The Costanzo Baby Secret

She ached to ask him what he meant by that, but the reserve in his voice was hard to miss even for someone in her impaired mental state, so she once again focused her attention on her surroundings.

He’d turned the car off the main road and was navigating a private lane leading to an enclave of secluded villas perched on a headland. By some high-tech method she couldn’t begin to fathom, a pair of iron gates set in a high rock wall opened as he approached, then swung smoothly closed again immediately afer the car had passed through.

A drive bordered with dwarf palm trees wound through extensive grounds to a residence which, while remaining true to what appeared to be a traditional island dwelling, was much larger than any they’d passed on the way, and bore an air of unmistakable opulence. Single-storied, it sprawled over the land in a series of terraced cubes, with a domed roof over the larger, central section.

Dario stopped the car outside a massive front door and switched off the ignition. “This is it?” she breathed.

“This is it,” he said. “Welcome home, Maeve.”

She opened her door and stepped out. The wind had dropped and a stand of pine trees dusted with the mauve shadows of dusk filled the air with their scent. The first stars blinked in the sky. Even from this vantage point, the estate—and estate was the only word to describe it—commanded a magnificent view across the Mediterranean.

Closing her eyes, she breathed in the peace and wondered how she could not remember such a place.

For a moment he leaned against the car and watched. The sight of her body, silhouetted sharp and brittle against the deepening twilight, brought back the shock he’d experienced when she first stepped out of the aircraft. The very second he saw her, he’d wanted to establish his husbandly right to enfold her in his arms. Peruzzi’s warning not to crowd her had been all that stopped him. That, and his fear that he might inadvertently break her ribs.

She had always been slender, but never to the point that the siroccos of autumn might blow her away if she ventured too close to the edge of the cliffs. Never to the point of such fragility that she was almost transparent. Small wonder the good doctor had urged him to patience. Restoring her physical stamina had to come first. The rest—their history, the accident and the events leading up to it—could wait. Ambushed by her intuitive questions, he’d already revealed more than he intended, but he wouldn’t make the same mistake again. He hadn’t risen to the top of a world-wide multi-billion-dollar business empire without learning to dissemble if the occasion called for it. And from where he stood, this amounted to one of those occasions.

“Would you like to stay out here for a while?” he asked her. “Perhaps stretch your legs with a stroll through the gardens?”

She ran her fingers through her short, silky hair. “No, thank you. Even though it’s still early, I find I’m quite tired.”

“Come then, and I’ll have my housekeeper show you to your room.”

“Do I know her?”

“No. She started working for me just last week. Her predecessor moved to Palermo to be closer to her grandchildren.”

He took her one small suitcase from the back of the car and pushed open the front door, then stood back to let her precede him inside the house.

She stepped into the wide foyer and slowly inspected her surroundings, taking in the lazy motion of the fans suspended from the high ceiling, the cool white walls, the black marble floors. “Do you live here all the time?” she asked, her voice hushed.

“Not as a rule. Usually I’m here on the weekends only. It’s where I come to unwind.”

A shiver passed over her. “So I’ll be on my own after today?”

“No, Maeve. Until you feel more at home, I’ll stay with you.”

“In the same room and the same…bed?”

Is that what you’d like? he wanted to ask, beset by memories he almost wished he could forget. Once upon a time, they had shared such insatiable passion for each other. “You have your own room for as long as you want it, but I’ll never be far away if you need me,” he said instead, and congratulated himself on providing an answer that neither threatened her, nor shut the door on their resuming a more normal married life at some future point. Peruzzi would be proud of him.

“Oh,” she said, and he might almost have thought she sounded disappointed. “Well, that’s very nice and considerate of you. Thank you.”

“Prego.”

She inched a little closer. “Um…are my clothes and personal effects still here?”

“Yes,” he assured her. “Everything is exactly as you left it.” Except for the blood-soaked outfit she wore the day of the accident. That was one memory he wished he could erase and hoped she’d never recall. “Here’s Antonia now,” he continued, relieved to be able to change the subject as the housekeeper arrived on the scene. “She’ll take you to your suite and make sure you have everything you need.”

She exchanged a tentative smile with Antonia, then turned to him one last time. “Thank you again for everything you’ve done today.”

“It was nothing,” he said. “Sleep well and I’ll see you in the morning.”

As soon as the two women, one so sturdy, the other so frail, left the entrance hall and disappeared toward the lower left wing of the house where the guest bedrooms were located, he turned in the opposite direction and along the corridor that led to the library and his home office. Closing himself in the latter, he picked up the phone and called Giuliana, his sister, who lived next door.

“I was hoping I’d hear from you,” she said, picking up on the first ring. “Did Maeve arrive home safely?”

“She did.”

“And how is she? Is it as bad as we feared?”

“Ah, Giuliana!” Horrified, he heard his voice crack and had to take a moment to collect himself. “She’s fragile as spun glass, inside and out. The journey down here exhausted her. We got in just a few minutes ago and she went straight to bed.”

“Poor thing! I wish I could see her and tell her how much I love her and how glad I am to have her back among us.”

“I wish it, too. I wish you could bring her son home and have her look at him and recognize at once that she’s his mother. Sadly, the time’s not yet right.”

“I know, Dario. Small steps, isn’t that what her doctor said?”

“Yes, but not, I fear, as small as he’d like. Already she’s wormed too much information out of me and knows our marriage was on shaky ground. Not exactly the best way for us to start trying to put our lives back together, is it?”

“But it can be done if you love each other enough to fight for what you once had. The question is, do you?”

“I can’t speak for her, Giuliana.”

“Then speak for yourself. I know that the way you started out together wasn’t ideal, and that you married her because you believed it was the honorable thing to do and you had no other choice, but it seemed to me that you were making it work.”

“Until it all went horribly wrong.”

And therein lay the crux of the matter. Could either of them get past what had happened, or had they lost too much ground ever to trust each other again?

Seeming to read his thoughts, his sister said softly, “Maeve loves you, Dario. I am certain of that.”

“Are you?” he said wearily. “I wish I was. But I didn’t call to burden you with my doubts, I called to find out how you’re holding up having an extra child to care for. Is Sebastiano wearing you out?”

“Not in the least. Marietta is an enormous help. You were lucky to find so capable and willing a nanny. As for Cristina, she loves her little cousin and plays with him all the time. And he’s such a contented baby. He only ever cries if he’s hungry or tired, or needs to be changed.”

“He’s the one bright spot in this whole unfortunate business.”

“And too young to understand what’s happened.”

“Let’s hope he never will.” Dario paused. “Has anyone else in the family stopped by to see him?”

“If by that you mean our mother, then, yes. She came by this morning and again this afternoon. She’s quite adamant that he should be staying with her, and I’m equally adamant that he should not.”

“I’d hoped she’d go back to Milan with our father. The last thing Maeve needs right now is to run afoul of her.”

“Unfortunately, she seems set on staying here. But don’t worry, Dario. I can hold my own with her, as you very well know, and Lorenzo certainly can. He won’t stand for her interfering in our arrangement.”