Bride By Choice Read online

  ‘Eleven. I’d just gone to bed.’

  ‘Sorry if I got you up.’

  ‘That’s all right. I never mind the chance to straighten you out on a few things.’

  ‘Oh, it’s me that needs straightening out, is it?’

  ‘Sure is. It must be dawn in Sicily. Why aren’t you in bed?’

  ‘I am, with a lady friend snoozing gently beside me at this moment.’

  There was a tiny pause before she said uncertainly, ‘I don’t believe you.’

  He sighed. ‘You know me too well.’

  ‘Of course.’ He heard the smile in her voice. ‘Underneath that playboy exterior you’re just Little Lord Fauntleroy.’

  ‘It’s a lie,’ he said indignantly. ‘A wicked slander.’

  She burst out laughing and the pleasant sound was in his ears as they said goodnight and hung up.

  He got into bed, expecting to sleep at once as he usually did. Instead, he lay in the darkness, brooding on something else that he would have liked to tell her, but couldn’t.

  Nobody had enjoyed the unorthodox wedding more than Lorenzo. At the reception he’d danced with all the prettiest girls, as his reputation required, and joined in the songs in his light, pleasing tenor. And, as one wedding begets another, he had especially appreciated the moment when his mother had announced her intention to marry Fede, the long-lost beloved of her youth, who had recently come back into her life.

  But it seemed Baptista had another marriage in mind, and suddenly Lorenzo had realised that everyone was looking at him.

  He’d jumped in alarm, exclaiming, ‘Who, me? No way!’

  They all smiled knowingly.

  ‘Forget it,’ he’d said firmly. ‘I’ll think about it in ten years. In the meantime, no way! Do you hear me?’

  That made them smile even more.

  And he couldn’t admit to anyone-not even himself-that for a moment he’d seen Helen’s lovely face, which was absurd because she was the last woman he would think of in connection with marriage. They’d settled all that the first evening.

  The brief vision passed, he was laughing again, resolved not to think of it any more.

  It was harder to ignore the memory of Bernardo’s face as Angie had become his wife. After all their quarrels, all the pride and tension, they had claimed each other with the certainty of true love. Lorenzo saw and understood this with an insight that had mysteriously grown recently.

  Later that night he went to his mother’s room to kiss her goodnight.

  ‘I think that all went very well,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, I was worried up to the last moment.’

  ‘I wasn’t. Not after Bernardo came to me and asked me to help him bring his marriage about. That was when I knew that, for him, Angie was the one.’

  ‘How did you know?’ Lorenzo asked impulsively. ‘I mean, what’s the difference between a woman’s who’s the one and-well-?’ He wasn’t looking at his mother, and a slight flush had crept into his cheeks.

  ‘Bernardo is a very proud man,’ Baptista said. ‘And he discovered that Angie mattered to him more than his pride. When a woman matters that much, she is the one.’ A gleam of mischief crept into her eyes. ‘Perhaps one day soon, you too-’

  ‘That’s enough of that,’ he said hastily.

  ‘If you say so.’ Baptista put her hand over his. ‘I worry about you, my son.’

  ‘Me? But I have a wonderful life, Mamma.’

  ‘I know. Dashing here, there and everywhere, as a young man likes to do. But sometimes you seem to me-adrift.’

  ‘Mamma, you’re not going to arrange my marriage the way you arranged my brothers’,’ Lorenzo said firmly.

  ‘I just thought you might have been arranging it yourself. Do you know how often you speak of Elena Angolini?’

  ‘Do I?’ he asked, alarmed. ‘Never mind. You can forget her. She’s practically engaged to a man called Erik. She says she isn’t, but I’m not fooled. They’ll announce it any day.’

  ‘Is that why you’re scowling?’

  ‘I’m not. Goodnight Mamma.’

  ‘Goodnight, my son.’

  Helen reached the airport an hour after Lorenzo’s plane was due to land. Her delay had been unavoidable, but she worried lest he was already through Immigration, looking around vainly for her, wondering if she’d let him down.

