loved to sail. Her family had made their living from the sea for generations. I used to joke she had more salt than water in her blood. She was—she was almost insatiable in her need to feel the wind on her face and hear the sails snap above her.”
She had craved other thrills, as well. Downhill skiing on some of the Alps’s most treacherous slopes. Fast cars. The drugs she’d flatly denied taking even after Marco discovered her stash.
At his insistence she’d gone through rehab. Twice. She swore she was clean, swore she’d kicked her habit. Yet he knew in his heart she’d driven down from Rome that last, fatal weekend to escape his vigilance. To escape him.
“I had a difficult surgery scheduled that week. A two-year-old child with a brain tumor several other neurosurgeons had deemed inoperable.”
He’d been exhausted after the long surgery, mentally and physically, and wanted only to fall into bed. Gianetta flatly refused to cancel her planned trip to the coast. She’d been cooped up in the city too long. She needed the wind, the sea, the salt spray.
“I stayed in Rome until the boy was out of danger and in recovery, then drove down to join my wife for the weekend.”
To this day Marco blamed himself for what followed. If he’d postponed the surgery…If he’d paid as much attention to his wife as he had his patients…
“I could see the storm clouds piling up when I hit the coast. I called Gianetta on my cell phone and begged her not to take the boat out.”
Begged, cajoled, ordered, pleaded…and sweated blood when he arrived to find she’d disregarded his pleas and launched the sloop.
“As soon as I reached the marina, I contacted her by radio. By then she was battling twenty-four-foot swells and the boat was taking on water.”
He could still hear her shrill panic, still remember the utter desperation and helplessness that had ripped through him. He could save the life of a two-year-old, but he couldn’t save his wife.
“The last time I heard her voice was when she sent out an urgent S.O.S. The radio went dead in midbroadcast.”
“How sad,” Sabrina whispered. “You never got to say goodbye.”
He flashed her a quick look, startled by her insight. For all their ups and downs, all the arguments and hot, angry exchanges, he’d never stopped loving his passionate, temperamental Gianetta. He’d sell his soul to be able to tell her so.
“You remind me of her,” he said after a long moment. “You have the same color hair, the same eyes. Yesterday morning, on the road…For a second or two I thought perhaps I was seeing a ghost.”
“So that’s why you almost ran me over!”
Sabrina struggled upright on the sofa. She wasn’t sure she liked being mistaken for a poltergeist, even briefly. And now that she thought about it, she realized Marco wasn’t the only one who’d made that mistake.
“Now I know why Rafaela gaped at me at the clinic. Why her mama stared at me when I first arrived. Do I look that much like your Gianetta?”
His gaze roamed her face. “The resemblance is startling at first glance, but I assure you it’s merely superficial. As I’ve discovered in the course of our brief acquaintance, Ms. Russo, you are very much your own woman.”
“You got that right.”
His slow smile banished the ghosts. “And very, very desirable.”
Well! That was better. Mollified, Sabrina sank back against the cushions. She would have liked to draw Marco out a little more about his wife but she sensed his need for a shift in both subject and mood.
A quick glance at her watch indicated they still had some time to kill before the car arrived. She should get on her laptop. She needed to reconfirm her appointments for the next few days and update Devon and Caroline on the latest developments in her changing-by-the-minute schedule.
With Marco standing so close, though, Sabrina couldn’t force her mind into work mode. Instead she nodded to the small, square table in the corner.
“I see you have a chessboard set up. We still have some time before the car arrives. Do you want to take me on?”
“You play?”
“Occasionally. When I do,” she warned, “I usually draw blood.”
“Ha!” He crossed to the table, lifting it with ease, and moved it into position beside the sofa. “We shall see.”
Seen up close, the pieces drew a gasp of delight from Sabrina. They were medieval warriors from the time of the Crusades, with armor and weaponry depicted in exquisite detail. The Christian bishops carried the shields of fierce Knights Templar. The Muslim king was mounted on an Arabian steed. Even the queens wore armored breastplates below their circlets and veils.
“White or red?” Marco asked.
She chose white and saw that that the box containing the pieces also included a timer.
“The game will go faster if we play speed chess. How about two minutes max per move?”
When Marco nodded, she hit the timer to start the clock and moved a pawn in the slightly unconventional Bird’s Opening, named for the nineteenth-century English master, Henry Bird.
Marco glanced up, his eyes narrowed, and countered with From’s Gambit. Four moves later, Sabrina put him in check and had to bite her lip to keep from laughing at his stunned expression.
“You weren’t joking about drawing blood. Who taught you to play like this?”
“My father. Chess is about the only thing we share a common interest in.”
He lifted his gaze from the board. Sabrina deflected the curiosity she saw in his eyes by tapping the button on the timer.
“The clock’s ticking. Your move, fella.”
Frowning, he moved his rook to protect his king. She smothered a grin and countered with her knight.
“Checkmate.”
Marco’s brows snapped together. He scowled at the board, searching for another move, but she had him boxed in.
“I demand a rematch.”
Sabrina took him three games to two and was about to put him in check again when the notes of a door chime cascaded through the intercom.
“That must be my mother’s chauffeur. We’ll finish this game when we return.”
“Some folks are just gluttons for punishment.”
While he went to trade car keys with the driver, Sabrina descended to the guest suite to slip on her jacket and grab her briefcase. The briefcase thumped awkwardly against her crutch as she hit the elevator again.
Marco was waiting when she emerged on the top floor. He’d pulled on his buttery suede bomber jacket and hooked a pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses in the neck of his black
