The Moretti Marriage Page 4

  But when she crossed to the full-length mirror in the corner, what she saw staring back at her was not a sleekly elegant woman wearing a designer creation the color of sea mist, but a drab, featureless individual in a drab, featureless dress. Her hair, newly styled just the day before, hung around her face in a limp brown mass, looking as defeated as she felt at that moment. Her eyes, which Nico once had compared to sparkling sapphires, reflected the emptiness in her soul, their dark blue irises lifeless. Even her skin appeared faded.

  When had it happened? Since yesterday? Or had the change been more subtle, and crept up a little at a time, as her wedding day grew closer?

  “Ah!” Furious with Nico for making her doubt herself, and with herself for letting him get away with it, she rushed into the bathroom. Smoothed blusher on her cheeks, and a trace of lilac shadow over her eyelids. Brushed a mascara wand over her lashes, and applied rosy lip gloss to her mouth. Dabbed a little perfume behind her knees and in the crook of her elbows. Then, snatching up a brush, she raked it through her hair until her scalp burned.

  “There!” she muttered, watching as her hair bounced gently into place. “Now tell me I look like a prison matron!”

  But how she looked wasn’t the issue. It was that Nico’s opinion could carry such weight after all this time. What kind of fool was she, that she’d let him derail her so easily?

  Taking a deep, calming breath, she returned to the bedroom and, refusing to listen to the little voice telling her to change into something else, she hunted through her jewelry case for an item to accessorize her dress.

  Not the plain gold locket and chain, she decided: it had no style! And definitely not the dignified pearls; they lacked pizzazz! But the long string of turquoise baroque beads, with matching dangling earrings? Now there was drama and color enough to turn a prison uniform into haute couture, and let anyone try to tell her differently!

  When she came back downstairs, the front door stood open. “So you travel over here fairly frequently, then?” she heard Baron say as she reached the bottom step, and realized with utter horror that he’d arrived already and was speaking to Nico.

  “Sì. At least three or four times a year.”

  That often? She’d had no idea! Had thought, from her mother’s passing references, that he’d visited only once or twice since the divorce.

  “Business must be good, then.”

  “I do not complain. And with you, business is also good?”

  “No complaints here, either. I keep busy, but always find time to put in a round or two of golf each week. Do you play?”

  “Not as often as I’d like, but I enjoy it when I have the chance.”

  “Maybe we can work in a game while you’re here.”

  Time to step in and effect a little damage control, Chloe decided, and practically flew the last several yards from the foot of the stairs to the front door. “I can’t see that happening, with everything else going on,” she said breezily, sweeping past Nico as if he were just another planter of petunias, and pressing a kiss on Baron. “Hi, sweetheart. I didn’t hear the car arrive, or I’d have been down sooner.”

  “I got here only a couple of minutes ago. Just long enough to say hello to your mother and meet Nico.” He caught her hand. “You look beautiful, Chloe. But then, you always do.”

  “Thanks.” She squeezed his fingers, so grateful for the understanding she read in his smile that she could have wept. He knew her so well; better than anyone else ever had. She didn’t need to tell him how distraught she was. His calm blue eyes saw it all. “We should be on our way, don’t you think? Your family will be waiting.”

  “Yes.” He paused with his hand on her elbow and nodded amiably at Nico. “Nice meeting you. We’ll see each other again, I’m sure.”

  “But certainly,” Nico returned, his gaze resting fleetingly on Chloe before focusing on Baron. “Ciao! Enjoy your day.”

  She waited just long enough for the car doors to slam closed before starting to explain. “I didn’t invite him,” she began. “Honestly, Baron, I had no idea he was coming, or I’d have put a stop to it. I don’t know what my mother was thinking about.”

  Baron reached over and briefly covered her hand. “Honey, it’s okay. I don’t mind that he’s here.”

  “You don’t?” Thunderstruck, she stared at him. “He’s my ex-husband, for heaven’s sake!”

