Читать книгу Convenient Brides - Catherine Spencer - Страница 6

CALLIE had been eighteen the last time that deep, dark Mediterranean voice had seduced her into forgetting everything her mother had taught her about “saving” herself for the “right” man. The kind who’d greet her at the altar with a full appreciation for what her pristine white gown and flowing veil signified. The kind who’d cherish the prized gift of her virginity on their wedding night.

Eighteen.

Nine years and a lifetime ago.

Yet although the phone awoke her from a deep sleep at the ungodly hour of four in the morning, she recognized at once who was calling. And so did her heart. It contracted as painfully as if a huge fist had closed around it and was squeezing the very life from her body.

“It is Paolo Rainero, Caroline,” he said. And then, as if she needed further clarification, “Ermanno’s brother. Your sister’s brother-in-law.”

And my first love. My first lover. The only one.

Callie cleared her throat. Swallowed. “Buon giorno,” she said, groping for the bedside lamp, and wished her Italian rolled off her tongue with the same fluid, exotic ease that he brought to English. “What a surprise to hear from you after all this time, Paolo. How are you?”

He let a beat of time pass before answering, and in that short but endless silence, any fledgling hope she’d entertained that he was in the U.S., and wanted to renew acquaintance with her for the pure pleasure of her company, shriveled and died. Fear slithered up her spine, leaving her skin unpleasantly clammy, and she knew with sudden, chilling certainty that he had nothing good to tell her.

As if to ward off the blow he was about to deliver, she asked with desperate good cheer, “Where are you calling from?”

“Rome. Caroline—”

“Are you sure? You sound as close as if you’re just next door. I’d never have guessed you’re half a world away. It’s amazing what—”

He recognized her mindless babble for the delaying tactic it was. “Caroline,” he said again, cutting her off more forcefully this time, “I’m afraid I have bad news.”

The children! Something had happened to the children!

Her mouth ran dry. Freed from the vicious hold, her heart hurled itself into a punishing, uneven beat somewhere in the vicinity of her stomach. “How bad?” she asked shakily.

“Very bad, cara. There has been a yachting accident. An explosion at sea.” He paused again. Another horribly telling hesitation. “Ermanno and Vanessa were aboard at the time.”

“With the children?” She forced the question past parched lips.

“No. With four guests and a crew of six. They left the children with my parents.”

A thread of relief wound its way through her mounting dread. “And? Don’t leave me hanging like this, Paolo. How badly is my sister hurt?”

“I’m saddened to have to tell you, there were no survivors.”

The softly lit room swam before her eyes. “None at all?”

“None.”

Her beautiful, generous, loving sister dead? Her body blown to pieces, mutilated beyond recognition?

Callie scrunched her eyes shut against the horrifying images filling her mind. Clutching the phone in a white-knuck-led grip, she whispered, “How can you be so sure?”

“The explosion was visible for miles. Other yachts in the area raced to the scene to lend assistance. Search and rescue vessels went into immediate operation. Their efforts met with no success. It was clear no one could have survived such a blast.”

“But what if they were thrown into the sea and made it to shore? What if you stopped searching too soon? Vanessa’s a strong swimmer. She might—”

“No, Caroline,” he said. “It is not possible. The devastation was too great, the evidence, too…graphic to be mistaken for anything other than what it was.”

He had never before spoken to her with such kindness; with such compassion. That he did so now nearly killed her.

A huge balloon of grief rose in her throat, almost choking her. A sound filled her ears; echoed repeatedly in the dimly lit bedroom. A sound so primitive, she could barely conceive that it poured from her.

Paolo’s voice pierced the black, terrible mists enveloping her. “Is there anyone with you, Caroline?”

What sort of question was that? And by what right did he, of all people, dare to ask it? “It’s not yet dawn, and I’m in bed,” she said rawly. “Alone.”

His voice caressed her. “You should not be, not at a time like this.”

Not in bed? she wondered. Or not alone?

“You are in shock, as are we all,” he continued, clarifying his remark. “Is there no one you can call on, to help you get through the next few hours until the necessary travel arrangements are in place?”

“Travel?”

“To Rome. For the funerals. They will take place later in the week. Naturally you will attend.”

Naturally! Nonetheless, she bristled at his tone, so clearly that of a man not accustomed to being thwarted. Some things never changed.

“I’ll be there,” she said. “How are the children coping?”

