Читать книгу Ultimate Romance Collection - Rebecca Winters, Amalie Berlin - Страница 108
ОглавлениеIN NO TIME Tuccia reappeared wearing a pair of white slacks and sandals toned with a café-au-lait-and-white print short-sleeved top. She sat on the end of the couch with one leg tucked under her. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
“As you know, the Sicilian pastry chef I’d planned to hire is in the hospital. But there’s no telling when he’ll be well enough to work again. Mamma found out he has developed an unexpected heart condition. I had high hopes for him. With his exciting creations, he would have brought a new clientele to our ristorante. Except for my mother’s cooking, there’s no one to equal him.”
Tuccia sat forward with a troubled look on her lovely face. “My zia says she’s the most superb cook in all Sicily. That means she has to know what she is talking about. What will you do?”
“Since I’m in charge of the ristorante at the castello, I’m the only one who has the authority to fix the problem. In an emergency, there are times when you have to do it yourself.”
Her eyes widened. “You mean you’re going to be the pastry chef?”
“It’ll be nothing new to me while I find someone else. But right now I’m concerned about you. Have you decided what you want to do with your life?”
A slow smile broke out on her face. “That was a trick question, right?”
The woman was getting to him. “Not at all. Since you never intended to follow through on the betrothal, what had you imagined you would be doing when you finally made your escape?”
Her smile faded. She looked away. “To be honest I only thought about how to subsist until my parents stopped looking for me and go from there.”
Cesare had assumed as much. “If I hadn’t offered you safe passage on the jet this morning, what was your exact plan when you reached Catania?”
“I was going to find temporary work in a greenhouse through an old school friend until I’m forced to move on for fear of being spotted.”
He hadn’t expected to hear that. “Are you a gardener with a knowledge of horticulture that would make you an asset at the greenhouse?”
“Of course not.”
“Yet you’re willing to prevail on the friend you mentioned to get a job there?”
“Yes. She works at the university and could help me find a position for a while. But because you told me not to use my phone, I haven’t talked to her yet and wouldn’t be able to until I reached Catania.”
“Do you have an affinity for flowers?”
Her head flew back. “Have you forgotten I’m a princess who has no knowledge of anything practical? But I’m strong and could cart plants around in a wheelbarrow if I have to.”
“I wasn’t trying to insult you.”
“I know,” she half moaned. “You’re being so good to me. I’m sorry I snapped.”
“I think you’re handling your desperate situation with amazing grace.”
She shook her head. “But it’s one I created and I don’t deserve your kindness.”
“Why do you say that? Everyone deserves help from time to time.”
He heard a deep sigh. “I guess because my parents rarely showed any kindness to me while I was growing up.”
“Did they hurt you physically?”
“Oh, no. Nothing like that. But their stifling, rigid rules made my life unbearable.”
“Nevertheless it doesn’t mean you’re not deserving of kindness,” he reminded her. “Just so you know, your letter to Jean-Michel has been dealt with in a way that won’t be traced to you. He should be getting it in a few days, so you can put that worry out of your mind.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “You’re a saint.”
“Hardly.” He leaned toward her with his hands on his thighs. “I’ve given your precarious position a lot of thought. Your idea to go to Catania would only be a stopgap for a few days. I still think it would be best if you leave Europe tomorrow. I’ll arrange it.”
She shook her head. “I couldn’t let you do that. You’ve done more than enough for me and have your own problem to solve right here.”
“First things first, Tuccia. You need to get far away. New York would be the perfect place to get lost. With my contacts, I could set you up in your own apartment and they would help you find a job that you would like to do. No one would suspect you’re the princess who disappeared. You’d be safe. That is what you want, isn’t it?”
“You know it is, but I’ve been thinking about the chef who’s in the hospital and how desperate you must be feeling right now. You saved my life by bringing me to Milan. Instead of putting you in an impossible position, I’d like to do something of value for you in return,” she said in an aching voice.
She had a way of running over every roadblock. He sat back and studied her for a moment, intrigued. “What do you mean?”
“Why not teach me to be a pastry chef so I can work at your ristorante until he’s well and can fly here. I’d do anything to help you if I could.”
It took all his self-control not to laugh. To his shock, he had the strongest suspicion she was being completely serious. “Are you saying you know how to cook?”
