LITMIR.BIZ

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want a premature delivery.”

      Oh, the blistering shame, to be the youngest daughter of the late, respected Audrey Leighton, president of the Junior League, pillar of society. To be pregnant and unmarried—with twins. Oh, God! Oh, God!

      “You weren’t really alone. You still had your sister, and Ermanno, too.”

      Oh, yes. More than you can begin to know! “I seldom saw them. They were traveling all over the world for the better part of a year.”

      “So they were—until Vanessa was put on bed rest because of her pregnancy. They stayed in California then, until after the twins were born, didn’t they?”

      “Yes,” she said, with guilelessly misleading honesty.

      “And you were there for the birth?”

      Callie stared fixedly at the moonlit sea, hating that she had to mouth another lie, albeit by omission. “Yes.”

      “My mother planned to be there, also, but the babies came almost a month earlier than expected.”

      “Mmm-hmm.” Actually only ten days early, thanks to the excellent care Callie had received. But Vanessa and Ermanno had planned their story carefully, to avoid just such a situation as Paolo described.

      He shifted in his seat and then, shockingly, stroked the back of his hand down her cheek. “Ah, Caroline,” he said softly. “I see how it hurts you, that you were there to welcome the children into the world, and yet could not be here, to see them grow up.”

      “You don’t know the half of it,” she cried, scrunching her eyes shut against the painful images forcing their way to the forefront of her mind.

      To give birth, to hold her babies close to her heart and smell their sweet, newborn smell—and then, ten days later, to let them go? There were no words to describe the emptiness, the agony.

      Even after all this time, the picture remained as painfully sharp as if it had happened just yesterday: Vanessa, wearing a yellow dress and matching jacket, Ermanno in a pale gray suit, and each of them holding a tiny bundle wrapped in a soft white blanket.

       You know we couldn’t love them more, if they were our very own, Callie.

       Never fear that they will want for anything, Caroline. They will have the best that money can buy.

      Before stepping into the waiting limousine, Vanessa turned one last time to Callie. We’ll give them brothers and sisters. They’ll be part of a big, loving family—and so will you, Callie. You’ll be their darling aunt.

      But the other children never materialized. Vanessa had been unable to conceive. Oh, Callie! she had wept. If it weren’t for you, I’d never have known the joy of being a mother. Thank you so much, darling, for the gift you gave us.

      “Then tell me all of it,” Paolo urged. “Tell me what it is that haunts you with such sorrow.”

      “My sister died last week,” she said, choking back a sob. “Isn’t that enough?”

      Sliding his arm around her shoulder, he pulled her close and cupped her chin, forcing her to look at him. “There’s more,” he insisted. “I hear it in your voice. I see it in your eyes. What is it you’re holding back? Please, Caroline, let me help you.”

      “You?” Her laugh verged on the hysterical. “I hardly think so!”

      “Why? Because, the first time I held you in my arms, I was too foolish to realize your true worth?” He expelled a huge sigh of frustration. “That was a long time ago, cara. Trust me when I tell you, I’ve changed for the better since then.”

      Temptation nibbled at the edges of her resolve. Quickly, before it gained too powerful a hold, she replied, “Easy for you to say, Paolo, but where’s the proof?”

      “Here.” He tapped a fist to his chest. “I admit that when I met you in Paris, I viewed you as a threat to my family, and was prepared to squash you flat at the first hint of sabotage. But I’ve watched you, this last week. I’ve seen your kindness to my mother, the way you sit with her and try to comfort her when your own heart is also breaking. I’ve seen how patient you are with the children, how loving, even though, more often than not, they rebuff your overtures.”

      His hand strayed down her throat, stole around her neck. “If it were within your power to do so, I believe you would change places with Vanessa, just to give them back their mother. Yet something more than that is eating you alive. I know it, and it worries me, even as my heart tells me you’re incapable of sinister motives.”

      “My heart hears your words and wants to believe them,” she countered tremulously, “but my head tells me actions are what count.”

      “Then let your head be the best judge of this,” he said, and before she could guess his intent, let alone utter a protest, his mouth came down on hers and fastened there in a burst of heat that set her blood on fire.

      Chapter Five

      SHE’D felt faint stirrings of desire with other men since he’d initiated her into the art of love, nine years before. Kinder, less dangerous men. More sympathetic and deserving men. But always, Callie had withheld herself, even if her current love interest hadn’t known it. When it came right down to that moment of ultimate surrender, she hadn’t been able to let go. Not once, since the night she’d conceived Paolo’s children, had she permitted herself the freedom to respond without reservation or inhibition.

      But if she’d spent the intervening years suppressing her sexual urges, Paolo had clearly spent the same amount of time fine-tuning his. The once-reckless womanizer had matured into a virtuoso seducer whose finesse laid instant waste to her resistance.

      The very second his mouth touched hers, all thought of selfpreservation fled her mind. With just a kiss, he turned her world on its ear, and nothing mattered but to prolong the pleasure of being in his arms again; of awakening after a long and arid sleep, and feeling, with every cell in her body, every beat of her heart, the sweet, sharp trickle of desire permeating her blood. Without a moment’s pause, she was ready to sell her soul all over again, if that’s what it took to satisfy the raging hunger he inspired.

      Her lips softened, parted. How else could she drink in the essence of him? When his tongue trespassed beyond the bounds of friendship and entered the forbidden territory of lovers, she held it prisoner, drawing it ever deeper into her mouth.

      She cradled his cheek. Let her fingers steal up to knot fiercely in his thick, black hair. She swayed against him, arousing both him and herself by brushing her nipples lightly against his chest.

      His hand skated from her throat to her ribs, and settled urgently, possessively, at her hip. For the first time in what seemed like eternity, she again experienced that scalding rush of heat between her legs. Sensed the distant tremors gathering strength within her, forerunners of a starving passion that would be satisfied with nothing less than complete fulfillment.

      How disastrously it all might have ended, had he not exercised some restraint, was anybody’s guess. But again, with a discipline his younger self had never shown, he pulled them both back from the brink. “Forgive me, Caroline,” he said hoarsely, shoving her almost roughly into the far corner of the passenger seat. “I should not have done that.”

      Dazed, disappointed, she swiped her hand across her mouth and injected a hard-won note of outrage into her reply. “Why did you then?”

      “I couldn’t help myself.” He hesitated, and if she hadn’t known him to be the most confident man she’d ever met, she’d have thought him unsure he should utter his next words.

      At length, though, he went on, “I find myself drawn to you. You touch me—against my will, I might add—with your selfcontained grief. I see the way you swallow when the pain almost gets the better of you, and I wish I could comfort you. But I forfeited that right a long time ago, and of the many things

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