Sicilian's Christmas Bride Read online

  “Traffic,” he told the man he was to lunch with, in the tones of a put-upon New Yorker. It turned out the other man was still trapped in a taxi. They laughed and made plans for a drink that evening.

  Dante put his phone away, folded his arms over his chest and settled in to wait for a break in the flow of parents and children so he could head for the door.

  He didn’t have to wait long. A trio of pleasantly efficient security guards cleared the way, formed the crowd into an orderly queue outside. Dante started toward the door, then fell back.

  What a place this was!

  And what would he have given to be turned loose in it when he was a boy. Just to look, to touch, would have been a time spent in paradise.

  His toys had been stick swords. Newspaper kites. And, one magical Christmas Eve, an armless tin soldier he found in a dumpster while he scavenged for his supper.

  How could he have forgotten that?

  Oh, how he’d loved his soldier! He’d kept it safely buried in the pocket of his sagging jeans, bloodied the nose of a bigger boy who’d tried to steal it.

  Was that what Taylor’s daughter faced? Improvised toys? If she were lucky, a broken, discarded doll to call her own?

  Dante scowled.

  Talk about giving in to your emotions! The child—Samantha—was not the Poor Little Match Girl. Neither was her mother. Taylor was perfectly capable of earning a living.

  Yes, he’d started the legal procedures that would take her house from her, but she’d reneged on the terms of the loan. It was business, plain and simple. She’d understood the risks when she signed those loan papers.

  Besides, she wasn’t destitute. She had possessions. She could sell them. She had friends in that town, people who’d help her and the child.

  Then, why had her coat looked worn? The house, too. Even by candlelight, he could tell it needed work. The walls needed fresh paint. The wood floors needed refinishing. The furnishings were shabby. And where were the shiny, high-tech gadgets women always had in their kitchens?

  Had Taylor deliberately simplified her life…or had fate done it for her?

  A muscle flexed in his jaw.

  Not that he cared. For every action, there was a reaction. That was basic science. She had deceived him, and he had repaid her.

  The child was not his problem. Neither was Taylor. He had no regrets or remorse, and if her daughter didn’t have a particularly merry Christmas this year…

  Something bumped against his leg.

  It was a child. A little girl, older than Samantha, clutching a cloth doll almost as big as she was in her arms.

  “What did I tell you, Janey?” A harassed-looking woman caught the child’s hand. “You can’t see around that thing. Tell the man you’re sorry.”

  “That’s all right,” Dante said quickly. “No harm done.”

  The child’s mother smiled. “I told Janey that Santa’s going to bring her some wonderful surprises in just a few weeks but she saw Raggedy Ann and, well, neither she or I could resist. You know?”

  He didn’t know, that was just the point. He’d never had surprises from Santa, never fallen in love with a goofy bear, like Samantha, or a rag doll like Janey.

  Even if he had, who would have understood how important such a simple toy could be?

  Dante watched the little girl and her mother fade into the crowd. He stood motionless, long after they’d disappeared from his sight.

  Then he made his way out of the store, took out his cell phone to call his chauffeur…And, instead, called his P.A. to tell her he wasn’t returning to the office.

  He felt—what was the word? Unsettled. Perhaps he was coming down with something. Whatever the reason, walking to his apartment building on such a cold, crisp day might clear his head.

  “You’re home early, Mr. Russo,” said his housekeeper when he stepped from the private elevator into the foyer of his penthouse.

  Dante shrugged off his coat and told her he didn’t want to be disturbed. Then he went into his study, turned on his computer and did what he could to further prepare for the meeting he’d have over drinks in just a few hours.

  For the first time in his life, he couldn’t get interested in the complex facts and figures of an imminent deal.

  What kind of Christmas morning would Taylor and her child awaken to? There was a time he’d have assumed Taylor viewed the holiday with as much cynicism as he did. After all, he’d spent six months as her lover. He knew her. He knew her likes and dislikes…

  Or did he?

  She’d shown him a side of her he’d never suspected. Had she really grown up in a small town? If he hadn’t seen her in that shabby little house with a child in her arms, even imagining Taylor in that kind of life would have been impossible.

  People didn’t even call her by that name in Shelby. She was Tally, not Taylor. A softer, more vulnerable name for a softer, more vulnerable woman.

  Dante went to the window and looked down at Central Park. Thanks to the influx of out-of-towners, it was alive with people, even on a weekday afternoon. There were probably more people in the park right now than lived in the entire town of Shelby, Vermont.

  If Taylor had stayed in New York, if she’d opened her business here, she’d be turning a handsome profit by now. She had contacts in the city, a reputation.

  Dante watched the scene below him for long minutes. Children were sledding down a snowy incline; even from up here, he could see the bright flash of their snowsuits.

  Would the little girl in the toy store find a sled under the tree Christmas morning?

  Would Taylor’s daughter?

  A muscle knotted in his jaw.

  No. The plan running through his head was clearly insane. She’d made a fool of him, wounded him in the worst way a woman can hurt a man.

  But the child was innocent.

  It was wrong, that children seemed always to pay for the sins of those who’d given them life.

