steady her nerves. She’d known for months now that this day would come—the day when she would have to tell Steven about the baby and lay out her plan for their child’s future. Yet she was no closer now to figuring out what that plan entailed than she had been when she’d left Boston more than two months ago. All she knew was that she loved Steven, and she loved her family. And no matter what she decided, someone she loved was going to be hurt. Worse, in choosing, she was going to lose either Steven or her family. Or possibly both.
Maria swallowed hard at that thought. And not for the first time, she wondered why the powers that be had played such a cruel trick on her.
Fate, the voice inside her head whispered. Perhaps it was fate, she thought. How else could she explain that the man she’d fallen in love with was a Conti—the one man in the world with whom she couldn’t possibly share a future? Maria sighed at the futility of her situation. No matter how much she might wish for things to be different, the past could not be changed. The Contis and the Barones were sworn enemies, had been enemies long before either she or Steven had been born. And the feud between their families that had begun when Marco Barone had eloped with her grandmother instead of marrying Steven’s Aunt Lucia was just as strong now as it had been nearly seventy years ago. In truth, the bad blood was probably even stronger now, Maria conceded, as she recalled all the misfortunes that had befallen the Barone family as a result of the Conti curse.
The Conti curse.
Maria shuddered at the thought of that horrid curse that had plagued her family for nearly seven decades. Even now, she still could recall sitting at her grandmother’s knee as a young girl and listening to the story of the Conti curse. She could almost hear her grandmother’s voice explaining….
“Lucia was so angry, so bitter, when Marco and I told them we were married,” Angelica Barone said as she related the tale of their elopement and how they had gone to the Contis and pleaded with them to understand.
“Understand?” a furious Lucia countered. “I understand that you have betrayed me, my brother and our family.”
“We love each other,” Marco Barone had told her. “I never meant to hurt you, Lucia.”
“Well, you have hurt me. You have hurt all of the Contis.”
“Perhaps someday when you are older, you will understand and be able to forgive us and wish us happiness,” Angelica offered.
“I shall never forgive you,” Lucia spat out. “And I shall never wish you any happiness. In fact, I curse you. You got married on Valentine’s Day, so from this day forward, I wish you and all of your descendants a lifetime of miserable Valentine’s Days—just like the miserable one you gave me.”
Then exactly one year later on the first anniversary of their wedding, Angelica Barone had miscarried the child she had been carrying. Maria shuddered again at the memory of her grandmother and the sadness that crept into her eyes when she had told her about losing her first child.
Smoothing a protective hand over her stomach, Maria couldn’t help worrying again how that curse might affect the baby growing inside her—a baby due on Valentine’s Day. Despite Steven’s claim that the tragedies her family had suffered were coincidences and that the Conti curse was nothing more than superstition fueled by overactive imaginations, Maria knew he was wrong. She had only to look at this past year for proof that the curse was real and the unhappiness that Lucia Conti had called down upon all Barones was continuing to wreak havoc.
Biting her lower lip, Maria considered the disasters that had plagued her family during the past year—disasters that all commenced shortly after she’d become involved with Steven. She winced at the memory of the sabotage of the new passionfruit gelato on Valentine’s Day and the turmoil of bad press and lost revenue that had resulted. Then there had been the fire at the plant and her cousin Emily’s amnesia. And worst and most frightening of all had been the recent kidnapping of both Steven’s sister, Bianca, and her cousin Derrick.
Perhaps Steven could dismiss the curse, but she couldn’t, Maria admitted. Besides, even if she were able to get past her fears of the curse, how would she ever be able to get past the loss of her family? How would Steven get past losing his family? Because she had no doubts that both families would disown them were she and Steven to declare that they wanted to share their lives together.
She’d grown up in the bosom of her large, boisterous family and wanted the same for her baby. For her and Steven to be together, she would have to forfeit that joy. How could she possibly condemn her baby to a life in which he or she would be stripped of that love? How could she possibly allow her baby to become caught up in the ongoing feud between the Barones and Contis?
The fact was, she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. For her baby’s sake, she would have to be strong, Maria told herself again. Somehow she had to find a way to reason with Steven, to make him see that they could have no future together because too many people would be hurt. And the one who would suffer the most would be their child. She simply had to make him see that.
Squaring her shoulders, Maria shifted her packages under her arm and reached for the doorknob. As usual, she found the house unlocked. Quickly, before she changed her mind, she hurried inside out of the cold. And for the first time since she’d arrived over two months ago, the scents of the baking bread and burning wood did nothing to soothe her spirit. Nor did the sound of Magdalene’s and Louis Calderone’s laughter coming from somewhere inside the house.
“Then my Aunt Lucia said…”
Maria started at the deep rumble of Steven’s voice and sent one of the wrapped boxes from her shopping bag tumbling to the floor.
“Oh, that must be Maria now,” Magdalene said.
Chastising herself for reacting like a clumsy schoolgirl at just the sound of Steven’s voice, Maria retrieved the fallen package and began stuffing it into her shopping bag.
“Maria? Is that you?”
“It is either Maria or a clumsy burglar,” Louis joked, his Spanish ancestry apparent in his speech.
“Maria?” Magdalene called out again.
“Yes, Magdalene. It’s me,” Maria replied, surprised that she managed to sound almost normal when nerves were tap-dancing in her stomach. “I’ll be there in a minute,” she added as she tried to calm herself.
But Magdalene was already rushing out to the foyer to greet her. “You were gone so long. Louis and I were about to send out a search party to look for you.”
“I’m sorry if I worried you,” Maria told her. “I decided to do some Christmas shopping while I was in town.”
“So I see,” Magdalene told her as she eyed the bags stuffed with gifts. “And your doctor visit?” she asked as she removed the shopping bag and packages from her fingers and set them aside. “Everything is okay?”
“Yes. Yes, everything is fine,” Maria told her as she stripped off her gloves and jammed them inside her coat pocket. She removed the scarf bundled around her neck and before she could protest, Magdalene was reaching for it and draping it over the coatrack beside the door.
“Here, give me your coat,” Magdalene instructed.
“No,” Maria said sharply, then immediately softened her voice. “I mean I want to keep it on for a while. I…I’m still feeling a little chilled,” she fibbed, deciding to delay the inevitable a bit longer
