Dante's Stolen Wife (8 page)

“Nonna’s different from my grandmother,” Caitlyn commented on their way inside.

“You know, I think that’s the first time you’ve mentioned your family since our wedding night.” He inclined his head toward the rear of the apartment. “Fill me in while we change. How’s your grandmother different from mine?”

She followed him into the bedroom and stripped off her suit jacket. “They’re both strong women,” she said, heading for the closet. “But Gran was rigid. Nonna…not so much.”

He reached around her for a wooden hanger. “Let me guess. Your grandmother came from the school of thought that teaches seeing is believing.” He nudged her with his elbow. “Passed that right on to you, did she?”

A smile flirted with Caitlyn’s mouth, then faded. “She didn’t have much choice. She raised me, you know. Or maybe you don’t know.” She shot him an uneasy glance. “Sorry. I guess it was Lazz I told.”

To her relief, he didn’t take offense. “Tell me now,” he encouraged. He unzipped her skirt for her, before ripping free his tie with a sigh of relief.

She stepped out of her skirt and clipped it to the hanger holding her suit jacket. It never ceased to amaze her how comfortable she felt performing these little domestic chores in front of him. Relishing the sizzle of awareness combined with the gentle bite of sexual tension. Wondering if the sight of her half-undressed would tempt him to pick her up and toss her to the bed behind them. If his nudity would tempt her to entice him there. She suddenly realized he was waiting for her response.

“Oh, it’s an old, sad story,” she hastened to explain. “One told by countless women over the years. My grandfather was a charmer.”

She broke off when Marco lassoed her with his tie and yanked her up against him. “Excuse me?” he rumbled.

She couldn’t help but grin. “Oh, stop glaring at me. I don’t mean your kind of charmer.”

“What other kind is there?” he asked, genuinely bewildered.

Her amusement evaporated. “The sort who makes pie-in-the-sky promises and neglects to keep them.” She strained against the confines of the tie, regarding him with amused exasperation. “Do you mind?”

“Another time, perhaps.” He reluctantly released her and continued to undress. “That explains why my promises worry you so much. You don’t know me well enough to believe I’ll keep them.”

“Something like that,” she confessed. “Gramps encouraged Gran to give up a high-powered budding career, which in those days, very few women managed to achieve. But she did it because he sold her on the dream.”

He leaned against the closet doorjamb, shirtless, his only covering a black pair of boxer briefs. “Which was?” he prompted.

She tore her gaze away and scrambled to remember where she’d left off in her story. “He…he wanted the dream. A two-story home and white picket fence, dinner on the table at six, where a freckle-faced son with a slingshot tucked in his back pocket would be waiting for him, along with a sweet little daddy’s girl dressed in a frilly dress and pigtails.”

“What did he end up with?”

“A ramshackle house in dire need of repair with a fence falling into splinters, a dinner of mac and cheese because the budget didn’t stretch to more than that, and a squalling daughter suffering from colic. Somehow it managed to escape his attention that in order to have the dream, someone had to earn a living. Not long after my mother was born, he took off. He’d found a new dream that appealed far more than the realities of the old one.”

“What happened to your grandmother and mother?”

She turned to face him. “Gran raised my mother the best she could. Worked whatever menial jobs she managed to pick up, since by then the possibility of a career had passed her by. My mother took off at sixteen with the first man who looked twice at her. I landed on Gran’s doorstep nine months later.”

“Hell, sweetheart.” He wrapped her up in a hug.

“Saying I’m sorry sounds so inadequate. But I am.”

Caitlyn shrugged, inhaling the unique scent of him. God, he smelled good, and felt even better—strength and warmth and comfort all rolled into one. “I had Gran. And my mother showed up periodically, whenever she found herself between boyfriends. Then the next rainbow would appear in the sky and she’d go dashing after it, certain that this time she’d luck into that pot of gold. Took after my grandfather, Gran always said. It’s been years since I last saw her.”

“And your grandmother?”

“She died of Alzheimer’s a few years ago. She’d talk about him sometimes. Gramps. She didn’t have a clue who I was, but she’d talk about when Jimmy came back, how they’d have the dream. Maybe it’s good that her disease offered her some happiness at the end. I don’t think she experienced much all the years I knew her.”

He pulled back an inch to gaze down at her. “You have the Dantes now,
cara
.” Emotion gave his voice a musical lilt. “You know that, right? No matter what anyone says about our marriage, we look after our own.”

His comment reminded her of her run-in with Britt. “Would you mind if I asked you a question about your past?” she said hesitantly. “You don’t have to answer. It’s just…”

He winced. “Uh-oh. Busted. Who, what, when and why?”

“Britt stopped by my office today right before Francesca arrived to take me to lunch.”

His expression gave nothing away. “And?”

