The Moretti Marriage Read online

  “I found it first, but you tried to outbid me on it.”

  “So I did.” His smile shifted to her face and bathed it in unsettling warmth. “But in the end, I let you win because why quibble over such a trifling piece, when already you had stolen my heart?”

  “Your heart had nothing to do with it! You couldn’t meet my offer, and pulled your jeans’ pockets inside out to prove it.”

  But it was the way he’d laughed as he relinquished his claim that had won her over. In the blink of an eye, he made her forget that she’d come to Italy to visit fabled art galleries, to walk the ancient streets and experience history firsthand, in still-living color. Meeting him that day in Verona instantly became the most memorable event in the tour she and Monica embarked on, to celebrate their having graduated summa cum laude from university.

  “I will concede defeat,” he’d said, with irresistible Latin charm, “only if you will let me take you to lunch. I have just enough lire in my pocket to buy us a carafe of wine and a bowl of pasta. Do we have a deal?”

  She’d agreed without a moment’s hesitation, and was in love with him before they arrived at the trattoria he chose, tucked away in a tiny sunlit square which she’d never have discovered on her own. To say he typified an Italian matinee idol would have been to sell him so far short of reality that it was an insult. Nico was the most beautiful, the most gallant, the most beguiling man she’d ever met. It hadn’t mattered one iota that he was virtually penniless.

  “I recently invested my limited assets in a business on the brink of bankruptcy,” he told her cheerfully, over ravioli and a jug of rough red wine.

  “Everything?” The future lawyer in her had been appalled. “What if you end up with nothing?”

  He’d laughed. “I grew up with nothing, la mia bella, and if I die with nothing, it will matter not at all, as long as I squeeze from life every last drop of joy it has to offer. A man must make the most of his time on earth, sì?”

  She’d realized then how different they were in outlook. He was the kind of man who dared to imagine; to take risks; to act on impulse and live with the consequences. She was nothing like that, and although she admired those qualities in him, they were also what made him dangerous. But that was something she didn’t discover until it was much too late.

  “Do you still have it?” he asked her now. “That brooch which brought us together?”

  “No,” she said. “I gave it away at about the same time that I left you. I couldn’t bear the reminder of what it represented.”

  “Did getting rid of it help you to forget?”

  “No.”

  “I’m glad. There was too much that was good between us for it all to be cast into oblivion.” He touched her hair. “We were happy for a little while, weren’t we, Chloe?”

  Oh, yes! Blissfully so, almost from the second she first set eyes on him…until that terrible, terrible night. Perhaps that was why the grief that followed was so hard to bear.

  Monica had continued touring the country, but Chloe stayed in Verona, any thought of discovering more of Italy abandoned. In fact, “abandoned” was a very good word to describe the way she’d behaved over the next month.

  Within a week, she and Nico were lovers. By the end of the summer, he asked her to marry him and just as well, or she’d have proposed to him.

  With a tiny diamond on her finger, she flew home at the beginning of September and flung herself into preparations for a wedding to take place in early October, even though her mother and grandmother voiced reservations at the suddenness of it all.

  “What about your career?” they’d wanted to know, and she’d told them, “Nico is my career now.”

  “How can you be sure?” they’d said. “At least wait until next summer before you marry him, to give yourself time to find out if this really is love, or just a holiday infatuation.”

  But she was not to be dissuaded, and when Nico arrived in Vancouver at the end of the month, both her mother and grandmother fell under his spell as swiftly and easily as she had.

  “When the right man comes along,” Jacqueline had decreed within twenty-four hours of meeting him, “the timing isn’t important. You’re meant for one another, my darling daughter. I can’t think of any other man I’d sooner call son-in-law.”

  Clearly, nothing that had happened since that day had changed her mother’s mind. She still considered Nico family; still thought the sun rose and set on him. Why else would she have jeopardized her only child’s future by allowing him to come back on the scene now?