“Not well. They’re old enough to understand what death means. They know they’ll never again see their parents. Gina cries often, and although he tries to be brave, I know that Clemente sheds many a private tear, too.”

Pushing aside her own grief to make room for theirs, Callie said, “Please give them my love and tell them their…their aunt Callie will see them soon.”

“Of course—for what it’s worth.”

Anger knifed through her, intense as forked lightning. “Are you questioning my sincerity, Paolo?”

“Not in the least,” he replied smoothly. “I’m simply stating a fact. Of course the twins are aware they have an aunt who lives in America, but they don’t know you. You’re a name, a photograph, someone who never forgets to send them lovely gifts at Christmas and on their birthdays, or postcards from the interesting foreign places you visit. But you found the time to come to see them only once, when they were infants and much too young to remember you. For the rest, you depended on their parents to bring them to America to visit you—and how often did that occur? Two, three times, in the last eight years?”

His sigh drifted gently, regretfully, over the phone. “The unfortunate truth is, Caroline, you and the children are almost strangers to one other. A sad case of ‘out of sight, out of mind,’ I’m afraid.”

He might see it that way, but Callie knew differently. Not a day went by that she didn’t think of those two adorable children. She spent hours poring over fat albums of photographs depicting every stage in their lives, from when they were just a few hours old, to the present day. Her staircase wall was filled with framed pictures of them. Their most recent portraits occupied pride of place by her bed, on the mantelpiece in her living room, on her desk at the office. She could have picked them out unerringly in a crowd of hundreds of children with the same dark hair and brown eyes, so well did she know every feature, every expression, every tiny detail that made them unique.

Strangers, Paolo? In your dreams!

“Nonetheless, I am their aunt, and they can count on me to be there for them now,” she told him. “I’ll leave here tomorrow and barring any unforeseen delays, should be with them the day after that.”

“Then I’ll send you the details of your flight later today.”

“Please don’t trouble yourself, Paolo,” she said coolly. “I can well afford to make my own reservations, and will take care of them myself.”

“No, Caroline, you will not,” he said flatly. “This has nothing to do with money, it has to do with family looking after family—and regardless of how you might perceive it, we are inextricably connected through the marriage of your sister to my brother, are we not?”

Oh, yes, Paolo, she thought, smothering the burst of hysterical laughter rising in her throat at the irony of his question. That, and a whole lot more than you can begin to imagine!

Mistaking her silence for disagreement, he said, “This is no time to quibble over the fine print of our association, Caroline. No matter which way you look at it, we have a niece and nephew in common, and must rally together for their good.”

How nauseatingly self-righteous he sounded! How morally upright! If she hadn’t known better, Callie might have been fooled into believing he really was as honorable and responsible as he made himself out to be.

“I couldn’t agree more, Paolo,” she said, with deceptive meekness. “I wouldn’t dream of turning my back on the twins when they need all the emotional support they can get. I’ll be in Rome no later than Tuesday.”

“And you will allow me to make your flight arrangements?”

Why not? Pride had no place in the tragic loss of her sister, and Callie was having trouble enough holding herself together. She couldn’t afford to squander her strength when she had much bigger battles to wage than besting Paolo Rainero on the trifling matter of who sprang for the price of her ticket. She could pay him back later, when everything else was settled. “If you insist.”

“Eccellente! Thank you for seeing things my way.”

You won’t thank me for long, Paolo, she thought. Not once you discover that when I come home again, I’m bringing those children with me!

Outside the converted eighteenth-century palazzo whose entire top floor housed his parents’ apartment, the traffic and crowds, both so much a part of everyday Rome, went about their noisy business as usual. Immediately beyond the leather-paneled walls of his father’s library, however, a mournful hush reigned. Dropping the receiver back in its cradle, Paolo left the room and made his way down the long hall to the day salon where his parents waited.

His mother had aged ten years in the last two days. Weeping and sleeplessness left her beautiful eyes ringed with shadows. Her mouth trembled uncontrollably. Silver, which surely hadn’t been there a week ago, glinted in her thick black hair. She clutched his father’s hand almost convulsively, as if only by doing so could she anchor herself to sanity.

“Well? How did she take the news? Is she coming for the funerals?” Cultured, wealthy in his own right, influential, and deeply respected in the international world of high finance, Salvatore Rainero did not surrender easily to defeat. But Paolo heard it in the subdued tone with which his father uttered the questions; recognized it in the slump of those broad, patrician shoulders.