  There was no sign of him in the crowd and she glanced up anxiously at the screen. To her relief the plane was so late that it hadn’t even landed. She got herself a coffee and took it to the window where she could look out on the bright summer day, and the even brighter prospect of her friend’s arrival.

  It was amazing how often she’d thought of him, considering how busy her life was. By day she worked long, happy hours as Erik’s assistant. In the evening she dated a variety of men. Some were young, some middle-aged; there were wealthy businessmen, impoverished medical students, the odd theatrical. They wined and dined and adored her, and they all bored her equally, for none of them made her laugh.

  Before Lorenzo she hadn’t known that laughter was important, but now every man seemed at fault because he couldn’t show her the comical twist to a situation, or share secret jokes that excluded the rest of the world.

  They tried to impress her with romance, offering flowers, gifts and verbal tributes. But such outright gestures only made her think of Lorenzo, whose words were either teasing or seriously confiding, never romantic, but whose eyes held an intense look she would sometimes surprise.

  It was June. He had been gone for nearly three lonely months, and he might be away still but for the decision of the Elroy Company to expand.

  ‘It hasn’t been announced yet,’ she’d told Lorenzo in a hurried telephone call, ‘but they’re buying up hotels all over the States. There’ll be an Elroys in Chicago, one in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and lots more. And all the contracts will be up for negotiation.’

  ‘I’m on my way,’ he’d assured her fervently.

  In a little while he would be here. She would look into his merry face and the world would be bright again. She was smiling already at the thought.

  But as an hour stretched to two, then longer, she frowned. At last she went in search of Charlie, whom she’d met when she was trainee, detailed to meet important guests. She’d never known his last name, or his precise job, but what he didn’t know about the airport wasn’t worth knowing.

  When she gave him the flight number, his face fell. ‘There’s a spot of bother with the plane. It can’t get its undercarriage down. It’s up there, circling, while they try to put it right.

  Helen went pale. ‘And if they can’t?’

  ‘It’ll land without the undercarriage. Technically that’s a crash but it won’t be too bad. Everyone will come down the chutes. Probably nobody will get hurt.’

  In a daze Helen returned to the window, trying not to heed her mounting dread. Of course Charlie was right. Lorenzo would just slide down a chute and reach the ground safely. She tried to cling onto that thought, but now, her eyes sharpened by anxiety, she could see how ambulances and fire engines were discreetly gathering near the runway.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we apologise for the late arrival of flight-’

  The words seemed to shrill along her nerves. Terror blotted out everything so that she hardly heard the next words.

  ‘…will land in the next ten minutes.’

  But what about the undercarriage? Lorenzo seemed to be there with her, laughing, giving her the wicked look that was so full of life and which she treasured. In a few minutes he might be dead.

  She turned and ran to the observation area. There she strained eyes and ears frantically for the first sign. The news must have gone around for the place was crowded with worried-looking people who all stood in silence, gazing at the clouds. They were low today, concealing the plane long after it could be heard. But then it suddenly broke into sight and a storm of cheers and applause broke out.

  The undercarriage was down.

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p; Helen never clearly remembered what happened next. Her mind knew that she stood, held to the spot, while the aircraft descended to the runway, touched down perfectly and screamed away into the distance, before turning and taxiing back. She didn’t move even when it came back into sight, gliding to its place and easing to a stop. All about her the crowd was erupting but she seemed locked in a block of ice.

  She’d stayed motionless, knowing that soon she would weep tears of joy and relief, but just now she could only hold herself together, because if she didn’t she would fall apart. She knew all this, but she didn’t dare let herself actually think about it.

  After a long while she told herself that she ought to wait for Lorenzo at the place where the passengers would be emerging, but her limbs couldn’t move. This was all an illusion. The plane had crashed. He was dead. She would never see him again.

  ‘Helen-Helen-?’

  Lorenzo was standing in front of her, giving her shoulders a little shake.

  ‘Helen?’ he said again. ‘Why are you crying, cara?’

  A tender note in his voice as he said ‘cara’ was almost her undoing, but she made herself be strong. ‘I’m not crying,’ she said quickly, brushing her face.

