The Costanzo Baby Secret (6 page)

“Not really, no.” She curled up in his arms like a child.

Except she wasn’t a child—or was she? How was a man to tell these days, with girls of fourteen dressing and behaving like adults? Gripped by fresh consternation, he asked the question begging to be answered. “How old are you, Maeve?”

“Twenty-eight.”

He expelled a sigh of relief laced with astonishment. “And until tonight you were a virgin?”

“Yes. I’ve never had the time for a serious relationship.”

A different kind of alarm swept over him then. Did she think making love equaled a serious relationship? Surely not. At twenty-eight she couldn’t be that far out of touch with reality. “A woman’s first time should be special,” he said. “I must have disappointed you.”

“No. I’ll remember this night for as long as I live.”

So would he, but not for the reasons she supposed. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d been so rattled. “And a very long night it’s been, too. You must be exhausted.” He slid her off his lap and picked up her dress and the ridiculous panties. “I’ll show you where you can get dressed, then take you back to your hotel.”

“Oh…yes. All right.”

Refusing to acknowledge the disappointment he heard in her voice, he showed her to a guest stateroom and stuffed her clothes in after her. “No need to rush. I’ll wait for you on deck.”

He had the outboard running when she reappeared, and wasted no time whisking her ashore. He couldn’t wait to be rid of her. Not because, having had his way with her, he’d lost all interest, but because he felt lower than dirt and hardly knew how to face her.

She was staying at the Splendido Mare. He walked her as far as the front entrance, but made no move to go inside with her. He wasn’t about to risk having her invite him up to her room. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to say no. “Thank you for a very special evening, sweet Maeve,” he said, kissing her on both cheeks. “Sleep well, and
buona notte
.”

He’d already turned away when she called out, “What time shall I see you tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow?” He spun back toward her.

“Yes. You said you’d take me out for a spin on your yacht, remember?”

Unfortunately, he did, and if she’d been any other woman, he’d have come up with an excuse to rescind the invitation, but she was looking at him with such artless anticipation that he hadn’t the heart to dash her hopes. “Let’s say two o’clock at the marina.”

“Wonderful. I’ll see you then.”

The radiance of her smile shamed him even further.
“Sì,”
he mumbled.
“A domani.”

By the time she showed up the next afternoon, he’d rounded up a small group of friends to join them, and brought his crew onboard to ferry passengers back and forth and serve drinks and meals. Safety in numbers and all that, he’d reasoned.

Once her initial shyness wore off, she seemed to enjoy herself. Certainly none of the others would have guessed she
wasn’t part of the in crowd. However humble her background, she looked and acted as if she’d been born to high society.

“I like your friends,” she said, lacing her fingers in his when, after dinner served on the same deck where he’d deflowered her less than twenty-four hours earlier, he found himself alone with her. Most likely in a misguided effort to give the pair of them some privacy, his other guests had drifted over to stand at the rail. “Thank you for introducing me to them. I feel I know you so much better now.”

Oh,
inferno!
That hadn’t been the message he’d intended to get across. “You’ve made quite an impression on them, too, especially Eduardo,” he said, knowing he could count on his old friend to back him up in this. They went back a long way and had helped each other out of similar awkward situations more than once in the past. “Don’t be surprised if he wants to see you again before you leave.”

“As if I’d agree to that!”

“Well, why not? He knows more about the history of the area than anyone you could ask to meet, and can show you places never mentioned in the guide books.”

“And you wouldn’t object?” she asked, looking woebegone as a lost puppy.

“I’d have no right. I don’t own you.”

Her face fell. “No, of course not.” She patted his hand and reached for her straw beach bag. “Listen, Dario, I think I’ve had a touch too much sun and feel a headache coming on, so if you don’t mind, I’m going to slip away quietly and call it a night.”

“Are you sure?”

“Oh, quite,” she said, leaving him in no doubt he’d got his message across loud and clear.

“In that case, I’ll take you ashore.” It was, he figured, the least he could do, especially as the crew was occupied clearing away the remains of dinner.

She didn’t speak again until he tied up at the dock and handed her out of the dinghy. Then, fending him off as he went to accompany her up the ramp, she said, “That’s far enough. I can manage on my own now.”

He might be a cad, but he wasn’t entirely without chivalry. “Nonsense. I insist on seeing you safely back at the hotel.”

“No.” She shook her head. “There’s no need to keep up the pretense. I’m not a child, Dario, and although I probably strike you as pitifully unsophisticated, I’m not completely naive. You’ve had your fun with me, and now it’s over. I get it.”