“She’ll be here.” Paolo shrugged wearily, his own sense of loss lying heavy in the pit of his stomach. “As for how she took the news, she was shocked, bereft, as are we all.”

His mother dabbed at her eyes with a fine linen handkerchief. “Did she mention the children?”

“Yes, but nothing that you need to worry about. She sent them her love.”

“Does she have any idea that—?”

“None. Nor did it occur to her to ask. But she was unprepared for my call and most probably not thinking clearly. It’s possible she might wonder, over the next two days. And even if she does not, once they’re read, we won’t be able to hide the terms of the wills from her.”

His mother let out an anguished moan. “And who’s to say how she will react?”

“She may react any way she pleases, Lidia,” Paolo’s father said grimly, “but she will not create havoc with our grandchildren, because I will not allow her to do so. In declining to take an active role in their lives for the past eight years, she forfeits the right to have any say in their future.” His fierce gaze swung to Paolo. “Did you have to work hard to persuade her to let us bring her over here at our expense?”

“Not particularly.”

“Good!” A spark of triumph lightened the grief in the old man’s eyes. “Then she can be bought.”

“Oh, Salvatore, that’s cruel!” his wife objected. “Caroline is mourning her sister’s death too deeply to care about monetary matters.”

“I have to agree,” Paolo felt obliged to add. “I suspect the poor thing was so numbed by my news that I could have persuaded her the moon was made of cheese, if I’d put my mind to it. Once she gets past the initial shock of this tragedy, she might well change her mind about accepting our offer. We met only briefly and nine years ago at that, but I remember her as being a singularly proud and independent young woman.”

“You’re wrong, both of you.” His father heaved himself up from the sofa to pace the length of the room. “She was anything but proud in the way she threw herself at you after the wedding, Paolo. If you’d given her the slightest encouragement, you’d soon have followed in your brother’s footsteps, and found yourself at the altar, too.”

Again, Paolo’s mother spoke up, unnaturally vigorous in her defense of someone she hardly knew, he thought. “You’re being unfair, Salvatore! I spoke to Caroline at length when she was here, and she was very excited about starting her university studies that September. I don’t believe she’d have abandoned her plans, even if Paolo had encouraged her.”

But there was no even if about it, Paolo thought, a disconcerting pang of shame rising from the ashes of the murky memories suddenly looming up in his mind. Despite his many other excesses in those days, alcohol wasn’t among them. But the night of his brother’s wedding, he’d had too much champagne to remember much beyond the fact that the bride’s pretty sister had been young, impressionable, eminently desirable and willing—though not nearly as experienced as she’d pretended to be.

One night with a novice had been enough to make him regret having seduced her. He wasn’t accustomed to his women being so generous, so trustingly naive. Caroline’s wide-eyed innocence, her sincerity and simple goodness, unnerved him—him, Paolo Giovanni Vittorio Rainero, a man afraid of nothing and no one. But she’d made him look too deep inside himself and he hadn’t liked what he saw.

He was the one who came from a long line of blue bloods, yet beside her he felt undeserving; an emotional pauper with little of worth to offer a girl who could have been a princess. She deserved better than what he could give her.

Facing her the next morning…well, in all truth, he hadn’t. Couldn’t. Her lowered gaze, the crushed disappointment touching her lovely mouth, and knowing he was the one who had put them there, had been more than he could bear. Hangover notwithstanding, he’d made a fast escape.

He hadn’t expected to run into her again, when he stopped by his parents’ apartment, a few days after the wedding. But he’d recognized at once that her earlier infatuation for him had metamorphosed into chilly disgust. A week had been more than long enough for her to realize Paolo Rainero wasn’t at all her kind of man.

Judging from the tone of their recent phone call, time hadn’t exactly mellowed her opinion of him. If his parents’ hopes for the future were to be realized, he was going to have to work very hard to polish his image, and charm her into compliance by whatever means necessary.

The realization did not sit well with him. In fact, it left a distinctly bad taste in his mouth. Seduction for seduction’s sake, whether or not it involved the physical, had long since lost its flavor, especially when it came with a hidden agenda.

“Where are the twins now?” he inquired.

“Tullia took them to the park,” his father said. “We thought a change of scene would be good for them.”

Paolo thought so, too. Huge bouquets had arrived daily since the accident, tokens of sympathy from the family’s vast circle of friends and acquaintances. The overpowering scent of lilies filled the apartment with funereal solemnity. There’d be enough of that at the church on Saturday, and again on Monday, when the immediate family accompanied the remains to the island for the private burial rites.

