LITMIR.BIZ

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      The bottle of water arrived, along with glasses filled with ice and slices of lemon. Dante reached for Gabriella’s hand.

      “I wish I’d been with you when you were pregnant,” he said softly. “And when you delivered. You shouldn’t have been alone.”

      Gabriella shook her head. “I told you, I wasn’t alone. Yara was there.” She paused. “And my brother.”

      Dante watched her face, the sudden play of emotion in her eyes. “You know,” he said carefully, “you never talk about him.”

      “There isn’t much to say.” Her voice trailed off; her eyes met his. There was a sudden fierce glow in them. “He is dead, but I suppose you know that.”

      “Sweetheart. I didn’t want to make you sad. If you don’t want to tell me—”

      “He died of AIDS.” The glow in her eyes grew even more fierce. “He was a good man, Dante. A wonderful brother.”

      “I’m sure he was,” Dante said gently.

      “Our father despised him.” She gave a bitter laugh. “But then, he despised me, too. My brother, because he was gay. Me, because I killed my mother.”

      “Gaby. Honey—”

      The waiter arrived with their lunch. They fell silent until he’d left. Neither of them reached for a fork. At last Gabriella picked up her story.

      “She died in childbirth, and our father said it was my fault.” Dante clasped her hand; she gave his a tight squeeze. “I know how wrong that is now, but when I was a little girl, I believed it. Anyway, just about the time you and I—about the time we stopped seeing each other—”

      “The time you found out you were carrying my baby,” Dante said gruffly.

      Another nod of her head. “Sim. My father wrote to me, a very conciliatory letter asking me to return home. He was getting old, he said, it was time to mend our relationship, he said…” She swallowed dryly. “So, considering that…that I wanted to leave New York, I went home. But he had lied to me. He was dying. He had no money—my father was a very heavy gambler. He needed someone to take care of him.” She shrugged. “So I did.”

      “Ah, sweetheart, I’m so sorry. You needed someone to take care of you and instead—”

      “I did not mind. There are things one must do in life.” She lifted her head and smiled, though now there were tears in her eyes. “And a good thing came of it. I told my father I would only stay with him if he permitted my brother to move back in. Arturo was ill by then.” She swallowed hard. “So Arturo and I were together again. It was wonderful. We talked and laughed and shared memories—and then my father died.” Her voice broke. “And before very long, so did Arturo. And while I was still mourning him, Andre Ferrantes came to the door to tell me the bank was going to foreclose on Viera y Filho—my father had named the ranch at my brother’s birth, you see, long before he could have known Arturo would be gay. And Ferrantes said—He said—”

      Dante stood, pulled back her chair and kissed her. Then he drew her to her feet, dropped some bills on the table and led her from the terrace toward the door.

      “How romantic,” he heard a woman say.

      And he thought, Wrong.

      This, whatever was happening between them, was far more complicated than romance. It was…it was—

      He clasped Gabriella’s hand and hurried her from the park.

      At home again, they checked on the baby.

      He was sound asleep, his backside in the air.

      Mrs. Janiseck left. So did Stacia. Dante took Gabriella out on the terrace. They sat close together on a love seat, his arm curved around her in the warm sun, surrounded by Izzy’s flowers.

      He told her all about his life. Things he’d never told anyone. His confused feelings for Cesare. His love for his brothers. For his sisters. He told her how lost he’d been at eighteen, how filled with rage because he had a father whose idea of famiglia had little to do with the family sitting around a dinner table and everything to do with some alien family whose existence periodically brought reporters and photographers and cops to the door.

      He told her how directionless he’d been, how his brothers had said enlisting in one of the armed services would give his life structure—and how he’d known, instinctively, he needed the opportunity to find that structure in a different way.

      He picked up her hand, kissed her fingertips and explained that he’d found it in Alaska, risking his not-so-precious neck in the oil fields, hiking alone whenever he could in the wilderness, camping out and watching the northern lights, listening to the mournful howl of the wolves until, at last, he’d seen his anger at life for the pettiness it was.

      “So I flew home,” he said. “To New York. And my brothers were starting to feel as directionless as I’d felt, now that Nick was out of the Marines, Rafe out of the Army and Falco was out of whatever in hell they had him doing in Special Forces.”

      And, he said, they spent hours talking. Planning. Ultimately pooled their savings and their areas of expertise in finance, where they all had done well in school and, in Falco’s case, at the poker tables.

      “Orsini Investments took off,” he said. It still was doing well—an understatement, really, making their investors happy despite the slowed economy.

      And finally he told her why he’d gone to Brazil, Cesare’s bizarre request—and then the truth that he’d kept from facing.

      He had gone there knowing he would not leave without searching for, and finding, her.

      When he fell silent, Gabriella smiled, though her cheeks were damp with tears.

      “Dante,” she whispered, “Dante, meu querido…”

      He drew her into his lap. They kissed. And touched. And when that was no longer enough, he took her to his bedroom, undressed her as slowly as if he were unwrapping a perfect gift.

      An eternity later, with her lover still deep inside her as she lay sated in his arms in the afterglow of their passion, Gabriella finally faced the truth.

      No matter what happened, she would always be in love with Dante Orsini.

       Chapter Twelve

      IT WAS decades since Dante had played hooky.

      He’d done it a lot in high school. Got into trouble for it, ended up on suspension once but school was dull and the world was exciting and, besides, even the principal had to admit he was too smart a kid to dump.

      Or maybe the influence on the principal was fear of his old man.

      Either way, he’d cut classes years back then and, yeah, at NYU, but ditching university classes wasn’t the same thing, especially when you could ace the coursework without half trying.

      But once he’d had his seemingly useless economics degree in hand and headed for Alaska, those easy days ended. He’d not only shown up at his job each day, he’d worked his ass off, too.

      The idea had been to test himself. Get the wild streak that had driven him north out of his system. And to make a lot of money. He’d done that, too, though he’d never been quite sure why it had seemed so important except to know it represented freedom. Total and complete independence, even more so after he’d come home, invested what he’d saved along with his brothers in the company they’d started.

      So, eventually, he had it all.

      Freedom. Independence. And a lot of money. More money than he’d ever imagined, enough to buy pretty much anything the world had that he might possibly want.

      And

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