father had threatened.
Determined to have the last word as usual, her mother had added, Your father’s right. But then, you never did use the brains God gave you, otherwise you’d have chosen that nice accountant you were dating last year, before he got tired of being strung along and ended up marrying someone else.
That they’d ultimately been proved right about Joe did nothing to lessen Corinne’s sense of abandonment. She couldn’t imagine ever turning her back on Matthew. Parents just didn’t do that to their children. But hers had, and shown not a speck of remorse about it.
“No,” she told Raffaello Orsini. “They retired to Arizona and we seldom visit.”
“You are estranged?”
“More or less,” she admitted, but didn’t elaborate.
He closed the small distance between them and with a touch to her shoulder swung her round to face him. “Then all the more reason for you to marry me. I come with instant family.”
“I don’t speak Italian.”
“You will learn, and so will your boy.”
“Your mother and aunt might resent a stranger coming into the household and taking over.”
“My mother and aunt will accede to my wishes.”
Once again, he had an answer for everything. “Stop badgering me!” she cried, desperation lending an edge of hysteria to her voice. No matter how real the obstacles she flung in his path, he steamrolled over it and confronted her with an even better reason why she, too, should accede to his wishes. And if she didn’t put a stop to him now, she’d end up surrendering to his demands from sheer battle fatigue.
“Ti prego, pardonami—forgive me. You’re in shock, as was I when I first read my wife’s letters, and for me to expect you to reach a decision at once is both unreasonable and inexcusable.”
His response, uttered with heartfelt regret, so far undermined her battered defenses that, to her horror, she heard herself say. “Exactly. I need some time to assimilate the benefits and the drawbacks, and I can’t do it with you breathing down my neck.”
“I absolutely understand.” He strode to the desk, returned with an envelope containing several photographs, which he spilled onto the coffee table. “Perhaps these will help clarify matters for you. Would you like me to leave you alone for a few minutes so that you may examine them?”
“No,” she said firmly. “I would like to go home and take my time reaching a decision, without the pressure of knowing you’re hovering in the background.”
“How much time? I must return to Sicily as soon as possible.”
“I’ll have an answer for you tomorrow.” In all truth, she had an answer for him now, but it wasn’t the one he wanted to hear, so she might as well keep it to herself and make her escape while she could. The sooner she put distance between him and her, the less likely she was to find herself agreeing to something she knew was out of the question.
“Fair enough.” He slid the photographs back into their envelope, tucked it in the inside pocket of his jacket, then retrieved her coat and, after draping it around her shoulders, picked up the phone. “Give me a moment to alert the driver that we’re ready for him.”
“You don’t need to come down with me,” she said, after he’d made the call. “I can find my own way.”
“I’m sure you can, Corinne,” he replied. “You strike me as a woman who can do just about anything she puts her mind to. But I will accompany you nevertheless.”
All the way back to her town house? She sincerely hoped not. Bad enough that his effect on her was such that she hadn’t been able to issue an outright refusal to his ludicrous proposition. The enforced intimacy of a forty-minute drive with him in the back of a dark limousine, and there was no telling what she might end up saying.
As it turned out, he had no such intention. He walked her through the lobby and out to where the limousine waited, handed her into the backseat then, at the last minute, withdrew the envelope from his pocket and dropped it in her lap. “Buena notte, Corinne,” he murmured, pinning her in his mesmerizing gaze. “I look forward to hearing from you tomorrow.”
CHAPTER THREE
SHE FLUNG HIM a baleful look and tried to return the envelope to him, but the wretched thing fell open and released its contents, which slithered in disarray over the leather upholstery. By the time she’d scooped them up, the door had clicked shut and the car was moving smoothly into the downtown traffic.
Wearily—she seemed to have been fighting one thing or another ever since the evening began, starting with Matthew’s tantrum at once again being left in Mrs. Lehman’s care—Corinne stuffed the photographs into her purse. Just because Raffaello Orsini had decreed that she should accept them didn’t mean she had to look at them, did it? She’d send them back to him by courier tomorrow, along with her rejection of his proposal.
When the limousine driver at last dropped her off at the entrance to the town house complex, she knew a sense of relief. It might not be much by most people’s standards, especially not the obscenely rich Mr. Orsini’s, but it was home, and all that mattered most in the world to her lay under its roof. Hugging her coat collar close against the freezing night air, she hurried to her front door, her heels ringing like iron on the concrete driveway she shared with her neighbors.
Once inside the house, she realized at once that it was too quiet. As a rule, Mrs. Lehman watched television in the family room adjoining the kitchen, and being a little hard of hearing, turned up the volume. But tonight, she met Corinne in the tiny entrance hall, her own front door key in her hand, as if she couldn’t wait to vacate the premises. In itself, this was unusual enough, but what really dismayed Corinne was the dried blood and ugly bruise already discoloring the baby-sitter’s cheekbone, just below her left eye.
Dropping her purse on the floor, Corinne rushed forward for a closer look. “Good heavens, Mrs. Lehman, what happened? And where are your glasses? Did you fall?”
“No, dear.” Normally the most forthright of women, she refused to meet Corinne’s gaze. “My glasses got broken.”
“How? Oh…!” Sudden awful premonition sent Corinne’s stomach plummeting. “Oh, please tell me Matthew isn’t responsible!”
“Well, yes, I’m afraid he is. We had a bit of a run-in about his bedtime, you see, and…he threw one of his toy trucks at me. It was after ten before he finally settled down.”
Corinne felt physically ill. She’d spent the evening being wined and dined with the very best, by a man she’d never met before, and for what? A proposition so absurd it didn’t merit a second thought. And meanwhile, her son was abusing the kindness of the one woman she most relied on to help her out when she needed it.
“I hardly know what to say, Mrs. Lehman. An apology just doesn’t cut it.” Then, biting her lip at her poor choice of words, she examined the cut more closely. It had stopped bleeding and didn’t appear to be deep, but it must be sore. “Is there anything I can get for you? Some ice, perhaps?”
“No, dear, thank you. I’d just like to get to my own bed, if
