A Forever Family Collection

She heard a smothered imprecation before the door closed. Good. Maybe she was an ice queen. Fine! So far she hadn’t seen examples of love in her personal life and didn’t expect to.

Her birth parents had given her away. Her adoptive parents had suffered through an unhappy marriage. Her adoptive brother was already divorced, and angry. He’d used her pretty mercilessly as an emotional punching bag. Belle always felt she was on the outside looking in, but never being part of a whole.

She thought about the single girls at the store, who all struggled to find good dates and were usually miserable with the ones they landed. Two of the four guys were married. One of them was having an affair. The other was considering divorce. The other two were players. Both spent their money on clothes and cars.

Her own roommates were still single and terrified they would end up alone. It was all they talked about when the three of them went running in the mornings.

Belle didn’t worry about being alone. That had been her state from the moment she was born. The few dates she’d accepted here and there outside the workplace had fizzled. It was probably her fault, because she didn’t feel very lovable and wasn’t as confident as she needed to be. Marriage wasn’t an option for her.

She didn’t trust any relationship to last, and cut it off early. Belle hadn’t met a man she’d cared enough about to imagine going to bed with. No doubt her mother had experimented, and gotten caught with no resources but the church orphanage to help her. Belle refused to get into that circumstance.

What she could depend on was her career, which gave her the stability she craved after being dependent on the orphanage and her adoptive parents. She was a free agent now. Her store had been number one in the region for two years. Soon she hoped to be promoted to upper-level management in the company.

But first she would take her precious vacation time to try to find her mother. If Cliff had gotten it wrong or misunderstood, then maybe the trip would be for nothing, but Belle had to think positive thoughts. Romantic Italy, the world of Michelangelo, gondolas and the famous tenor Pavarotti, had always sounded as delightful and as faraway as the moon. Incredible to believe she’d actually be flying there in ten days.

Tomorrow she’d see about equipping herself with a company GSM phone and SIM card, the kind with a quad-band. Once in Rimini, she’d find a local library and work from the latest city phone directory to do her research.

She was in the midst of making a mental list of things she’d need when Rod, one of the reps, suddenly burst in on her. “Hey, boss? Can you come out in front? An angry client just threw his cell phone at Sheila and is demanding satisfaction. He said it broke after he bought it.”

She smiled. “If it wasn’t broken, it is now. No problem.” No problem at all on the first red-letter day of her life. “I’ll be right there.”

It was seven in the morning when thirty-three-year-old Leonardo Rovere di Malatesta, the elder son of Count Sullisto Malatesta of Rimini, finally got his little six-month-old Concetta to sleep. The doctor said she’d caught a bug, and he’d prescribed medicine to bring down her temperature. It was now two degrees lower than it had been at midnight, and she hadn’t thrown up again, grazie a Dio!

After he’d walked the floor with her all night in an attempt to comfort her, he was exhausted. The dog ought to be exhausted, too. Rufo was a brown roan Spinone, a wedding gift from his wife’s father.

Rufo had been devoted to Benedetta and had transferred his allegiance to Concetta when Leon had returned from the hospital without his wife. Since that moment, their dog had never let the baby out of his sight. Leon was deeply moved by such a show of love, and patted the animal’s head.

There was no way he’d be going in to the bank today. Talia and Rufo would watch over his daughter while he slept. The forty-year-old nanny had been with him since Benedetta had died in childbirth, and was devoted to his precious child. If the baby’s fever spiked again, he could count on her to waken him immediately.

He kissed Concetta’s head with its fine, dark blond hair, and laid her in the crib on her back, out of habit. She never stayed in that position for long. Her lids hid brown eyes dark as poppy throats. She had Benedetta’s coloring and facial features. Leon loved this child in a way he hadn’t thought possible. Her presence and demanding needs filled the aching loneliness in his heart for the wife he’d lost.

After tiptoeing out of the nursery, he told Talia he was going to bed, then went to find his housekeeper, who’d always worked for his mother’s family. She and Talia were cousins, and he trusted them implicitly.

“Simona? I’ve turned off my cell phone. If someone needs me, knock on my door.”

The older woman nodded before Leon headed for his bedroom. He was so exhausted he didn’t remember his head touching the pillow. The relief of knowing the baby’s fever had broken helped him to fall into a deep sleep.

