CS-Dante's Twins Read online

  Of course, she should have expected that. The Fletchers were a high-profile family, one of the wealth-iest and most prominent in the province, let alone the city. The simple fact of their stepping outside the grounds of their home was reason enough to bring the media running. But she had not foreseen finding herself caught in the spotlight.

  Mr. Fletcher, on the other hand, had come prepared. When asked for a statement, he’d tugged the lapels of his Burberry coat firmly into place and brought his emo-tions-under control with equal dispatch. "Our son has come home a hero,’’ he said. "His mother and I are very proud of him and deeply grateful that he has been spared." He had turned and nodded to where Anthony still clutched Leila’s hand. Bathing the pair of them in a smile, he finished, "As you can see, he has a great deal to live for and we all know there’s nothing like the love of a good woman to speed a man to recovery."

  ‘‘So there I was, Mother," Leila explained, "left with my mouth more or less hanging open and nothing com-ing out to set the record straight?

  "But you ended the relationship weeks before Anthony left for eastern Europe? ’ her mother exclaimed, while Cleo clucked dolefully and poured herself a gen-erous shot of sherry.

  "But he doesn’t remember," Leila said. "That’s the whole trouble. He’s suffering from some sort of neuro-logical trauma inducing episodic amnesia and seems to be under the impression that we’re still a couple."

  "But you’re not, darling! You’re engaged to Dante. You’ve set a wedding date."

  "Exactly." Leila took a sip of the sherry and felt her stomach rise in revolt. "But try telling that to a family whose son is still recovering from a serious brain injury and who doesn’t need anything to bring on a setback. He looks like hell, Mother. He’s lost weight, his eyes are sunken, his head’s been shaved except for a patch of hair at the back, and he can’t even walk without as-sistance because his sense of balance is affected."

  "Your language has gone to the dogs since you moved here," Cleo remarked virtuously.

  "I’m not trying to be intentionally offensive, Cleo. Quite frankly, the shape he’s in right now, Anthony might well have just come back from hell."

  "You don’t look all that much better yourself," her mother observed. "When did you last eat?"

  "I can’t remember. One of the Fletcher maids set up a buffet in the dining room but I wasn’t hungry. No one was, really, although we went through gallons of cof-fee." Leila raised her sherry glass to her lips but the smell of the normally pleasant aperitif struck a markedly offensive note. "Maybe that’s what’s given me an upset stomach," she said, putting the glass aside.

  ‘‘You complained of the same thing this morning, too, my darling, before you’d touched a thing. And you weren’t feeling too swift the morning before that, ei-ther."

  "I miss Dante. Once he’s back, I’ll recover my ap-petite."

  "Don’t be too sure of that," Cleo muttered, poring over the cards she’d laid out on the table.

  "Well, what other reason could there be‘?" Leila swallowed, trying to relieve the faint but persistent quea—

  siness. "In any case, I’m sure it’s nothing a good night’s sleep won’t fix."

  But she was hardly out of bed the next morning before the nausea attacked again, this time so potently that she barely made it to the bathroom in time. ‘‘My goodness," she said weakly, accepting the cold washcloth her mother handed to her and mopping her face. "It must be the flu."

  ‘‘You think so, do you?" Cleo said from the doorway.

  "How long have you and Dante known each other, sweet innocent?"

  "Just over eight weeks."

  "And is it impertinent of me to assume you have made love during that time?"

  "Not for the last four weeks. He’s been away."

  "But before that? You were intimate?" Being twenty—nine didn’t protect a person from blush-ing in the face of such outspoken curiosity, Leila dis-covered. "We’re consenting adults, Cleo."

  "With normal healthy appetites, I don’t doubt."

  "That’s one way of putting it, I suppose."

  "lndeed." Cleo tugged the belt of her dressing gown more tightly around her waist and came to perch on the edge of the bathtub. "And as consenting informed adults, you naturally used a condom?"

  "Cleo!" Maeve gasped, appalled. But her expression mirrored Cleo’s question and she quavered, "Did you, Leila? Take…precautions, that is?"

  "Once we came home from Poinciana we did, yes. Of course."

