скачать книгу бесплатно
“What?”
“You’re not going to believe it. I don’t believe it.”
“It’s that bad?”
“Much worse.”
“Are you dying?”
Irena knew it was a serious question. “No, but at least it would solve my problem.”
Without warning Deline jumped to her feet. “That’s never a solution!” she scolded. “I was about to say that unless an incurable disease is about to take your life, nothing else you could tell me would rival what I’ve lived through while I decided whether to stay with Leon or not.”
“Try this. I’m pregnant.”
Deline paled. “Andreas’s baby…”
After a brief pause; “Probably,” she answered in a shaky voice.
Her friend’s eyes widened with incredulity. “What do you mean probably?”
“The doctor worked out the dates with me. He’s ninety percent sure it’s Andreas’s, but it could be another’s. Oh, Deline, what if it’s Vincenzo’s baby?”
“Who’s Vincenzo?” Her friend’s loss of color alarmed her so much, she guided her back to the couch where they could both sit.
“Vincenzo is a man I spent all my time with when I was in Italy doing my article for the paper. He is handsome and…Oh, what a mess!” Irena let her head drop into her hands, a sudden feeling of despair washing over her.
“How long have you known you were pregnant?”
“I’ve felt queasy for the last week and finally went to the E.R. yesterday. I thought maybe I’d come down with flu or something. The doctor there referred me to an ob-gyn who confirmed it this morning before I came here. I’m six weeks along.”
She’d begged the doctor to go over the dates again…and again. When she’d left Greece for her newspaper assignment in Italy, she’d only slept with Andreas, the man she had assumed she would marry on her return to Greece.
But those ten days in Italy had changed the course of her life forever. There she’d met Vincenzo, had been hit hard and fast with feelings she had never experienced or felt before. So much so that she’d extended her stay to be with him and hadn’t wanted to go back to Greece…or Andreas.
Her friend’s eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Irena. No matter what, you’re going to have a precious baby.”
“I know.” Moisture glazed Irena’s cheeks. “I want it more than anything in the world.” Wanted it to be Vincenzo’s…she added silently.
“Of course you do.” Deline squeezed her arm gently. “What are you going to do?”
Irena took a deep breath. “I know one thing I’m not going to do. Andreas will never learn the child I’m carrying is his, if it is his. I’m going to another OB this afternoon to get a second opinion. I have to be sure.”
“I was just going to suggest that you see another doctor. This is too important.”
“Oh, Deline…I want so much for Vincenzo to be the father.”
“But if the next doctor tells you the same thing—”
“If he does, I still refuse to hurt Andreas and Gabi. You and Leon had to live through a nightmare when he came to you with the news that he’d fathered Thea’s twins. I don’t want to start another nightmare for them. They’re in love. Andreas couldn’t marry her fast enough. They’re on their honeymoon making plans for their future. I won’t do that to them.”
Deline sat there shaking her head in disbelief.
“I want to be on my honeymoon with Vincenzo. I want to be able to tell him I’m carrying his baby. Sometimes I wonder how you got through it, Deline. I was so crushed for you.” The twins were adorable, but they should have been Deline and Leon’s.
“I’ll never forget you were there for me.” Her voice shook.
“I don’t mean to bring up the past to hurt you. I just can’t do that to them.”
Deline got to her feet. “The truth has a way of coming out, Irena. What if everything had remained a secret until years down the road? I’m not so sure our marriage could have withstood such a blow then. At least we’re starting out with the truth now, before our own baby is born. And Leon has been so good to me—incredibly kind and understanding. Patient, you know?”
Irena understood. “Believe me, I’m thankful things are working out for you so well. But think, Deline—Maybe Gabi is pregnant already. I’m afraid of history repeating itself.”
Her friend groaned.
“Wouldn’t my news be a lovely belated wedding present for the two of them after they get back from the Caribbean…I can’t do it to them.”
“One day he’ll find out, and when he does…” Deline actually trembled. “I know Andreas. Leon’s brother is noble to a fault and he’ll always care about you, but if you were to keep knowledge of that kind away from him and then he discovered it—especially after what he went through to make sure Leon was united with his own children—” She shook her head again. “I’d fear for you, Irena.”
Put that way, so did Irena. She cleared her throat. “There’s one way to handle it so he never finds out. That’s what I came over to talk to you about.”
“What? Move to another planet?”
“Not quite so far away. After I returned from Italy, I resigned my job at the newspaper. My plan had been to break it off with Andreas before I went back to Riomaggiore to be with Vincenzo. That’s where I’m going now. What I’m hoping is that he meant what he said and still wants to marry me.”