His mother drifted to the balcony overlooking the rear courtyard. “I don’t know how the children would cope without Tullia,” she said fretfully. “She’s been with them since they were babies, and they cling to her now. They seem to need her more than they need us.”

“And they need us more than they need an aunt they wouldn’t know from Adam,” Salvatore interjected, slipping an arm around her waist and leading her from the room. “Come, Lidia, my love. Stop worrying about Caroline Leighton and start looking after yourself. You’ve barely closed your eyes since we heard the dreadful news, and you need to rest.”

She went unresistingly, but turned in the doorway at the last second. “Will you still be here later, Paolo?”

“Yes,” he said, his glance locking briefly with his father’s and correctly reading the plea he saw there. “I’ll be here for as long as you both need me. You can count on me to do whatever must be done to keep our family intact.”

Although determined to keep such a promise, he hoped he could do so and not end up despising himself for the methods he might have to employ.

The Air France Boeing 777-200 touched down at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris just after eleven o’clock on the Tuesday morning, completing the first leg of her journey to Rome. She’d left San Francisco exactly ten hours earlier, which wasn’t such an inordinately long time to be in the air, especially not when she’d reclined in Executive Class comfort the entire distance. But the fact that it was only two in the morning, Pacific Standard Time, played havoc with Callie’s inner clock, not to mention her appearance.

She’d never been able to cry prettily, the way some women could, and her face bore unmistakable evidence of weeping. It would take considerable cosmetic expertise and every spare second of the two hours before her connecting flight to Rome, to disguise the ravages of grief. But disguise them she would, because when she faced Paolo Rainero again, she intended to be in control—of herself and the situation.

Perhaps if, after deplaning, she’d been less involved in plotting her strategies, she might have noticed him sooner. As it was, she’d have walked straight past him if he hadn’t planted himself so firmly in her path that she almost tripped over his feet.

“Ciao, Caroline,” he greeted her, and before she had time to recover from the impact of Paolo Rainero’s voice assaulting her yet again out of the blue, he’d caught her by the shoulders and bent his head to press a light, continental kiss on each of her cheeks.

She’d wondered if she’d recognize him. If he’d changed much in nine years. If the dissolute life he’d pursued in his early twenties had left only the crumbling remains of his formerly stunning good looks. Would the aristocratic planes of his face have disappeared under a sagging layer of flesh, with his sleek olive skin crisscrossed by a road map of broken veins? Would his middle have grown soft, his hairline receded?

She’d prayed it would be so. It would make seeing him again so much easier. But the man confronting her had lost nothing of his masculine beauty. Rather, he had redefined it.

His shoulders had broadened with maturity, his chest deepened, but not an ounce of fat clung to his frame. The clean, hard line of his jaw, the firm contours of his mouth, spoke of singleminded purpose. There was dignity and strength in his bearing. Authority in his somber, dark brown gaze.

He had a full head of hair. Thick, black, silky hair that begged a woman to run her fingers through it. And only the faintest trace of laugh lines fanned out from the corners of his eyes.

Stunned, she stared at him, all hope that he’d prove himself as susceptible to the passage of time as any other man, evaporating in a rush of molten awareness that battered her with the force of a tornado.

It wasn’t fair. He’d shown a flagrant disregard for the frailty of human life, driving too fast, living on the edge, and daring death to slow him down. At the very least, he might have had the good grace to look a little worn around the edges. Instead he stood there, splendidly tall and confident—and still dangerously attractive, despite the tragic reason for his coming into her life again.

Woefully conscious of her own disarray, both physical and mental, and unable to do anything about either, she stammered, “Why are you here?”

He smiled just enough for her to see that he still had all his teeth, too, and that they were every bit as white and even as she remembered. Amazing, really. She’d have thought some irate husband would have knocked a few of them out by now. Paolo had had quite a taste for other men’s wives, when he wasn’t seducing virgins.

“Why else would I be here, but to meet you, Caroline?”

She wanted to smack him for the way he seemed to suck the oxygen out of the atmosphere and leave her fighting to breathe. “Well, in case you’ve forgotten, you booked me all the way through to Rome, and we’re not even in Italy yet.”

“There’s been a slight change of itinerary,” he said, rolling his R’s in melodic cadence. “You will be traveling the rest of the way with me, in the Rainero corporate jet.”

“Why?”

He lifted his impeccably clad shoulders in a shrug. “Why not?”