Shame, thick and bitter, coated his tongue. “I’m not sure I know how you expect me to respond to that,” he muttered.

“Then let me make it easy for you. We made love or had sex or however you choose to describe it, by mutual consent. It was a one-night stand or a short-lived holiday romance, again depending on your point of view. And since that’s all it was, let’s chalk it up to its being just one of those things, and say goodbye with no hard feelings.”

She might be sexually inexperienced, but she was a pro when it came to making a man feel lower than a worm. “If I’ve deceived you, Maeve, and clearly you think I have, then I’m sorry. In my own defense, however, I have to say you deceived me also, even if you never intended to.”

“Because I didn’t warn you ahead of time that I was a virgin, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Would it have made any difference if I had?”

“All the difference in the world,” he said gently. “I would never have laid a hand on you, no matter how desirable I found you.”

She blinked back a tear. “I never thought I’d come to regret saving myself until the right man came along.”

“That’s my whole point,
cara
. Sadly, I’m not the right man for you, at least not long-term.”

“And I’m not cut out to be some rich playboy’s toy.” She wiped her eyes and leaned forward to kiss his cheek. “Goodbye, Dario. Thank you for everything,” she said, and quickly walked away.

She was wrong, he thought regretfully, curbing the urge to run after her as she disappeared. He did not see women as toys. He had the utmost respect for them and, for the most part, had remained on good terms with his former lovers.

He did, however, look for a certain level of sophistication in those he took to bed. He was straightforward and did not make promises he had no intention of keeping. When an affair had run its course, he expected his partners to accept the end gracefully. No histrionics, no tearful protestations of undying love, no public scenes.

For that reason the charming ingenue was not for him. At least, she hadn’t been until Maeve Montgomery had shown up in his life.

“D
ARIO
?”

He blinked and shook his head, as though trying to throw off the effects of sleep. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “Did you say something?”

“I’m wondering where you went to, just now. One minute you were here, the next, you were gone. Lost in thought.”

“I was remembering,” he said.

Lucky him! She wished she could. “Remembering what?”

“Nothing special.”

“Nothing pleasant, either, if the look on your face is any indication. Are you going to tell me about it?”

“No,” he said. “You wouldn’t be interested.”

“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?”

Draining his glass, he strode to the sideboard and removed the heavy glass stopper from the decanter. “I haven’t used the yacht in months,” he said, pouring himself another aperitif, “and was thinking I should get someone to check and make sure everything’s ship-shape on board.”

She no more believed him than she believed the moon was made of green cheese, but the set of his shoulders and the
stubborn cast to his mouth told her she’d get nowhere by saying so. Clearly, as far as he was concerned, the subject was closed.

For now, maybe. But not for long. Not if she had any say in the matter.

The next several days passed uneventfully. Too uneventfully. Although attentive and pleasant when they were together, which wasn’t nearly often enough in Maeve’s opinion, Dario deftly turned aside any attempt on her part to get him to reveal details of their shared past.

He wasn’t quite as reticent about his life and background before he’d known her. His parents set great store by education, he told her, and their children had not disappointed them. He’d earned an MBA from Harvard; his elusive sister had a degree in art history from the Sorbonne. And if that wasn’t academic glory enough to satisfy them, his brother-in-law was a graduate of the London School of Economics.

Small wonder his mother was so hostile, Maeve thought when she heard all this. A diploma in sales from the local community college, which was all the foreign wife could bring to the table, didn’t stack up too well beside such impressive credentials.

Had he arrived at the same conclusion and decided he’d made a mistake in marrying her? she wondered. Was that what lay behind her nagging sense of impending doom, and why he never kissed her again as he had that first evening?

The most he’d permitted himself since was a chaste peck on both her cheeks when he bade her good-night. The rest of the time, he kept his distance both physically and emotionally. Once in a while, she thought she saw the subdued light of
desire smoldering in his gaze as he sat across the candlelit dinner table from her, but he always managed to dampen it when he realized she was observing him.

When she wasn’t with him, she could have set her watch by the fixed routine that marked the passing hours. She slept late, ate breakfast by herself in her suite, swam in her private pool, lolled in the endless sun on her private terrace and either played solitaire or thumbed through the magazines on the coffee table in her private sitting room until she met him for lunch.

In the afternoon she napped for an hour or two, swam and lazed some more. At four o’clock she was served Earl Grey tea in china cups so translucent, she could practically read print through them, and
mostazzoli panteschi,
intricate little pastries filled with sweetened semolina, which the cook baked specially for her because she happened to mention once how much she liked them.

