Rico remembered that. Someone had done an interview with him for a national magazine article on the Cancún Castello and during the meeting the reporter had seen the Aztec dagger in a case on his desk. There had been questions and photos and apparently that had been enough to attract the attention of professional thieves.
He hadn’t worried about it at the time, because his security at the hotel was top-of-the-line. But the Corettis, he was discovering, were very worthy adversaries. “I remember that article. Go on.”
She nodded and threaded her fingers together in her lap, restlessly tugging at them until he laid one hand on top of hers to hold her still.
“My oldest brother, Gianni, loves antiquities. He couldn’t resist the lure of that dagger and where he went, so did my father and Paulo.” She looked up at him again and held on to his hand tightly. “I swear I didn’t know they were going to hit the hotel until after it was done.”
Staring into those wide-open, pale brown eyes shining with misery and regret, he could only nod. Rico believed her. But then, if he hadn’t been in such pain over losing her, he would have believed her long ago.
Satisfied, she kept talking. “When you discovered the dagger missing, I just…had a feeling. Then you contacted the police and were vowing to hunt down the thieves no matter what it took.”
He remembered that, too. His fury at being robbed. The crushing need to retrieve something his father had passed on to him.
“While you were with the police, I searched through the guest register and found my family under one of their more familiar assumed names.”
Familiar. Assumed. She had grown up quite differently than he had. Now he saw that lying, to Teresa, had been second nature. Just the way things were done. And he had to admire her for breaking away from the only life she had ever known. What kind of strength was that, to turn your back on your family? Your legacy?
“Gianni was already gone with the dagger,” she was saying and Rico came out of his thoughts to listen to the rest of the story.
“My father and Paulo were packing.” She winced. “They had already sent what they’d taken from your guests by overnight mail to our home in London.”
And those, Rico told himself, were diamonds, rubies and emeralds that would never see the light of day again. At least, he told himself wryly, not in their original settings.
“I begged my father to call Gianni, to get him to return the dagger, but it was too late. My brother had boarded a plane right after—” She broke off.
“Right after stealing from me,” Rico finished for her.
“Yes. There was no way to reach him and I’m not sure I would have been able to convince him to return the dagger even if I could have talked to him.” She sighed and shook her head, pulling one hand from his to push a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “Maybe if I had confessed that we were married—” she mused. “But I just couldn’t do it. You were furious, I knew I would have to leave you and there wasn’t a point in telling my family and hurting my father over a marriage that would be ending anyway.”
He gritted his teeth and she saw him fight for control. When he finally found it, he spoke again. “This explains the robbery,” Rico said quietly. “And why you didn’t tell your family about us. It does not tell me why you ran from me. Why you chose them over what we had together.”
She pulled in one long, shuddering breath and slid off the bed to stand up. Facing him, she wrapped her arms around her middle, accidentally opening the fall of her robe, giving Rico a glimpse of luscious, tanned skin and the tops of her breasts beneath her nightgown. He had to force himself to focus on what she was saying.