“Francesca mentioned that Britt once hit on you.” Caitlyn struggled to keep her voice casual. Not that she succeeded in fooling him. “Did she? Hit on you, I mean?”

He released a rough sigh. “I’d call it more of a tap than an actual hit, one I politely ignored.”

A swift smile came and went. “
Mr. Irresistible
,” she managed to tease.

He gave a short, ironic laugh. “I’ll take your word for it. Some women hit on me, though whether it’s because I’m irresistible or not I can’t say. More irresistible for most women is that I’m a Dante and they want the sparkle a Dante husband can bring to a marriage. After all these years, I can tell the difference. Britt likes the sparkle.”

“While I prefer the spark.”

“So I’ve noticed.” He slid a hand around the nape of Caitlyn’s neck and lifted her for a lingering kiss. “My turn to ask a question.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Who, what, when and why?”

“Why did Francesca feel the need to tell you about Britt?”

Once again Caitlyn tried for casual and once again came up short. “Britt demonstrated a bit too much curiosity about how I ended up with you instead of Lazz.”

“It was more than that, wasn’t it?” When she didn’t respond, he let it go. “You’re a loyal friend, Caitlyn. But you have nothing to worry about when it comes to other women. Once The Inferno strikes, that’s it. No one else exists as far as I’m concerned.”

“Prove it.”

The words slipped out before she could stop them, and his response came in a flash. Determination hardened his features and he kissed her with a passion that instantly sent her spinning out of control. Over the past several days he’d gained a familiarity with how to arouse her, how to drive her soaring to the highest peaks. Of course, it didn’t take much. A kiss. A touch. Even a look seemed to ignite the flame between them.

Their remaining few clothes slid away with soft sighs, forming a path of cotton and silk from closet to bed. Where had her anger gone these past days? Her indignation over his deception? They’d both vanished in the face of a far more powerful emotion, one that left her mindless with need, a need only one man could fulfill.

Gran would have called her every kind of fool for putting fantasy ahead of reality. But in that moment Caitlyn didn’t care. Winding her arms around her husband, she surrendered, soaring over rainbows and floating away on clouds of pleasure. Tomorrow would have to take care of itself.

Tonight she’d take the dream.

S
he was gone.

Marco came instantly awake. He didn’t try to explain this new awareness of Caitlyn’s presence or absence, but simply tossed back the covers to go in search of his wife. He tracked her down raiding the refrigerator. To his amusement, she’d prepared a snack for two.

“I see by all those sandwiches that you knew I’d come,” he said with a yawn.

“Yes.” He caught a hint of resignation in her voice.

“No doubt you’ll say it’s The Inferno.”

He took the plate from her and set it aside. Wrapping his arms around her, he rested his forehead against hers. “It still bothers you, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.”

Simple and concise and down-to-the-bones honest. He appreciated that about her. “Do you think The Inferno makes what we feel for each other less real?” he asked.

Despite the lack of light, he could see her gaze grow troubled. “If our relationship is all at the whim of this Inferno, then it isn’t because of who I am as a person. Or who you are, for that matter. We’re just mated to each other without anything in common other than sexual attraction. How long do you think that’s going to last?”

“Got it.” He cut straight to the heart of the matter. “You want security. You want assurances. You want to know that we’re still going to be together fifty years from now.”

She choked on a laugh that contained more than a hint of tears. “I’ll take a year, for now. Even a week. But I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. For it to all go horribly wrong. If what we feel is due to The Inferno, then it’s fantasy, not reality.”

“It’s more than that, Caitlyn, and you know it.” He leaned back against the kitchen counter and cushioned her against his chest. “Either The Inferno is real or it’s fantasy. If it’s fantasy, it’ll end and you’ll get hurt. But if it’s real, you’re afraid your ability to make your own choices in life will be taken out of your control.”

Caitlyn nodded. “What if we decide we don’t like each other? What if we aren’t able to build a lasting foundation together? What if we discover that our goals in life are entirely different? According to you, we’re trapped together forever.”

Okay, that hurt. “Do you feel trapped,
cara?
”

“Sometimes,” she confessed.

He cupped her face and kissed her, imbuing it with as much tenderness and reassurance as he could. “I suspect that’s true of all love, not just with The Inferno. You haven’t lost a piece of yourself. You’ve gained something you didn’t have before. At least, I have.”

Instead of relaxing, her frown deepened. “But when The Inferno happened, didn’t you feel as though you’d lost all control?”

“Of course. And I understand you feel the need to direct your own life.” He shrugged. “I have no intention of interfering with that.”

“You already have,” she pointed out softly.

A hint of impatience colored his words. “Honey, no one has total control over their lives and most have only limited self-direction. Control is the illusion, self-direction the fantasy.”

“It’s my illusion and my fantasy, just as The Inferno is yours,” she insisted stubbornly.

