His Betrothed Page 5

“No, no,” Maria said. “Rocco, please get her out of here. Her first day home and we’re putting her to work? No way!”

  Rocco, who had been lingering near the antipasto tray, grunted and led her upstairs to the study. Tony, his shirtsleeves rolled up and his tie askew, sprang to his feet from his place at her father’s desk. Salvatore and Guy, Jr., looked up from their chairs on the other side of the desk.

  It was clear the men had been involved in an intense conversation, one that had left Guy, Jr., red faced and Salvatore somber.

  “Come on in, Angel,” Tony said, gesturing to the tiger maple conference table by the fireplace. “See our magnificent shopping mall.”

  “All right.”

  “Winnetka has been such a small suburb, nearly choking on its own tax base,” Tony said, warming to the topic. “But with the revenue generated by the shopping mall, the town will be able to afford to build a new elementary school, put in an enhanced 911 system and expand the park district summer programs.”

  The scale model was impressive, made lifelike with cut-glass archways and clay trees. Salvatore, obviously proud, explained he had built the model from balsa wood and other materials.

  “I designed the mall,” he admitted, unrolling the impressive blueprints. “But the real work will be in building it, of course. Drawing is just, well, using a pencil and paper.”

  The deference to Tony and Rocco started another conversation about the troubles facing a contractor. Rocco complained vociferously about zoning regulations and the building inspector. While he did, Angel backed up against the bookshelf.

  “I’m just doing the grunt work,” Guy, Jr., said, leaning unsteadily on the arm of his chair. “The hauling, the lifting, the trucking, the demolition. They wouldn’t trust me with the important things.”

  “That’s because you can’t be trusted,” Rocco retorted.

  Angel used the momentary distraction to shove the recorder in the space between two books. With her index finger, she checked to make sure the voice activator button was flipped on.

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” Tony said. “This isn’t a business meeting. This is merely an opportunity to show Angel what we’re working on.”

  He looked at Angel with some scrutiny, but she stepped away from the bookshelf and kept her face as blank as possible.

  Aiming for that I’m-just-a-girl-who-can’t-under-stand-business-talk look.

  “But, Tony, we got issues to work out,” Guy, Jr., insisted. “I got workers to pay.”

  Pointedly ignoring Guy, Jr., Tony retrieved his suit jacket from the arm of his desk chair.

  “I believe I hear Maria calling,” he said, slipping on his jacket and shooting his cuffs. “She’s made a marvelous dinner. Let’s not keep her waiting.”

  And he left the study without a backward glance.

  “We got to get this settled,” Guy muttered, but Rocco and Salvatore were escorting Angel downstairs, working to fill the uncomfortable silence with talk of Salvatore’s next project—a new chapel for the cathedral.

  Downstairs, Maria insisted that Angel take the seat at Tony’s right side. Angel agreed, grateful to put some distance between herself and Zach, who helped his father into a seat at the far end of the table.

  But then he walked right back to her and leaned down to give her a kiss on the back of her neck.

  “Where did you put it?” he murmured.

  So he had figured out that she had taken the tape recorder and camera right back from him!

  “Zach, you sit down with your father,” Tony said, tugging at his sleeve.

  Zach retreated, but a glance to Angel let her know that there’d have to be a confrontation after dinner.

  She didn’t look forward to that.

  But a Sciopelli family dinner was no place for solitary thoughts. Just as she remembered from her childhood, the table was a bazaar of interlocking conversations, excited interruptions, sudden outbursts of laughter and raised glasses.

  Although Tony opened with a few somber words about the tragedy they had endured, Isabel was the only one who did not try her best to fulfill his admonition that his parents had always wanted mealtimes to be pleasurable. Salvatore encouraged her to eat, but she relentlessly pushed her food around her plate with her fork and complained that she felt just heartsick about the tragedy that had befallen the Sciopellis.

  But Tony and Maria pointedly played good hosts and drew their guests into light conversation.

  “So,” Maria said firmly as she seated herself across from Angel after bringing in the pasta course. “Does this mean that you and Zach are going to get back together again? I’ve heard that renewed first love affairs are the most intense.”

