Vanessa or Ermanno had told him.
Oh, surely not! They stood to gain nothing by doing so, and would have lost what they most cared about.
“You’ve turned rather pale, Caroline.” Utterly remorseless, Paolo continued to torment her. “Could it be that you remember, after all?”
Less certain of herself by the second, Callie fought to match his offhand manner. “Remember what, exactly?”
“The day your sister married my brother—or more precisely, the night following the wedding.”
So her secret was safe, after all! But as relief washed over her, so, too, did a wave of embarrassment. “Oh,” she muttered, helpless to stem the heat flooding her face. “That!”
“That, indeed. Let me see if I recall events accurately.” Ever so casually, he tapped the rim of his water glass. “There was a moon, and many, many stars. A beach with powder-soft sand, lapped by lazy, lukewarm waves. A cabana that offered privacy. You in a dress that begged to be removed…and I—”
“All right,” Callie snapped. “You’ve made your point. I remember.”
As if she could forget—and heaven knew she’d tried hard enough to do just that! It was the night she gave him her virginity, her innocence and her heart. Not even the slow passage of nine years could dim the clarity of those memories…
“Isn’t he the most divinely handsome man you’ve ever seen?” Radiant in her pearl and crystal encrusted wedding gown, Vanessa had peeked from behind the drapes fluttering at the French windows of the suite set aside for the bride and her attendants. In the grounds below, her groom chatted with the more than three hundred guests who’d arrived that morning in a flotilla of private yachts, and were now milling about the terrace.
As weddings went, Callie supposed this one came as close to fairy-tale perfection as reality could get. Isola di Gemma, the Raineros’s private island, was aptly named—truly a jewel, set in the shimmering Adriatic, some thirty miles off the coast of Italy.
But, like her sister, she barely noticed the huge urns of exotic blooms framing the flower-draped arch where the ceremony was to take place, or the rows of elegant white wrought-iron chairs linked together with white satin streamers. Instead she inched out onto the narrow Juliet balcony, the better to spy on the groom’s tall, dark-haired younger brother, busy adjusting the gardenia in the lapel of his white jacket.
He’d landed by helicopter on the island the night before, arriving just in time for dinner, and Callie’s mouth had run dry at the sight of him. Charming and handsome, with a worldly sophistication to match his good looks, he reduced the young men she usually dated to pitifully clumsy boys.
She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him since. She’d even dreamed about him. Vanessa’s wedding might be a fairly tale, but in Callie’s opinion, the best man was the stuff princes were made of.
“Yes,” she breathed to her sister, leaning over the balcony to get a better view. “He’s…divine.”
Perfect. Godlike!
As if he could read her mind, he glanced up, trained his gaze directly on her, and sent her a slow, conspiratorial smile, as if, between them, they harbored a secret too deliciously wicked to be shared with anyone else. At that, an unfamiliar sensation trickled through her, startling and sweet. Suddenly weak at the knees, she clutched the balcony railing.
“Come away from there, both of you,” their mother had scolded. “It’s bad luck for the groom to see the bride beforehand, and while having the maid of honor fall headlong from an upper floor balcony might amuse some people, I doubt it would impress your future father-in-law, Vanessa.”
How true! Salvatore Rainero had made scant secret of the fact that he had reservations about his son’s marriage to an American. That he considered Audrey Leighton and her two daughters socially inferior, and quite possibly fortune hunters, had been apparent from the outset, but Ermanno had remained adamant. He intended to marry Vanessa with, or without, his father’s approval.
Fortunately his mother, Lidia, had scoffed at her husband’s suspicions, and given the couple her blessing, thus smoothing over the tensions threatening their future. Whatever his other personality flaws, Salvatore was a doting husband who adored his wife. If she was willing to embrace into the family their son’s choice of a mate, he’d swallow his misgivings and indulge her wish to throw a lavish wedding.
And lavish it was, with champagne enough to float a boat, a feast worthy of royalty—the Raineros actually had been members of the nobility in times gone by, which probably accounted for Salvatore’s elevated notions of grandeur—and a two-foot high wedding cake created by an army of Rome’s most renowned bakers and pastry chefs. For Callie, though, the high point of the whole affair had been when the best man escorted her onto the dance floor and took her in his arms.
She melted in the warmth of his dark-eyed gaze, in the bold intimacy of his hands sliding down her spine and urging her close. Intoxicated by his scent, by the sheer power of his masculine aura, she let him mold her body to his, and cared not one iota that his father scowled from the sidelines.
“So beautiful una damigella d’onore outshines the bride,” Paolo murmured hotly in her ear. “It is my good fortune that my brother chose to marry your sister, and left me with the greater prize.”
No boyfriend had ever spoken to her with such unfettered, lyrical passion, nor held her so close that she could feel the hard thrust of his arousal pressing against her, undeterred by a pair of finely tailored black trousers or the folds of a silk chiffon bridesmaid’s gown.
No boyfriend had dared slide his arm so far around her waist that he could brush his fingers up the under-slope of her breast and, in so doing, incite a wash of heat between her legs.
All of which, she concluded dizzily, was what separated the man from the boys.
Later, he danced with his mother, the mother of the bride, and the other four bridesmaids. Waltzed sedately with an elderly widowed aunt. Twirled the flower girls around the terrace, much to their shrieking delight. Boogied with other men’s wives, then returned them to their husbands, flushed and breathless and decidedly reluctant to let him go.
Finally, with the wedding festivities reaching a fever pitch of laughter and music and wine, he sought out Callie again.
“Come with me, la mia bella,” he urged, tugging her by the hand beyond the flare of twinkling lights illuminating the terrace, and into the shadows of the garden. “Let me show you our island, made all the more lovely by moonlight.”
The mere idea left her quivering with anticipation, but, “I think we’re supposed to stay until the bride and groom leave,” she replied primly.
“But they will not leave,” he assured her, snagging an open bottle of champagne chilling in a silver wine bucket. “Italian weddings do not end with the setting sun, cara mia. They are celebrated well into the small hours of the morning. We will return before anyone has the chance to miss us.”
She fought a brief, losing battle with her conscience, knowing her mother wouldn’t approve of her abandoning her maid-of-honor duties to run off with the best man. But wedding decorum couldn’t hold a candle to Paolo’s magnetic pull.
Fingers entwined with his, she followed him as he skirted the shrubbery separating