“You refuse to believe it might exist because of your grandmother.” He could see he was treading on dangerous ground, but no longer cared. “Your bedtime story may have been a cautionary one of lost dreams. Mine was more along the lines of ‘The Big Bad Wolf.’ You know, the one with all those annoying little pigs.”

A brief smile flirted with her mouth, a mouth he’d practically ravaged only hours earlier. “I believe that was ‘The Three Little Pigs.’”

“Yeah, well, at the tender age of three, I was a blood-thirsty little savage and cheering for the wolf. The point is, I’m well aware that if we build our foundation with straw that it will get blown away. Or we can build it with stone so it withstands the fiercest storms. We choose the tools and materials. We also choose our dreams. Together.”

“You make it sound so simple.” She hesitated and he could practically see her organizing her little list of ifs, ands and buts. “This obsession of yours isn’t logical, Marco. I don’t understand why you’re so dead set on believing in a fairy tale. So set that you’d marry a woman you only knew for five minutes.”

His mouth tightened and a hint of old pain came and went in his eyes. “My parents were excellent examples of the worst a marriage can be, just as Primo and Nonna were excellent examples of the best. My grandparents heeded The Inferno when it struck, and their marriage is fast approaching six decades. My father ignored it, and he never knew a happy day in all his married life.”

Her eyes widened in shock. “You’re kidding. I assumed…Your mother wasn’t—”

He shook his head. “Dad’s Inferno bride, no. She was a business transaction. Despite Primo’s warnings, my father married my mother for the good of Dantes, though even that didn’t turn out the way either of my parents planned.” He had to make her understand. “You may think it’s superstition or fantasy. But I lived with the reality. I’ll take anything else over that.”

“Oh, Marco. I’m so sorry.”

He could see the lingering doubt, could tell that she thought his actions in marrying her were an overreaction. “Listen to me,
cara
. If I hadn’t made the choice I did, if I hadn’t swept you off to Nevada and married you, Lazz would have eventually found a rational argument to convince you to marry him. The only person I’ve ever met more logical than you is him.” She started to interrupt and he cut her off. “If you hadn’t married me, if you’d married my brother instead, it wouldn’t have just been the two of us who’d have suffered, but Lazz and his future wife, as well. He may not thank me for what I did right now, but that will change when he experiences The Inferno for himself.”

She shook her head in wonder. “You really believe this.”

“I do.” He held her gaze. “And before long, so will you. I don’t care how long it takes, or what I have to do to convince you, eventually you’ll believe in The Inferno.”

For the first time since they’d been married, Caitlyn arrived at the apartment without Marco. He had a meeting with Nicolò that he’d warned might run late, and sure enough, it had. She changed into jeans and a tee, then wandered restlessly through the apartment. It had an uncomfortably empty feel. She’d never realized how much her husband filled it up with his personality until he wasn’t there.

There were signs of her presence around the place now, bits and pieces that Marco had plucked from her apartment and scattered about his. He hadn’t pressured her to give up her old lease. At least, not yet. And she appreciated his patience. But little by little her apartment became emptier and emptier while his became fuller and more complete.

Most interesting of all, her personal treasures had found places here, places where they fit and meshed. Her grandmother’s silver tea service gleamed proudly atop Marco’s chiffonier in the dining room. Her collection of blown glass knickknacks glittered softly along the fireplace mantel. Her mysteries competed with his science fiction books. And their clothes, which had started out rigidly organized into proper his-and-hers sides of the closet had somehow met in the middle and mated into a colorful collection of “theirs.”

She glanced at the box of files she’d brought home and stretched out on the couch with a sigh. Might as well get to work. Maneuvering the box onto the endmost couch cushion by her feet, she perched her reading glasses on the tip of her nose and pulled out the first stack of files.

She’d found a number of confusing records buried among the personal papers and wanted to take her time and sort through them in order to determine how best to handle the information they contained. Before she could do more than flip open the first folder, she heard Marco’s key in the lock.

There was a confusingly long pause. Then, “
cara
?”

She couldn’t stop a smile from spreading across her face. “In here.”

He appeared in the archway between the living room and hallway, a briefcase in one hand, a newspaper in the other. She could tell from his face that something was wrong and sat up.

“What’s happened?”

“Damn rag. I found it shoved under our door.” He tossed it to her. “Let me warn you, you’re not going to like it.”

That explained what had slowed him at the door. She adjusted her glasses and the newsprint swam into focus. Marital mix-up…Marco or Lazz? Confused bride is tricked at the altar. With an exclamation of fury, she ripped through the pages to the article the front teaser had alluded to. “My God, Marco, they know. It’s all here. That I was dating Lazz first. That I met you and you pretended to be your brother. How we ran off to Nevada for a spur-of-the-moment marriage. The fight. They’ve chronicled every last detail.”