“Because there’s no need. I have a ticket on a regular flight. All other considerations apart, what about my luggage? The inconvenience of my not showing up—”

“Do not concern yourself, Caroline,” he purred. “I have seen to it. By standing here throwing up obstacles, you inconvenience no one but me.”

Another thing about him remained unchanged. He was as arrogant as ever, and it was still all about him! “Well, heaven forbid you should be put out in any way, Paolo!”

He regarded her with benign tolerance, the way she might have regarded a fractious two-year-old trying to bite her ankle. “You are exhausted and sad, cara, and it’s making you a little capricciosa,” he decided, relieving her of her carry-on bag with one hand, and cupping her elbow with the other.

“That shouldn’t come as any surprise, all things considered!”

“Nor does it, which is why I thought to spare you the tedium of spending time waiting here in a crowded airport, when it is within my power to have you already safely arrived in Rome before your originally scheduled flight leaves Paris.”

“I don’t mind the wait.” She tried ineffectually to squirm free of his hold. “I’m actually looking forward to the chance to freshen up after being cooped up in an aircraft for ten hours.”

“Be assured, the company jet has excellent facilities, all of which are at your disposal,” he countered. “Come, now, Caroline. Allow me to spoil you a little, especially now when you have all you can do to hold yourself together.”

Supremely confident that he’d overcome her objections, he swept her out of the terminal and into the back of a waiting limousine. After a brief exchange with the uniformed driver, Paolo joined her, settling himself beside her close enough that his body warmth crept out to touch her.

Unnerved, she inched farther into the corner as the car joined the traffic heading out of the airport toward the city center. Noticing, he smiled and said, “Try to relax, cara. I am not abducting you and I intend you no harm. You’re perfectly safe with me.”

Safe with him? Not if he was anything like the man he’d been nine years ago! Yet his concern seemed genuine. He appeared more tuned in to her feelings, and less focused on his own. Could she have misjudged him, and he had changed, after all?

Callie supposed anything was possible. Heaven knew, she was nothing like the girl he’d seduced, then cast aside so callously. Perhaps they’d both grown up.

“Ah!” His shoulder brushed hers as he leaned past her to look out of the window. “We’ll soon be there.”

Huddling even farther into the corner, she said, “Where’s ‘there’ exactly?”

“Le Bourget. It’s the airport most commonly used by private jets.”

Soon—much too soon for Callie’s peace of mind—they arrived, and in short order had cleared security, passed through the departure gate and were crossing the open tarmac to where a Lear jet waited, its engines idling. Buffeted by the wind, she mounted the steps to the interior, and barely had time to fasten her seat belt before the aircraft was cleared for takeoff.

Was she crazy to have allowed Paolo to coerce her into changing her travel plans? she wondered, as Paris fell away below, and the jet turned its nose to the southeast. Did he have an ulterior motive? Or was she looking for trouble where none existed?

“You’re very silent, Caroline,” he observed, some half hour later. “Very withdrawn.”

“I just lost my sister,” she said. “I’m not exactly in a party mood.”

“Nor am I suggesting you should be, but it occurs to me you might wish to discuss the funeral arrangements…” He paused fractionally, his long fingers idly caressing a glass of sparkling water. “Or the children.”

“No,” she said, turning to stare at the great expanse of blue sky beyond the porthole to her left. “Not right now. It’s all I can do to come to terms with the fact that I’ll never see Vanessa again. I keep hoping to wake up and find it’s all a horrible dream. Perhaps once I’ve seen the children, and your parents…How are they coping with this terrible tragedy, by the way? Your parents, I mean?”

“They’re even more devastated than you claim to be.”

Sure she must not have heard him correctly, she swung back to face him and found him watching her with chilling intensity. “Are you suggesting I’m faking how I feel, Paolo?”

Raising his glass, he rotated it so that its cut crystal facets caught the light and flung it at her in a blur of dazzling reflections. “Well, if you are,” he said silkily, “it wouldn’t be the first time, would it, cara?”

There was nothing kindly in his regard now, nothing compassionate, nor did he pretend otherwise. In that instant, she knew that she should have listened to her instincts. Because, in stepping aboard the Rainero corporate jet, she’d made a fatal mistake.

She’d put herself at the mercy of a man who, whatever his stated reasons for meeting her in Paris, no more cared about her now than he had nine years ago. He was exactly the same callous heel who had ruined her life once, and given half a chance, he’d do the very same thing a second time.