  “You don’t answer me, Chloe,” Nico said, sliding his hand around the back of her neck. “Were we not happy for a little while? Our wedding day, was it not perfect?”

  She had to force herself to answer truthfully. It would have been so much easier to dismiss both him and the question, if she could have said “no.”

  Instead, “Yes,” she admitted grudgingly, “though if I’d been in your shoes, I wouldn’t have found it so special. None of your family came to see you get married.”

  “The distance and cost involved made it impossible for them to attend, and in truth, I hardly noticed their absence. You were there, beyond beautiful in white satin and lace, and that was enough for me. Indeed, you could have worn sackcloth for all I cared. That you were about to become my wife was the only thing that mattered. I might not have had the means to fly my family here from Italy but, that day, I felt like the richest man on earth. What was money, compared to your promise to remain by my side, through good times and bad, for as long as we both should live?”

  The passion in his voice, the drugging seduction of his fingers strumming a love song over the nape of her neck, were making deadly inroads on her self-possession, and she had to put a stop to them before she fell so far under their spell that she ended up in his arms.

  “I think your memory is deceiving you,” she said, trying to wriggle out of his reach. “Being poor bothered you a very great deal—to the point that making money eventually became your obsession.”

  “I needed to provide well for you and our son, Chloe. Do not fault me for that. Before I met you, I’d made myself a promise that I wouldn’t marry until I could support a wife and family in some sort of style. But you bewitched me into forgetting all that. I knew the day I met you that you were the woman for me. But I never regretted making that decision. I still do not, even now, even though we ended up so far apart.”

  “Perhaps we both wanted too much, too soon. Perhaps what we had was too good to last.”

  “Or perhaps we didn’t fight hard enough to hold on to it.”

  “How do you hold on to a three-and-a-half-month-old baby lying in a casket, in a church graveyard?” she cried. “How do you ever recover from that?”

  “By sharing your grief with the one person in the world who really understands it. But we couldn’t do that, could we, Chloe? Instead of turning toward each other, we turned away, and in doing so, lost so much more than our son. We threw away everything else that was good and beautiful between us.”

  “Don’t you see, we had nothing left? Everything we were, or hoped to be, died with him.”

  “If you truly believe that, then you’re doing the right thing in marrying your Baron.”

  “I do believe it, Nico,” she said with hushed vehemence. “I believe it with my whole heart. I can make a fresh start with him because he doesn’t threaten my peace of mind. He is…my safe harbor. He won’t hurt me.”

  “Then no wonder you are finally ready to trade me in for this older model.”

  “Mature is how I’d describe my fiancé!”

  “Ah!” He rolled his eyes. “If only I could have been such a paragon of manly virtues!”

  She wrenched herself free of his touch and raced toward the house, stopping at the far end of the pool deck just long enough to hurl a final bit of advice over her shoulder. “Do yourself and everyone else a favor and go home, Nico, because if you have any idea of upsetting my wedding plans, you’re was
ting your time here. I’m going to marry Baron next Saturday, and nothing you can say or do is going to change my mind.”

  Nothing? “We’ll see about that, tesoro,” he murmured softly, remaining in the garden long after she’d disappeared inside the house. “I have seven days in which to prove to you that, whatever you might want to believe, all the passion you think died with our son is still very much alive. And it will be my very great pleasure to reawaken it. I think then that you will be unwilling to settle for a safe harbor with this Baron Prescott. I think you’ll find he will not be enough for you, after all.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Saturday, August 22

  ANOTHER perfect summer’s day, another breakfast on the sunny patio, and the only storm on the horizon the one brewing between mother and daughter.

  “How could you?” Chloe exploded, glaring at Jacqueline across the table. “And spare me the injured innocence act. You know perfectly well what I’m talking about. What in heaven’s name possessed you to invite Nico to stay here?”

  “He always stays here whenever he’s in town. I thought you knew that.”

