

The way he’d said “friend” had made her want to slap his face.

But she hadn’t.

She knew how things looked. Dante had kissed her and she had responded, but so what? It was a simple matter of hormones and he was an expert at making her hormones respond. Besides, he’d caught her by surprise. She had never expected to see him again, never wanted to see him again. He meant nothing to her; he never had. It had taken her a while to figure that out—his easy disposal of her had wounded her pride, that was all.

She was over him. Completely over him, and—

What was that?

Gabriella threw up her hand. Lights blazing through the front windows from a fast-moving vehicle all but blinded her.

Her heart began to gallop.

“Ferrantes,” she whispered. It had to be him, hot with fury. Dante had made a fool of him in front of everyone, and, he would surely think, so had she.

Tires squealed. A car door slammed. Footsteps pounded up the steps to the veranda and a hand stabbed at the doorbell, over and over and over.

Her mind raced.

What should she do? Phone the policia? The nearest station was miles away. Besides, would they give a damn? Ferrantes was of this place. She was not. Not anymore. Her father had seen to that. He’d told endless lies about her, turned her into an outsider…

The bell was still ringing and now the sound of a fist pounding on the door added to the din. She could not let this continue. It was too much, far too much, and she gave one last frantic look up the stairs before she took a deep breath, went to the door and flung it open.

But it wasn’t Ferrantes filling the night with his presence.

It was Dante. And even as her traitorous heart lifted at the sight of him, the expression on his face made the breath catch in her throat.

Dante saw a rush of emotions flash across Gabriella’s face.

Surprise. Shock. Fear. And, just before that, something he couldn’t identify. Not that it mattered. Whatever she felt was meaningless compared to his rage.

She was good, though. He could almost see her clamp the lid on all the things she’d felt on seeing him again.

“Dante,” she said, as politely as a capable hostess greeting a not-so-welcome drop-in guest. “I didn’t expect to see you tonight.”

“I’ll bet you didn’t.”

“In fact, I thought—Senhor de Souza and I both thought—you’d gone back to New York.”

“Without signing over the deed?”

She could almost see the sneer on his face. Don’t react to it, she told herself, and forced a calm response.

“I only meant—”

“Trust me, sweetheart. I know exactly what you meant.” He smiled; he could feel the pressure of his lips drawing back from his teeth. “Aren’t you going to ask me in?”

She hesitated. He couldn’t blame her. She was far from stupid.

“Actually, it’s rather late.”

“It’s the shank of the evening. Back home, you and I would be heading out for a late supper right about now.”

She flushed. “That was a long time ago.”

“Supper,” he said, as if she hadn’t spoken, “and then maybe a stop at one of those little clubs way downtown that you liked so much.”

“You liked them,” she said stiffly, “I preferred simpler places.”

He felt a stir of anticipation in his blood. Her accent had just thickened. She had only the slightest accent. She’d told him once, in a rare moment when they’d talked about their lives, that she’d been tutored in English from childhood—but her accent always grew more pronounced when she was trying to contain her emotions.

In bed, for example.

When they’d been making love. Her whispered words would take on the soft sounds of her native tongue. Sometimes she’d say things to him in Portuguese. Things he had not understood but his body, his mouth, his hands had known their meaning.

He looked down at her, his muscles tense.

“But you liked what we did when we went back to your apartment or mine,” he said, his voice low and rough. “What we did in bed.”

Her color deepened. Or maybe the rest of her face turned pale. He didn’t give a damn. If she thought she was going to control the situation the way she’d controlled it this morning, she was in for a hell of a surprise.

She took a deep breath that lifted her breasts. They seemed larger than in the past. Fuller. But then, he hadn’t seen her breasts in a very long time.

Too long, he thought, and a surge of hot lust rolled deep in his belly.

Lust? For a woman with no makeup on her face? A woman wearing a loose cotton top over baggy jeans? Hell, she looked beautiful anyway, though he had never seen her dressed like this before. She’d always worn chic designer clothes when they were together. Her own clothes, though he’d often tried to buy things for her.