  "But before that?"

  Leila didn’t like the direction in which her relatives’

  questions were leading. "Not the first time or two. We hadn’t exactly planned in advance to fall in love and the island isn’t littered with drugstores conveniently stocked with contraceptives. But if you’re suggesting I might be pregnant—"

  She broke off as another attack took hold. "I’m not pregnant," she insisted, when the spasm passed.

  "That’s what they all say," Cleo intoned.

  "She’s right," Maeve said. "When morning sickness struck me, I continued to deny it for months, but it didn’t make a bit of difference. You were born the following summer, regardless. Maybe you should forget about go—

  ing to work today, Leila, and make an appointment to see a doctor instead. Because, if you are pregnant—"

  "She is," Cleo declared smugly.

  "—Then you can’t afford to wait four months to get married. You’ll need a bouquet as big as a house to hide your condition."

  "I’ll get the car out," Cleo said, referring to the an-cient Chevrolet she drove on average twice a year.

  ‘‘Maybe when a so-called expert confirms what I already know, you won’t be so quick to scoff at my powers."

  He’d come in to the office early. Before seven. Before anyone else, even the warehouse crew, was on the scene. Fool that he was, he’d thought to surprise her. He’d left an orchid on her desk. It would’ve been the first thing she’d seen when she walked through the door and she’d have known at once that it was from him; that he’d shaved four days off his itinerary just to be with her, to ease the loneliness that she’d claimed had laid her low every minute she was apart from him.

  Instead, he was the one who’d been surprised. Surprised? Hell, ambushed was more like it! And nothing to cushion the blow but the photograph of her spread across the front page of that morning’s edition of the city’s biggest daily newspaper which Carl Newbury had so thoughtfully brought to his attention the minute he’d learned he was back behind his desk.

  "I did try to warn you, pal, remember‘?" Newbury said, the commiseration in his voice woefully negated by the glee in his eyes as he waited for Dante’s reaction.

  "The night of the banquet on Poinciana, I did my damnedest to make you see the kind of woman she is, but you didn’t want to hear."

  "I don’t now," he’d said, still nursing the futile hope that at any moment she’d appear at the door and offer a perfectly reasonable explanation for the camera having caught her in a clinch with the heir to the Fletcher em-pire.

  "I suspected all along she was a tire—biter, Dante, and from the looks of it, she’s proved me right. Sorry to have to be the one to say it, but what you’ve got to offer doesn’t amount to a hill of beans beside what Anthony Fletcher can give her."

  An indisputable if unpalatable truth! Dante made a pretty good living, enough to set his mother up in some-thing approaching the style she deserved. Enough to make sure that his sisters families didn’t want for any-thing. Enough that he could live pretty high on the hog with his penthouse and imported car and holidays just about anywhere on the globe he cared to go. But Carl was right: it all added up to small change compared to the Fletcher fortune.

  Not that he needed Newbury or any other so—called concerned friend planting ugly suspicions in his mind. He was doing a good enough job of that all by himself. So he’d sent Newbury on his way with a curt reminder that he wasn’t being paid to theorize on matters about which he knew le
ss than nothing, and he’d waited. Nine o’clock had come and gone. Ten had rolled around. Ten-thirty. The slow-burning rage ran amok then. Because no matter how much he’d have preferred to believe other-wise, there was no changing the fact that her nonap—

  pearance went beyond mere tardiness. The orchid, the surprise return, the certainty with which he’d sailed into the building at dawn had been for nothing. She wasn’t going to show, period.

  He wasn’t used to sitting back and waiting for things to happen. He’d been a take-charge type from the word go-"bossy" was the word his sisters had used when they were kids-—and he wasn’t about to change the hab-its of a lifetime now. He wanted answers. Damn her, she owed him that much, at least.

  Yanking the phone toward him, he’d punched in her home number. No answer, just the ongoing monotonous peal of the bell that, from the first, somehow conveyed the emptiness of the house at the other end. Still, he let it ring fifteen times. Because even if she wasn’t there, where in hell was her mother or the cousin? Unless .... Just briefly the rage faltered. Could there have been an accident?

