His Betrothed Read online

  Angel reached for the scowling lion’s head again.

  Surely they would be home. It was a scant two hours since the service and although she would have missed most, if not all, of the people who came back to the house for refreshments, she was sure that the Sciopelli brothers didn’t have anyplace else to go.

  Still, the fact that they didn’t open the door was ominous.

  Maybe this wasn’t going to work out after all, Angel thought, giving in to her queasiness.

  Suddenly the heavy oak door swung open.

  And Angel thought it might swing right back in her face because Maria looked blankly at her before her scowl was replaced with a joyful smile.

  “Oh, my sister!” Maria shrieked. Quickly wiping her flour-dusted hands on an apron over her black mourning dress, she threw her arms around Angel. Angel struggled to maintain her breath and her balance. Holding tight, Maria screamed louder.

  “Come quick! It’s Angel! I almost didn’t recognize her! She’s come home—Tony, Tony, it’s just like you hoped!”

  Within seconds Tony, Rocco and Salvatore were crowding around Angel.

  “Come in, come in, come in,” Salvatore said shyly. He pushed forward a tall young waif dressed in a black shift that on any other woman would have looked like a bag. On this woman, it looked like haute couture. “Isabel, you remember Angel. You just met. My sister’s been away for a while.”

  “I didn’t even know you had a sister until today,” Isabel said in a smooth-as-silk voice.

  “Yeah, but she’s back, right?”

  “Nice to meet you again, Angel,” Isabel said in a voice barely above a whisper. She held out a perfectly manicured hand. “Salvatore hasn’t told me a thing about you.”

  “Isabel’s a model,” Salvatore said. “We met at the Martins’ Christmas party—she was in for a showing of Kanae clothes. We’re engaged.”

  “Salvatore, I’m sure she doesn’t want to hear the history of our courtship while standing on the hot porch,” Isabel chided, running her hand along his shoulder. “We’ll have plenty of time to get acquainted.”

  Angel was quickly ushered into the house.

  “Congratulations on your engagement,” Angel said just as Isabel stepped back against Salvatore to form a picture-perfect pose.

  What could he be thinking of, marrying so young?

  But then Angel realized that Salvatore must be twenty-six years old, one year younger than herself. That wasn’t too young. Where had all the years gone?

  Tony urged her into the cool foyer and closed the door behind her.

  “So…you gonna stay for dinner?” Rocco asked gruffly. “Most of the guests have gone home already. We were gonna sit down and eat. I’m starvin’.”

  “Rocco, don’t be pushy,” Maria warned, and she added in a conciliatory voice, “Give Angel a chance to catch her breath. I hope you stay, Angel, but if you have to leave, we’ll understand. Won’t we, Tony?”

  Tony gazed at Angel thoughtfully, clipping his white shirt cuffs to show an inch of linen with a white-on-white three-letter monogram.

  “Zach said that he dropped you off at the train station because you didn’t want to come here,” he said calmly.

  “I changed my mind,” Angel replied.

  “Wonderful,” Tony said, his sole expression of emotion being the slight lift of his eyebrows. “Can you stay?”

  “For dinner?”

  “For dinner, yes. But why don’t you make it longer?”

  Things were going even better than O’Malley said they would! Angel thought to herself.

  “Tony, don’t pressure her,” Maria said. “We don’t even know why she’s here.”

  “I just…just wanted to be with family.”

  “That’s nice,” Maria said.

  “So she will stay for a week. At least,” Tony insisted. “Maria, fix up the guest suite for her.”

  “Our housekeeper’s at the Martins’ house. She’ll be coming back after dinner,” Maria said. “I’ll take care of it then. Do you have any bags with you?”

  “No. They’re at the hotel. Tony, Maria, I appreciate your hospitality.”

  “Please say you will stay with us,” Tony said. “We can send to the hotel for your things.”

  “Of course I will, but I don’t want to impose.”

