Marco's Pride

No one said anything and Marco glanced at Maria, the director of fragrance. She hadn’t spoken yet. “What? I can tell something’s bothering you, and I can guarantee it’s not the mill.”

Maria’s dark eyebrows winged higher. “I’d say so.” She folded her arms over the leather clipboard. “It’s the new ad campaign. They shot the first print ad yesterday.”

“And?”

“It’s not the ad we agreed on. It’s not the new ad campaign that we’ve planned.”

“But is it any good?” The ad was scheduled to run in two dozen fashion publications around the globe.

“No.”

There were days Marco wished he hadn’t gotten out of bed. Today was one of them. “That bad?”

“You’d hate it.”

“Okay. Get the ad agency on the phone. Jacopo, make an appointment with our friends at the mill. Let them know we’re coming, along with our legal counsel. Looks like we’re going to have a busy day everyone.”

It would be busy, he thought, giving his creative team a chance to file out before reaching for his phone. But it wasn’t so busy he’d forgotten the twins. Leaning across his desk, he punched in the number for his travel coordinator. “Marco here,” he said. “Any success locating my daughter’s blanket?”

No luck. That wasn’t the answer he wanted to hear, and his travel coordinator’s solution irritated him. “I know I could buy her a new blanket, but that’s not the point. Gia doesn’t love a new blanket. She loves the old one. Make sure you’re on the last flight out tonight. I want her favorite blanket.”

CHAPTER TWO

HE GOT home far later than he intended and by the time he’d arrived, the house was dark and quiet, only a few lights glowing downstairs.

Marco followed the light to the grand salon where he heard Payton talking in a hushed voice. The doors were slightly ajar and he could see Payton curled on the love seat speaking on her cell phone. She was wearing slim hunter-green slacks, a black turtleneck, and a suede green blazer. She knew color, he thought. That shade of green she was wearing—forest with a hint of moss—set off her fiery hair and accented her pale complexion.

She’d always had a good eye for color and design and that was exactly what she was discussing now. Business. She must be talking to someone at work in San Francisco.

For a moment he felt a strange spark of emotion, part anger, part resentment. He and Payton had had their problems but he only had respect for her talent. She was a natural when it came to design. It was almost as if she could see how fabric would drape in her mind’s eye, picture the texture, the color, the cut and with just a few pencil sketches, she’d come up with brilliant ideas.

He’d admired her work. He’d wanted her on his team, producing for him. But once their relationship fell apart, Payton headed back to America and went to work for an Italian designer there.

Payton’s fingers were beginning to cramp from holding the little cell phone so long. She’d called the office just to check in but her assistant wouldn’t let her off the phone.

“When are you coming back?” her assistant demanded, already sounding rattled for eleven o’clock in the morning. “I swear, you’re the only one who knows what’s going on.”

“Well, somebody else better figure it out soon,” Payton answered lightly, thinking that if her being gone two days was a problem for Calvanti Design, then they were really going to be thrown for a loop when she announced that she was taking a leave of absence on her return.

She was just hanging up when she heard the wooden floor creak. Turning, Payton spotted Marco standing outside the tall gilded salon doors. “When did you get home?”

“A few minutes ago.” He gestured to the phone. “I didn’t overhear anything I wasn’t supposed to hear, did I?”

“No.”

He walked toward her, shedding his coat en route. “I heard you design for Calvanti under your own label now.”

“Yes.” Payton warily watched him approach.

He’d been livid when she took the position with Calvanti on returning to San Francisco two years ago. Calvanti was a small Italian-American design firm that had shown stunning poise and creativity for a small upstart fashion house. Payton had been thrilled at the prospect of having her own label and yet Marco had said they’d only hired her to capitalize on the d’Angelo name.

“You’ve given up working on menswear then?” he asked, dropping his coat on the back on a chair.

She felt a muscle pull in her jaw. He’d never thought much of her as a designer. Early in their marriage she’d shyly shown him her work and he’d been less than impressed. Actually he’d been far more blunt than that. “I still collaborate on menswear and the sportswear collection, but in the future I’ll be focusing more exclusively on my label.”

“You’ve been successful.”

“Surprisingly so, yes.”

“I guess it doesn’t hurt being a d’Angelo after all.”

She felt her face grow hot. She couldn’t speak for a moment, formulating silent protests, wanting instinctively to defend herself but it would do no good. Marco wouldn’t believe she’d kept his name for the girls’ sake. All Payton had wanted was to keep Gia and Liv’s lives simple. Uncomplicated. As free from tension as possible.

“You’ll be meeting Princess Marilena tonight. She’ll be here in a half hour. I expect you’ll treat her with nothing but kindness and respect.”

Payton felt as if he’d tossed a sandbag at her middle. She drew a quick breath, the air nearly knocked out of her. “Of course.”

“I ask that you’ll keep your distance.”

Her cheeks burned. “I understand, Marco. We’re speaking English.”

“Yes, but you’re famous for selective listening. You hear only what you want to hear and I’m telling you now that you can not, will not, come between Marilena and me.”

“Good, because I have no desire to come between you and the princess. If anything, I want to ensure the stability of your relationship—”

“Why?”

He could have been a surgeon with his cold precision. She struggled about, searching for the right words. It wasn’t easy. “If anything happened to me, the girls would…” her voice faded for a moment. Her mind swept the future, saw only a great blankness and shied away. “They’d go to you.”

“I thought you’d always intended they’d go to your mom—” Marco broke off, realizing he’d just erred. Her mother had died in the past year. Payton and her mother had been very close. “I’m sorry. I’d forgotten.”

She nodded painfully. “Thank you.”

Damn her, Marco thought. She looked so guileless standing there, long hair loose, the soft auburn curls flattering her high cheekbones, softening her firm chin. But he knew her. Knew the tricks in her heart. She was no Botticelli angel. She had a goal when she traveled to Milan four years ago. She wanted an internship with a prominent fashion house and she wanted to snare a prominent man. She’d done both.

And yet…yet she looked so tired, so vulnerable just now and it weighed on him. She’d been raising the twins on her own for two years now, and God knows, that couldn’t have been easy.

“I didn’t bring the girls to create friction,” Payton added after a moment. “I thought it’d be good for them to meet the princess before the wedding. I thought it’d help them adjust.”

He looked at her long and hard. Was she telling the truth? Could he possibly trust her?

“Have the girls been in bed long?” he asked, changing the subject, not knowing where to go with any of this. Seeing Payton again wasn’t easy. Nothing with Payton had ever been easy. “I wanted to get back earlier but I had a meeting that turned nasty.”

“They fell asleep a couple hours ago. They’re exhausted. The traveling and the time change.”

Payton saw the new lines at Marco’s eyes and the tightness at his mouth. Those lines hadn’t been there two years ago. He seemed to be feeling so much pressure and she wondered at the stress he was under.

“I was thinking,” she said, “that perhaps we—you, Princess Marilena, and I—could have dinner tonight.”