“I prefer to pay for my own things,” she’d always said with a polite smile. She’d used that same line when he tried to buy her any but the simplest of gifts.

She didn’t need convincing anymore, he thought coldly. She hadn’t blinked an eye at his dropping five million bucks on her this morning.

“Whatever we did in New York is over, senhor.”

“Such formality, sweetheart. After all we’ve been to each other?”

“The past,” she said stiffly, ignoring his remark, “has no bearing on this matter.”

“But it does,” he said softly. “After all, I bought this house today.”

She nodded, folded her arms over her breasts. “Yes. And…and it was a very kind thing for you to—”

“Based on the way you looked at your boyfriend, I have to assume you were glad I did.”

“Sim. I was. But Ferrantes is not—”

“Your lover.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Whatever you want to call him.”

He watched the tip of her tongue peep out, watched it sweep across her lips and hated himself for the way it made him feel, hated her for doing it. It was deliberate; everything she’d done from the second she’d set eyes on him this morning had been deliberate.

“Must have been hell, a woman as fastidious as you, sleeping with a man like—”

She slapped him. Her hand moved so fast he never really saw the blow coming. The best he could do was jerk back, grab her wrist, twist it behind her as he tugged her toward him.

“What’s the matter, baby? Does the truth hurt?”

“Get out,” she hissed. “Get out of my house!”

“This isn’t your house. Not anymore.”

Tears filled her eyes. Angry tears, phony tears. One of the two. He knew damned well they couldn’t be any other kind.

“I bought it. Just as you assumed I would.”

She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “Assumed?” A choked laugh burst from her throat. “I didn’t even know you were in Brazil! Come to think of it, why are you in my country?”

“Don’t flatter yourself, sweetheart. I didn’t come looking for you.”

She knew that. Still, hearing it hurt. It was time to hurt him back.

“I came on business. Family business.”

“Ah, yes,” she said, tossing her head. “The famous famiglia Orsini. How could I have forgotten?”

She gasped as his hold on her tightened. In the few months they’d been together, they had never discussed his family, his father’s underworld connections. She’d have known about it, of course. That the Orsini brothers were sons of Cesare Orsini was favorite gossip-column fodder.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Only that perhaps the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Dammit, you’re hurting me!”

She was twisting against his hand, trying to get free, but each jerk of her body only brought her more closely against him.

It was agony.

Exquisite agony.

The soft brush of her breasts against the hardness of his chest. The whisper of her belly against his. The feel of her thighs rubbing lightly over his. Just the sight of her, all that sun-streaked hair tumbling around her face, that lush mouth, the eyes deep enough for a man to get lost in.

Memories swept through him.

The feel of her, moving beneath him.

The scent of her, when he brought her to climax.

The taste of her mouth, her skin, her clitoris.

Desire, wild, hot and dangerous, took fire. It thickened his blood, ignited nerve endings, brought him to full, rampant arousal. Maybe she was right. Maybe the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. Go back a couple of generations, to the land of his ancestors, a woman would not have dared make a fool of an Orsini as this woman had done this morning.

On a low growl, Dante clasped Gabriella’s shoulders, lifted her to him and claimed her mouth.

She fought. It didn’t matter. Kissing her, subduing her, taking her was everything.

This morning she had told him what she wanted. Now, it was his turn to tell her what he wanted.

Her. Her, in his bed, again. For as long as he chose to keep her there. He’d never wanted another man’s leavings but this—this was different.

He would wipe Ferrantes’s possession away. Replace it with his own demands. His own pleasure. Her pleasure, too, because that would happen, she would soften under his touch as she had earlier today, she would moan against his lips, run her hands up his chest, press herself to him, yes, as she was doing now, moving her hips against his, making those sexy little whimpers that could raise the temperature a hundred degrees.

He groaned her name. Slid his hands under her bulky shirt. Cupped her breasts and groaned again at the feel of them in his hands, all warm, sweet silky flesh straining against her bra, filling his palms, the nipples lifting to the caressing sweep of his thumbs.