“Not every detail, I hope.”

Delicate color washed across her cheekbones, though whether from anger or embarrassment, she couldn’t have said for certain. “No, not every detail. But close enough. When did this come out? I wonder if it’s what set Britt off. It would certainly explain a lot.”

“It’s possible, though I doubt Britt needs anything specific to set her off.” He joined Caitlyn on the couch and unceremoniously dumped the box of files onto the floor. Stretching out his legs in front of him, he leaned against the back cushion and loosened his tie. “Something’s bothering me about these articles and I haven’t quite put my finger on what it is.”

“You mean something more than the articles themselves?”

“Yeah.” He scooped up her legs and pulled them across his lap. His large hands closed over her sock-covered feet and began to absentmindedly knead the narrow arch.

“This last month or so they’ve changed in tenor.”

Ever since that night on the plane he’d continued his habit of massaging her feet, something that never failed to drive her straight up the wall. She stretched like a cat, sending the stack of files cascading off her lap and scattering across the hardwood floor. Marco started to get up to rescue them and she planted her toes against his rock-hard abs and pushed him back down. No way was he going anywhere anytime soon.

“Forget the files. I’ll get them later. Tell me how the articles have changed. What’s different about them?”

He subsided against the cushions. “They’ve gotten personal. Vindictive. You know…” His brow creased in thought. “I think that’s it. I mean, before, they’d write up some chatty little piece about a party we’d attended, who we were dating. Every once in a while there’d be a slight hiss or meow behind the captions. But nothing damaging.”

“It’s sure damaging now. It’s gotten downright personal.”

“That’s exactly what’s bothering me. It is personal. And damn specific.” His frown deepened. “Too specific, now that I think about it. Whoever’s writing these articles must have a mole working at Dantes. It’s the only explanation.”

“You must be kidding.”

Marco shook his head, smiling a bit at her shock. “It’s not unheard of. And it’s not like we have our employees sign a confidentiality agreement regarding the family’s personal life.”

“Maybe you should start.”

“I’ll mention it to Sev. Get legal on it. In the meantime, if we can find the person passing on the information, we can cut off
The Snitch
’s source and salvage the Romano account.”

Oh, dear. “Have we lost it?”

“I like the way you say ‘we.’” He reached out a long arm and snagged the neckline of her tee, pulling her in for a lingering kiss. “And no, we haven’t lost the account. Yet. I warned them this would come out. Too many people overheard the commotion when we returned to Dantes the morning after our wedding for it not to have hit
The Snitch
. But the very fact that the fight is detailed so precisely in the article is evidence that the rag has an internal source of information.”

“What I don’t understand is why it’s such a big deal for the Romanos if the Dantes are featured in this thing.” She balled up the newspaper and tossed it toward the fireplace. “I’m serious, Marco. Why does it matter what a stateside rag prints about you and your family? It can’t have that serious an impact on the Romanos.”

Marco shrugged. “They have a reputation to protect. According to Vittorio, scandal doesn’t touch the Romanos. Nor does it touch the Romanos’ associates, or they’re no longer associated.”

“Huh. That seems a bit over the top.” She lifted an eyebrow. “Doesn’t his reaction strike you as excessive?”

“That’s Vittorio for you. He’s ferocious when it comes to guarding the Romano name and I gather he doesn’t want
The Snitch
turning its investigative light on him.”

“Makes sense.” She gave it a moment’s consideration. “I guess a family that old must have a lot of skeletons they’d rather not have uncovered, especially if they’re publicity shy.”

“Let’s just hope to God they don’t find out about The Inferno. We consider The Inferno intensely private. No one knows about it, except family, and we intend to keep it that way.” Marco rolled onto his hip to face her.

“Let’s forget about the Romanos. And
The Snitch
’s snitch. And everything Dantes. There’s only one thing I care about right now.”

She couldn’t help grinning. “And what would that be, Mr. Dante?” she asked, all wide-eyed innocence.

He maneuvered on top of her and plastered every foot of hard male body over every inch of hers, pressing her deep into the soft cushions. He plucked her glasses off the end of her nose and carefully set them aside. “I’m sure we’ll come up with something.”

It wasn’t until hours later that they drifted from couch to bed. Their clothes had long since disappeared into the jumble of files and documents papering the floor. And Caitlyn simply left them there, something that would have been unheard of a few short weeks ago.

The next morning was a different story and she zipped around, gathering up the papers while Marco rescued their clothing. She didn’t bother sorting or organizing—something else unheard of only weeks before—but dumped everything haphazardly into the box. She reached for a final stapled document when Lazz’s name, coupled with the Romanos’, practically jumped off the page. She scanned swiftly, aware that if they didn’t leave soon they’d both be late for work. But what she read had her rocking back on her heels.