Desperate Measures (2 page)

“I wouldn’t think so many people could get away on a weekday morning to skate,” he said, and pointed to Mario. “Take that guy. Somehow he doesn’t look like a guy who would skate.”

Ellen smiled. “Neither do you.”

“You’re telling me,” he mumbled. He watched Mario skate up to a man, pause there for a second, then move past. He’d done this several times with various people. Joe’s heart lifted with hope each time, only to be dashed when no flick of
anything passed between them. Dammit, which one was
the
one? With a vague suspicion that he was being taunted, he resumed his probing of Ellen. “But he can really skate, can’t he? Ever seen him here before, Ellen?”

Somebody accidentally bumped into Ellen before she could answer, and she was pushed just far enough away for their hands to break contact. Instantly he felt as insecure as ever on the skates, and he stretched out his hand to take hers again.

He missed.

Joe yelped as he felt his body overbalance. He forced himself up, and overbalanced in the opposite direction. He tried to keep his backside as far from the hard wooden floor as possible. His feet shot forward of their own accord.

“Waddle!” Ellen shouted from behind him.

He waddled. He was able to bring his balance back, but the waddling had an unfortunate side effect. His speed had increased, and he was zooming between the skaters and the outer wall of the rink at a pace Jackie Stewart would have admired. He passed his cousin at a fast clip. He had no idea how to stop, and there was nothing to grab onto to brake himself.

He was considering crashing into the wall when he caught sight of a bar sticking out from it at about waist height. His mind registered that it was one of the emergency exit doors. Blessing the miracle, he grabbed for it as he approached. His fingers closed gratefully around the cold steel.

To his horror, the bar gave inward.

The exit door swung open, and Joe shot out into the blinding spring sunlight. He rolled across
the concrete sidewalk … and fell flat on his face the moment his roller skates hit the grass. He lay there, face down in the dandelions, and decided he was really going to have to talk to Mario about his choice of illicit rendezvous. A nice, safe hotel lounge would have done very well. He could hear voices behind him, and he reluctantly sat up. Nothing seemed to be broken except his dignity. A group of skaters were crowded in the open doorway.

“Leaving so soon?” someone asked.

“I have a plane to catch,” Joe quipped, and everyone laughed.

“You should turn in your skates first, mister,” the rink manager said with amusement.

“I told the skates that, but they wouldn’t listen,” Joe said, chuckling.

Several people helped him to his feet and back into the building. Once he was settled onto one of the benches, out of harm’s way, everyone skated off. He looked around, puzzled for a moment and not sure why.

“What’s wrong with this picture?” he muttered.

Then he realized that Mario, formerly so visible among the other skaters, had vanished. He was nowhere to be seen inside the skating rink.

And neither was the beautiful Ellen.

“You
will
be coming to the charity dance for Graduate Hospital, won’t you, Ellen?”

Ellen Kitteridge turned her mind from the unwanted image of a sexy man with a devastating smile. That image had haunted her for three days.
Her almost uncontrollable reaction to Joe Carlini had been vivid. And frightening.

Spotting her grandmother’s willful expression, she hid a smile. Trust Lettice Kitteridge to turn a question into a command.

“We’ll see, Grandmother,” she said, and sipped her after-lunch coffee. The dance was a good cause, but she hated the thought of all those people knowing … and staring …

“I’m on the board of trustees,” her grandmother said, exasperation evident in her voice. “People expect it of you.”

“That’s nice.”

“You came to Marlee’s tea the other day.”

“Yes, I did,” Ellen said, then tapped the seven heavily embossed envelopes next to her napkin. “Marlee asked me as a friend, not because my name looks good on the guest list. Which is more than I can say for these. And you know as well as I do the phone-call invitations are double this every day. Everybody wants the former wife of Prince Florian Borghese at their party or tea. But nobody will actually talk to Ellen Kitteridge, who had the nerve to divorce ‘Italy’s Darling.’ ”

The delicate cup in her grandmother’s hand met the saucer with a sharp click. She raised her chin to a disapproving angle. “Really, Ellen, you do yourself a disservice. Everybody—”

“Everybody, including my parents, has made it a point to show their disappointment that I had a shot at being this generation’s Grace Kelly and I blew it.”