“Gabriella,” he said, his voice urgent, and she wound her arms around his neck, sucked his tongue into the heat of her mouth…

Merda! What in hell was he doing?

Cursing, he pushed her from him. She stumbled back, shoulders hitting the wall, eyes flying open and fixing on his. She looked shocked, on the verge of tears, but he wasn’t fooled. He was letting her do it all over again, blinding him to reality, using sex to turn his body on and his brain off as if she were a sorceress and he a fool she could enchant.

But he wasn’t.

“Nice,” he said, as if he’d been in control all the time. “Very nice. We’re going to get along just fine.”

“Get out,” she said, her voice trembling.

“Come on, sweetheart. Don’t take it so hard. And, what the hell, it’ll be easier with me than it was with Ferrantes, we both know that.”

She swung at him again but he was ready this time. He caught her hand, dragged her against him.

“You said—you said you would give my home to me. No strings, you said.”

“That was before I knew you’d already made a deal with good old Andre.”

She spat a word at him and he laughed. Turned out, some obscenities sounded pretty much the same whether they were said in the Sicilian of his youth or the Portuguese of hers.

“You think this is amusing?”

Dante lowered his head until his eyes were almost even with hers.

“What I think,” he said in a cold whisper, “is that you get to have a choice.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means I’ll sell the place to Ferrantes in the blink of an eye.”

“He wouldn’t pay five million dollars.”

“My accountant keeps telling me I can use a couple more nonperforming assets.”

Her mouth trembled. Her eyes filled. It was hard not to feel sorry for her. Hard—but not impossible.

“I hate you, Dante Orsini!”

“I guess the question is, who do you hate more? Me or Ferrantes? Of course, you can always turn us both down. Pack up, move out—”

A thin cry drifted into the room. Gabriella stiffened, jerked back in his arms.

“What’s that?”

“A…a fox,” she said quickly.

She was lying. He could see it in her face. The cry came again. Dante narrowed his eyes.

“A fox in the house?”

“A monkey, then,” Gabriella said, rushing the words together. “Sometimes they get into the attic.”

The hell it was. You didn’t have to grow up in the country to know whatever was making that sound was not a monkey or a fox. Dante thrust her aside and started for the stairs. She ran in front of him and held out her hands.

“Get out of my way,” he growled.

“Dante. Please. Just leave. I’ll pack tonight. I’ll be out by morning. I promise—”

He lifted her as if she were a feather, set her aside, took the stairs two at a time, following what were now steady sobs down a long hall, through an open door, into a softly lit room…

And saw a crib, a blue blanket, a blue teddy bear…

And a baby, kicking its arms and legs and sobbing its heart out.

Dante stopped on a dime. Gabriella rushed past him and lifted the child into her arms. Say something, Dante thought furiously…but no words would come. He didn’t seem capable of anything besides looking at her and at the baby.

“Meu querido,” she crooned, “dearest one, don’t cry!”

The baby’s cries changed to sad little hiccups; Gabriella held the small body against her so that the baby’s face was against her shoulder. A pair of eyes—pale-blue eyes fringed by long, dark lashes—peered at Dante.

The room filled with silence. After a very long time, Dante cleared his throat.

“Yours?” It was not a brilliant comment but it was all he could think of saying.

Gabriella looked at him. He could read nothing in her face.

“I said, is the child—”

“I heard your question.” Her eyes were bright with what he could only assume was defiance. “Yes. The child is mine.”

He felt as if someone had dropped a weight onto his heart.

“Yours,” he said thickly. “And Ferrantes’s.”

Gabriella made a choked sound, neither a laugh or a sob, then lowered her face to the baby’s. Dante stared at her. At the child. He knew he should say something…or maybe he should just smash his fist through the wall.

He did neither. If life lesson number one was that what was over was over, number two was the importance of maintaining self-control.

Dante turned and walked out.