  Then his glance fell on the newspaper again, on the article accompanying the photo and the words he didn’t want to acknowledge. "... still suffering from wounds suffered in bridge explosion, prominent industrial mag-nate’s son returns home a hero…flanked by family and longtime love Leila Connors-Lee. When asked if there’d be wedding bells in the near future, a smiling Samuel Fletcher told reporters, ‘My son’s full recovery is obvi-ously the first order of business, but after that? Well, let’s just say we have nothing but good things to look forward to. "

  Oh, there’d been an accident all right but Dante Rossi was the victim! He’d behaved as recklessly as a teenager behind the wheel of his first fast car. He’d mixed busi-ness with pleasure, and left himself open to being made the laughingstock of everyone who’d witnessed his in-fatuation on Poinciana.

  "Son of a bitch!" With a backhanded swipe of his fist, he sent his in-basket dying, indiscriminately spew-ing four weeks of memos and mail across the carpet. In less time than he usually took to sign a business contract, he’d asked a stranger to marry him, an aber-ration he could only ascribe to some sort of rare tropical fever. The real pity of it, though, was not that he’d suc-cumbed so easily but that his recovery had not manifes-ted itself sooner—before he’d dragged his family into the whole ridiculous farce.

  He knew they’d be waiting for explanations, that they’d look to him to clear up the mess. And he would, just as he always did. But not yet. Not until he could trust himself to be utterly in control. Not until he could be sure the rage wouldn’t sneak up and betray him. He’d rather be dead than let anyone know that his pride had taken such a beating.

  Because that’s all it was: embarrassment for having subjected himself to the indignity of acting like a fool in front of witnesses. The howling emptiness echoing inside him had not one good goddamned thing to do with love. Hell, how could it have? Of the eight or nine weeks he’d known her, they’d spent less than half together. That didn’t add up to love; there was another name for it entirely.

  The Fletchers of the world, with their pedigrees and fraternity rings, would call her an amusing diversion but he was the son of common working people. Immigrants who’d slaved by the sweat of their brow. Plain-living, plain-speaking folk not given to vanishing the truth, be-cause that didn’t put bread on the table or shoes on the kids. Following along in that tradition, he’d call her what she was: a good lay. And for him to have confused that with love showed him as nothing but a fool. He needed a couple of days to come to terms with that.

  But first, there was business to attend to. He hadn’t slaved the last eight years to make Classic Collections the success it was today, just to flush it all down the tubes because of an affair gone sour.

  Reaching for the phone again, he called up his assis-tant on the intercom. "I’m not here, if anyone asks, Meg," he said. "If anyone calls, you haven’t heard a word since I faxed you from Brussels two days ago and you don’t know exactly when I’ll be back in the office." He didn’t lift his head again until after six o’clock that night, but by then he’d dealt with every last item requiring his attention. Yet through it all, thoughts of her kept running through his mind.

  What if she were ill? Or her mother—or the flaky cousin? Could there be a reasonable explanation for the morning paper’s article?

  Wearily, he rubbed his aching eyes and flicked on the TV news station just as the stock market report was winding up. "And now for the latest on Anthony Fletcher," the announcer began, and as if the written word hadn’t been proof enough, the screen showed in full living color yesterday’s scene at the airport.

  "Today," the news anchor continued, "Fletcher is home and sufficiently recovered to receive visitors." The picture changed to reveal the Fletcher estate, walled to keep out the gawking public. But the woman climbing out of the car which the armed security guard had allowed past the gate was instantly recognizable. Dante saw her quite clearly, being embraced by Mrs. Samuel Fletcher and ushered into the house.

  So, she wasn’t ill; wasn’t flat on her back with two broken legs. Wasn’t anything, in fact, but exactly what Newbury had described her being: a social-climbing gold digger who’d dumped him for someone who could give her a richer life.

  Well, to hell with her!

  Lunging out of his chair, he strode from the room, leaving the TV weatherman blatting on about spring be-ing just over the horizon. An hour and fifteen minutes later, he was en route for Whistler—Blackcomb and a weekend of taking on the worst the ski resort could offer in the way of death-defying challenge. Because nothing got the best of Dante Rossi. Not a mountain, not a millionaire, and most cer-tainly not a woman!