In fact, no matter how discontented she might be about other aspects of her “new” life, food was the one thing she couldn’t fault. Meals were invariably delicious, an extravaganza of island specialties: fresh seafood, capers in a variety of sauces and salads, pasta, an abundance of exotic fruit and wonderful desserts made with honey and almonds. Enough of those and she’d soon put back the pounds she’d lost—and then some. That Dario managed to remain so fit and trim was simply one more unresolved mystery.

As twilight fell, she went about the business of making herself look presentable for the coming evening with a mixture of anticipation and dread. Would this be the night her memory returned and she discovered why she sometimes felt a sense of loss so acute that it left her sick to her stomach?

But it never was, and she was back in bed no later than ten-thirty or eleven, at the mercy of an exhaustion she couldn’t overcome. Or was it that she sought escape in sleep so as not to have to acknowledge the demons hounding her when she was awake?

Questions. Always questions. And never any answers.

Apart from joining her at lunch and in the evening, Dario spent most of his time on the phone or glued to the computer in his study, keeping abreast of developments in the company’s head office, or consulting on business-related matters with those members of the family who were also in residence on the island. At least, she assumed that’s why around the same time every day he’d disappear for an hour or so. But all she really knew for sure was that, wherever he went, he never invited her to accompany him.

Not that she was ever left alone. The household staff smothered her with attention. About the only thing they didn’t offer to do was hold her hand while she went to the toilet.

Finally she’d had enough and confronted him at lunch, the Wednesday after she arrived on the island.

He gave her the perfect opening. “I have to fly up to the city tomorrow,” he said, fixing them each a campari and soda.

“You’re going to Milan?” Her heart lifted at the prospect of escaping this place and the dark, overwhelming air of sadness that so often hounded her. To be around other people who didn’t look at her as if she wasn’t quite all there, to get her hair styled, instead of snipping at it herself with a pair of manicure scissors, that would be bliss! “Good. I’ll come with you.”

“No,” he said flatly. “The pace of the city’s much too frantic. You’re supposed to stay quiet and take it easy.”

“But if we have a penthouse there—”

“We have an entire house here, and I’ll be gone only a couple of days, or as long as it takes me to attend a few meetings. I don’t need the distraction of worrying about what you’re up to when I’m in the middle of sensitive business negotiations.”

Annoyed by his autocratic refusal, she said, “And what am I supposed to do while you’re away, Dario? There’s nothing here to keep me occupied.”

“You can relax, recuperate—”

“I’ve done nothing but relax and recuperate for the past several weeks, not to mention being comatose for a whole month before that, and frankly I’m tired of it. I’m marking time when what I want is to pick up my life where I left it off.”

He shrugged. “You already are. You’re back home with your husband. Can’t you let that be enough for now?”

“No, because there’s something missing.”

“If you’re talking about us and our present living arrangement, I can’t imagine you want to engage in marital relations with a man you don’t remember marrying.”

Actually, that wasn’t quite true. She might have no memory of
when
she married him, but the more she saw of him, the better she understood
why
. His smile left her weak at the knees. His voice reverberated throughout her body with the deep, exotic resonance of a jungle drum. As for his touch, whether he intended it to be so or not, it turned her insides to a molten lava that rivaled anything the island volcanoes had ever produced.

But there was more to him than pure sex appeal. She’d soon seen beyond the striking good looks to the intelligence, the integrity, the decency. A man half as attractive would have been
insulted that his wife didn’t remember him. But Dario continued to treat her with the utmost patience and respect, asking nothing more than that she enjoy herself and get well again.

Misreading her introspection, he said, “Don’t think it’s easy, living in the same house with you, Maeve, and not giving in to my baser instincts. I’m a man, not a saint.”

Oh, hallelujah! She wasn’t the only one lying alone in bed every night and wishing it were otherwise. But, “There’s more to it than that,” she confessed. “Something I can’t quite put my finger on.” Her voice broke and she pressed a clenched fist to her heart. “I feel a deep emptiness here that nothing, not even you, can fill. I have, ever since I set foot in this house.”

Quickly setting down his glass, he pulled her into the curve of his arm and stroked her back. “Because you’re pushing yourself too hard and letting frustration get the better of you.”

“Can you blame me?” She tugged free of his hold, not about to be swayed from her original course by her runaway hormones. “There’s a limit to how much mollycoddling I can take, and I’ve reached it.”

“You’re not enjoying being taken care of?”

“Did Napoleon enjoy being exiled on Elba?”

“You’re not a prisoner,
mio dolce
.”

“I might as well be. I can’t blink without someone taking note of the fact, and as for wanting to roam freely about the house the way any other wife would, or discuss menus with the cook, forget it! It’s not my place to do any such thing. I’m essentially confined to barracks unless I’m with you. It’s like living in boot camp!”

