"For drawing up a payment schedule for what I owe you."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"About resuming my own life," Gabriella said. "You see, I have been thinking things over. And it is time that happened. This has been very nice but-"
"Very nice?"
"You have been most kind to me. Of course, it would have been better had your attempt to buy the fazenda gone through."
"Better," he repeated, his voice low and dangerous. "Buying you the fazenda would have been better than bringing you to live with me?"
"Well, yes. It would have taken me a very long time to repay you but the fazenda was my home-"
"And this is not."
There was a terrible coldness in his voice. She wanted to put her arms around him, tell him that she had never been happier than she'd been the past days, that she wished, with all her heart, his home could really be her home, too …
"No," she said, struggling to hold on to what little pride she had left, "it is not."
They stared at each other while the silence of the chill night built around them.
Then Dante nodded.
"I'll want my attorney at this meeting."
"Certainly. I will give you my lawyer's address and telephone number."
"Do that."
He turned on his heel. Walked inside, grabbed his jacket, took the private elevator to the lobby and walked briskly into the night. When he got back, hours and hours later, his bed was empty.
Gabriella was in the guest suite.
Exactly where she should be, he thought grimly, and poured himself the first of the several brandies he figured he'd need before he could tumble into merciful sleep.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
SUNDAY dawned bright and sunny.
A perfect day for a wedding, someone would probably say, but Dante knew better. It was a perfect day for a man to wake from a dream and realize he'd come within a heartbeat of putting his head in a noose.
He loved his brother, but better Rafe than him.
Dante showered, shaved, dressed and got out the door without seeing Gabriella. His mood was grim, but he wasn't sure why it should be, considering he'd barely escaped making the biggest mistake of his life. There was such a thing as carrying Doing The Right Thing too far.
He certainly hadn't been on the verge of asking her to marry him because he loved her.
Love?
Dante shuddered as he stepped from a taxi outside the unassuming little church in the Village where Rafe's wedding was to take place. Yesterday he'd done a good job of half convincing himself what he felt was love, but the truth was, love had nothing to do with it. Responsibility.
That's what he felt for her. He was a decent man, she'd given birth to his child.
That was all there was to it.
Dante looked around as he straightened his tie. No cops. No Feds. None he could spot, anyway.
Rafe would, at least, be free of the kind of attention Cesare almost always received. This was Rafe's day, for better or for worse-no pun intended. He'd smile, toast his brother and his bride, then head for his meeting with Gabriella, her attorney and Sam Cohen. He'd phoned Sam at 6:00 a.m., and though Sam had grumbled, he'd said yeah, okay, he'd draw up the necessary documents-child support, child visitation-and hustle over to the two-o'clock meeting.
So, everything was a go. Have a meeting, move on with life. Today's agenda, in a nutshell.
Dante took a steadying breath, plastered what he hoped was a smile to his face and went up the stone steps into the old church.
At first he saw no one. Maybe, just maybe, Rafe had come to his senses … . Forget that. He could hear voices. His mother's, high and excited. His sisters, laughing and chattering like magpies.
His brothers' low rumble. Another deep breath, and Dante headed for the small changing room where his family was gathered.
"Dante, mio figlio," his mother shrieked, and embraced him in a hug that almost killed him. "You finally got here," Anna said, but she tugged at his tie and kissed his cheek.
"We'd almost given up hope," Isabella added, but she smiled and kissed him, too.
His father gave him an inquisitive look.
"Dante."
"Father."
"Was your trip successful?"
Dante's mouth thinned. "This isn't the time to discuss it," he said coldly, and turned to Falco and Nicolo, who grinned.
"Hey, man," Falco said.
"Glad to see you made it," Nick said. "Where the hell have you been, anyway?"
"Away," Dante said.
Nick raised an eyebrow, but Rafe saved the day, grabbing him and saying, "Can you believe I'm doing this?"