  ‘When I couldn’t see you I thought maybe you’d gotten tired waiting and gone home. I’m sorry I’m late. There was a bit of trouble.’

  ‘Yes, the undercarriage. How much did you know on board?’

  ‘They told us to prepare for a crash landing.’ His familiar cocky grin was just a little frayed. ‘Of course I knew everything would be all right in the end. They can’t get me.’

  ‘Yes-yes-I knew that too.’

  The tears were coursing down her face again, and this time she didn’t try to stop them. The next moment she was in Lorenzo’s arms, having the breath squeezed out of her in a huge bear hug.

  ‘I thought I wasn’t going to see you again,’ he said huskily.

  ‘Don’t say that,’ she gasped, thumping his shoulders. ‘How dare you scare me? How dare you?’ Then she stopped thumping and clung to him, feeling him vigorous and solid, and trying to reassure herself that he was really here.

  ‘I need a really stiff drink,’ he said at last, in a voice that wasn’t perfectly steady, and they made their way to the bar, holding on tightly to each other.

  After three months he looked different. The Mediterranean sun had tanned him, making his curly brown hair lighter and his eyes a deeper, fiercer blue. Anyone seeing him for the first time would have known that this was a healthy male animal who lived through his senses and enjoyed it. Helen’s heart was still thumping from the dread she’d gone through, but as she looked at him she knew there was another reason.

  Not that that would stop her being mad at him for frightening her.

  Once settled in the bar, they regarded each other suspiciously

  ‘You weren’t scared for me, were you?’ he asked.

  ‘As if!’

  ‘I can see you weren’t,’ he said, sounding satisfied.

  ‘I just thought how like you it was to be on the plane that fouled up,’ she said crossly. ‘You probably made it happen.’

  So she was being unreasonable! So what? The relief from terror was so shattering that she was ready to lash out at him.

  ‘Probably did.’ He was watching her, a gentle smile on his lips.

  ‘If you aren’t the most awkward, worrisome, disruptive-’

  ‘Disruptive? Me?’

  ‘Well, aren’t you? Don’t give me that innocent look! From the first moment you came into my life-sideways, let me remind you-deceiving me, deceiving everyone-’

  ‘Deceiving’s a bit strong,’ he objected mildly.

  ‘Well, it’s your own fault. You’ve done nothing but make my life difficult, kissing me and letting my parents get the wrong idea and-everything else.’

  And haunting my dreams, she thought, and making me miss you every waking moment. And then showing me the truth I don’t want to face.

  He held her hand for a moment, before saying, ‘When I was eight I went off exploring, the way kids do, and got lost. I was gone for hours and they had the whole island out looking for me. When they finally delivered me, wet and hungry, to Mamma-’ he gave a soft whistle ‘-boy was I in trouble!’

  She looked at her hand lying in his, feeling the warmth and strength that she might so easily have lost. Happiness seemed to be taking her over, streaming to her fingers and toes, bringing a silly smile to her face. She controlled it hastily.

  ‘I think we should be making a move,’ she said.

  He seemed to come out of a dream. ‘Yes-yes, of course.’

  In the car he resolutely discussed his plans for the trip. ‘A few days here, looking in on my customers, trying to keep them happy, then Richmond, Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Memphis, Dallas, New Orleans.’ He blew out his cheeks. ‘I’m really going to be busy!’

  ‘Are you going straight home from New Orleans, or coming back to New York?’ she asked, carefully neutral.

  He didn’t answer at once. At last, he said in a strange voice, ‘I’m not sure. Are you free for dinner tonight?’

  ‘I think so,’ she said, sounding casual, although it had been marked in her diary for a week.

  ‘I’ll meet you in the Imperial Bar at eight.’

  She had a mass of work that afternoon but she got through it fast and was in the bar a few minutes early. Lorenzo’s eyes opened wide when he saw the soft white dress she was wearing. A gilt belt clasped it in at the waist, and the V neck made the perfect setting for the chain and locket. She wore her black hair loose about her shoulders. He too had dressed up, not formally, but with the casual, silk-shirted elegance that made him even more impossibly handsome.

