The Playboy's Fugitive Bride (40 page)

“I do not.”  She slapped his chest.

He chuckled.  “You do.  You fell asleep in the limo on the way home and began mumbling about going to the mill yard with your father.  I think you might have had a fight or something.  When you said my name, I knew instantly who you were.”

Her eyes narrowed as her mind wandered back down memory lane.  “Oh yeah.”  She smiled.  “It was the day you were visiting the mill for the second time.  Daddy didn’t want me there.  He was adamant about it.”

Massimo smiled.  He would tell her why later.

“But I got one of my friends to give me a ride, and I snuck in anyway and hid at the back of the cafeteria and listened while you…lied.”  Her voice dropped an octave.

“Give me your hand.” 

She hesitated before obeying.  He kissed her wrist before placing her fingers on the scar on his right side.

She stared at him.

“Feel that?”

She rubbed the scar, sending a burning sensation into Massimo’s skin.  “I asked you about it a couple days ago.  How did you get it?”

Massimo took a deep breath.  Now was the moment of truth.  He held her gaze.  “After my father died, I discovered something about him.  A secret from his past.”  Talking about his father and Galen took all the excitement out of him and his flaccid sex slipped out of her.

She moaned at the loss and turned fully around in his arms so they were lying belly to belly.  She kept her hand on his scar, though.  “What?  What did you discover?”

He took a moment to ponder, wondering how much he should divulge.  It bothered him that she hadn’t responded to his declaration of love.  He’d told her that he loved her, and she’d said nothing.  He’d never spoken those words to any woman but his mother.  And he’d envisioned that when and if he spoke them, the woman would jump into his arms and tell him that she loved him, too.  That woman was lying in his arms, unaffected by his love.

Massimo swallowed the panic that rose in his throat.  It would be so damned painfully ironic if she rejected his love.  There was no doubt that she enjoyed his body.  But did she want his heart?  Was it good enough for her?  “I discovered that I had a half brother, ten years younger than me,” he said to relieve his mind of the apprehension he felt.

“What?  That must have been a shock.”

He shook his head regretfully while he told her about the day he’d found his father and his secretary together at Andretti Industries.  “She’s the mother of his bastard child,” he finished, as the disgusting images swirled in his mind.  He never wanted to speak of them again.

“You were so young.  Too young to witness something like that.”

“That’s when my relationship with my father took a nose dive.  I lost all respect for him.  I despised him for cheating on my mother.”

“Well, all Andretti men cheat.  That’s a fact.”  Her ironic tone concealed the true emotions he imagined she was feeling.

He broke their gaze and looked across the room as he recalled her pointing out that fact to him before.  It was the most significant reason she’d given for not wanting to marry him, but he’d forced her to.  She could never know the real reason he’d demanded they get married that night.  “It’s the curse,” he said with a sour twist to his lips.

“What curse?”

He pulled her more securely into him and flung a leg across her hips.  “A few generations back, one of my ancestors fell in love with a young girl from a Masai village in Kenya.  She was the daughter of the Chief.  The Masai are very proud people and entrenched in their traditions.  They didn’t allow intermarrying with other races, especially the white race.  So, Amadore, my ancestor, stole Itifaki and ferried her back to Italy.  Unfortunately, Itifaki was already promised to the son of the
Laiboni,
or medicine man of the village.  Mbari was his name, and he cast a curse on Amadore and the entire Andretti bloodline.”

“What was the curse?” she asked in a breathless whisper.

“No Andretti male would ever find happiness with any one woman, and further more they will never father a daughter.”  He chuckled.  “Of course I don’t believe in such nonsense.”

“Why not?  It seems to have worked.  You’ve all cheated, and as far as I know, there have only been male offspring in your family tree.  Even your half sibling is a male.”  She paused on a shaky breath.  “I will never have a daughter.”  Her voice was dull, void of the heated passion they’d just shared.  She pulled her hand from his scar and fisted it.  “You will cheat on me, Massimo.  Andretti men cheat.  It’s in their blood.  Your blood.”