“Still? You mean in ten days you got to a point that he asked you?” Deline cried out aghast. “Not that you aren’t the most beautiful and intelligent woman I’ve ever known. Any man would want you, but if he knew about Andreas—”
“It sounds complicated, I know. He didn’t exactly ask. It more or less came out. But when I left, I couldn’t give him an answer until I’d talked to Andreas first, and you know what happened next. He was totally involved with Gabi!
“When he told me about her, it struck me then that Andreas and I had never been in love, otherwise Gabi couldn’t have stolen his heart any more than Vincenzo could have stolen mine. Vincenzo warned me that if I’d gone through with that marriage, it wouldn’t have worked, that one day I would regret my mistake—he was right.”
Deline stared at her before an odd expression broke out on her face. “What kind of a man could have caused you to fall for him so completely in a ten-day period, you want to marry him and wish it was his baby you’re carrying?”
Irena averted her eyes.
“Come on. Out with it.”
“His name is Vincenzo Antonello. He’s an irreverent bachelor who’s Italian down to the roots of his hair.” Curly, untamed, overly long black hair. “He either walks or drives his used Fiat if he has to go any distance.” Irena smiled at the memory, so different from her life where she had grown up in a world of luxury villas, elegant cars, limo service and helicopters.
“He was assigned to give me and my photographer a tour of the liqueur manufacturing plant in La Spezia where he works. As he was putting me back in his car, he said he liked it that at five foot eight, I was closer to him in height. ‘There’s more to grab hold of.’”
His deep laughter had rumbled out of him along with the words spoken in heavily accented English. Insufferable, arrogant, but with those blue eyes piercing you through black lashes.
“Our whole meeting was absolutely crazy, Deline. The whole time I was there, he spent every waking hour with me. We laughed and ate and walked and talked. I’ve never talked with anyone else so much in my whole life. I don’t think either of us got any sleep.
“We hiked, we played, we strolled. He bought me flowers and little gifts. I was showered with them. He…bewitched me.”
Six feet of proud, hard-muscled male, handsome as the devil he mocked. The antithesis of political correctness.
Irena had grown up cautious.
He was a Catholic, albeit not a good one, he’d admitted with a rakish white smile. She didn’t espouse one particular religion. Irena believed in the emancipated woman who could be powerful in the corporate world.
“He has an opinion on everything and isn’t afraid to express it.”
No worshipper of money, Vincenzo. As long as he made enough at his job, he was happy to let someone else handle the financial nightmare of being a CEO. Irena came from a monied background. Her parents’ very existence was defined by wealth.
“Vincenzo went out of his way to show me his village. Our walks in the hills took all day because he kept pulling me down to kiss me. On my last night there I ended up at his apartment in Riomaggiore. It was very small and simply furnished. He fixed me an Italian meal to die for.
“We drank wine and danced on his veranda until it got dark. When he picked me up and carried me to his bedroom, it seemed entirely natural. I’d stopped thinking because these overwhelming feelings had taken over. Before I flew back to Greece, he said something totally ridiculous to me.”
“What was that?” Deline had been watching and listening, spellbound.
“‘We are opposites in every conceivable way, Signorina Liapis. I think we should get married.’”
“Irena—”
“He shocked me, too. He enjoyed doing it on a regular basis.”
“What did you say to him?”
“From the beginning he knew how things stood with me, that I’d loved Andreas Simonides for a long time and expected to be his wife soon.”
“How did he handle that?”
“He laughed at me. ‘Love? If you two truly loved each other, you would be married by now and not here with me.’”
Irena bowed her head. “I have to tell you, Deline. Those words pierced me because I realized he was speaking the truth. Andreas and I had been drifting. If I’d felt for him what I felt for Vincenzo, I wouldn’t have let my career take precedence over being with him whenever possible.
“Vincenzo kept firing truths at me. ‘What is love, anyway? A word. It can mean anything you want it to mean at the moment. Then again it can mean nothing at all.’
“I asked him if he didn’t believe in it. He shrugged his shoulders and did that Italian thing with his hands and arms. Then he said, “‘I believe in forms of it. Who couldn’t love a child, for instance?’”
“When I told him he was impossible to talk to, he said, ‘Why? Because I don’t conform to your misguided idea of perfection or feed you what you’re used to consuming? Have you ever taken a good look at yourself?’”
Deline shook her head. “I can’t believe he dared.”
