“I’m willing to keep an open mind on the matter.”
A curious lightness filled him, blurring the sharp edges of his grief. Tucking her arm firmly in his again, he said, “Then I propose we call a truce, at least for now.”
Thoughtfully she tipped her head to one side, a slight movement only, but it was enough to send her hair sliding over her shoulder in a fall of cool, blond silk. It took all his self-control not to catch it in his hand and let it spill between his fingers. “I guess it won’t hurt to try.”
He wasn’t quite so sure. All at once, none of the truths to which he held fast seemed quite as absolute anymore.
“I have decided we shall remain here for another week,” Salvatore announced, when the adults congregated in the day salon for coffee, after dinner. “This is a peaceful place, a place to start the healing.”
“Another week?” Callie glanced from Lidia, to Paolo.
Neither seemed inclined to question the head of the household. Typical, she thought. The master speaks, and the other two jump to obey his commands. “I’d hoped to be back home by then.”
Salvatore inspected her down the length of his aristocratic nose. “We have no wish to detain you, if you’re in a hurry to leave us, Caroline.”
“It’s not that I’m in a hurry, Signor Rainero. You’ve been more than kind hosts and I’m grateful. However, I have obligations in San Francisco.”
“And they are uppermost in your mind at this time, are they?”
How smoothly he managed to shift the context of her words and leave them cloaked in unflattering connotation! “Not at all,” she said, meeting his gaze defiantly. “But I came here in a hurry and left others to take over my responsibilities at work. I hardly feel entitled to be absent any longer than is absolutely necessary.”
“I understand.” He waved his hand as if he were bestowing a benediction. “You are a career person. I confess I had forgotten. In my family, you see, the women are content to be wives and mothers. That is their career.”
“What happens to those who don’t want to marry or have children?”
“There is no such creature,” he said, scandalized. “To have a husband and bear his children is an honor no self-respecting Italian woman would reject.”
Callie couldn’t let such an arrogant, outdated remark go unchallenged. “You’re living in the dark ages, if you believe that! ”
Paolo directed a look at his father and smiled. After a barely perceptible pause, Salvatore smiled, too, albeit thinly, and said, “I daresay I am a little out of touch. Tell me what it is you do, my dear, that you find so absorbing.”
A little unnerved by his abrupt turnabout, she said, “I’m an architect.”
“You must be very clever. What is your area of expertise?”
“I specialize in the restoration of Victorian houses.”
“An admirable undertaking.” Salvatore nodded approval. “We are not so different in our thinking, after all, in that we both recognize the importance of preserving the past. You must have spent years acquiring the knowledge to embark on such a career. Remind me again where you attended school.”
“In the States,” she replied evasively, suddenly uncomfortable at being the center of his probing attention. He could nod his handsome head and twinkle his dark eyes all he pleased, but he had a mind like a steel trap, and it was busily at work trying to put her off balance.
Nor was he the only one. Not about to let her get away with such a vague answer, Paolo said, “You’re being much too modest, Caroline. As I recall, you won a scholarship to one of America’s Ivy league universities. Smith, wasn’t it?”
“Smith?” Salvatore sat up straighter. “Then it’s small wonder you don’t have time for marriage or children. It would be a pity to waste such a fine education. How long were you there?”
“I wasn’t,” she said, desperate to steer the conversation into safer channels. “And I didn’t say—”
But Paolo cut her off. “You mean, you didn’t go to Smith, after all? Why ever not?”
“What does it matter?” she shot back irritably. “The point I’m trying to make, if you’d do me the courtesy of letting me finish a sentence, is that I never said I didn’t want children. In fact, I shortly hope to take on just such a responsibility, and very much look forward to doing so.”
“You’re getting married?”
“You’re pregnant?”
Almost simultaneously, Salvatore and Paolo fired the questions at her.
“Neither,” she said, aware that she’d painted herself into a corner. But there was no escaping it now, not unless she wanted to give the impression she didn’t care what happened to her niece and nephew, and really, what was the point in delaying the inevitable?
Bracing herself, she said, as tactfully as she knew how, “I’m talking about Gina and Clemente. I know this probably comes as a shock to you, and please be assured I’m not trying to be deliberately hurtful, but I’m well able to provide a home for the twins in the States, and I’m wondering if their living with me might be good for them, at least for a while.”
Lidia’s coffee cup fell from nerveless fingers, and spread a dark stain over the sofa’s pale silk upholstery. “Oh, Caroline, why would you say such a thing?” she wailed softly, her face crumpling. “Do you think we do not love them enough? That we will let them forget their mother?”
“No, Lidia,” Callie said gently. “I know how dearly you love them. But I love them, too, and I believe I’m wellequipped to take their mother’s place.”
“The hell you are!” Salvatore roared, slamming his hand flat on the coffee table as Lidia buried her face in her hands. “You foolish woman, do you seriously think we will stand idly by and allow you to tear our grandchildren away from the only home they’ve ever known—and not only that, but to live with a woman who puts career before home and family?”
“Those are your conclusions, Signor Rainero, not mine. I wouldn’t dream of relegating the children to second place. Just the opposite, in fact. I’d take an extended leave of absence from my work, and devote myself entirely to looking after them. As for tearing them away from you, that’s utter nonsense and the furthest thing from my mind. I hope you’ll visit them often. But I also believe a complete change of scene will benefit them at this time. I think learning something of their mother’s country—learning its customs, seeing where she grew up, things like that—will help preserve her memory more indelibly for them.”
“What you believe or think is of no consequence, young woman!” Salvatore informed her blackly.
“Father,” Paolo intervened, shaking his head at his parent in what struck Callie as a distinctly cautionary manner, “be sensible and calm down before you have another heart attack. And you, Momma, dry your tears. Caroline is merely expressing an opinion to which she’s obviously given careful thought, and frankly, what she’s suggesting isn’t entirely without merit. She is the closest substitute for Vanessa, after all, and could well fill her empty shoes better than you’re willing to recognize.”
But his father, purple with rage, was beyond sensible. “You’re taking her side against us?” he bellowed. “Where’s your sense of loyalty, man?”
“Exactly where it’s always been, with you and the children. But they’ve suffered enough, without ending up being the pawns in an ugly tug-of-war, which is why I propose we direct our energies to finding a compromise that will satisfy everyone.”
Lowering his voice, Salvatore said with such deadly emphasis that Callie’s