  CHAPTER FIVE

  MORNING sickness played havoc with punctuality. Leila was late to work on Monday, arriving shortly after nine o’clock, a full half hour past her usual time.

  Gail Watts, the secretary she shared with two other overseas buyers, intercepted her on her way in and handed her a sheaf of message slips. "We missed you on Friday, Leila."

  She’d had too much on her mind that day to think about the inconvenience her absence might have caused.

  "I’m sorry," she said, sticking as close to the truth as possible. "I wasn’t feeling well, but that’s no excuse for not phoning to let you know I wouldn’t be in. Is there anything I missed that needs attending to right away?" She hoped there wasn’t. The soda crackers and weak tea she’d consumed before leaving the house didn’t seem particularly anxious to prolong their acquaintance with her.

  "Nothing so urgent you needed to kill yourself getting here." Gail tipped her head to one side and inspected her sympathetically. "You still don’t look so hot. Are you sure you shouldn’t be home in bed?"

  Swallowing the nausea clogging her throat, Leila at-tempted a smile. "Give me a few minutes to get caught up and I’ll be fine."

  "Sure. Would coffee help?"

  Dr. Margaret Dearborn, the obstetrician she’d seen on Friday afternoon, had assured Leila morning sickness was generally considered the sign of a well—implanted embryo and an inconvenience that normally lasted only for the first trimester, but she’d neglected to explain how thoroughly it could monopolize a person’s life during that time. The mere thought of coffee almost undid Leila.

  "No, thanks," she said, and sat down before she fell down. Someone, she noted peripherally, had left a faded orchid on her desk.

  Gail nodded. "Okay. Give me a shout if you change your mind. Oh, by the way, the boss is back, in case you hadn’t heard."

  "Dante’s back? Are you sure? I wasn’t expecting him until later this afternoon?

  "Saw him with my own eyes not fifteen minutes ago."

  Delight achieved what soda crackers could not; tem-porarily at least, the nausea subsided. "Oh, that’s won·

  derful!"

  "Amazing what a little good news can do for a woman’s state of health," Gail remarked, dropping a sly wink.<
br />
  "Isn’t it just! Take a message if anyone calls me in the next half hour, will you? I’ll be tied up in a meeting that can’t be put off a minute longer!" Already halfway to the door, Leila stopped suddenly and spun around.

  "Gail, do I really look washed out?"

  "You no longer look like something the dog just dug up, if that’s what you mean, but a little blusher wouldn’t hurt."

  It was as she left the ladies’ room after acting on Gail’s advice that Leila ran into Carl Newbury, and something about his expression--a hint of malicious sat-isfaction—set her stomach to quivering unpleasantly again.

  Doing her best to ignore the way his gaze roamed over her, she continued down the hall to the corporate wing. Dante’s assistant was not in the outer office but Gavin Black was there, searching through a filing cabinet.

  "He’s inside and he’s alone," he beamed, nodding at the closed door to Dante’s office.

  She found him seated behind his desk, speaking on the phone. Acknowledging her arrival with nothing more than a faint lift of his eyebrows, he swiveled to face the window and continued his conversation.

  It was a far cry from the welcome she’d envisioned. His mind’s on other things and small wonder, Leila told herself. Hadn’t she been swamped with work when she came back from her buying trip to the Orient?

  Perching on one of the chairs flanking the other side of the desk, she tried to allay her growing sense of un-easiness by feasting her eyes on the sight of him. He needed to visit the barber. Instead of lying flat and close against the nape of his neck, his hair curled a little. But the hand cradling the phone was exactly as she re-called, lean and strong and capable of awakening such passion in her that she grew weak at the memory of it. Something the other party said annoyed him. Swinging around, he rapped a pencil on the desk. "Re—

  strictions on the export of antiquities from the country of origin are becoming more stringent all the time," he snapped, "so don’t tell me this is only a minor glitch. We’re facing an increasingly diminishing supply for a growing demand and unless we want to lose clients, we need to find new markets." `