“I told you not to marry him,” Lettice said.

Ellen stifled a moan. Hoping to head off the
lecture, she said in a rush, “Yes, and you were the only one. And I was a fool not to listen to you. Could we end this now?”

“Yes, you were a fool,” Lettice agreed, clearly ignoring her granddaughter’s request. “He was an overblown ski bum with some dingy title, and you fell for it.”

“He was hardly a ski bum. He’d won gold medals in the giant slalom in two consecutive Olympics. And his family have been princes of Lombardy since the middle ages.” Ellen knew she was fueling her grandmother, yet she felt, in all fairness, she had to mention the truth.

Lettice made a rude noise. “Big deal. You were too shy to stand up for yourself in those days, and too eager to please. With my idiot son pushing you like that, it was no wonder you fell for that hulking blond. Everybody was enamored of that title, but nobody considered that the man didn’t measure up to it. You did measure up as a princess, however. I was very proud of the way you took on all those duties he couldn’t be bothered with. I know you didn’t care for the socializing that your position required. You were admirable, child.”

“Thank you.” Ellen toyed with her napkin. It was amazing how many hospital dedications and school openings could be attended in one day. But all of it had fit in with what everyone expected of her, and she’d thought she’d finally found her niche as Florian’s wife.

Unfortunately, she had been naive enough to believe a sensitive, loving man had been hiding behind his “playboy prince” image. But then she’d
discovered that the Borghese estate needed financial shoring up. Worse, Florian ran through money like water and actually thrived on gossip and publicity. She had later thought that he must have picked women who were on a tabloid’s payroll—the stories of his affairs had been detailed, sensational, and published almost daily. Florian had actually kept a scrapbook. It had taken a tragedy for her to swallow her pride at last and admit that Florian had definitely gone for the gold. Hers.

“At least you wised up, packed up your bank accounts, and came home,” her grandmother said.

Ellen closed her eyes as the familiar, sharp pain of loss ripped through her. The price for that wisdom had been terrible. She would gladly have continued to sacrifice her pride and dignity to Florian if she hadn’t lost her son, Paulo. But whatever dreams or hopes she’d had crumbled, and she had come home divorced and disgraced. Only the very conventional Lettice Kitteridge had surprised everyone and stood by her granddaughter’s side. Since then, Ellen had been content to drift.

“There you go blanking out again!” Lettice snapped.

Ellen opened her eyes to find her grandmother glaring at her.

Lettice went on. “I know everyone acted like an idiot about the accident and your divorce. Especially that boneheaded son of mine. Good thing he and your mother have taken to living in Palm Beach year round now. My blood still boils when I think of the way they’ve both cut you off.” Lettice clamped her jaw shut.

“I’m sorry I caused a rift between you and my father,” Ellen said in a low voice.

Lettice rapped a spoon against the table. “Don’t be silly, Ellen. I’ve told you before: When they handed out brains, your father was in the short line. Your mother too. None of us have gotten along for years. When I think of the genes you could have inherited … Now that was a real crapshoot. Fortunately, you came up a winner.”

Chuckling, Ellen shook her head.

“Still, back to my point,” Lettice said. “You’ve had a right to hide yourself away after all that’s happened. But you’ve been moping around ever since you came back from Europe. It’s about time you stopped being depressed, Ellen, and pulled yourself up by the bootstraps.”

Ellen started laughing. She couldn’t help it. Her grandmother’s eyebrows rose in surprise.

“Only you would order someone out of a depression, Grandmother.”

“Of course. So you
will
go to the charity dance,” Lettice said, bringing Ellen abruptly back to the issue under discussion.

She smiled. It was obvious her grandmother was ready to do battle. She hated to disappoint her, but a charity dance wasn’t worth the fight.

“If it will make you happy, then I’ll go to the dance.”

“Good,” her grandmother pronounced with clear satisfaction. “Now, I have an escort in mind—”

“I don’t need a date,” Ellen said firmly. Her grandmother had tried to fix her up before, but Ellen had no interest in “dates.” A little voice inside her suggested one particular man might be
a very interesting date. She ignored it. Joe Carlini had literally sailed out the door, and she ought to be grateful for that. One Italian in her life had been more than enough.