  “But why now?” She shook her head, so baffled she could scarcely string two words together without exploding. “You’ve spent weeks orchestrating this wedding, Mother. So why, at the last minute, would you go out of your way to turn it into a shambles?”

  “Because, in the final analysis, a mother has to do what she thinks best for her child, especially if that child is determined to hide her head in the sand and pretend everything’s perfectly lovely, when it would be apparent to a blind man that it’s not.”

  “Are you saying you deliberately encouraged Nico to come here at this time in the hope that he’d ruin things for me?”

  “No. I had no idea he’d planned a visit to coincide with your wedding. But when I found out, I couldn’t help but think that destiny was stepping in and taking a hand in your future.”

  Stunned, Chloe said, “In other words, you might not have planned it, but you’re hoping it will happen anyway?”

  “He can’t spoil anything unless you allow him to. If you’re absolutely sure you’re doing the right thing in marrying Baron, you won’t let anyone stand in your way. But if, simply by his being here, Nico changes your mind, he’ll have saved you and Baron both from making a terrible mistake.”

  “He won’t change my mind! I know what I’m doing.”

  “So you keep saying. But it’s not the impression I’ve been getting lately.”

  “Then take another look! I’m twenty-eight years old, Mother, and capable of making my own decisions. I haven’t needed you to wipe my nose since my first day in kindergarten, and I don’t need you interfering now in something that’s absolutely none of your business!”

  Unruffled, her mother said, “You’ll always be my business, Chloe, just as you’ll always be my daughter, no matter how old you are. And I could not, in all conscience, stand idly by and do nothing when, the closer you get to your wedding day, the more unsettled you become.”

  “I am not unsettled!”

  “Certainly you are. I’d even go so far as to say you’re depressed. Now sit down and have a peach.”

  She’d sooner eat worms! Clutching the back of her chair in a white-knuckled grip, she asked mournfully, “Have you considered how Baron will feel when he finds out what you’ve been up to?”

  “One way or the other, I suspect that, in the end, he’ll thank me.”

  Bewildered, Chloe stared at her. “I thought you and Gran liked him.”

  “We do, darling—enough not to want to see him hurt.”

  “You’ve got a funny way of showing it! Inviting my ex-husband to stay here is bad enough, but to suggest he’s welcome at the wedding…how am I supposed to explain that to Baron in a way that makes any sort of sense?”

  “You’re not,” her mother said, unperturbed. “If there’s any explaining to be done, I’ll take care of it.”

  “Over my dead body!” Chloe dropped down on her chair, exhausted before the day had properly begun. “You’ve caused enough trouble, Mother! I’ll speak to Baron. If you really want to do something worthwhile, get rid of Nico, and spare us all a lot of grief.”

  As if he’d been lurking in the bushes waiting for the right moment to make an entrance, Nico suddenly strolled around the corner of the house. “Did I hear someone mention my name?”

  Chloe scowled at him, but her mother and grandmother, their faces wreathed in welcoming smiles, chorused, “Good morning, Nico!”

  “Did you sleep well?” Charlotte inquired solicitously.

  “Like a baby, Nonna!” he replied, bending to kiss her cheek. “You’re looking wonderful, as usual, and younger than ever.”

  Jacqueline, meanwhile, poured him a cup of coffee. “Here you are, dear. Strong and black, just the way you like it.”

  He dropped a kiss on her cheek, too. “Grazie, Jacqueline! As always, you know exactly how to make me feel at home.”

  Chloe, though, refused to acknowledge him, and stared instead at the coffee cooling in her own cup. Totally unfazed by her chilly reception, he took a seat next to her. “Buon giorno, bella! Come sta?”

  “No happier to see you today than I was last night,” she informed him bluntly. “Don’t make yourself too comfortable in the lodge, Nico. You won’t be staying there, after all.”

  “No?” She didn’t need to look at him to sense his smile. She could feel its warmth stealing over her face like a second sun. “I am to take over my usual room here, in the main house?”