  The sight of him made her heart skip a beat. But that was natural, she told herself quickly. The terrors of the afternoon had heightened her emotions. They would soon fade. But she couldn’t repress a smile as she saw him, and her heart went right on beating fast.

  ‘You haven’t told me yet where we’re going,’ she said when they were in the taxi.

  ‘The Jacaranda,’ he said, grinning. Then he took her hand and said, ‘You’re beautiful.’ But he saw her shake her head. ‘What? What have I said?’

  ‘You sounded like the others. I don’t want you to do that.’

  ‘Then I won’t,’ he said, alarmed.

  Not until they reached the restaurant and were seated, waiting for the wine, did he speak again, saying severely, ‘What’s this about “the others”? As a good brother I demand to know.’

  ‘I like to be entertained in style, and I’m not short of offers,’ she said lightly.

  ‘Doesn’t Erik mind?’

  ‘Not in the slightest.’

  ‘So what’s the big deal with Erik? Are you two engaged or not?’

  ‘I told you we weren’t.’

  ‘Yes, but you’ve also been mighty mysterious. What did he say to you that could only be said here?’

  Helen’s lips twitched. ‘First, he wanted to give me this,’ she said, touching the gold chain and locket.

  ‘That must have set him back a few hundred dollars.’

  ‘Nearly a thousand, actually.’

  ‘Oh, yeah?’ He sounded edgy. ‘And you say you’re not engaged?’

  ‘It was a kind of goodbye and apology.’

  ‘He’s got someone else?’

  ‘He’s always had someone else. I was a “front” to fool the world-’

  ‘The jerk!’

  ‘-while he plucked up courage to “come out”.’

  Lorenzo stared. ‘You mean-?’

  ‘I’ve met the “someone else”. His name’s Paul. He’s very nice.’

  Lorenzo covered his eyes with his hand, struggling to control himself. He failed, and the next moment he’d burst out laughing.

  Helen laughed with him. But behind the laughter she was musing on the things she couldn’t tell him: the sudden seriousness in Erik’s face as he’d said,

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bsp; ‘I knew you’d forgive me, my dear, because it’s been obvious to me for some time that you were in love with Lorenzo. You don’t mind my saying so, do you?’

  She had minded, but she supposed his mistake was understandable.

  ‘Now I think of it,’ she said, ‘the way he courted me was always like a performance. Lots of romantic gestures, but he never really got close. I barely noticed because I didn’t care about him that way.’ She glanced up. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

  ‘I’m not,’ Lorenzo said, hastily wiping the silly grin from his face. It was crazy but suddenly he could hear birdsong.

  The waiter arrived with the wine, and soon as they were alone he toasted her.

  ‘To your exam success,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you. I owe it all to Gigi. What a sweet thought. How did you come to think of a bear? Most people are conventional and just send flowers.’

  ‘Conventional? Me? You know I never do what the other guys-’ His voice ran down. Something about the gleam in her eyes, plus some worrying entries on a recent credit card statement, told him the worst. ‘Did you-get anything else from me?’

  ‘Only three bunches of flowers. And three cards.’

  He groaned.

  ‘I tried to tell you when we talked that night, but something you said made me realise you hadn’t meant the flowers to arrive.’

  ‘I thought they might send the wrong signals, so I cancelled them. But then I got my credit card statement and there they all were.’

  Her lips twitched. ‘I loved the cards.’ A wild impulse made her add, ‘especially the first one.’

  ‘That one said-?’

  ‘Love and best wishes.’

  ‘Yes-well, you know how it is-in that sort of message-you say “love”, but-’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘But-I don’t know.’

  ‘Neither do I.’

  The silence was jagged. Helen looked up to find Lorenzo watching her, and everything they had tried to deny was in his eyes. She was back in the first night, in his arms, feeling his scorching lips on hers, growing dizzier, crazier.

  But then she pulled herself firmly together. What happened that night had been a passing moment, and if she had ached for him ever since that was nobody’s concern but hers.