Even Dante could tell the question was rhetorical. Rafe was smiling, and when he slid his arm around the waist of a beautiful, dark-haired stranger and drew her forward, the look he gave her was so filled with happiness that it put an ache in Dante's heart.
Had his eyes glowed that way each time he'd looked at Gabriella the past week? Hers had glowed when she'd turned them on him, but it had been a lie. All she'd ever wanted was that damned ranch …
"This is Chiara."
His new sister-in-law smiled shyly.
"Dante," she said softly, "I am very pleased to meet you."
She hesitated. Then she leaned in, stood on her toes and kissed his cheek.
Hell. She was starry-eyed with love, and that feeling came again, as if a hand had reached into his chest and grabbed hold of his heart. But then the organ began playing, Anna and Isabella rushed to Chiara's side and the next thing Dante knew, he was standing at the altar with his brothers.
The ceremony was brief. The women all cried. Rafe took his wife in his arms when the time came and kissed her with a tenderness that made Dante's throat tighten.
He swallowed hard. Gabriella had done one fine job, leaving him so confused that even he found today's events touching.
The reception was at their parents' home, in the big conservatory Cesare had built a couple of years ago.
Anna teased him about looking so grumpy.
"You could, at least, try looking happy," Izzy said. "This has been like a fairy tale!"
There were no fairy tales, Dante wanted to tell her, not in real life, but he smiled, said it sure was, picked up a flute of champagne and wandered over to Falco and Nick who were standing in a corner, looking out at their father's sea of withered tomato plants.
"Man," Nick said, sotto voce, "I think I'm on wedding-cake overload."
Falco agreed. "I'm glad Rafe's happy but if he tells me just once more how it's time I found myself a wife-"
Dante put the champagne flute on a table.
"How about we go someplace where nobody's gonna talk about the joys of matrimony?"
His brothers grinned.
Twenty minutes later, they were in their usual booth, the last one on the left, at The Bar.
The Bar wasn't fancy even though it was in a fancy location.
The reason was that the location had once been just a step up from a slum.
Back then, The Bar had been called O'Hearn's Tavern and was a neighborhood hangout downstairs from the hole-in-the-wall apartment Rafe had rented. But the brothers had liked the place. The beer was cold, the sandwiches and burgers were thick and cheap, and the no-nonsense ambience suited them just fine, though they'd probably have flattened anybody dumb enough to use the word ambience to describe the atmosphere.
Then, right about the time the four of them pooled their resources and their skills to start Orsini Brothers, the area began to change. Tired old tenements, including the one where Rafe had lived, were gutted and reborn as pricey townhouses. An empty factory building became a high-priced club. Bodegas became boutiques.
Clearly, the Orsinis were about to lose their favorite watering hole.
So, they bought O'Hearn's. Stopped calling it that, started calling it, simply enough, The Bar.
They had the leather booths and stools redone, the old wooden floor refinished and kept everything else unchanged: the long zinc bar, the battered wooden table tops, the thick sandwiches and burgers, the endless varieties of cold beer and ale.
Only the bartenders knew Rafe, Dante, Nick and Falco owned it. They wanted it that way. Their lives were high profile; The Bar was not … although, to their amazement, it became what was known as a "destination," which made the four of them laugh. It was where they often got together Friday nights and whenever they wanted to down a few beers, relax and talk.
Right now, though, nobody was relaxing. And that was Dante's fault.
The bar was shadowed, as always. Comfortable, as always. A Wynton Marsalis CD played softly in the background. The bartender, unasked, had brought Nick a bottle of Anchor Steam, Falco a Guinness, Dante a Belgian white. Their usual drinks, their usual booth, the usual cool jazz … but the atmosphere was tense.
Nick and Falco kept looking at each other, raising their eyebrows, rolling their eyes toward Dante.
What the hell's going on? they were saying in every way that didn't require speech, because neither of them wanted to ask. Dante's mood was, in a word, grim. His silence, his flat stare, the very set of his mouth made that painfully clear.