  “Where’d you hear that?” Tony asked, interrupting his own explanation to Rocco that he alone could choose the most delicious eggplant roll filled with chicken and vegetables that would be good enough for Angel.

  “Tony, it was in one of those women’s magazines,” Maria replied.

  Angel hazarded a glance down at the other end of the table. Guy, Jr., held his weight up with his elbows, leaning across the table to share with Rocco an incident in which Guy had bested one of his sub-contractors. Rocco stared uncomfortably at his plate.

  When Guy sat back at the satisfied conclusion of his tale, Angel had a clear picture of Zach.

  He was cutting his father’s meat for him, but as if sensing Angel’s gaze, he looked up. Meeting her eyes and then glancing at Tony.

  “So what do you think, Angel?” Tony asked. “Are we finally going to throw rice and hear wedding bells for you and Zach?”

  She blinked at her brother.

  “I think it’s way too early to talk like that,” she said with what she hoped was perfect diplomacy.

  “Angel, you’ve known him all your life,” Maria reminded. “You were betrothed to him by your father on the day of your baptism. I was there—remember, Rocco and I were in nursery school together!”

  “The promise was just meant as a joke,” Angel said.

  “Seems like everyone took the joke very seriously,” Isabel offered, reluctantly taking a tiny bite of pasta at Salvatore’s urging.

  “Especially Zach,” Tony said.

  Not seriously enough, she thought to herself.

  With poignant bravado, Salvatore popped the cork on a bottle of the very best Perrier-Jouët champagne from the cellar and the long table of family toasted her return. Tony tried very hard to keep the tone of the meal light and happy, recounting anecdotes about childhood that kept everyone smiling.

  As a dessert of cannoli and fruit came to a close and the tiring, eventful day caught up with everyone, a more somber mood prevailed and soon everyone was imitating Isabel’s restless grief.

  Rocco abruptly stood and sang a favorite lullaby their mother had used to soothe all four children.

  While everyone praised his talent, there were damp eyes as people remembered Mrs. Sciopelli.

  “Do Darth Vader,” Salvatore suggested. “It’s Isabel’s favorite.”

  Isabel looked up sullenly from her plate.

  “I prefer Stallone.”

  “No, do Arnold Schwarzenegger,” Jeanne Martin countered. “‘I’ll be back,’ he says.”

  “Rocco, do Mrs. Tobin,” Maria said. She leaned across the table to explain to Angel. “We have a housekeeper who comes in on the days when I go into the office. I told you I’m doing the interior design for the Winnetka Shopping Mall, didn’t I? Well, Rocco does the most wicked imitation of our housekeeper. He’s really very talented. Isn’t he, Tony?”

  “Yes, Maria.”

  Rocco held up his hand to silence the chorus of requests.

  “I will not do Mrs. Tobin, because that would be cruel,” he said to Maria. “Instead, I shall do one just for Angel.”

  He composed himself and, as he did so, a subtle reorganization of his features took place. He spoke in a subtle Southern drawl.

  “Eight years ago, I was called upon to serve—”

  “The presi
dent! The president!” shrieked Isabel, for the first time showing some emotion. “That’s the president of your country.”

  “Yours, too,” Salvatore said. “As soon as we get married.”

  Rocco acknowledged the table’s burst of applause with a regal bow.

  “You’re just as great as always,” Angel said.

  “I can do one better,” Guy, Jr., said, rising unsteadily to his feet. “It is a man who’s been a real pain in the—”

  “Just do it, Guy,” Tony interrupted, his courteous demeanor strained to its breaking point.

  The room quieted, anticipating. Guy squared his shoulders, drew his eyebrows down and lifted one side of his mouth in a sneer.

  “I told you the first day you walked into this office, Zachary Martin, that one day you’d have to choose. And today is that day.”

  O’Malley’s voice, with a rendition that was so eerily perfect that, for a scant moment, Angel thought O’Malley himself had slipped into the room. She looked at Zach, but he avoided her gaze.