“No!  Never!  I will never cheat on you, Shaina.  I would cut my heart out of my chest before I hurt you.  What I believe is that my ancestors used the so-called curse as an excuse to cheat.  I’m not like them.”  When she tried to turn away, he held her chin and forced her to look into his eyes.  “I love you, Shaina Norwood-Andretti.  I will never be unfaithful to you.  And we will have daughters.  Lots of sons and daughters.  You have to believe that, believe me.”  His heart pounded against his chest with fear—the fear of losing her, not just physically, but emotionally as well.  The way his father had lost his mother long before she died.

Shaina closed her eyes against the piercing blueness of Massimo’s.  She was cursed.  He was cursed—not by some medicine man, but by the force of habit he’d adopted from his ancestors.  They were doomed.  She would never be happy, and neither would he.  Maybe the moments they’d just shared were the happiest she would ever have.  She would have to cherish them.  Grief seized her.  She didn’t know if she should leave Massimo now before she invested more of herself into their relationship, their marriage, or wait for him to be unfaithful.

He shook her shoulder.  “Shaina, say something.”

Shaina felt ice spreading through her stomach.  “What do you want me to say?  Just because you said you loved me and that you’ll never hurt me doesn’t make it true.  I don’t believe in the curse either, but I’m sure your ancestors made the same promises to their wives, and they all broke them.  Those aren’t the only promises you broke,” she added, pulling away from him.  She was surprised he let her go.  “You lied to my father.  He died because of you.  I need to know why, Massimo.”

“Okay.”  His voice was tainted with frustration and impatience.  He pushed himself to a sitting position and reached for the sheet, pulling it up along the bed with an aggravated deftness.  He leaned his back against the cushioned headboard and reaching for her, he settled her next to him and spread the sheet over them.  He returned her hand on his scar.  “This scar proves that I had nothing to do with the demise of your father’s company, or his death.”

“How?”

“When I learned about my—Galen.”  He stopped to catch his breath.  “I was livid.  I was hurt.  I can’t prove it, but I know my father’s affair with his secretary had something to do with my mother’s death.  At least her will to live.”

“How do you know that?” Shaina asked, still not understanding where his story was leading and what it had to do with her family’s tragedy.

“The day my mother died, she and my father had just emerged from
Il Nido d’Amore. 
It’s a private intimate room on the third floor of the mansion where they used to sequester themselves for hours, sometimes days at a time.  It was their own little love nest where no one, not even I was allowed.  It wasn’t until I was much older that I understood the significance of that room.”

“I guess that’s why you never showed it to me on my tour,” Shaina said.  How much was he still keeping from her?  “I know
amore
means love.  What does
nido
mean?”

“It means nest. 
Il Nido d’Amore
means The Love Nest,” he said dropping a kiss on the top of her head.  “After my father left to return to his office, my mom took me into the music room with her.  She sat down at the piano and began to play Beethoven’s
Fur Elise.
  She played that tune whenever she was happy, and her smile that day was radiant.  I so loved to watch her play, her fingers sliding across the keys and her body swaying to the music.  I remember she was wearing this floral print cotton dress.  She looked so beautiful, like an angel.”

He smiled and looked across the room as if he could still see his mother sitting at the piano, playing for him.  But soon his smile slithered away to be replaced with a look of sheer sadness.

“The phone rang and she got up to answer it.  I watched her smile die and the color leave her cheeks.  She went white as a ghost before she slid to the floor.  Somebody must have told her about my father’s other child.  It’s the only thing that would have sent her into shock, and then early labor.”

“I’m sorry.”  She laced her hands around his waist and nuzzled her face in his shoulder.  He smelled musky, all male, and…  She drew back.  She couldn’t allow herself to be hypnotized by him, not until she heard the rest of the story.  “Go on.”

His chest heaved on a sigh.  “After I met with your father, I left for Kenya to spend some quiet time in one of my favorite villages and to scatter my father’s ashes in the Mara Lands.”

“Weren’t your mother’s ashes scattered there too?”

“Yes.  They met at the Masai Mara National Reserve, and every year, they went back to celebrate that day.  They wanted to spend eternity together there.”

“That’s so romantic.”