When he heard a tap on his door later, he checked his watch. He’d slept seven hours and couldn’t believe it was already midafternoon! He came awake immediately, fearing something was wrong.

“Simona? Is Concetta worse?” he called out.

“No, no. She has recovered. Talia is feeding her.” Relief swamped him a second time. “Your assistant at the bank asked if you would phone him at your convenience.”

“Grazie.” Leon levered himself off the bed and headed for the shower, surprised that Berto would call the villa. Normally he would leave a message on Leon’s cell. Maybe he had.

After he’d shaved and dressed, Leon reached for his phone. There was a message from his father asking him to join the family for dinner.

Not tonight.

Another message came from his friend Vito, in Rome. Leon would phone him before he went to bed.

Nothing from Berto.

Leon walked into the kitchen, where he found Talia feeding plums from a jar to his daughter, who was propped in her high chair. Rufo sat on the floor with his tail moving back and forth, watching with those humanlike eyes.

Concetta’s sweet little face broke into a smile the second she saw her father, and she waved her hands. Whenever she did that, it made him thankful he was alive. He felt her forehead, pleased to note her fever was gone.

“I do believe you’re much better, il mio tesoro. As soon as I make a few phone calls, you and I are going to go out on the patio and play.” It overlooked his private stretch of beach with its fine golden sand. Concetta was strong and loved to stand in it in her bare feet if he braced her.

Yesterday he’d bought a new set of stacking buckets for her, but she hadn’t felt well enough to be interested. Now that her health was improved, he couldn’t wait to see what she’d do with them. First, however, he phoned his father to explain that the baby had been sick and needed to be put down early.

When Leon heard the disappointment in his voice, he made arrangements for dinner the following evening if she was all better. With that accomplished he called his secretary at the bank.

“Berto? I sent you a text message telling you my daughter was ill. Is there a problem that can’t wait until tomorrow?”

“No, no. I’ll talk to you in the morning, provided the bambina is better.”

Leon rubbed the pad of his thumb along his lower lip. “You wouldn’t have phoned if you didn’t think it was important.”

“At first I thought it was.”

“But now you’ve changed your mind?” Berto was being uncharacteristically cryptic.

“Sì. It can wait until tomorrow. Ciao, Leon.”

His assistant actually hung up on him! Leon clicked off and eyed the baby, who’d eaten all her plums and seemed perfectly content playing with her fingers.

“Talia, something has come up at the bank. I’ll run into town and be back within the hour. Tell Simona to phone me if there’s the slightest problem.”

“The little one will be fine.”

He kissed his daughter’s cheek. “I’ll see you soon.”

After changing into a suit, Leon alerted his bodyguard before leaving the villa. He drove his black sports car into the most celebrated seaside resort city in Europe, curious to understand what was going on with Berto.

After pulling around to the back of the ornate, two-story Renaissance building, partially bombed during World War II and later reconstructed, he let himself in the private entrance reserved for him and his family. He took the marble staircase two steps at a time to his office on the next floor, where he served as assets manager for Malatesta Banking, one of the two top banking institutions in Italy.

Under his father’s brilliant handling as wealth manager, they’d grown to twenty-five thousand employees. With his brother, Dante, overseeing the broker-dealer department, business was going well despite Italy’s economic downturn. If the call from Berto meant any kind of trouble, Leon intended to get to the bottom of it pronto.

His redheaded assistant was on a call when Leon walked into his private suite of rooms. Judging from his expression, Berto was surprised to see him. He rang off quickly and got to his feet. “I didn’t know you were coming.”

Leon’s hands went to his hips. “I didn’t expect you to hang up so quickly from our earlier conversation. I want to know what’s wrong. Don’t tell me again it’s nothing. Which of the accounts is in trouble?”

Berto looked flustered. “It has nothing to do with the accounts. A woman came to the bank earlier today after being sent from Donatello Diamonds on the Corso D’Augosto.”

“And?” Leon demanded, sensing his assistant’s hesitation.

“Marcello in Security called up here, asking for you to handle the inquiry, since your father wasn’t available. The manager at Donatello’s told her she would have to speak to someone at the bank. That’s when I called you.