  “He’s also a family friend, and strikes me as a decent enough guy. His timing might be a bit off, but I can handle it, if you can.”

  That was the trouble in a nutshell; she wasn’t sure she could. Wasn’t sure of anything anymore, if truth be told. “What will your parents think?”

  “That he’s just another guest, unless you choose to tell them differently. They don’t have to know you were once married to him. It’s none of their business.”

  “He thinks he’s coming to the wedding, Baron!”

  “Where’s the harm in that? I hardly expect he’s going to fling himself down on the ground and throw a tantrum in the middle of the ceremony. He doesn’t strike me as the type. In fact, if he still harbors any romantic affection for you, seeing you marry me might be the one thing to give him closure.”

  More confounded by the second, Chloe shook her head. “You amaze me! If it were your ex-wife we’d just left standing on the doorstep, I can tell you I wouldn’t be taking it nearly this well.”

  “Why not? Don’t you trust me to know who it is I want to be with?”

  “You know that I do.”

  “Well, the same goes for me. Unless you tell me differently, I’m assuming nothing’s changed between us.” He patted her hand again. “I know you well enough to recognize that you don’t have a dishonest bone in your body, Chloe. You’d never lie about your feelings.”

  He was trying very hard to make her feel better, she realized. What he couldn’t begin to guess was that, with his every word, she felt worse.

  Nico spent the day in business meetings in the city, returning to the house just as dusk fell.

  “Come join us for dinner,” Jacqueline said, intercepting him as he left his rental car and was about to head down the brick path to the lodge. “It’ll be just the three of us. Chloe phoned to say she was dining downtown with Baron’s family, and won’t be home until later.”

  Not sure if he was disappointed or relieved by the news, he allowed himself to be persuaded. Seeing Chloe again had unraveled him more than he cared to admit. They’d been divorced for more than four years; time enough for both of them to move forward along separate paths. But just as she couldn’t come to terms with the death of their son, so he, Nico realized, couldn’t accept the idea of some other man replacing him in her life.

  Coming upon her in the pool last night had shaken him to the core. He hadn’t been prepared to find her so scantily clad that it required no imagination at all to picture her naked.

  Ludicrous though it sounded, loss and grief had made her lovelier, stripping her down to a finely sculpted version of the sweetly rounded girl he’d married. Her skin was stretched more tightly over her bones, lending her face an almost ethereal beauty. No one looking at her would guess she’d given birth to a three-kilo baby boy. Her waist and hips were trim, her belly flat, her breasts small and firm, her long, luscious legs unblemished.

  “You left so quickly this morning that I didn’t get the chance to ask you then,” Jacqueline said, the very second they sat down at the table, “but there’s nothing stopping us from talking now. So, how do you find her?”

  He laughed. His former mother-in-law had always been one to get straight to the point. “Is it possible we’re talking about Chloe?” he teased.

  “Well, of course! Who else?”

  Aware that both mother and grandmother were eyeing him expectantly, he chose his reply with care. “I sense it would not take much to break her.”

  “So you see it, too!” Jacqueline leaned back in her chair and nodded with satisfaction. “Oh, we’re so glad you’re here, Nico! You’r
e the one person who might be able to talk some sense into her.”

  “Or I could be the one to push her into this marriage you feel will be such a mistake. You saw how she was with me this morning. As far as she is concerned, I’m very much a part of her past, and have no place in her present. What makes you think she will listen to anything I say? And perhaps more to the point, do I have the right to say anything at all?”

  “I believe you do,” Charlotte said in her quiet, thoughtful way, “because I also believe that in her heart, Chloe still loves you. But she can’t get past the hurt, and it blinds her to her true feelings. Instead, she’s hiding from them, and using Baron to do it.”

  “What about you, Nico?” Jacqueline asked, observing him closely. “Do you still love Chloe?”