“It could have been,” he said blandly.  “But after learning about his other child, I took my father’s remains deep into the jungle where his ashes would never cross paths with my mother’s.”  His muscles tensed.  “Once that was done, I started off on a lone safari to clear my head.  I was distracted, of course, and didn’t notice the injured rhino charging toward me until it was too late.  Weeks later, I woke up on a cot in a Masai hut in excruciating pain and fighting for my life.  I went in and out of a coma for several more weeks while the villagers tried tirelessly to keep me alive.  It was months before I was strong enough to return home, and to make matters worse, I had lost some of my most recent memories.”

He paused to catch his breath before turning to look at her.  “By the time I made it back to the States, the then executor of my father’s estate had sold off a number of our companies and reneged on several contracts my father had signed before his death.  The bank had already foreclosed on West Gate, and unfortunately your father had died and you and your brother had disappeared.  I am not responsible for your father’s death, Shaina.  I liked your father, very much.  I respected him, and I regret not being here to prevent what happened to his company, to him, and to you and your brother.”

Shaina closed her eyes as her heart began to palpitate in her chest. 
He almost died
.  The love of her life almost died.  While he was fighting for his life, she was cursing him, damning him, wishing him dead.

Shaina pressed her palm against his scar and the pain he’d suffered all those years seemed to seep into her hand, up along her arm and into heart.  Her limbs felt numb and sweat beaded her forehead.  She pressed her hand against her chest as her breath seemed to solidify there.  She clung to Massimo in desperation.  “I can’t breathe.  I… I can’t breathe,” she panted between gasps, as her convulsing stomach seemed to careen toward her chest, bringing a gallon of bile with it.  The room spun around her.

“Shaina.  Shaina.  Breathe.  Breathe,
cara
.  In through your nose, out through your mouth.  Two counts in, three counts out.  Yes, baby.  Yes, like that.  Breathe…”

Massimo was holding her, his strong hands stroking her back, his voice calling her name and telling her to breathe.  “There.  There,” he said as her anxiety calmed, as the pressure in her chest eased, and her stomach stopped convulsing and returned to its rightful place.

“Water,” she said, needing to wash the bitter bile from her mouth.

Massimo scooted off the bed and hastily returned, holding a glass of water to her lips.  “Slowly, slowly,” he crooned.  His other hand massaged her temples as she tried not to gobble down the cool liquid.

She pushed the glass away.  ““Okay, I’m good.  Thanks.”

He placed it on the nightstand and his arms were about her again.  He lay her head on his chest and stroked his fingers through her hair.  “What happened?”  His voice was a tormented whisper.

“The thought of you dying was too much for me to handle.”  Tears ran down her cheeks.  “You were fighting for your life while I was cursing you, wishing you dead for what I thought you’d done to my family.  I’m sorry.  I’m so sorry, Massimo.”

“It’s okay.”  He kissed the top of her head.

“Did one of the villagers find you?”

“Actually, it was Jabari who dragged me back to the village.  I didn’t even know he’d been following me.  Animals do have a sixth sense, and he must have sensed the danger even before I started out.  Somehow he knew a rhino was injured and on a collision path with me.”

“Oh, my God.  That’s amazing.  You two do share an uncommon bond.”  She snuggled closer to him, happy that he was here with her, and grateful to Jabari.

“Yes.  I owe my life to Jabari, and to you,” he added in a choked voice.  “You kept me alive.  Your eyes kept me clinging to life while I drifted in the darkness of my coma.”

“My eyes?  How?”

“When I met with your father the first time, I saw a picture of you on his desk.  Well, your eyes, only.  You were dressed in a
khimar.
  Do you remember that picture?”

Shaina nodded.  “Yes.  It was for a play.”

“I was mesmerized by your eyes even then, and I asked your father about you.”

“You did?”  Her lips parted on a smile.  He’d been infatuated with her as she’d been with him.  So much time had passed and they’d still ended up together.  They were truly made for each other, destined to be together.  “What did my dad say when you asked about me?”

“That you were too young and too good for me.”

“He did not.”

“That’s why he didn’t want you at the mill the day I visited for the second time.  He was trying to protect you from me.  Hey, if you were my daughter, I would have done the same thing.  I was a hound dog, Shaina.”