She clasped her hands together. “If you hadn’t come, I would know nothing, and I would be flying back to New York without ever getting an answer. Thank heaven for you!” she cried. “I’ll never be able to repay you.”
A strange shiver chased through his body at the realization he might not have heeded the prompting. He’d tried to ignore it, until he’d been swimming in the pool. Then it wouldn’t leave him alone.
Belle’s gorgeous eyes searched his. “But now that I see her picture, I think I’m frightened. It’s like that old expression about being careful what you wish for, because you might get it.”
She wasn’t the only one alarmed. Already she was important to him in ways he couldn’t begin to explain.
“Is it because you’ve discovered you’re the stepsister through marriage of the infamous Malatesta family?”
He’d thrown the question at her in a silky voice to combat her pull on him. His attraction to her was sucking him in deeper and deeper. He didn’t want this kind of complication in his life, not after having lost Benedetta. Too many losses convinced him it was better not to get involved. Leon had his daughter. She was all he needed.
His guest stared at him through haunted eyes. “What are you talking about? When the couple who adopted me brought me to their house, they broke their birth son’s heart. He hated me from the first day. If anything, I’m afraid of being the orphaned offspring of the woman your father brought into your home, thereby breaking your heart.”
Her words touched on Leon’s deep-seated guilt, and confounded him. She really was frightened. He could feel it. “You’re pale and need to eat. Come out to the patio with me.”
Leon showed her though the tall French doors on the far side of the dayroom. Simona had set the round, wrought-iron table with a cloth and fresh flowers from the garden. She’d prepared bruschetta and her bocconcini salad of mozzarella balls and cubetti di pancetta ham he particularly enjoyed.
He helped Belle to a seat where she could look out at the Adriatic. With the hot, fair weather, he spotted half a dozen sailboats and a few yachts out on the water. It was a sight he never tired of, especially now with the view of her alluring profile filling his vision.
Once he’d poured her some iced tea he said, “If you’d prefer coffee or juice, I’ll ask Simona to bring it.”
But Belle had already taken a long swallow. “This tastes delicious and is exactly what I needed. Thank you.”
After drinking half a glass himself, he picked up his fork and they started to eat. “I’m assuming Cliff is the son you referred to.”
She nodded. “The Petersons adopted me when I was ten. Mr. Peterson never wanted me, but Nadine had always hoped for a daughter and finally prevailed on him to adopt me. They already had a sixteen-year-old son, who had no desire for a girl from an orphanage to move in on what he considered his territory.”
Leon’s stomach muscles clenched in reaction. He could relate to Cliff’s hatred at that age. Leon had been eleven when his father had installed the twenty-year-old Luciana in the palazzo, a world that had belonged to him and his brother, Dante. No one else.
Now that the years had passed, and Leon had his own home and was a father, he understood better his parent’s need for companionship. At eleven he’d been too selfish to see anything beyond his own wants.
From the beginning he’d rebuffed any overtures from Luciana, but he had to admit she’d never been unkind to him or Dante. Anything but. As the years went by, he’d learned to be more civil to her. Maturity helped him to see that her cool aloofness at times masked some kind of strange sadness, no doubt because she’d lost both her parents under tragic circumstances.
To think she’d had a baby she’d been forced to give up! The knowledge tore him apart inside. He could never give up Concetta for any reason.
“How did it happen that Cliff told you about your mother?”
After putting her fork down, Belle told him what had transpired at the attorney’s office. Leon was astounded by what he heard. For her adoptive brother to take the money before telling her what she’d been desperate to know all her life sickened Leon. What made Cliff more despicable to him was to learn he hadn’t let her keep the money that was legally hers.
“Tell me about your life with the Petersons. I’d like to hear.”
She looked at him for a minute as if testing his sincerity. Then she began in a halting voice. “The day I was taken to their house, Cliff followed me into the small room that would be my bedroom. He grabbed me by the shoulders and told me his dad hadn’t wanted a screaming baby around the house. That’s why they’d picked me. But I’d better be good and stay out of his dad’s way or I’d be sorry, Cliff said. And in fact his father was so intimidating, I tried hard to be obedient and not cause trouble.”
Leon grimaced. “They should never have been allowed to adopt you.”
“Laws weren’t so strict then. The orphanage was overcrowded. You know how it is.”
As far as Leon was concerned, it was criminal.
“Ben was a car salesman who loved old cars and had restored several, but it took all their money. He lost his job several times because of layoffs, and had to find employment at other car dealerships. The money he poured into his hobby ate up any extra funds they had. He was an angry man who never had a kind word. The more I tried to gain his favor, the more he dismissed me.”
And destroyed her confidence, Leon bet.
“Nadine held a job at a dry cleaners and was a hard worker who tried to make a good home for us. She took me to church. It was one of the few places where I found comfort. But she was a quiet woman unable to show affection. It was clear she was afraid of her own son and stayed out of her husband’s way as much as possible. I never bonded with any of them.”
“How could you have under those circumstances?” Leon was troubled by her story.
“One good thing happened to me. As soon as I was old enough, I did babysitting for people in the neighborhood to earn money. I’d helped out with the younger children in the orphanage and knew how to play with them and care for babies. I love them.” Her voice trembled.
There was a sweetness in Belle that got under his skin.
“To tell you the truth, I liked going to other people’s houses to get away from Cliff and his father, who were so mean-spirited. He constantly asked me for money, telling me he’d pay me back, but he never did. I didn’t tell on him for fear Ben would take out his anger on me.”
With each revelation Leon’s hands curled into tighter fists.
“Finally Cliff got a job in a garage after school, and in time bought himself a motorcycle. That kept him away from me, but from then on it seemed he was always in trouble with traffic tickets and accidents.
“He was often at odds with both his parents because of the hours he kept with girls they didn’t know. Sometimes he barged into my room, to take out his frustration on me by bullying me. He never lost an opportunity to let me know I’d ruined his life,” she whispered.
“I can’t begin to imagine how you made it through those hellish years, Belle.”
“When I look back on it neither can I. The day I turned eighteen, I got a job in a cell phone store and moved in with three others girls, sharing an apartment. It saved my life to get away from my nightmarish situation.”
“Did Cliff follow you?”
“No. I left while he was gone. He had no idea where I went, and could no longer come after me for money and badger me. The few times I went to see Nadine, I went by her work at the dry cleaners so Cliff never saw me. She knew things were out of control with him and