  Did he? Was it love that had sent his heart slamming against his ribs, and left his groin aching painfully, when he’d seen her last night? Or just the normal reaction of any red-blooded man to the sight of a beautiful woman? “We’ve been apart a long time, Jacqueline. We don’t know each other anymore. We’ve both changed.”

  “But you care about her?”

  “She was the mother of my child. I’ll always care.”

  “Sufficiently to see if there’s enough left of what you once had, to build something new?”

  Unwilling to let them see the doubt in his eyes, he pushed away from the table and paced to the long windows overlooking the Strait. Had he and Chloe ever had enough to make marriage work, if they came apart at the seams the first time something went wrong?

  Until that dreadful night, they’d thought they were immune to the woes that afflicted other couples. Had laughed at the idea that anything could ever tarnish their love. Yet in the space of a few minutes, their entire world had crumbled, and only after the dust settled had he realized their marriage lay in ruins because of it….

  He’d come home late in the afternoon, to the house they’d rented just before Luciano was born because it had a little alcove off the only bedroom that would serve as a nursery, and a sunny garden where the baby could take his afternoon naps.

  He’d burst through the front door, full of excitement. At last, one of his investments had paid off. For the first time, he’d seen a light at the end of the long tunnel of poverty which had marked his childhood and dogged him as a man.

  “Put on that dress I like so much, the yellow one, with the daisies all over it,” he’d told Chloe, swinging her off her feet in a dizzying circle. “I’m taking you out to dinner, to somewhere fancy, for a change! Tonight, we have something to celebrate!”

  “We can’t go out,” she’d said, laughing down at him. “We’re parents now. We have a baby to think about.”

  “We’ll get a sitter—Erstilia, from next door. She’s said often enough that she’d be happy to look after Luciano.”

  Chloe had been aghast. “But we’ve never left him with anyone else, not even your mother! He’s only fourteen weeks old, Nico. What if he needs me?”

  “We’ll have our phone with us. If there’s a problem, we’ll come home right away. And Erstilia’s twenty—a responsible young woman, who could use a few extra lire to help with her university education.”

  He’d lowered Chloe to the ground, holding her so close that he felt every inch of her lithe and lovely body sliding against his on the way down. By the time her toes touched the floor, he was hard and wanting, and she…she’d looked up at him, her eyes clouding in that way they did when the passion began to run riot through her veins.

  “Come with me,” he’d whispered, talking about the restaurant, but meaning the other thing, too; the wild, unfettered loving that they did so well.

  She’d sighed, her protest dying, and moved her legs apart so that he could run his hands up under her skirt, pull down her panties, and touch her in exactly the right place to make her whimper and shudder and beg. Then there, against the whitewashed wall just inside the front door, he’d taken her. Swiftly, urgently, with all the raging hunger of a man bewitched by his woman. Felt her contract around him, felt himself surge and explode.

  “I love you, Nico,” she’d sobbed, burying her face against his neck. She often cried when she came.

  “And I adore you, tesoro,” he’d replied, holding her close. “You are my life.”

  Luciano had started to wail then, as though he knew he was being left out. They’d drawn apart, smiling, and gone together to soothe him.

  “I wouldn’t feel right, leaving him,” she’d said, leaning over the crib. “He’s still so young.”

  But Nico had coaxed and wheedled until at last, reluctantly, she’d agreed they’d go out to dinner—but only if he’d let her wait until Luciano was asleep. Only if Erstilia was comfortable about being left with him. Only if they didn’t stay out too long.

  “What is this?” he’d asked, scowling in mock anger. “Am I now number two in your life, that my time with you is rationed to a few short hours?”

  “You’re my husband,” she’d replied softly, “but he is my son and he depends on me to take care of him. Don’t make me feel guilty about that.”

  “Don’t make me feel selfish for wanting you to myself, for a change.” He brushed his hand down her face and cupped her jaw. “Do you realize we haven’t gone out together once in the last three and a half months, unless Luciano’s been with us?”

