The Costanzo Baby Secret Read Online Free Page A

call and pouring himself a stiff drink. It was all very fine for Arturo Peruzzi to counsel patience, but Dario had never been a particularly patient man. Already, after littlemore than an hour, his tolerance was tested to the limit as far as letting nature take its course in its own sweet time. He’d spent too many days neglecting work because he couldn’t concentrate. Too many evenings like this, with a bottle of single-malt Scotch for company. And a damn sight too many nights alone in a bed designed for two.
    Irritably, he threw open the glass doors and stepped out onto the terrace. Night had fallen and the dozens of solar lights dotted throughout the garden and around the perimeter of the pool gleamed softly in the dark.
    Once upon a time not so very long ago, Maeve had wanted him as much as he wanted her. They’d slipped naked into the warm, limpid depths of the private spa outside their bedroom and made love with an urgency that bordered on desperation. He’d buried his mouth against hers for fear that someone might hear her cries of surrender. He’d withheld his own pleasure in order to prolong hers, and finally come so hard and fast within the confines of her sleek, tight flesh that his heart almost stopped.
    So why was he standing here alone now, hard and aching, and she was sleeping in a guest suite? Dannazione, she was his wife!
    A sound punctured the night, closer than the murmur of the restless sea, fainter than a whisper. A footfall so hesitant he might have dismissed it as a figment of his imagination had it not been accompanied by a fragrance he recognized: bergamot, juniper and Sicilian mandarin softened with a touch of rosemary. Her fragrance, and he ought to know. He’d bought it for her.
    Turning his head, he found her framed in the open doorway behind him, her silhouette softened this time by the long,loose garment she’d put on. She had never looked more ethereal or desirable.
    “I thought you’d turned in for the night,” he said when he was able to speak.
    “I couldn’t sleep.”
    “Too much excitement?”
    “Perhaps.” She took a step toward him and then another. “Or perhaps I’ve done enough sleeping and it’s time for me to wake up.”

CHAPTER THREE
    H E REMAINED so still and watched her so warily that she almost lost her nerve and scuttled back to the safety of her suite. Decorated in shades of celadon and cream, nice soothing colors designed not to agitate the amnesiac mistress of the house, it was more luxurious than anything she could have imagined. The gorgeous bathroom had a steam shower and a tub deep enough to drown in. Adjacent to the bedroom was a sitting room, and outside in the private garden overlooking the sea, a swimming pool.
    An oasis of tranquility, she’d have thought, yet she’d found neither answers nor rest there. From the minute she stepped over the threshold into the house, an air of utter desolation had engulfed her. She felt hollow inside. Bereft beyond anything words could describe.
    Something bad had happened here. Something that went beyond a less than perfect marriage, and try though she might to dismiss it, the weight of unspeakable tragedy, of an event or events too horrific to contemplate, continued to haunt her. This spectacular seaside villa held a dark and dreadful secret, one she was determined to unearth. And whether or not hewanted to, her tight-lipped husband was the man who’d reveal it to her.
    “Are you going to offer me a drink?” she asked boldly, even though her pulse ran so fast that she could hardly breathe. Nothing new there, though. She’d lived with subdued panic most of her life, and had long ago learned to disguise it behind a facade of manufactured poise.
    “If you’re asking for alcohol, I’m not sure that I should,” Dario said.
    “Why not? Am I a raging dipsomaniac?”
    He actually laughed at that, a lovely rich ripple of sound that played over her nerve endings like the bass keys of a finely tuned piano.