A small sound escaped her throat. “No. I’m embarrassed to tell you I’ve never cooked anything from start to finish in my life, although I spent a lot of time in the palazzo kitchen growing up. The cooks were kind to me and let me watch. I washed lettuce and sometimes they’d let me beat egg whites or stir the gravy. Once in a while they’d allow me to sift the flour into the cake bowl before it was baked.”
“Does that mean you didn’t learn to cook at boarding school?”
She laughed outright. “You have a strange idea of what goes on there.”
“Actually I do know, and was only teasing.” Despite the impossibility of what she’d said, the more they talked, the more he found himself enjoying her company. Too much in fact.
“I’m relieved to hear it, Cesare. To be honest, that boarding school in France happened so long ago I’ve forgotten. All I know is, I was waited on. When my parents enrolled me at the University of Paris, I had to live with them in an apartment in St. Germain des Pres. Would it reassure you to know that I told my maid I could make my own tea and instant coffee in the microwave?”
He laughed at her sense of humor and her sparse knowledge in the cooking department. A princess with a classic education from the finest schools and universities in Europe, but to make a pastry... “Tuccia—”
“Please hear me out, Cesare,” she cut him off before he could say anything else. “According to your mother, you could head any Cordon Bleu cooking school in the world. You could teach me. It would be like getting a college education of a different kind.”
His eyes searched hers. She wasn’t kidding. Princess Tuccianna had been known for doing some daring, outlandish things, but this idea had shocked him to the core.
“As intelligent and resourceful as you are, you don’t know what would be entailed.”
She sat forward. “My parents’ cooks didn’t know how to cook in the beginning, did they? They had to learn from someone,” she reasoned. “Why couldn’t I do the same thing under your expert tutelage? I’d work fast and it would free you up to get on with running all your businesses. My anonymity would be assured hidden behind the castello walls. Within six months, the chef you hired would be back.”
Cesare no longer felt like laughing. This beautiful young woman was bargaining for her life. He had to give her credit for possessing the kind of guts he hadn’t seen in most people.
When he didn’t say anything, she blurted, “I’ve been thinking about what you asked me.”
“What was that?”
“About what I wanted to do with my life. If you were to teach me how to make pastry, I would have learned a marketable skill. When Signor Fragala returns, I’d be able to use all that knowledge I’d learned from you. With a reference from you—provided you gave me a good one if I deserved it—I could find a position in any country.”
He could hear her mind working. It was going like a house on fire. To his astonishment he was listening to her because she was making a strange kind of sense.
“After a half year in hiding, I’m positive my family will have disowned me so it wouldn’t matter where I chose to live and work. I’d be a normal woman with a good job.”
“You’ll never be a normal woman, Principessa.” his voice grated. Nor would he want her to be. He liked her exactly the way she was. “Can you honestly sit there and tell me the thought of being disowned doesn’t pain you?”
She lowered her head. “I guess I don’t know how I’d feel about it until it happened. But what I do know is that I’m never going to bow to my parents’ wishes again. Hopefully before long Jean-Michel will have comforted himself with another mistress while he hunts for a new titled princess to marry.”
Cesare rubbed the back of his neck, unable to believe he was actually toying with the idea of teaching her the rudiments. In a perfect world, if she did follow through and did learn how to cook, it would give her the independence she’d never known. It would allow her to earn money and she’d be free to make her own choices, something that had been denied her from birth.
At some point in time she’d decide to get in touch with her parents, or not. He couldn’t believe he was allowing his thoughts to go this far.
Quiet reigned before she said, “I know what you’re thinking. I don’t have any money right now to pay you to teach me. But if I were a good student and could work at the castello, you wouldn’t have to pay me any money. Not ever! I’m already indebted to you for your sacrifice. It would be my gift to you for saving my life.”
The last was said in a trembling voice. It was the wobble that did it to him.
“Are you a fast learner?” Cesare knew she was grateful. He didn’t want her to go on begging for the chance to repay him. Her willingness to take a risk of these proportions made her a breed apart from anyone he’d ever known.
She stared at him with those heavenly gray eyes. “I guess that depends on the subject matter, but I graduated with honors in European history.”
“Congratulations, Tuccia. That’s no small feat. But to make a pastry chef out of you... I don’t know.”
“You’re right. It’s too much to ask and I’d probably be a disaster.”
He didn’t like the discouraged tone of her voice and it made up his mind for him. “Maybe not.”
A gasp escaped her lips. “You mean you’re willing to entertain the idea?”
Her excitement put a stranglehold on him. “Let’s just say I’ll put you on probation for a few days and see how it goes.”
“You’re not teasing me?” she cried.