  “We don’t have space for you there, either. If you’re determined to hang around, you’ll have to move to a hotel, and it won’t be the Trillium Inn, because it’s booked up with people whom Baron and I want to have at our wedding. So you’ll be forced to look at something downtown.”

  “Chloe,” her mother interposed gently, “why do you care where Nico sleeps, as long as it isn’t in your bed, with you?”

  The mere suggestion of such a possibility sent such a stab of forbidden pleasure coursing through her body that Chloe was left blushing and breathless. And of course, he noticed! Leaning so close that his shoulder brushed hers, he murmured, “Don’t worry, cara. It will happen only when you give the word.”

  “Dream on!” she choked indignantly.

  Trying to avert another storm, Jacqueline quickly changed the subject. “So sorry we couldn’t welcome you properly last night, Nico, but as I mentioned when you phoned during your layover in Toronto, we were entertaining Baron’s parents whom we met for the first time. I’m sure you understand how awkward it would have been to explain your presence to them, had we included you in the party.”

  “Do not be concerned,” he practically crooned, so full of beaming good cheer that Chloe came perilously close to smacking him. “I found the key to the lodge exactly where you said it would be, and was comfortably settled in by what…?” He lifted his shoulders in one of his supremely careless shrugs. “Six o’clock? Half past?”

  “And you have everything you need?”

  “But yes! More than enough. The bed….” Another shrug, this time accompanied by an expansive forefinger-to-thumb gesture of approval. “Molto comodo! Very comfortable!” He angled a sly glance at Chloe. “But much too big for just one person.”

  “Don’t give me that look,” she informed him tartly. “It’ll be a cold day in hell before I jump into any bed with you again!”

  “Did I ask that you do so, cara?”

  “No, but it’s what you’re thinking!”

  “And since when am I not allowed to dream?”

  “Since you found out I’m engaged to another man.” She drew in an irate breath. “I won’t tolerate your causing trouble for Baron and me, Nico. Contrary to the impression my mother might have given you, we thought long and hard before we decided to get married, and we’re not about to let you or anyone else put an eleventh-hour dent in our plans.”

  “But, darling, how could I if, as you claim, you’r
e meant for one another?”

  Dar-ling, he said, endowing both syllables with such husky, continental emphasis that her spine tingled. She tossed down her napkin and abruptly rose from her seat. “You can’t, and you won’t get a chance to try. If it were up to me, I’d have you tossed out of here on your ear, but since it’s not, I’ll make sure we cross paths as little as possible. And on those occasions when our being in the same place at the same time is unavoidable, I shall ignore you. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have things to do.” Sparing her mother but a passing glance, she dropped a kiss on Charlotte’s head. “I’ll see you later, Gran.”

  “You’re going out?” Jacqueline sounded surprised, and more than a little disappointed.

  “Yes. Baron and I are doing the tourist bit with his family today.”

  “So early? It’s only just after nine. What’s the big rush?”

  “He’s picking me up at half past, and I’m not quite finished getting ready.”

  “Oh, sit down and finish your breakfast!” her mother declared impatiently. “You look perfectly fine as you are.”

  Nico glanced up from the brioche he was dissecting and swept a critical eye over Chloe’s gray linen dress. “No, she doesn’t. She needs to wear something more attractive.”

  “Oh, really?” Chloe fixed him in an affronted glare. “And exactly what’s wrong with what I have on?”

  “It is dull and does not suit you.” He waved his butter spreader dismissively. “It has no style, no pizzazz. It makes you look like a prison matron. I do not like it.”

  “How odd!” she cooed, masking her outrage with a heavy dose of sarcasm. “You must have mistaken me for someone who cares about your likes or dislikes!”

  She swept away then, chased by his taunting laughter and the echo of his words. They followed her inside the house and up the stairs to her bedroom. …No style, no pizzazz… I do not like it…like it…like it….

  “Much he knows!” she muttered scornfully. “He wouldn’t recognize style if it jumped up and bit him in the face!”