He laughed, so relaxed and charming that she knew if she didn’t keep her wits about her, she was in danger of finding
him even more adorable than she already did. “Oh, not quite that bad, surely?”

Worse, in fact. She was treated like visiting royalty. And therein lay the problem. She wasn’t a visitor, she was the mistress of the house. Or at least she was supposed to be. But the one time she’d ventured as far as the kitchen, the cook had descended on her, clucking like an overwrought hen, and shooed her away.

“It sometimes feels that way. Take today, for instance. Because I was dressed and ready for lunch early, instead of doing as I usually do and sticking to my own little garden, I decided to wander farther afield and explore the rest of the grounds to see if something—anything—might jog my memory.

“First, I practically had to wrestle my way past a maid who didn’t think I should be allowed through the front door. Then, once I was outside, no matter which way I turned, I kept running into people—gardeners, maintenance men, you name it—who made it clear I shouldn’t wander off the main paths or go too close to the edge of the cliff. So I went down the drive, thinking I’d take a walk along the road, and got as far as the gates only to find them locked. When I asked one of the workers why, he pretended he didn’t understand me, even though I spoke to him in Italian.”

“Not surprising.” Turning away, Dario busied himself refilling his glass. “He speaks the local dialect, which is quite different from anything you hear on the mainland. Even native Italians have trouble communicating with the islanders. Another campari and soda?”

Refusing to let him distract her, she shook her head. “No, thanks. Look, I can see why you’d want to keep strangers from
wandering all over your property, but surely those of us living here should be able to get out if we feel like it? Why, even the door in my garden wall is now kept locked.”

“I know. I ordered it to preserve your privacy after my mother’s unscheduled visit.”

“The point I’m making,” she went on, doggedly ignoring the interruption, “is that I’ve been here almost a week, and to put it bluntly, I’m suffocating. I step out of my suite, and a maid immediately shows up to escort me to wherever I’m supposed to go next. I try to familiarize myself with my surroundings, and I’m stymied at every turn. I feel like a hamster running endlessly on a wheel, but never getting anywhere.”

“Then how about this?” he said soothingly. “I’ll take the afternoon off and, after lunch, we’ll tour the island by boat. If you feel up to it, we can even stop in your favorite cove and go snorkeling. Would you like that?”

She’d like it better if he’d just be straight with her, instead of stalling for time. Before he’d squelched it, she’d seen the brief flash of dismay in his eyes when she’d mentioned the emptiness inside, and guessed he knew exactly what caused it. And if he thought a dip in the sea would be enough to wash it from her thoughts, he was mistaken. Either he gave her the answers she sought, or she’d find someone who would.

On the other hand, after whining about boredom and lack of freedom, she could hardly turn down his invitation to do something different, and visiting a place that had meant something to her in the past might prove to be the key that would unlock her mind.

“Yes, I would,” she said, swallowing her frustration and doing her best to sound suitably appeased. “Thank you.”

Viewing Pantelleria by boat instead of from the air gave her a whole new perspective on the island. In places, giant cliffs swept down to isolated pockets of pebble beach. In others, great outcroppings of purple-black lava rose up from the cobalt Mediterranean to encircle dreamy lagoons.

Montagna Grande, towering nearly three thousand feet above sea level, stood guard over bright green fertile valleys crisscrossed with ancient stone walls. In other areas, the softer gray-green of low-growing juniper, heather and myrtle that Dario said was called
macchia,
ran wild over the land. “The scent when the wind blows from the west is enough to knock your head off,” he told her.

They sailed past isolated farms and a tiny fishing village where water bubbled up from the thermal springs in its harbor. Another village clung to the edge of a sheer cliff, with glorious views across the sea. But awe inspiring though all that was, the spectacle much closer at hand stirred Maeve’s blood more.

Dario in tailored black trousers and white shirt was a sight that would kick any woman’s heart rate up a notch. But Dario in swimming trunks, with the wind ruffling his hair, was enough to stop a woman’s pulse altogether.

Seated beside him in the eighteen-foot Donzi runabout, Maeve had to keep reminding herself that this man really was her husband, and of all the women in the world he might have chosen, he’d picked her to be his wife.

His bronzed torso gleamed in the sun. The only shadows came from the play of muscle in his forearms as he effortlessly navigated Pantelleria’s jagged coastline. The hands loosely gripping the steering wheel were strong and capable. Once, they had touched her intimately. She knew it, even though she
couldn’t remember when, because looking at them sent a spasm of awareness shooting through her body.