  The silence at the table grew oppressive, infecting everyone with sullen lethargy. Guy, Jr., smiled out the side of his mouth, getting some kind of pleasure from the uncomfortableness of his audience.

  “Siddown, Guy,” his father said.

  His mother abruptly announced she had to phone the house and check on Anna.

  “Guy, that wasn’t nice,” Maria said as Mrs. Martin left the room. “It’s been a difficult situation for Zach.”

  “But it was a good imitation,” Zach admitted. “It was right on target.”

  “Uncanny, actually,” Tony said.

  “Really?” Angel challenged coolly.

  “Yeah,” Zach said. “Do you recognize the voice?”

  Angel felt her face go hot as everyone looked at her.

  “No,” she lied. “I don’t. Who is it?”

  Chapter Five

  “That’s Zach’s boss, Patrick O’Malley,” Tony explained. “The state’s attorney who nearly drove father to an early grave. I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone capture his voice quite like that.”

  He stopped, his face drawn and pale. He stared directly at Guy, Jr., with contemptuous wonder. Crumpling under his glare, Guy, Jr., muttered an apology.

  “No, no, Guy, you just did a good job, that’s all,” Tony said. “It just was so perfect, so on target Wasn’t it, Zach?”

  “Zach, you work for O’Malley?” Angel asked.

  The room grew still. Everyone stared at Zach.

  He leaned back in his chair.

  “I don’t exactly work for him,” he replied. “I do appellate work. I write the legal briefs to support the verdicts juries come to. He wins a case, I defend to the higher court what he did.”

  “Good thing he’s never had to write a brief explaining a guilty verdict for your father, right, Tony?” Guy asked, desperately trying to regain some kind of camaraderie.

  Tony’s chilly expression drove Guy to pour himself another drink and slump a little lower in his chair.

  “Did he ever ask you to choose?” Angel asked.

  Maria stifled a cough.

  “Yes,” he said, two hard gray eyes never leaving Angel’s face.

  “And did you?”

  “He must have chosen if he’s here,” Guy, Sr., said, struggling to put an end to the conversation. “And he chose his family above some two-bit politician who’s trying to make a name for…himself by persecuting a couple of family-owned…bus-businesses. He chose his family and…and…and…”

  Zach’s father’s labored breathing became a cough and his cough wouldn’t stop. Guy handed him a glass of water. Isabel offered a napkin. Salvatore said the oxygen tank was in the living room and he and Zach helped Mr. Martin out of the room.

  Eerily calm, Tony took Angel’s hand in his and whispered confidentially.

  “I hope you don’t think we blame you for leaving. When the first indictment came in, it must have been hard not to believe Father was some kind of monster. But he wasn’t a bad man. He was just a businessman trying to make a living.”

  Angel saw a chance to. stop the madness once and for all.

  “Who killed him?”

  Tony stared at her reproachfully.

  “The police have no leads. It could have been anyone,” he said, shrugging. “I hope they catch whoever did this, but I am resigned to the fact that the criminal justice system will not bring our parents back to us. And that’s really all that matters to me. I’m not about vengeance, Angel.”

  Tears filled his eyes.

  He blinked and looked away.

  Angel squeezed his hand, feeling the love for her brother that had been so muted and confused for the past ten years.

  “Is that why you’re here, Angel, to find their killers?” Tony asked. “Because the murderer isn’t in this house.”

  “No, no, I’m here because—”

  “She’s here because ten years is a long time to be away from your family,” Zach said, returning to the dining room. “And we don’t want her to feel unwelcome, do we, Tony?”

  “No, of course not,” Tony agreed. He pushed his chair away from the table. “Has your father recovered from his attack?”

  “He’s resting in the downstairs guest room,” Zach said. “He needs a good half hour with his oxygen tank and then I think he’ll be strong enough that we can drive him home.”

  “He can stay overnight.”

  “No, he insists on being in his own bed. Why don’t I drive Angel down to her hotel to pick up her bags? My brother says you have some business to talk over in the study and you know how I feel about business.”