  “Angel, this has been such a terrible time for us,” Tony said. His voice rose as he addressed all the family standing in the marble-tiled foyer. “We need to come together, forget past problems, forgive one another. Because, Angel, family is all you really have in life.”

  “Yes,” murmured Guy, Jr., who slipped behind Tony to put a hand on his shoulder. “Family is everything.”

  Tony shot him a disapproving glance. Jeanne Martin, looking very tired but still put together with exquisite taste, entered the foyer. She started when she saw Angel. Her scarlet-stained lips parted slightly and she took a steadying breath.

  “My darling Angel, it’s so wonderful you have come to the house,” she said, recovering quickly. “Zach will be so happy to see you.”

  “What will Zach be happy about?” a voice behind Mrs. Martin said.

  Tugging his tie, Zach walked out into the cool foyer, glanced around the gathering and did a double take when he saw Angel. He gave her an arrogant and provocative once-over.

  “So, Angel, you must have changed your mind after I dropped you off,” he said with unmistakable suspicion.

  She caught her breath.

  “I did,” she said.

  “You seemed so definite about leaving.”

  “I changed my mind.”

  “Did you walk here?”

  “Took a cab.”

  “How’d you get a cab?”

  “There was one at the station,” she lied. O’Malley had had one waiting for the limousine when they had completed their talk.

  “At this hour? On a Saturday? Lucky woman.”

  “Yes, I was very lucky,” Angel insisted. Was it her imagination or was everyone in the foyer calculating the odds of getting a cab at the Hubbard Woods station house? Zach stared at her from beneath half-closed lids.

  “Luck is a very wonderful thing,” Tony said, his words slicing into the uncomfortable silence. “We are lucky and glad you have come back. And we want you to stay. This is your home. The ten long years are over. Angel, welcome back.”

  Angel shivered, though the brilliance of the foyer’s cathedral skylight was temperate.

  “Dad, look who’s here!” Guy exclaimed, waving his martini glass toward the Venetian doors leading to the courtyard. “Little Angel has returned.”

  Wheezing, his father struggled into the foyer.

  “Oh, Angel, it’s wonderful to see you,” Guy, Sr., said. “Your father and mother would be so happy to know you are here. Come, come give me a kiss.”

  Angel walked unsteadily toward the man who was her godfather and would have been her father-in-law, well aware of the intensity of Zach’s regard as she stepped past him. She kissed Guy, Sr.’s cheek, now wet with tears.

  The old man pulled a handkerchief out of his suit jacket pocket and apologized, between coughs, for his lung cancer.

  Angel patted his back reassuringly until he calmed. She hazarded a glance at Zach.

  “Yes, it’s a wonderful thing,” Zach said, leaning over to give her a perfunctory peck on the cheek. “I’m glad you changed your mind and came home.”

  “I had better check on dinner,” Maria said.

  Angel silently submitted to the tide of hospitality.

  As the parade of family members came into the kitchen, Maria had glasses of wine and a platter of antipasto meats ready. She hugged Angel a second and then a third time. Tony squeezed Angel’s shoulder, told her that he was sure she would understand that he had some business to conclude upstairs in the study.

  “When you’re done visiting, come up and see the shopping mall,” he said proudly. “Salvatore designed the building, I put it into work and—”

  “And I de
signed the interior,” Maria interjected, pulling a casserole dish from the oven.

  “She did. It’s very much a family project.”

  “I’d be delighted to see it,” Angel said.

  Tony strode away.

  “Here, let me take your purse,” Maria said as Angel juggled a plate and a glass of wine. “I’ll put it upstairs in the guest suite. I’ll have the housekeeper put fresh sheets on the bed when she returns and we’ll call your hotel and have your bags sent here.”

  “No, please, that’s all right. I need my purse,” Angel said abruptly, putting her glass and plate on the kitchen counter. “I…I wanted to freshen up.”

  “Sure,” Maria said, stepping away. “I understand. The long day.”

  But the tone of her voice made it clear that she didn’t understand the sudden determined tone of Angel’s voice.