“He dared more than that. ‘Ms. Liapis,’ he said. ‘You are like the geese that fly in chevron formation—cool and unflappable, you cruise above the world with your fine-feathered family unit as you were taught to do, careful not to be diverted by other species of birds or natural disasters.’
“‘But I must tell you it would be fascinating to watch what would happen if just once you took a different course and had to wing it on your own.’”
“He didn’t say that!” Deline cried.
“Oh, yes, he did, and his remark stung. When he started to make love to me, I didn’t want him to stop. More than anything in the world I wanted to know his possession. He was a virtual stranger, yet nothing about him seemed strange. Everything we did felt right. It was like I’d met my soul mate.”
In a rare moment of pique Irena had risen to the bait and had done something foolish, if not dangerous, in order to prove he was wrong about her before she flew back to Athens. It had shocked her to the core, considering that from the moment he’d agreed to show her and the photographer around, she’d wanted to take him seriously, but was afraid.
Irena got to her feet. “After my new doctor’s appointment this afternoon, I’m going to go back and tell Vincenzo he was right about everything. My being there will prove that I’ve taken a different course and want to be with him. We have this intense attraction and connection. It will be liberating to be able to admit it. If he meant what he said about getting married, I want it, too.”
“What will you tell him about the baby?”
“The truth. As much as I’ve been told by the doctors. He has the right to know everything, including the fact that Andreas met someone else, too. If he can’t forgive me for going back to break it off with Andreas, then he’s not the man I thought he was.” She bit her lip. “If he wasn’t being serious about marriage, then I’ll have to leave Europe.”
“Where will you go?”
“I have no idea.”
“Oh, Irena. I’m frightened for you.”
“So am I. I’m terrified”
“Come on, Dino. You can do it.”
“I’m scared, Papa.”
Vincenzo could see the fright in his son’s dark brown eyes. His medium-size six-year-old would only come as far as the edge of the hotel pool, but he wouldn’t jump into his arms. No bribe would entice him. “Then what would you like to do before we leave?”
“I don’t want to leave. I want to live here in Riomaggiore with you.”
When Dino said it in that forlorn little tone, it gutted Vincenzo. “You know you can’t, Dino. Come. We’ll walk down to the beach and watch the boats.”
“Okay,” he demurred sadly.
“Would you like to go for a ride and catch some fish?”
“No. I just want to watch.” Dino claimed he loved the water, but when it came right down to it, he couldn’t bring himself to enjoy it. By now Vincenzo had hoped his son would have overcome some of his fears, but since his ex-wife, Mila, had remarried six months ago and moved to Milan from Florence, they seemed to have grown worse.
“Let’s go!” He levered himself onto the tile. When both of them had slipped on their shirts and sandals, Vincenzo grasped Dino’s hand and they descended the steps beyond the pool area that led down to the sea.
Tomorrow was the last day of his boy’s one week summer vacation with him. Only a little more time left before he had to drive him back to Milan. Then the one weekend a month of visitation would begin again until his week in December. So much time apart from his son was killing him.
Before Mila had moved to Milan, Vincenzo had made that once a month sojourn to Florence where she’d lived with her family and Dino since the divorce. He’d found a small hotel located near the Boboli Gardens where you could look out over Michelangelo’s city. The delightful spot had become a second home to him and Dino.
The hotel he’d picked out in Milan didn’t feel like home to them. Neither did Milan itself, but rules were rules and had been set in concrete. Vincenzo was only given one week in summer and one week in December before the Christmas holiday to be with his son on his terms.
Nothing would change until Dino turned eighteen, unless of course Vincenzo married again. Such an eventuality would upset a small universe of people in more ways than one.
But after letting his father dictate an ill-fated marriage the first time around, he was through with the institution. His only choice was to bide his time until Dino was old enough to plead for a change in the visitation rules. Then Vincenzo would go before a higher court and appeal the decision. Hopefully that day would come years before Dino was considered an adult.
Later, as they walked along the cliffside path of Via Dell’Amore between Riomaggiore and Vernazza, his son cried, “Look, Papa. The sun fell into the sea.”
“Do you think it scares all the fish to see a big light shining under the water?”
That brought the first laugh of the evening to Dino’s lips. “No. You’re funny.”
Vincenzo looked down at his boy. He was the joy of his life. “Are you tired after all our walking? Do you want me to carry you on my shoulders up these steep steps?”
“I don’t think they’re steep.” He trudged up ahead of him, then turned around. “What’s steep?”
