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CHAPTER ONE
Luca Bellini shot upright in bed, torn from sleep as abruptly as he had tumbled into it.
Cristo!
His head felt as if someone were inside it, pounding to get out. His mouth was coated with a substance that was best politely described as foul. His belly was cramped into an ever-tightening Gordian knot.
And where in hell was he? A bedroom, but what bedroom? Better yet, whose bedroom?
Luca scrubbed his hands over his face.
It surely was not his.
This was not the bedroom in his flat in Rome. It was not the one in his home in Tuscany or in his New York condo.
A light current of cool air fanned his naked torso. He looked up, saw the big fan slowly rotating in the center of the high, beamed ceiling…
And remembered.
He was in Texas, in an overblown mansion on an overblown chunk of real estate known as El Sueño.
It was the last place on the planet he wanted to be.
He fell back against the pillows, his face twisted in the kind of glower that would have sent those who worked for him running for cover.
El Sueño. His father’s ranch in Wilde’s Crossing. Texas.
“Fuck,” he snarled, because only that most basic of American curses suited the anger simmering inside him.
And what time was it? Early morning, most probably, judging by the bright sunlight leaking into the room through the vertical blinds that hung at the windows and wide French doors.
Luca plucked his watch from the nightstand and peered at it.
Six. Six in the miserable a.m. No wonder his head felt as if it was going to explode. He’d gotten to bed somewhere around three, his belly filled with the booze he and Matteo had driven sixty miles to find, some hideous stuff he’d never heard of, because no way in the world would he or his brother have touched a drop of whiskey from this house.
Alessandra and Bianca had called them idioti as much for wanting to drink themselves insensible as for refusing to drink anything that had been paid for with Wilde money, but what did women know of these things?
Luca had made the mistake of voicing that opinion. Alessandra had responded by jabbing her index finger into the center of his chest.
“We are not women,” she had said hotly, “we are your sisters!”
Any other time, he would have laughed. But there was nothing to laugh about when it came to discussing the Wildes or anything to do with them. There hadn’t been, for months.
“And we are sensible,” Bianca had added, filling a pair of crystal goblets to the brim with a decent Argentinian Malbec she’d liberated from the wine rack in the library. “Booze is booze.”
Actually, what she’d said was boose is boose.
Alessandra had swung toward her sister.
“We grew up speaking English,” she’d snapped. “Can you not speak it properly now?”
“We grew up speaking Siciliano far more often than we spoke Inglese,” Bianca had replied. “And unless you wish to wear this wine instead of drinking it, you will not correct my speech.”
Alessandra had countered with a classic Sicilian gesture that proper young women were not supposed to make.
Bianca’s response had been to offer the same gesture—and then the sisters had rolled their eyes and stepped into each other’s arms for a hug.
The memory of that sharp exchange followed by an embrace was bittersweet.
Luca’s sisters were like Mama. Direct. Passionate. Quick to anger, but quick to forgive.
He supposed those traits were common to all four of them: the girls, himself and Matteo. None of them took after their cold, removed, lying son of a bitch of a father, and grazie a Dio for that.
The Bellini offspring—not one of them considered themselves Wildes—had seen the truth about John Hamilton Wilde long ago. Well, perhaps not the actual truth. Who in the name of all the saints would have managed that? But they’d certainly begun to question damn near everything he said and did.
But bigamy?
That had come as one hell of a shock.
It had taken them a long time to figure out that he had never been legally married to their mother, and the worst of it was that when they finally did, they had not been able to tell her for fear of what the news would have done to her.
And then, without warning, their mother was gone.
She had drowned in the very sea she’d loved. Then they’d been free to confront the man whose cursed blood flowed in their veins.
Luca rose from the bed, went into the connecting bathroom, relieved himself, dug his toothbrush from his overnight kit and scrubbed his teeth.
That was a little better.
Now to get dressed.
Someone tapped at the French doors that opened onto a wide wraparound porch. Luca frowned and stepped back into the bedroom.
“Who’s there?”
The sound was repeated, more a hard rap of the knuckles than a tap this time, and the door handle rattled.
Whoever it was, was impatient.
Luca snatched his jeans from the chair where he’d dumped them, pulled them on, zipped up the fly, went to the doors and opened them. Matteo stood in the morning sun, feet apart, hands fisted on his hips.
He looked awful.
Hair uncombed. Jaw bristling with early morning stubble. Expression grim.