“No. I wouldn’t do that. Not about this.”
He could tell she was fighting tears. “When would I start?”
“As soon as we’ve eaten dinner.”
“So soon? Aren’t you exhausted after everything you’ve been through in the last twenty-four hours?”
Her question stunned him because her first thought had been for him. He could have asked the same of her after being on the run.
“Not at all.” In fact he’d never been so wired in his life.
“Does that mean we’re going up to the castello right now?”
He stood up. “No. This pensione is going to be your home, your school room and your lab. You’ll do everything hands-on right here. After a few days I’ll decide if I can turn you into the next executive pastry chef at the Castello Supremo Hotel and Ristorante di Lombardi. Otherwise I’ll put you on the plane for New York.”
Tuccia let out an incredulous cry of joy and she jumped to her feet. She rushed over to him and put a hand on his arm. The contact sent a shock through him. His awareness of her made it hard to breathe.
“You mean it? You’re not joking? But you just said you weren’t joking. I’m sorry, but I just can’t believe you’re willing to give me a chance.”
“Everyone deserves a chance.” He looked her in the eye, trying to get a grip on his emotions. “What fake name were you going to use when you applied for the greenhouse job in Catania?”
His question made her blink, and she let go of him. “Come on,” he prodded her. “You’ve obviously had one in mind for a long time.”
“Not the same one my zia used to charter that plane for me. I guess... Nedda Bottaro.”
“Nedda? The heroine in the opera Pagliacci?”
“Yes. I love opera and Pagliacci is one of my favorites.”
“But Nedda meets such a cruel end.”
“I know. She and Carmen suffered the same fate. I always cry.”
Cesare heard pain in her voice. “Why use the last name Bottaro?”
“It means a wine cask maker. There’d be no connection to any of my family names.”
He nodded. “Wise decision. If I deem you a promising pupil, we’ll go with both when I introduce you to my partners. I’ll tell them I stole you from the finest ristorante in Palermo.”
She rubbed her hands against womanly hips in a nervous gesture. “How soon will that happen?”
“Not for a while. I’ll have to teach you a lot first, and quickly, too. After dinner we’ll start with something simple. I’ll take a taxi to the grocery store and get the needed ingredients. While I’m at it, I’ll buy you a new Pay as You Go phone to reach me if you need to and program it. By the time you go to bed, you’ll be able to make the recipe I have in mind in your sleep.”
She paced the floor, then wheeled around in front of him. “If I can pass your tests, that means I’ll be making desserts for hundreds of people a week.”
“That’s right. Kings, sheikhs, presidents of countries.”
Her radiating smile illuminated those hidden places in his soul that had never seen light. That thought appeared to delight her.
“You’ll have assistants to help you.”
“But I don’t look anything like a chef.”
No. She didn’t look like anyone else in the whole wide world. “You will after we dress you properly. When I bring my partners to the kitchen to introduce you, no one will ever guess you’re Princess Tuccianna.”
Her cheeks had grown becomingly flushed. “I want to be good enough to meet your standards. You’ll never know what this means to me.”
He was beginning to. While she stood there, Cesare phoned for a taxi. After he hung up, he turned to her. “I’m starving and am going out to pick up a meal for us after I shop. When I get back, we’ll get started.”
She followed him to the door. “If I can’t do the job you need done, does this mean you’ll have to be the head pastry chef at your own hotel?”
He liked it that she was a little worried about him. “Yes. My partner’s wife, Gemma, can no longer handle the job this late in her pregnancy. I’d promised I would produce her replacement by tomorrow, but with Signor Fragala in the hospital, the job has now fallen on my shoulders. I’ll have to let them know in the morning. That doesn’t give me time to find anyone else with his credentials. It could take me several months.”
“And I don’t have any,” she half moaned the words.
In an unconscious gesture he put a hand on her shoulder and kneaded it gently. “I’m not my mother’s son for nothing. You’ve convinced me you want this job more than anything. By the time I’m through with you, I’m hoping you’ll be able to write your own ticket as a pastry chef.”
After a long pause he said, “At this point I’ve been wondering. Is the difficult, uncontrollable, incorrigible Principessa di Trabia of Palermo, Sicily, worth her salt? It would be fun to find out the truth. I’ll be back soon.”
* * *
Tuccia rested against the closed door with her arms folded. His touch had crept through her body like a fine wine, weakening her physically. Yet his final comment before he’d gone out the door had caused a sudden surge of adrenaline to attack her.