  The muscle in his jaw knotted again. Dante went to the breakfront, took out a bottle of brandy and poured an inch into a snifter. He warmed the glass between his palms, stared sightlessly into the rich depths of the swirling liquid.

  And put it down, untouched.

  Instead, he went to his desk. Picked up the phone. Made calls to his attorney, to his accountant, to the same private investigator who’d found Taylor for him.

  If any of them thought his instructions were unusual, they knew better than to say so.

  When he’d finished, Dante picked up his snifter of brandy and went up the spiral staircase to his suite.

  The view was even better here. Three walls of glass gave him a vantage point a peregrine falcon would have as it swooped over the city.

  Lights glimmered, diamonds sparkling against the pall of encroaching darkness, and he recalled the first time he’d stood here, gazing out into the night, the fierce swell of pride he’d felt at knowing all this was his, that his sweat, his struggles, his fight to get to the top had all been worth it.

  Taylor had never seen this view. She’d come here for drinks, for dinner, but he’d never carried her up the stairs to this room.

  To his bed.

  Dante sipped the brandy.

  What if he had? If he’d made love to her while the lights of the city challenged the stars in the night sky? If he’d taken her to these windows, naked. Stood with her as she looked out on his world. Stepped behind her. Cupped her breasts. Bent his head and kissed the skin behind her ear.

  She’d always trembled when he kissed her there.

  Trembled when he entered her.

  He closed his eyes. Imagined entering her now, right now, here, as she looked into the night. Imagined holding her hips, pressing against her, the urgency of his erection seeking the heat, the silken dampness that was for him.

  Only for him…

  His eyes flew open.

  The hell it was.

  She’d been with another man, even while she’d been his because, damn it, she had belonged
to him no matter what she said.

  He turned from the window, turned from the images that assailed him.

  What he’d just done had nothing to do with Taylor. It was simply an act of charity. This was the season for charity, after all. What he’d done was for a child. An innocent little girl, trapped in a game played by adults.

  That the plan he’d set in motion would also bring Taylor back into his life was secondary. Whatever had happened between him and his once-upon-a-time lover was over.

  Dante tossed back the rest of the brandy. The liquid burned its way down his throat and, as it did, burned him, as well, with the ugly truth.

  Forget charity. Forget pretending that what had happened was over.

  It wouldn’t be. Not until he slept with the woman who’d made a fool of him, one last time.

  CHAPTER SIX

  WHEN SHE WAS SIX, Tally stopped believing in Santa Claus.

  Her grandmother had taken her to the mall the week before. She’d been terrified of the man with the white beard and the booming laugh, but after a lot of coaxing, she’d sat in his lap and whispered that all she wanted for Christmas was a Pretty Patty doll.

  Christmas Eve, she crept out of bed and saw her grandmother putting the doll under the tree.

  Even then, she’d understood Grandma had to count every penny. That she’d loved Tally enough to buy the doll meant more than if Santa had brought it.

  Now, twenty-two years later, she was close to believing in Santa again.

  How else to explain the call from a decorator she’d worked with in Manhattan? He’d been in too much of a hurry to offer details but the bottom line was that he knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who was familiar with her work.

  That person had recommended her for the commission of a lifetime.

  “The guy’s richer than Midas,” Aston trilled. “Seems he just bought out some old-line firm and the digs don’t suit him, so he’s moving the whole kit and caboodle to that new building on 57th and Mad. You know the one? Baby, this is one plum job! A huge budget, free creative rein…Pull this off, your name will blaze in neon!”

  A couple of weeks back, Tally would have been flattered but she’d have turned down the offer. She’d have had no choice, not with a shop to open in Vermont. Now it seemed as if Dante’s vicious act of revenge might turn out to be a godsend.

  “He wants to meet with you first, of course. See if the synergy’s right.”

  For an assignment like this, she’d do whatever it took to make the synergy right.

  She splurged on a haircut, had her black suit cleaned and pressed, charged a new coat which she hated to do but appearance was everything in New York. If things went well, she’d be able to pay for it. If not, she was so broke that the credit card company would have to wait the next hundred years for their money.

  She even tried to go back to thinking of herself as Taylor Sommers instead of Tally. Her given name had been the one she’d always used in the city. It suited the image she’d needed, that of a cool sophisticate.

  The woman Dante had always assumed her to be. The one she knew he’d wanted her to be.

  And yet, today, after leaving Samantha with Sheryl, riding the train into Manhattan, now standing across from the glass tower where she was to meet the Mystery Mogul, she felt more like Tally than Taylor.

  Taylor wouldn’t have butterflies swarming in her stomach.

  Tally did.

  She was nervous. Hell, she was terrified about meeting the man who held her future in his hands.

  He had no name. Not yet.

  “You know how these big shots are,” Aston said. “Some of them won’t make a move unless a camera’s pointed at them, but some guard their privacy like lions protecting a kill. This guy’s like that. He wants to stay nameless until the deal is struck.”

  The Mystery Mogul was meeting her in his new offices. Tally looked up, counting the floors even though she’d already done it twice, head tilted back like an out-of-towner.

  The butterflies fluttered their wings again.