  She’d looked at him searchingly, nibbling the corner of her lip the whole time. “All right, you win,” she’d said at last. “We’ll go to dinner, just you and me.”

  And they had, to one of Verona’s finest ristorante, in the picturesque Ancient town neighborhood. Overriding her protests, he’d ordered an expensive bottle of wine, a meal fit for a queen and her consort, and laughed when she insisted on keeping the phone beside her on the table so that she’d be sure to hear it, if it rang.

  “There’s no rush, cara mia,” he’d insisted, when she’d suggested they skip dessert and head home. “You know Luciano will sleep a good eight hours. We’ll be back long before he needs to be fed again.”

  “It doesn’t feel right to be away from him,” she’d said.

  “He doesn’t even know we’re gone,” he’d replied, unable to curb the impatience creeping through his voice. “Per carita, Chloe, I begin to think you don’t even know I exist!”

  The call that changed their lives forever came at precisely twenty-one minutes after eleven. She’d snatched up the phone on the first ring, and he’d known at once that something had gone terribly wrong. The blood had drained from her face, leaving her white as chalk. And her eyes…dear God, they were the eyes of a woman staring straight into the jaws of hell.

  “No!” she had said, quietly at first. And then over and over again, more loudly, until at last she was screaming the word, and people had come running from all over the restaurant to find out what had happened.

  He’d tried to take the phone from her, but she clutched it so tightly that, in the end, he’d had to wrench it from her by force. “I can’t wake him up,” he heard Erstilia saying, her voice high and terrified. “Please, Signora Moretti, come home quickly. He will not open his eyes.”

  “Call for an ambulance,” he barked, suddenly so short of breath that he could barely get out the words. “We’ll be home in fifteen minutes.”

  They were too late. No sooner had they got to say “hello” to their son, than it was time to say “goodbye.”

  Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, the doctors told them; something no one could have foreseen. It was just one of those things, one of those cruel tricks of fate. No one knew why. No one was to blame.

  But Chloe didn’t believe them. She blamed him.

  He hadn’t been able to comfort her. Dio, he hadn’t known how to comfort himself! The darkness had grown blacker, thicker, until he couldn’t move away from it. Couldn’t find his way back to the light. It took months…years, before he could look life in the eye again.

  By then, he wasn’t the same man he’d once been. He lost more than his son, tha
t night. He lost his wife, too, and the best part of himself with her….

  He turned away from the windows to confront the two women watching him with such hope in their eyes…such trust. “You’re asking the wrong person,” he said. “You’re looking for a miracle, and that’s something only God can grant.”

  Charlotte sank back in her chair, disappointed acceptance written on her face. But Jacqueline left the table and came to where he stood. “And God helps those who help themselves, Nico!” she said forcefully. “So I ask you again. Do you at least care enough for my daughter to make her stop and look clearly into her own heart, before she walks down the aisle a second time and marries a good man who, through no fault of his own, happens also to be the wrong man?”

  Torn between his own selfish needs, and the common decency one man extends to another when a woman is involved, he drew in a breath so deep, he thought his ribs would crack.

  Seeing his indecision, Jacqueline struck without mercy at his most vulnerable point. “If you won’t do it for yourself or Chloe, Nico, do it for your son. Make Luciano’s short time with us amount to more than a memorial to misery and grief. Make it a monument to the healing power of the love he brought into all our lives. He deserves better than to be remembered only for the tears.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Sunday, August 23

  GIVING up her west-end apartment at the end of July had been a big mistake, Chloe decided. It left her with no place in which to seek refuge; no place to escape the curiosity and gossip Nico’s presence aroused. Because keeping his connection to her secret was impossible, something which became glaringly apparent that morning, when her godparents, Phyllis and Steve Stonehouse, who weren’t expected until the Monday, showed up a day early.

  At Jacqueline’s request, Nico was on the patio, busy taking apart the barbecue, when they arrived, “Because,” as her mother explained, “the left burner isn’t working and I want to cook a salmon on it tonight.”