LITMIR.BIZ

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an aunt who lives in America, but they don’t know you. You’re a name, a photograph, someone who never forgets to send them lovely gifts at Christmas and on their birthdays, or postcards from the interesting foreign places you visit. But you found the time to come to see them only once, when they were infants and much too young to remember you. For the rest, you depended on their parents to bring them to America to visit you—and how often did that occur? Two, three times, in the last eight years?”

      His sigh drifted gently, regretfully, over the phone. “The unfortunate truth is, Caroline, you and the children are almost strangers to one other. A sad case of ‘out of sight, out of mind,’ I’m afraid.”

      He might see it that way, but Callie knew differently. Not a day went by that she didn’t think of those two adorable children. She spent hours poring over fat albums of photographs depicting every stage in their lives, from when they were just a few hours old, to the present day. Her staircase wall was filled with framed pictures of them. Their most recent portraits occupied pride of place by her bed, on the mantelpiece in her living room, on her desk at the office. She could have picked them out unerringly in a crowd of hundreds of children with the same dark hair and brown eyes, so well did she know every feature, every expression, every tiny detail that made them unique.

       Strangers, Paolo? In your dreams!

      “Nonetheless, I am their aunt, and they can count on me to be there for them now,” she told him. “I’ll leave here tomorrow and barring any unforeseen delays, should be with them the day after that.”

      “Then I’ll send you the details of your flight later today.”

      “Please don’t trouble yourself, Paolo,” she said coolly. “I can well afford to make my own reservations, and will take care of them myself.”

      “No, Caroline, you will not,” he said flatly. “This has nothing to do with money, it has to do with family looking after family—and regardless of how you might perceive it, we are inextricably connected through the marriage of your sister to my brother, are we not?”

      Oh, yes, Paolo, she thought, smothering the burst of hysterical laughter rising in her throat at the irony of his question. That, and a whole lot more than you can begin to imagine!

      Mistaking her silence for disagreement, he said, “This is no time to quibble over the fine print of our association, Caroline. No matter which way you look at it, we have a niece and nephew in common, and must rally together for their good.”

      How nauseatingly self-righteous he sounded! How morally upright! If she hadn’t known better, Callie might have been fooled into believing he really was as honorable and responsible as he made himself out to be.

      “I couldn’t agree more, Paolo,” she said, with deceptive meekness. “I wouldn’t dream of turning my back on the twins when they need all the emotional support they can get. I’ll be in Rome no later than Tuesday.”

      “And you will allow me to make your flight arrangements?”

      Why not? Pride had no place in the tragic loss of her sister, and Callie was having trouble enough holding herself together. She couldn’t afford to squander her strength when she had much bigger battles to wage than besting Paolo Rainero on the trifling matter of who sprang for the price of her ticket. She could pay him back later, when everything else was settled. “If you insist.”

      “Eccellente! Thank you for seeing things my way.”

      You won’t thank me for long, Paolo, she thought. Not once you discover that when I come home again, I’m bringing those children with me!

      Outside the converted eighteenth-century palazzo whose entire top floor housed his parents’ apartment, the traffic and crowds, both so much a part of everyday Rome, went about their noisy business as usual. Immediately beyond the leather-paneled walls of his father’s library, however, a mournful hush reigned. Dropping the receiver back in its cradle, Paolo left the room and made his way down the long hall to the day salon where his parents waited.

      His mother had aged ten years in the last two days. Weeping and sleeplessness left her beautiful eyes ringed with shadows. Her mouth trembled uncontrollably. Silver, which surely hadn’t been there a week ago, glinted in her thick black hair. She clutched his father’s hand almost convulsively, as if only by doing so could she anchor herself to sanity.

      “Well? How did she take the news? Is she coming for the funerals?” Cultured, wealthy in his own right, influential, and deeply respected in the international world of high finance, Salvatore Rainero did not surrender easily to defeat. But Paolo heard it in the subdued tone with which his father uttered the questions; recognized it in the slump of those broad, patrician shoulders.

      “She’ll be here.” Paolo shrugged wearily, his own sense of loss lying heavy in the pit of his stomach. “As for how she took the news, she was shocked, bereft, as are we all.”

      His mother dabbed at her eyes with a fine linen handkerchief. “Did she mention the children?”

      “Yes, but nothing that you need to worry about. She sent them her love.”

      “Does she have any idea that—?”

      “None. Nor did it occur to her to ask. But she was unprepared for my call and most probably not thinking clearly. It’s possible she might wonder, over the next two days. And even if she does not, once they’re read, we won’t be able to hide the terms of the wills from her.”

      His mother let out an anguished moan. “And who’s to say how she will react?”

      “She may react any way she pleases, Lidia,” Paolo’s father said grimly, “but she will not create havoc with our grandchildren, because I will not allow her to do so. In declining to take an active role in their lives for the past eight years, she forfeits the right to have any say in their future.” His fierce gaze swung to Paolo. “Did you have to work hard to persuade her to let us bring her over here at our expense?”

      “Not particularly.”

      “Good!” A spark of triumph lightened the grief in the old man’s eyes. “Then she can be bought.”

      “Oh, Salvatore, that’s cruel!” his wife objected. “Caroline is mourning her sister’s death too deeply to care about monetary matters.”

      “I have to agree,” Paolo felt obliged to add. “I suspect the poor thing was so numbed by my news that I could have persuaded her the moon was made of cheese, if I’d put my mind to it. Once she gets past the initial shock of this tragedy, she might well change her mind about accepting our offer. We met only briefly and nine years ago at that, but I remember her as being a singularly proud and independent young woman.”

      “You’re wrong, both of you.” His father heaved himself up from the sofa to pace the length of the room. “She was anything but proud in the way she threw herself at you after the wedding, Paolo. If you’d given her the slightest encouragement, you’d soon have followed in your brother’s footsteps, and found yourself at the altar, too.”

      Again, Paolo’s mother spoke up, unnaturally vigorous in her defense of someone she hardly knew, he thought. “You’re being unfair, Salvatore! I spoke to Caroline at length when she was here, and she was very excited about starting her university studies that September. I don’t believe she’d have abandoned her plans, even if Paolo had encouraged her.”

      But there was no even if about it, Paolo thought, a disconcerting pang of shame rising from the ashes of the murky memories suddenly looming up in his mind. Despite his many other excesses in those days, alcohol wasn’t among them. But the night of his brother’s wedding, he’d had too much champagne to remember much beyond the fact that the bride’s pretty sister had been young, impressionable, eminently desirable and willing—though not nearly as experienced as she’d pretended to be.

      One night with a novice had been enough to make him regret having seduced her. He wasn’t accustomed to his women being so generous,

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