Bride By Choice

‘He collected him from the airport two days ago. There now! Didn’t we choose a splendid husband for you?’

She was suddenly dizzy. There was a fog about her head, but not thick enough to shield her from the incredible, the monstrous, the outrageous truth. There was Poppa pumping the young man by the hand, bellowing, ‘Lorenzo!’ There were her sisters, surrounding him excitedly, urging him inside.

And there was Lorenzo Martelli, letting himself be hauled away, meeting Helen’s stormy eyes from the safety of a distance, and giving her a shrug in which guilt, helplessness and mischief were equally mixed, before turning tail and seeking refuge in the safety of the house.

CHAPTER TWO

MAMMA was almost bouncing up and down in her excitement, kissing her daughter again and again.

‘Isn’t that wonderful?’ she enthused. ‘Fancy the two of you liking each other at once! Just wait until your Aunt Lucia in Maryland hears about this.’

Helen blanched at the thought of this story spreading all over Maryland. How long before it got to California? ‘Mamma, don’t tell Aunt Lucia anything just now.’

‘You’re right. Wait until you’ve got his ring on your finger.’

‘Mamma—’

‘OK, OK. But you gotta tell me how you met him.’

‘He was at the hotel reception tonight.’

‘Of course. He wants to sell them his vegetables. Oh, it’ll be a marriage made in heaven.’

‘It isn’t a marriage made anywhere,’ Helen said crossly. ‘I’m not marrying him.’

Signora Angolini screamed. ‘What you mean? What kind of a girl kisses a man in front of the whole street and then says she won’t marry him?’

‘It’s not in front of the—’ A prickle on her spine caused her to look up the high buildings. Row upon row they rose, and wherever she looked the windows were packed with smiling faces.

‘I think we’d better get indoors,’ she said faintly. One ghastly fact was becoming clearer by the moment. There was no way she could tell her family the truth. If kissing her ‘fiancé’ in the street was bad, kissing a man whose identity she hadn’t known was a hundred times worse. The Angolini family would never recover from the shame.

Their home was an apartment over the butcher’s shop that was Nicolo Angolini’s pride and joy. Although large, it was always slightly cramped by two parents and three daughters. Tonight it was packed to the seams with the three sons, their wives and children. By the time Helen and Mamma had climbed the stairs the introductions had been made, and Lorenzo was the centre of a smiling crowd.

Now Helen discovered the purpose of the leather bag. Lorenzo had come bearing gifts, wine and delicacies from Sicily that made Mamma tearful as she recalled the homeland that she had last seen as a girl. Helen was so touched by her mother’s happiness that she almost forgave Lorenzo. Almost.

Her sisters were in ecstasies.

‘He’s really handsome,’ Patrizia whispered, seconded by Olivia and Carlotta. ‘Oh, Elena, you’re so lucky.’

‘My name is Helen, and one more word out of any of you will be your last,’ she muttered.

‘But I want to be a bridesmaid,’ wailed Carlotta, who was fifteen.

‘You’ll be a statistic in the missing persons’ column in a minute,’ Helen warned.

Her sisters exchanged significant looks, understanding that Elena (who had always been ‘difficult’) might be a little sensitive just now.

Turning away from them she edged her way up to Lorenzo, until she got close enough to mutter. ‘We have to talk.’

‘Look, I’m sorry—’

‘You’re going to be.’

‘It just happened.’

To the delight of her whole family she put her hands on his shoulders, gazing up into his face with an utterly charming smile. ‘You’re a scheming rat,’ she murmured.

‘I didn’t mean it to be like it was.’

‘Have you told my family the truth?’

‘No.’

‘Good. Because if you do, you’re dead.’ She glided away, still smiling. Lorenzo gulped.

The folding doors between the two main rooms had been pushed back, creating one large room, connected to the kitchen by a hatch, through which Mamma passed enough food to supply an army. Pride of place was given to a variety of meat courses.

Everyone wanted to talk to Lorenzo, which saved Helen from having to do so. She needed time to compose her thoughts. Memories of the things she’d said tonight flitted through her horrified brain. She’d actually told him that her parents were trying to arrange their marriage. And he not only hadn’t warned her, but he’d joined in her vilification of Lorenzo Martelli.

To cap his iniquity he’d tricked her into accepting his kiss, and actually kissing him back. At this point her thoughts became lost in disorder. Warmth rose in her and she had a horrible feeling that it was showing in her cheeks.

Great! Now he would see her blushing, and that would make him even more full of himself. She looked at him angrily across the table, and found that he was watching her, as she’d feared. But not as though he were pleased with himself. There was a question in his eyes, and his lips wore a half smile that she would have found delightful under other circumstances.

It was all part of the trickery, she warned herself. Having insulted her, he was now bent on winning forgiveness on easy terms. Well, he could think again!

Lorenzo was talking about his family back in Palermo. Helen gathered that his father had died some years earlier, but his mother was still alive, although in frail health.

‘She called me last week,’ Mamma said, ‘to say you were coming. And I told her you would always be welcome in our home.’

‘Well, you’ve certainly made me welcome tonight,’ Lorenzo assured her with his charming smile that took in everyone at the table.

‘Do you have any brothers and sisters?’ Carlotta wanted to know.

‘Two brothers, Renato and Bernardo, both older than me. No sisters, but a sister-in-law. Renato has recently married an English woman called Heather, and their first baby is due later this year.’

Poppa was frowning. ‘I didn’t know your parents had three sons,’ he said. ‘I thought it was only two.’

‘No, there are three of us.’ Lorenzo’s smile was still perfect, but Helen detected a fleeting tension in him, and noticed how adroitly he turned the conversation.

He was wonderful in company, Helen realised. He could be ‘man-to-man’ with her father and brothers, while charming Mamma and making her sisters laugh. In no time at all he had them all on his side, which struck Helen as a really dirty trick.

The most difficult part of the evening was that for once she had her parents’ total, unqualified approval. They had picked out a suitable husband, and instead of arguing she had moved to first base in a couple of hours. In this atmosphere it was impossible to tell them that their choice was a devious, unscrupulous deceiver who ought to be hung up by his thumbs until he promised never to approach a woman again.

Lorenzo, watching her, read her thoughts with tolerable accuracy, but he was too much occupied with getting his bearings to worry about the retribution awaiting him. As a Sicilian he was used to large gatherings, but it was taking all his presence of mind to hold his own in this one. Apart from brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles, there were also a couple of Mamma’s nieces with their husbands. Of these, the one who stuck in Lorenzo’s mind was Giorgio, because he disliked him so much.

Giorgio was a huge man with a spiteful face and a bullying nature. He was also blatantly on the make, and lost no time in telling Lorenzo about his family back in Sicily who’d been trying to sell their produce to Martellis for years, but had been scandalously rejected. He implied that now he expected this injustice to be put right.

Lorenzo fenced with him and escaped as soon as he could, giving a huge sigh of relief. That was one more reason to be glad he wasn’t marrying Helen Angolini. Even if she hadn’t rejected him first.