LITMIR.BIZ

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heaven sakes just tell me!”

      Rini had angered her. This was going wrong. “From the time I could remember, I played soccer. By seventeen I was playing on a winning team with my friend Guido. On the day of the championship game, I got injured. At the hospital tests were done and I was told I was infertile. Over the years I’ve undergone tests, but the diagnosis is always the same...”

      Her haunted eyes had fastened on him. She didn’t move or cry out, but he saw pain break out on her face.

      “Like anyone, I grew up thinking that one day I’d get married and have children. It was something I took for granted. Even after my first diagnosis, I didn’t really believe it. I thought that surely in time the problem would go away and I’d be normal like everyone else. But every year I was tested, I was told that nothing had changed.”

      “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, sounding agonized.

      “So am I, Alessandra, because the diagnosis has impacted my life.”

      “So that’s why you left me without saying goodbye? You thought I wouldn’t be able to handle it?”

      His lips thinned.

      “Of course a woman wants babies with the man she marries. But there are other ways to have children.”

      “It’s not the same. The other day when I was telling you about Valentina, you said you couldn’t wait until you could have your own baby. It’s a natural urge to want to procreate.”

      “Yes, but—”

      “But nothing. I can’t give any woman a baby, so I’ve been living my life with the reputation of being a dedicated bachelor. No one but my doctor, and now you, know I’m infertile.”

      “It happens to people, Rini. How tragic that you’ve let it rob you of the joy of life! It kills me that your fear has prevented you from settling down with a woman because you can’t give her what you think she wants.

      “I know you’d make a marvelous father, Rini. That’s why there’s adoption. Thousands of couples do it. For you to have lived your life since seventeen with such a dark cloud hanging over your head doesn’t bear thinking about.”

      “You’re very sweet, Alessandra, but you’re not in my shoes.” Her incredible reaction was all he could have hoped for and let him know her support would never be in question. His doctor had told him the right woman would be able to handle it.

      But there was still something else to keep them apart. All of it stemmed from his conversation with her aunt and her implied warning. Even now he held back, thinking it was better that she believe his infertility presented the biggest problem for them.

      Alessandra stared at him. “What you’re saying is that you’re going to let this stand in the way of our having a relationship. If you really mean that, then you need counseling before you deny yourself the greatest joy in life.”

      “Therapy won’t help me,” he responded bleakly. He rubbed the back of his neck. “Combined with the conversation I had with your aunt, a relationship with you won’t work.”

      “We’re back to my aunt again?”

      “She told me some things in confidence I can’t share. Don’t be upset with her. It’s because she loves you.”

      “Rini—” she cried out, aghast. But she’d felt him withdraw emotionally from her. It had been a huge mistake to fly here after all.

      Alessandra pulled out her cell and called for the limo to return to his house. Once off the phone she got up and walked over to the table to drink the rest of her lemonade. “Please tell the cook the food was delicious. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going outside to wait for my ride.”

      Rini moved faster than she did and caught up to her outside the front door of the villa. “Alessandra—”

      “It’s all right, Rini. Though your explanation wasn’t the one I expected, I got my answer, so thank you. Please forgive me for barging in here uninvited. I give you my promise it will never happen again.”

      When the limo turned into the courtyard, she rushed to get in the backseat on her own. Rini was right there, but she refused to give him the satisfaction of meeting his eyes and closed the door herself. As the limo drove off, Rini’s heart plummeted to his feet.

      “Where do you wish to go, signorina?”

      “The airport, per favore.”

      Alessandra didn’t look back as they turned away.

      No more looking back.

      Just now she’d wanted to comfort him over his infertility, but she sensed he wouldn’t have been willing to listen to her. For him to have revealed his agony to her had been huge for him. Now that he’d told her the truth, he’d backed away, certain that she—like any other woman—wouldn’t see him as a complete man.

      Was that image of being incomplete the reason for his meteoric rise in the business world? Had he worked day and night to compensate for what he saw as an inadequacy? She’d detected the love in his voice when he’d talked about his sister and her babies. Pain pierced her heart to realize that every time Rini eyed his nephew, he was reminded that he could never give a woman a child from his own body.

      She’d seen the way he’d kissed and loved Valentina’s baby. The man had been there for her throughout her pregnancy. Yet all that time, he’d been gutted by the knowledge that he’d never be able to look forward to having a baby from his own body. Her heart ached for him.

      As for his conversation with her aunt, that was something else again. If he’d been sworn to secrecy, then she wouldn’t be getting an explanation out of him. Alessandra could go to her aunt and demand to know the truth, but it wasn’t her right.

      On the flight back to Metaponto, she stared out the window of the plane. Rini Montanari had been an earthshaking interlude. But interlude was all he’d prepared for their association to be and became the operative word in her romance-less life.

      * * *

      Sunday evening the helicopter dipped lower over Ravello. Rini was late for his brother Carlo’s birthday party, which Valentina and Giovanni were hosting.

      For the last three weeks Rini had traveled to four areas of Calabria in Southern Italy, exploring the possibility of developing more oil sites. But he’d been in agony since Alessandra had left his villa and couldn’t concentrate.

      Nothing he’d visited turned out to be as promising as the land owned by the Caracciolo family. But he’d written that off. Unfortunately, blotting Alessandra from his heart was another matter entirely. With love in her eyes, she’d reacted to the news that he was infertile as if it was of no consequence to her. She’d assured him it didn’t matter. The way she’d kissed him, as if he was her whole life, he’d believed her.

      But her aunt’s fear that a relationship with Alessandra might cause a permanent rift between the twins had prompted him to back away. Fulvia had told him how close the girls had been growing up, how much fun they’d had as children. But everything changed when Alessandra fell in love and then was betrayed by her sister and the man she’d thought she would marry.

      The girls had finally gotten past it, but now they’d reached another impasse because Dea had met Rini first. Apparently she’d been devastated when he didn’t want to date her. Hearing that Alessandra had been showing him around the property had upset her.

      Though the situation was totally unfair, Fulvia had looked him in the eye and asked him if he wanted to be responsible for bringing on more pain between the two of them that might last. It was his decision to make.

      In the end, Rini couldn’t do it, so he’d had to let Alessandra go. All he could do was watch news clips on television about the discovery of the Temple of Hera beneath the waters off Basilicata in the Ionian.

      Dr. Bruno Tozzi and his team had been given credit

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