day he’ll find out, and when he does…” Deline actually trembled. “I know Andreas. Leon’s brother is noble to a fault and he’ll always care about you, but if you were to keep knowledge of that kind away from him and then he discovered it—especially after what he went through to make sure Leon was united with his own children—” She shook her head again. “I’d fear for you, Irena.”
Put that way, so did Irena. She cleared her throat. “There’s one way to handle it so he never finds out. That’s what I came over to talk to you about.”
“What? Move to another planet?”
“Not quite so far away. After I returned from Italy, I resigned my job at the newspaper. My plan had been to break it off with Andreas before I went back to Riomaggiore to be with Vincenzo. That’s where I’m going now. What I’m hoping is that he meant what he said and still wants to marry me.”
“Still? You mean in ten days you got to a point that he asked you?” Deline cried out aghast. “Not that you aren’t the most beautiful and intelligent woman I’ve ever known. Any man would want you, but if he knew about Andreas—”
“It sounds complicated, I know. He didn’t exactly ask. It more or less came out. But when I left, I couldn’t give him an answer until I’d talked to Andreas first, and you know what happened next. He was totally involved with Gabi!
“When he told me about her, it struck me then that Andreas and I had never been in love, otherwise Gabi couldn’t have stolen his heart any more than Vincenzo could have stolen mine. Vincenzo warned me that if I’d gone through with that marriage, it wouldn’t have worked, that one day I would regret my mistake—he was right.”
Deline stared at her before an odd expression broke out on her face. “What kind of a man could have caused you to fall for him so completely in a ten-day period, you want to marry him and wish it was his baby you’re carrying?”
Irena averted her eyes.
“Come on. Out with it.”
“His name is Vincenzo Antonello. He’s an irreverent bachelor who’s Italian down to the roots of his hair.” Curly, untamed, overly long black hair. “He either walks or drives his used Fiat if he has to go any distance.” Irena smiled at the memory, so different from her life where she had grown up in a world of luxury villas, elegant cars, limo service and helicopters.
“He was assigned to give me and my photographer a tour of the liqueur manufacturing plant in La Spezia where he works. As he was putting me back in his car, he said he liked it that at five foot eight, I was closer to him in height. ‘There’s more to grab hold of.’”
His deep laughter had rumbled out of him along with the words spoken in heavily accented English. Insufferable, arrogant, but with those blue eyes piercing you through black lashes.
“Our whole meeting was absolutely crazy, Deline. The whole time I was there, he spent every waking hour with me. We laughed and ate and walked and talked. I’ve never talked with anyone else so much in my whole life. I don’t think either of us got any sleep.
“We hiked, we played, we strolled. He bought me flowers and little gifts. I was showered with them. He…bewitched me.”
Six feet of proud, hard-muscled male, handsome as the devil he mocked. The antithesis of political correctness.
Irena had grown up cautious.
He was a Catholic, albeit not a good one, he’d admitted with a rakish white smile. She didn’t espouse one particular religion. Irena believed in the emancipated woman who could be powerful in the corporate world.
“He has an opinion on everything and isn’t afraid to express it.”
No worshipper of money, Vincenzo. As long as he made enough at his job, he was happy to let someone else handle the financial nightmare of being a CEO. Irena came from a monied background. Her parents’ very existence was defined by wealth.
“Vincenzo went out of his way to show me his village. Our walks in the hills took all day because he kept pulling me down to kiss me. On my last night there I ended up at his apartment in Riomaggiore. It was very small and simply furnished. He fixed me an Italian meal to die for.
“We drank wine and danced on his veranda until it got dark. When he picked me up and carried me to his bedroom, it seemed entirely natural. I’d stopped thinking because these overwhelming feelings had taken over. Before I flew back to Greece, he said something totally ridiculous to me.”
“What was that?” Deline had been watching and listening, spellbound.
“‘We are opposites in every conceivable way, Signorina Liapis. I think we should get married.’”
“Irena—”
“He shocked me, too. He enjoyed doing it on a regular basis.”
“What did you say to him?”
“From the beginning he knew how things stood with me, that I’d loved Andreas Simonides for a long time and expected to be his wife soon.”
“How did he handle that?”
“He laughed at me. ‘Love? If you two truly loved each other, you would be married by now and not here with me.’”
Irena bowed her head. “I have to tell you, Deline. Those words pierced me because I realized he was speaking the truth. Andreas and I had been drifting. If I’d felt for him what I felt for Vincenzo, I wouldn’t have let my career take precedence over being with him whenever possible.
“Vincenzo kept firing truths at me. ‘What is love, anyway? A word. It can mean anything you want it to mean at the moment. Then again it can mean nothing at all.’
“I asked him if he didn’t believe in it. He shrugged his shoulders and did that Italian thing with his hands and arms. Then he said, “‘I believe in forms of it. Who couldn’t love a child, for instance?’”
“When I told him he was impossible to talk to, he said, ‘Why? Because I don’t conform to your misguided idea of perfection or feed you what you’re used to consuming? Have you ever taken a good look at yourself?’”
Deline shook her head. “I can’t believe he dared.”
“He dared more than that. ‘Ms. Liapis,’ he said. ‘You are like the geese that fly in chevron formation—cool and unflappable, you cruise above the world with your fine-feathered family unit as you were taught to do, careful not to be diverted by other species of birds or natural disasters.’
“‘But I must tell you it would be fascinating to watch what would happen if just once you took a different course and had to wing it on your own.’”
“He didn’t say that!” Deline cried.
“Oh, yes, he did, and his remark stung. When he started to make love to me, I didn’t want him to stop. More than anything in the world I wanted to know his possession. He was a virtual stranger, yet nothing about him seemed strange. Everything we did felt right. It was like I’d met my soul mate.”
In a rare moment of pique Irena