  “Yes, the long day, that’s it,” Angel said, grasping at the excuse.

  She slipped into the powder room and spilled the contents of her purse out onto the marble counter.

  She thanked God that she had locked her wallet at the train station near the hotel. Nothing she carried identified her as Jennifer Smith. When this was over, she hoped she’d have the option of returning to Iowa.

  She put the camera and small tape recorder into the pocket of her dress and scooped everything else back into her purse.

  She flushed the toilet, ran the water for a few moments, crumpled a guest towel and came out into the hallway to bump right into Zach.

  His jaw rippled with anger, and when he put his arm against the wall to block her path back to the kitchen, she felt afraid. Truly afraid.

  “O’Malley got to you, didn’t he?”

  She swallowed air that felt as hot as fire.

  “I…I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You’re no good at lying,” Zach said. “That’s why you should get out now before you have to learn or fail at it. Now, where is it?”

  He grabbed her purse, flipping it open.

  “Give me back my…” she demanded, careful to keep her voice down.

  “How’d he persuade you? Did he tell you the fate of the innocent children of Chicago was in your hands?” He pawed through her purse and checked the lipstick to make sure it was. “He’s good at using children—he can capture the right sense of remorse about never having had his own.”

  “He did say something about children.”

  “Did he weep? He can cry on demand, did you know that? Really good at turning on the emotion. I admire the man, even like him, but I know his faults and his weaknesses. He’s using you, Angel.”

  “He’s not! He’s a very nice man,” Angel told Zach, knowing full well O’Malley had her over a barrel.

  “And how would you know?” Zach asked. His smile was long on triumph, but short on mirth.

  “I’m not saying I do,” Angel backtracked.

  “Give me the recorder and the camera. I’m sure he gave you both. Along with a perfectly useless crash course in undercover work. Hand over.”

  “Zach, no, I—”

  “Who did he say was going to pick up tapes and film? Who’s the courier? Or did he ask you to go downtown every day for a confab at his office?”

  “He didn’t say.” Angel felt off balance by Zach’s questions. “I mean, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He shoved the purse back into her hands and then ran a quick commanding caress over her hips. She was momentarily distracted from her irritation by the burst of sensation he awakened with his touch, but she recovered…just as he pulled the thin chain out from under the neckline of her dress.

  In his broad, tanned hand, the gold ring with the small, square-cut peridot, her birthstone, and citrine, his birthstone, looked fragile—though it had survived ten years of wearing and not just a few flings across a lonely bedroom in her apartment.

  He stared at the ring dangling from its chain and then closed it gently in his fist.

  Angel knew he could see her vulnerability to him, her ten-year-long losing battle to forget him, and she tugged the ring out from his grasp and shoved it back under her dress collar with a suitably indignant look.

  He didn’t crumble.

  “I can’t protect you if you stay.”

  She wanted to ask him what he meant, but at that moment Maria called out from the kitchen.

  “Angel, what hotel are you staying at? Tony says his foreman, Jimmy, lives downtown. He can go pick up your suitcases and check out for you.”

  “I’ll go get them,” Zach called out, running a flat palm down the back of Angel’s dress. “I can pick them up after dinner.”

  “Tony says it’ll be easier this way,” Maria persisted. “You know how he gets when he’s got an idea in his head. He says he wants to have a relaxing family dinner. No distractions.”

  “What have you got at your hotel?” Zach whispered, his icy mint breath gone hot against the base of her neck. “Think fast. Do you have anything there that could hurt you?”

  “No,” Angel said, remembering that any identification for Jennifer Smith was in the locker at the train station.

  She had thought she was being overly careful when she rented the locker, but now she realized she had been right.

  “Just a change of clothes.”

  “Your plane ticket?”

  “It’s not there,” she said cautiously. “I didn’t want anyone to know my destination.”

  “Good girl. You’ve grown some smarts.”

  She nearly corrected him on several points, starting with “girl” and ending with “smarts,” but Maria called out again.