“Is the difficult, uncontrollable, incorrigible Principessa di Trabia of Palermo, Sicily, worth her salt?”
Cesare had said that to get a rise out of her. Without question he’d accomplished his objective.
Frightened and excited by the whole situation she’d created for herself, Tuccia turned on the TV in the corner to distract her for a little while. She grazed the channels with the remote and came across two stations giving the four o’clock news. The second she saw a news clip of herself and Jean-Michel flash on the screen, she felt sick and sank down on the couch.
“Authorities in France and Italy are asking for anyone to come forward who knows anything about the whereabouts of Princess Tuccianna of Sicily, the daughter of the Marchese and Marchesa di Trabia. She’s the fiancée of the acting Comte Jean-Michel Ardois of the House of Ardois and prominent CEO of Ardois Munitions. Princess Tuccianna disappeared yesterday morning in Paris and hasn’t been seen since.
“The famous couple were to have been married today. Speculation that she was kidnapped by some foreign government faction for ransom has not been counted out.
“According to police, the Marchesa had been waiting in the lounge for her daughter to change after the final fitting of her wedding gown at the exclusive bridal shop on the Rue de L’Echelle. But she never came out. The police found her betrothal ring and are suspicious that some employees working at the shop helped aid in the kidnapping and are now being detained.
“Both families are desperate for news of the beautiful dark-haired twenty-five-year-old princess. So far any sightings of her have turned out to be false. She speaks French, Spanish, English, Italian, Sicilian and is known to be an excellent swimmer and sailor who—”
Tuccia turned off the TV and buried her face in her hands, swamped by guilt for the terrible thing she’d done. At least Jean-Michel would get her letter soon, but in the meantime innocent people were being questioned and detained. Hundreds of policemen in two countries were searching for her. She’d endangered her aunt and Cesare’s mother. But she couldn’t go back to that life. She just couldn’t.
Jean-Michel wanted to marry a woman with a title, preferably a young one who’d give him children and not cause him trouble. Her parents wanted a son-in-law with a fortune that would never run out. No love was involved. Tuccia was a pawn and always had been. It was a fact of life that she’d been born to royalty.
It truly wasn’t fair to Cesare, who’d been forced to come to her rescue this morning, flying her with him on the ducal jet no less. Knowing the huge risk of aiding a fugitive—that’s what she was at this point—a lesser man might never have done such a favor, not even for his own mother.
To add to her crime, Tuccia had proposed an idea to save both their skins. But it was so audacious and dangerous if anyone were to find out who she was. For Cesare to be willing to go along with her idea made him a prince among men as far as she was concerned.
He had a reputation for being brilliant. She’d known that about Lina’s son long before she’d ever met him. But she hadn’t counted on him being so incredibly handsome, too. Working with him, she would fast lose her objectivity. How could she possibly concentrate on what she was doing while she was in his presence? If there was such a thing as love at first sight, she’d fallen victim to it.
By working with him, there was no doubt she’d be learning from a master. It would be an honor to be the student of a man famous on two continents for his business acumen as a restaurateur. He’d built an enviable empire of restaurants in New York.
Part of her wanted to show him she was worth her salt. But what if she failed? She’d passed lots of tests in her life, but none would be more important than this one now that she’d made the commitment.
While she was sorting through her tortured thoughts she heard a knock on the door. Tuccia rushed to let him in. He was loaded with three big sacks of food and carried them into the kitchen.
She shut the door behind him. “It looks like you bought out the store.”
“Several stores to be exact.” He washed his hands in the sink. “The risotto with veal looked good at the deli. I picked up some rustic wheat bread and a bottle of Chardonnay Piemonte to go with it.”
“Wonderful. I’m hungry, too.” She peeked in the sacks and found their dinner, which she put on the round kitchen table. Their gazes fused. “I take it the other two sacks contain enough pastry ingredients to feed a small army.”
“You’re partially right. The rest are provisions for you to take with you in case you change your mind before the evening is over.”
Her spirits plunged. “What do you mean?”
“While I’ve been gone, you’ve had time to reconsider what we’ve talked about. After we’ve eaten, I’ll be happy to take you to the train station if that’s your wish. The standard service leaves at quarter to nine for Sicily. There’ll be no amenities. You’ll have to sit up in your seat all night. But you’ll be like dozens of passengers with little money and melt into the crowd.”
He pulled wine glasses from the cupboard and poured some for them, but what he’d just said to her had shocked her.
