so remote and elusive to Leon.
Before they reached the house he phoned Simona. After learning Concetta was back to normal and playing with her new buckets in the kitchen, he told his housekeeper to prepare lunch for him and a guest. They’d be arriving shortly and could eat out on the patio.
Engrossed in her own thoughts, the woman seated next to him hadn’t said a word during the drive. Once upon a time she’d been a baby, separated at birth from her mother by an ocean. When Leon thought about his little daughter and how precious she was to him, he couldn’t fathom Belle’s or Luciana’s history. Leon had so many questions he didn’t know which one to ask first.
When the white, two-story villa built along neoclassic lines came into view, he pressed the remote to open the gates and drove around to the back. When she saw the flower garden there, Belle gave a gasp of admiration.
Leon helped her from the car and led her up the steps into the rear foyer that opened into the dayroom. “At the end of the hallway is a guest bedroom with bath, where you can freshen up. When you’re ready, come and find me in here, and we’ll eat lunch on the patio, where we won’t be disturbed.”
“Thank you.”
The second she disappeared, he hurried through the main floor to the kitchen, where he found Concetta in her playpen with some toys. She made delighted sounds when she saw him, and lifted her arms. He gathered her up and kissed her half a dozen times against her neck, causing her to laugh. Again he was reminded that his lunch guest had never known her mother’s kiss. Obviously not her father’s, either.
Talia smiled. “She’s had her lunch and is ready for her nap.”
“I brought company, so I can’t give her all my attention, but I will when she wakes up.” He kissed her once more and handed her back to Talia. His daughter didn’t like being separated from him, and shed a few tears going down the hall to the staircase.
Much as he wanted to put her to bed himself, he was aware someone else was waiting for him, someone who’d been waiting years for any word about her parentage.
Simona looked over her shoulder. “Do you want lunch served now?”
“Please.”
He retraced his steps to the dayroom and found Belle holding a five-by-seven framed photo she’d picked up from a grouping on one of the credenzas. Her back was turned to him, but even from this distance, he could see her shoulders shaking.
“I won’t pretend to say I understand what you’re feeling. I can only imagine what it must be like to see yourself in Luciana’s image. Though you’re not identical, anyone who knows you well would notice certain similarities.”
Belle put the picture back and whirled around, her lovely face dripping with tears. She used both hands to wipe them off her chin. “My mother is a princess? Your stepmother? I—I can’t take it in,” she stammered. “In the orphanage I used to dream about what she would be like. I had to believe she gave me up because of a life-and-death reason. But my dreams never reached heights like that.”
Leon put his hands on his hips. “I’m still in shock from the knowledge that she had a baby, yet there’s never been a whisper of you.”
He heard his guest groan. “When Cliff told me my mother was from Italy, I wanted it to be the truth. But I never thought I’d really find her. Why did you bother to come to the pension?” The throb in her voice hung in the air.
It was the question Leon had been asking himself over and over. He rubbed the back of his neck. “I can’t honestly tell you the reason. It was a feeling that nagged at me to the point I had to investigate.”
She clasped her hands together. “If you hadn’t come, I would know nothing, and I would be flying back to New York without ever getting an answer. Thank heaven for you!” she cried. “I’ll never be able to repay you.”
A strange shiver chased through his body at the realization he might not have heeded the prompting. He’d tried to ignore it, until he’d been swimming in the pool. Then it wouldn’t leave him alone.
Belle’s gorgeous eyes searched his. “But now that I see her picture, I think I’m frightened. It’s like that old expression about being careful what you wish for, because you might get it.”
She wasn’t the only one alarmed. Already she was important to him in ways he couldn’t begin to explain.
“Is it because you’ve discovered you’re the stepsister through marriage of the infamous Malatesta family?”
He’d thrown the question at her in a silky voice to combat her pull on him. His attraction to her was sucking him in deeper and deeper. He didn’t want this kind of complication in his life, not after having lost Benedetta. Too many losses convinced him it was better not to get involved. Leon had his daughter. She was all he needed.
His guest stared at him through haunted eyes. “What are you talking about? When the couple who adopted me brought me to their house, they broke their birth son’s heart. He hated me from the first day. If anything, I’m afraid of being the orphaned offspring of the woman your father brought into your home, thereby breaking your heart.”
Her words touched on Leon’s deep-seated guilt, and confounded him. She really was frightened. He could feel it. “You’re pale and need to eat. Come out to the patio with me.”
Leon showed her though the tall French doors on the far side of the dayroom. Simona had set the round, wrought-iron table with a cloth and fresh flowers from the garden. She’d prepared bruschetta and her bocconcini salad of mozzarella balls and cubetti di pancetta ham he particularly enjoyed.
He helped Belle to a seat where she could look out at the Adriatic. With the hot, fair weather, he spotted half a dozen sailboats and a few yachts out on the water. It was a sight he never tired of, especially now with the view of her alluring profile filling his vision.
Once he’d poured her some iced tea he said, “If you’d prefer coffee or juice, I’ll ask Simona to bring it.”
But Belle had already taken a long swallow. “This tastes delicious and is exactly what I needed. Thank you.”
After drinking half a glass himself, he picked up his fork and they started to eat. “I’m assuming Cliff is the son you referred to.”
She nodded. “The Petersons adopted me when I was ten. Mr. Peterson never wanted me, but Nadine had always hoped for a daughter and finally prevailed on him to adopt me. They already had a sixteen-year-old son, who had no desire for a girl from an orphanage to move in on what he considered his territory.”
Leon’s stomach muscles clenched in reaction. He could relate to Cliff’s hatred at that age. Leon had been eleven when his father had installed the twenty-year-old Luciana in the palazzo, a world that had belonged to him and his brother, Dante. No one else.
Now that the years had passed, and Leon had his own home and was a father, he understood better his parent’s need for companionship. At eleven he’d been too selfish to see anything beyond his own wants.
From the beginning he’d rebuffed any overtures from Luciana, but he had to admit she’d never been unkind to him or Dante. Anything but. As the years went by, he’d learned to be more civil to her. Maturity helped him to see that her cool aloofness at times masked some kind