  She wanted this job more than she’d ever wanted anything. Aston’s description of it was almost too good to be true.

  Her fee would be—well, enormous. More than she’d earn in five years in Shelby. She’d be able to give Sam everything. New toys, clothes, the best possible nanny to care for her while Tally was at work.

  Best of all, she could deal with the loan payments she owed the bank—the payments she owed Dante. So much for his plans to destroy her.

  She wouldn’t even have to tackle the toughest thing about living in New York. The Mystery Mogul, it turned out, owned an apartment building with a two-bedroom, two-bath vacancy.

  “Well, of course he does,” Aston had said.

  The way he said it made her laugh. It was the first time she’d laughed in weeks.

  Since Dante’s visit.

  Since she’d discovered just how ruthless he could be.

  Since she’d found out just how much she could hate him.

  “The rent’s a perk of the job, can you imagine?”

  She could. A picture was emerging of a bona fide eccentric with money to burn. The only thing that almost stopped her was that this meant returning to Dante’s city. And that was just plain ridiculous. It was her city, too, or had been for five years. Besides, the odds of running into one person in a city of eight million were zero to none.

  And even if there was that eight-million-to-one chance, so what? She’d left Dante so he wouldn’t know she was having his baby, but it turned out she needn’t have worried. She’d told him Sam wasn’t his and he’d been only too willing to believe her.

  Tally lifted her chin as she strode through the lobby of the glass tower and stepped into a waiting elevator. She should have spat in his face that night in her kitchen. Given the opportunity a second time, she wouldn’t pass it by.

  “To hell with you, Dante Russo,” she said aloud, as the elevator whisked her to the twenty-seventh floor. “You’re a cold, contemptible son of a bitch and—”

  The doors slid open.

  And the cold, contemptible son of a bitch was standing in front of her, arms folded, face expressionless.

  “Hello, Taylor,” he said, and that was when she knew she’d been had. All this—the wonderful job, the money, the apartment…

  It was all a cruel joke.

  A joke only one of them could laugh at, she thought, and then she stopped thinking, called him a word she had never before thought, much less used, and launched herself at the man she would hate for the rest of her life.

  DANTE HAD KNOWN this wouldn’t be easy.

  Taylor despised him. Well, so what? The feeling was mutual.

  And she was proud.

  He admired that in her; he always had. She’d never shown the weakness so many women—hell, so many men and women—showed, that of needing someone to lean on. Like him, she was independent and strong.

  But things had changed.

  She did need someone now. Some no-good SOB had gotten her pregnant and walked away, left her with a child to raise, and that made all the difference.

  He’d decided to start by telling her that but she didn’t give him the chance. The elevator doors opened, she saw who was waiting for her and she came at him like a tiger.

  He got his arms up just in time to keep her from clawing his face.

  “Taylor,” he said, “Taylor, listen—”

  “No,” she panted, raining blows on his upraised arms, “I’m done listening, you bastard! Wasn’t what you did to me enough? Did you need an encore? You no-good, heartless—”

  He caught her hands, yanked them behind her back. “Stop it!”

  “Let go. You let go of me or—”

  She was still fighting him. Dante grunted, tucked his shoulder down and hoisted her over it like a bag of laundry. She shrieked, kicked her feet and yanked at his hair. What in hell would he say if somebody came running to see who was being murdered?

  “Put me do
wn!”

  “With pleasure,” he said grimly.

  The former tenants had left behind a couple of chairs, half a dozen file cabinets and a small black leather sofa. Dante strode to it and dumped her on it. Then he stood back, folded his arms again and glared.

  What had made him think helping her would be a good idea?

  “Don’t even think about it,” he warned when she scrambled up against the cushions.

  “I hate you, Dante. Do you hear me? I hate you!”

  “I’d never have known.”

  She sat up straight, mouth trembling. “How even you could do something like this, you—you—”

  “Watch what you say, cara.”

  “Do not call me that!”

  “Is it your habit to attack your clients?”

  “If you think I’m going to be party to this—this schoolboy prank—”

  “You’re so sure you know everything, Taylor. Is it possible you don’t?”

  “I know what you are. That’s all that’s necessary.”

  She rose to her feet, tugged down her coat, smoothed her hands over her hair. She was still shaking and suddenly he wanted to go to her, take her in his arms and tell her everything was going to be all right. That he would take care of her.

  Except, that wasn’t why he’d brought her here. It was for the child.

  And for yourself, a voice in his head said slyly. How come he’d forgotten his vow to sleep with this woman one last time? That would put her out of his thoughts forever. He didn’t need to hear her say she wanted him. Or that she was sorry she’d been unfaithful. He didn’t need to hear the words she’d whispered that night three years ago when she’d begged him to stay with her, to stay in her arms, in her bed.

  “Get out of my way!”

  She was looking up at him as if she wanted to kill him. Fine. The game he’d planned was one that was best played by sworn enemies.

  “We’ll have our meeting first.”

  “We’ve already had it. To think you’d resort to such—to such subterfuge, just so you could make a fool of me!”

  “Would you have agreed to this appointment if you’d known I was the man involved?”