  “Bored. Ah, the life of a carefree playboy,” Tony quipped. He stood. “But you don’t need to drive all that way.” Tony addressed Angel then. “Jimmy brought back your bags and I’ll have them sent to your room.”

  “I thought I was driving her back to her hotel,” Zach said.

  “Ah, you are too hasty in your courtship,” Tony replied. “You don’t go driving off into the night with my sister without announcing your intentions.”

  And he strode out of the dining room without a backward glance. Guy, Jr., Rocco and Salvatore followed. Isabel shoved her chair back, said she was tired and went upstairs.. Maria said to leave the plates because Mrs. Tobin would take care of them. She followed Isabel upstairs.

  “Then we’ll go for a walk in the garden,” Zach said.

  ld;Actually, I have other plans,” Angel said. “I think I’ll spend some time in my room.”

  With lightning speed reflexes, he grabbed her wrist and brought her to her feet.

  “No, Angel, you really want to go for a walk,” he said, his voice low. “That is, if you value your life half as much as I do.”

  Rather than resist, she followed him out onto the courtyard, past the flowers and to the pool. The vegetation was overgrown, several tiles on the surround were missing, but otherwise everything was exactly as it had been ten years before.

  “You’re leaving,” Zach said. “I’m going to put you in a cab and I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure that no one goes after you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they’re tearing apart the study.”

  “No, they aren’t,” she said.

  “Yes, they are. You took the camera and the recorder back from me, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I did,” she said defiantly. “Are you my courier or not?”

  “There isn’t going to be a courier. As soon as I get my hands on O’Malley, I’ll—”

  “Make him send me home?”

  “You’ll already be home,” he said darkly. “Because I’m telling you to go home.”

  Angel wagged a finger at him.

  “Make sure you pick up the recorder.”

  “The recorder is in the study?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, no. And the camera?”

  “Someplace safe. I’ll see if I can take pictures of documents some other time.”


  “They’ll find the recorder tonight and shake you down for the camera. Now you know you can’t stay.”

  She sighed in exasperation. “They’re talking to your brother about something to do with the shopping mall.”

  “Let’s just get you on a plane out of here.”

  She pointedly sat down on the concrete bench.

  “You sure like to get me out of town.”

  “Is that a comment about ten years ago?”

  “Take it any way you want. Are you working for O’Malley or not?”

  “I work in the same office. I talk to the man about cases. But I don’t report to him. And I’m not working for him now.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that—when you kissed me?”

  “Because it doesn’t matter who I work for. I never do anything for him that would affect the Sciopelli or Martin families. And I don’t want you working for him.”

  “It’s none of your business what I do.”

  “It is if it’s going to get you killed.”

  “And how would that happen if you were doing your job and helping me?”

  “No, that’s not my job.”

  “How can you work in that office if you don’t believe in the law?”

  “I do believe in the law. Aw, Angel, what I’m doing now shouldn’t interest you.”

  “You’re right. It shouldn’t. We aren’t married, we aren’t engaged, we aren’t betrothed anymore. I’m a free woman and I can do what I want.”

  He slumped down beside her, pulling his tie free and shoving it into his pocket.

  “Look, I never meant to hurt you—”

  “This isn’t about then,” she snapped.

  “It is, too.”

  “No, it isn’t,” she replied, annoyed at his arrogance. “I admit it—I sat in the Las Vegas airport watching at the gate of every incoming Chicago flight. It took me two days to figure out you weren’t coming. I waited for you, then took the flight just like you said. That hurt. But it’s over. Ten years is a long time. I’ve made another life for myself. And I intend on going back to it. After I’m finished here.”

  In ten years he had played out in his mind what she would say, what he would say, if they ever met. He had never been able to explain to her why he had stayed, and he found he couldn’t do it now, either. He couldn’t explain the horrible choice that had confronted him—all he could tell her was that he had known, had been comforted by the knowledge that she was strong, stronger than the people who relied on him to stay. And that, in a subtle but unmistakable way, his remaining at home had been her surest protection.