  “I agree with Tony. I don’t see what the problem is with sending Jimmy,” Maria said. She slammed the oven door shut. “He lives downtown and it’d be too much trouble for you to…”

  Maria turned the corner into the narrow hallway to the bathroom just as Zach wrapped a strong arm around Angel’s waist and abruptly kissed her.

  Chapter Four

  His mouth was hard, his lips unrepentant, his head forcing hers back until she accepted his tongue like a sweet offering. Angel could only keep her balance by submitting to the strong, broad hand pressing at her lower back. The same hand that quickly made a sweep of her dress. Angel felt the camera and recorder slipping from the hip pocket of her dress into his fingers.

  “Oh, you two are like a couple of kids,” Maria cooed at the door to the kitchen. “Can’t keep your hands off of each other, huh?”

  Zach looked at her with a smile that was one part rogue and one part boyish charm.

  “Caught me, didn’t you?”

  Maria shook her head, snapped a dish towel at him as if she were chastising a mischievous imp and went back to the kitchen.

  “You two are so romantic.” She sighed.

  Angel glared at Zach, feeling unaccountably resentful of the kiss—and of the effect the kiss had upon her. She would not react to him, she ordered herself. He stood tall and took his hand out from behind her head. His triumphant smile transformed into a scowl.

  He held up the camera and recorder.

  “I can explain,” Angel said, uncertain how she would, not having any clue as to his loyalties.

  “Don’t. I know how O’Malley operates. I can probably quote you everything he said to persuade you to do this. It’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever done.”

  “Oh, really? I think the stupidest thing I’ve ever done was waiting for two days in the Las Vegas airport, thinking you were on your way.”

  Actually, the stupidest thing might be admitting the stupidest thing, Angel thought immediately after the words left her mouth.

  She was a firm believer in personal dignity, in hiding her sorrows, in self-reliance and never giving herself a pity party. She was so appalled at her own outburst, she nearly missed his response.

  He looked as if he might say something.

  And then, lightning quick, his features hardened.

  He slip
ped the recorder and camera into the inside pocket of his suit jacket

  “Get out, Angel, before it’s too late,” he warned. He held her chin tight so that she couldn’t look away. “And don’t put your trust in Patrick O’Malley. The man talks big, but he’s got his own agenda and it doesn’t include saving your life. And if you stay in this house, I promise you your life will need saving.”

  He started to walk away, but she put her hand out to the opposite wall to block his path.

  “If I’m going, shouldn’t you give me a kiss good-bye?”

  She blinked at him, her lips parted.

  And he did. This time she responded to him as aggressively as an animal in heat. She put her hands into his jacket, feeling the taut ladder of muscles from his abdomen to his shoulders. She pressed one thigh against his maleness. For a selfish moment, she was glad he was still as affected by her as he had been as a younger man.

  He shoved her away abruptly.

  “This is goodbye, Angel,” he said. “It has to be goodbye.”

  He held up her hotel key, which had been jangling at the bottom of her purse. Sauntering into the kitchen without a backward glance, he called out to Maria that he would personally drive Angel downtown after dinner to her hotel.

  “If you want some time alone, don’t go to her hotel room,” Maria suggested. “Tony will have a fit. He’s very old-fashioned, you know. Isabel and Salvatore have to sleep in separate bedrooms and they’re engaged.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Zach said, and walked out to the living room.

  Angel stood in the hallway between the powder room and the kitchen. Her hair felt tousled, and as she rubbed the back of her hand against the remnants of his kiss, she saw that her pale lipstick had been smudged into disrepair. Her heart was galloping, her legs were wobbly and her lower belly had become furnace hot.

  She rued her lack of experience with the opposite sex that made her so vulnerable to Zach. But his desire for her left him vulnerable, too. She opened her hand to the camera and recorder she had liberated from his suit jacket pocket before replacing them in her pocket.

  She took a couple of deep breaths and walked into the kitchen and told Maria that she’d be delighted to help with dinner.