“But—”

“Don’t push your luck,” Ellen said, rising from the luncheon table. She walked around it and kissed the older woman’s cheek. “I’ll find my own date if I need one, thank you very much.”

“I just want you to be happy,” Lettice said in an innocent tone.

Ellen shook her head. “Anybody ever tell you you’re a manipulator of the first water?”

“I take pride in it, my dear,” Lettice said, smiling at her. “You’re getting very uppity, you know.”

“This family could use another Anne,” Ellen said pointedly.

“Heaven forbid!” her grandmother exclaimed. “Your cousin is a trial.”

Ellen chuckled. The clashes between her independent cousin and the “matriarch” of the family were notorious. Still, she wished she had some of Anne’s courage for confrontation. Instead, she always took the easy route. Like now.

“I suppose it’s enough that you’ve agreed to attend,” her grandmother finally said in clear defeat. Obviously, one Anne was enough.

“It’s all you’re going to get,” Ellen said, smiling to take any sting out of her words.

“I’ll take it. But you ought to get out more. About the only place you’ll go to willingly is that spa of yours.”

“Yes, grandmother,” Ellen said, her tone meek to cover renewed amusement. It wasn’t her fault if
Grandmother assumed her morning excursions were to an Elizabeth Arden’s.

The doorbell rang, and Ellen glanced up in surprise. She knew nobody was expected. Shrugging, she said, “I’ll get it.”

“Mamie will do it,” Lettice said.

“Mamie’s in the kitchen cleaning up the luncheon dishes,” Ellen reminded her. “Sometimes I think you’re back in the thirties, Grandmother. I’m surprised you never took President Roosevelt to task for his methods of fixing the Great Depression.”

“I did, dear,” Lettice said smugly.

“I’ll still answer the door.”

As she walked to the door, Ellen couldn’t keep her thoughts from turning back yet again to the other day. She had been indulging herself at the rink in New Jersey, far from her grandmother’s Gladwyne, Pennsylvania, home. That wonderful urge to get on skates and “bop” to the music was one she had acquired in boarding school. It had gotten her into trouble before. Maybe she ought to blame the school for giving her a flamboyant roommate, she thought. Cecilia St. Martin had taught her to skate in the first place.

Now she was older and wiser about the “acceptable.” Truthfully, it was nobody’s business what she did, but she had no wish to upset her grandmother needlessly. Lettice had firm notions about what was acceptable. Still, rebellion was one thing, privacy quite another.

Ellen swallowed, her steps slowing. But then she had met a man. One very sexy man. At thirty, she had sternly told herself, she should be long
past schoolgirl reactions to handsome men. Still, she had rushed out of that rink at the first opportunity, as if the hounds of hell were after her. If ever there was a time to let sleeping dogs lie, this was it. And the dogs had better be deep in dreamland. She had no desire to complicate her life any more than it already was.

At least she’d hung around long enough to see that Joe Carlini had been unhurt, she thought, chuckling as she remembered his grand exit. She knew she shouldn’t be laughing, but she couldn’t help it. It seemed so long since a man had made her laugh.

A picture of his strong, darkly tanned Roman features flashed across her mind, and she immediately sobered. He
was
good-looking, she admitted. Even without the skates, he would be quite tall. His hair was almost black, which wasn’t surprising given his heritage, yet his eyes were an unexpected light brown, nearly hazel. Under his easy exterior, she had sensed a power that came from a man used to being in command.

Ellen groaned as she tried to force her thoughts in another, safer direction before she answered the door. And she tried with even less success to ignore the little voice that said she had had more than help on her mind when she’d first approached Joe at the rink. She wouldn’t have left anyone struggling along as he had been. She knew she wouldn’t. She’d had to offer help. And then, when she had looked into his eyes, she had been momentarily willing to do anything for him. She understood the expression “like lightning” all too well now. She had been struck.

And she didn’t need that, she told herself. Not now, not ever. Hadn’t she had a whopper of a lesson about men? She’d even sworn off Italian food, for goodness’ sakes! And she certainly wasn’t interested in any Americanized version of her ex-husband. Or in any man. She’d had about all the infamy and excitement any person was entitled to.

All she wanted now was peace and quiet. A lot of peace and quiet. She had a feeling that there wouldn’t be any with a man like Joe Carlini.