Will You Marry Me?: A Marriage Made in Italy / The Courage To Say Yes / The Matchmaker's Happy Ending

She moistened her lips nervously. “I’ve always had issues of self-esteem. Not to know who you are because you were given up for adoption means you don’t have an identity. All my life I’ve wanted to know if I looked like my birth parents, or acted like them.

“What if I had sisters and brothers I knew nothing about? What if I came from a large family with half siblings or extended family I would never meet or get to know? It used to drive me crazy, wondering.”

“Belle...at least now you know you have a mother and a stepfamily who are very much alive.”

“Yes,” she whispered, staring blindly out to sea. “If I do meet her I’ll be able to learn about my birth father. I longed for a father, too, and spent many hours daydreaming about him. But I’m terrified, Leon, because I was abandoned. Being abandonable meant I wasn’t good enough to be kept and loved. That’s a very hard thing to accept.”

What she was telling Leon made him sick inside. “Since you don’t know the circumstances of being left at the orphanage, don’t you realize your adoptive father and brother have contributed to a lot of those negative feelings?”

“Of course.” She took a shaky breath. “But to meet my own birth mother after all this time and find out from her own lips I hadn’t been loved or wanted would shatter me. I don’t know if I could handle it. The risk is too great.”

Leon shook his head. “That’s not going to happen to you. If you could see the loving way Luciana treats people...” Luciana was very loving to his daughter when he took Concetta over for visits. “You would see that your mother has an innate tenderness that goes soul deep.” Leon had seen and felt it, but in the beginning he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it.

“Even so, I know I’m setting myself up to learn that everything I’ve ever thought or dreamed of about her and my father won’t be as I assumed. You’ve told me she hasn’t had other children, but she’s a princess who has lived a life completely different from mine in every way, shape and form. The chances of her even wanting to meet the daughter she gave up are astronomical.”

“That’s not true. You don’t know her as I do.”

“I know you want to believe she’ll be happy to see me, but you can’t know what’s deep in her heart. And there’s your father to consider. The more I know about her and their life, the more I fear a permanent reunion could never be realized.”

“It’s true I don’t know her inner thoughts.” Leon’s mind reeled when he compared the two women’s worlds. And he had no idea how his father would react upon hearing the news that Luciana’s daughter was in Rimini.

“Even if she’s willing to meet me, how will she handle it? She thought she gave me up and would never see me again. Even if meeting me could satisfy the question of what happened to me, it wouldn’t solve the issues she had for giving me up in the first place.

“What if seeing me exacerbates problems that bring new heartache?” Belle sounded frantic. “This meeting might result in trouble between her and your father, and they’ll wish this had never happened...”

She wheeled around, her face white as parchment. Tears glistened like diamonds on those pale cheeks. “What if I brought on a crisis like that?”

Tortured by the fear and pain in her voice, Leon reached for her and rocked her in his arms like he would Concetta when she was upset and frightened. “Shhh. That’s not going to happen, Belle. I swear it.” He kissed her hair and forehead without thinking.

“I—I don’t want it to happen, but you can’t guarantee anything.”

Much as Leon hated to admit it, everything she’d revealed from her heart and soul made a hell of a lot of sense. But suddenly he had other things on his mind. When he’d pulled her to him, his only thought had been to comfort her. Yet the feel of her curves against his body invaded his senses, sending a quickening through him, one so powerful he needed to put her away from him. As gently as he could, he let go of her.

Belle took a step back before looking up at him through red-rimmed eyes. “The sister warned me my time would be better served by getting on with my own life rather than wasting it trying to find my birth mother, who obviously didn’t want to be found.

“I left the orphanage with the renewed resolve to get on with my career and put my dreams away. Then came the moment in the attorney’s office when Cliff made that slip about my birth mother being Italian.”

“A providential slip, in my opinion,” Leon muttered. He was beginning to believe some unseen power had been at work on both sides of the Atlantic. Otherwise how could he account for going to her pension to talk to her, when normally he would have left it alone?

“I agree, Leon. The second it happened, I ignored the sister’s warning and the words in the pamphlet. I thought I knew better, and left for Italy, determined to keep looking. Now I wish I’d listened to her.”

To his consternation, Leon was thankful she hadn’t obeyed the sister in charge.

Belle’s pleading eyes trapped his. “My mother’s secrets are safe with me, and they have to remain safe with you, Leon. They have to.” The desperation in her voice pulled on his chaotic emotions.

“They’ll be safe as long as you do something important for me.”

“What?” Her breathing came in spurts.

“I insist you stay in my house as my guest until you return to the States. If you don’t let me do anything else, at least accept my hospitality. Our parents are married. That one fact bonds us in a way you can’t deny.”

“I wasn’t going to, but since I got the information I came for, I’m planning to fly back to New York either tonight or in the morning. Every second I’m here, it’s worse. The possibility that she could find out I’m a guest in your villa terrifies me. Whether she wanted me or not doesn’t matter. She gave me life and I’d rather die than hurt her.”

Leon’s admiration for Belle grew in quantum leaps. “I believe you would,” he murmured, before making a quick decision. “Your mind appears made up, so I’ll see you back to your rental car.”

“Thank you.”

“I’ll meet you in the foyer after I let my housekeeper know I’m leaving.”

She nodded, and he went to find Simona. On his way back through the house he stopped in the dayroom to pick up the photograph Belle had been looking at. It showed Luciana and his father on their wedding day, outside the church. At twenty she bore an even stronger resemblance to her daughter.

When he reached the foyer, he found Belle studying a large oil painting of his family. “That’s my brother leaning against my mother.”

“You look about six years old there. How old was Dante?”

“Five. We’re just fourteen months apart.”

She turned to him. “What a handsome family. You resemble both your parents.”

“Genes don’t lie, do they?”

“No. Your mother has the most wonderful smile.”

“She was the most wonderful everything.”

Belle stared at him. “You were very lucky to have a mother like that. What was her name?”

“Regina Emilia of the House of Della Rovere in Pesaro.”

“A princess?”

“Yes.” He opened the door so she could walk past him. After he helped her into the car, he handed her the photograph. “I want you to have this. No one deserves it more than you do.”

Tears sprang to Belle’s eyes. “I couldn’t take it.”

“There are dozens more where this came from.” He shut the door and walked around to get behind the wheel.

* * *

Belle was still incredulous over what had happened. She hugged the photograph to her chest in wonder that she’d come to the end of her search. It was all because of Leon Malatesta, who was the most remarkable man she’d ever met. But it wasn’t his generosity that had caused her to tremble in his arms just now.

While he’d been holding her, kissing her like he would to comfort a child, feelings of a different kind had curled through her like flame. The need to taste his mouth and let go of her feelings had grown so intense, she knew she was in deep trouble. He was her stepbrother!

In the past, when her friends had talked about desire, she’d never experienced it. Until a few minutes ago she hadn’t known what it felt like. Shame washed over her to think she hadn’t wanted him to stop what he was doing to her. By easing away from her before she was ready, he’d sent her into another kind of shock.

“Are you all right, Belle?”

“Yes. I—I’m just feeling overwhelmed,” she stammered.