In other words, he looked pretty much the same way Luca looked this morning, but why wouldn’t he?
Looking at Matteo was almost, but not quite, like looking in a mirror.
They were twins. Fraternal, not identical, born two minutes apart. They were the same height: six feet three in their bare feet. Both had the bodies of athletes: wide shoulders, narrow hips, long legs. Women said they were handsome. One in particular had even gushed that he, Luca, was a magnificent male specimen.
She hadn’t lasted long after that.
Emotion had its place. In bed. Not out of it. Luca knew what he wanted from a woman, knew what he was prepared to deliver, and out of control emotion was not on the list.
It was too dangerous.
A man should always be in charge of his emotions.
If anything could be said to be his mantra, it was that.
Of course, there were physical differences between them. Luca’s hair was the color of dark, rich coffee; his eyes were a deep sapphire blue. Matteo’s hair was an inky black. His eyes were sea green.
Matteo had a dimple in his right cheek—his sisters teased him unmercifully about that dimple, sometimes faking exaggerated Victorian swoons complete with deep sighs and hands pressed to their hearts.
Luca also had a dimple. It was in the center of his square, very masculine chin, though when Bianca or Alessandra called it a dimple he would say, sternly, that it was a cleft.
And then one sister or the other would do that hand-to-the-heart routine and say Oh my God, a cleft!
“Si. A cleft,” Luca would growl.
And then, inevitably, he’d give up being stern and he’d laugh.
He laughed with his sisters. With Matteo. But not very much with others.
Luca was a serious man. It was the thing about control again. It wa
s important to both brothers.
Growing up as they had with a hot-blooded, hot-tempered mother—she was Sicilian, after all—and a father who was often withdrawn and generally unavailable had shaped Matteo into a man who knew emotions were best kept to himself.
Luca had taken things a step further.
Emotions were best avoided altogether.
He had adhered to that conviction his entire life.
But last night, when he and Matteo, Alessandra and Bianca had finally confronted the damnable Wilde clan, more than fireworks had exploded into the hot Fourth of July night.
Months worth of rage had overtaken him.
“Luca.”
It had seemed impossible that they were finally confronting the Wildes. The other children of John Hamilton Wilde. The sons and daughters they had not known existed.
The sons and daughters born to legitimacy.
“Luca?”
No shameful secrets for them. No wondering why their father had never really seemed a part of their lives.
“Luca! Dude, are you deaf?”
Luca, hands fisted at his sides, glared at his brother.
“Do not start with me, Matteo. I am not in a good frame of mind this morning.”
“Do you think I am?”
Luca took a deep breath, let it out and unfisted his hands.
“No,” he said quietly, “of course not.” He stepped back so Matteo could enter the room. “Did you get any sleep?”
“A couple of hours. You?”
“About the same. “
“We should not have spent the night under this roof.”
“No,” Bianca Bellini said dryly, “certainly not.”
The brothers turned toward the French doors where their sisters stood glowering at them.
“Ladies,” Luca said calmly, “how nice of you to drop by.”
Bianca tossed back her mane of long, straight blonde hair and marched into the room, followed by Alessandra. Alessandra’s gold curls were drawn back in a low ponytail, but she managed to toss them just the same.
“Are you still complaining because we refused to drive back to Dallas in the middle of the night? It was bad enough that you two went in search of liquor on a strange road in a strange place in such furious anger. When you sit behind the wheel of a car in such a mood, terrible accidents happen.”
“No accident happened. And we were not in any kind of mood,” Matteo said with dignity.
“Of course not,” Alessandra said. “All that fist-clenching and tooth-grinding was for dramatic effect.”
Luca narrowed his eyes. “Is this why you’re here? To criticize our behavior last night?” His jaw tightened. “Because I think we behaved with great restraint.”
His sisters glanced at each other. Then they sighed. Bianca sank into a chintz-covered armchair near the windows; Alessandra dropped onto the edge of the bed.
“You did,” she said. “We all did. We all deserve awards for outstanding behavior.”
Luca paced across the room, grabbed his T-shirt and yanked it over his head.
“I hate this place,” he growled. “The land. The house. The people in it, the endless Wildes, their wives and their husbands…”
“For what reason?” Bianca asked wearily. “They’re no more responsible for this situation than we are.”
“They’re Wildes,” Luca snapped. “That’s sufficient reason.”
Alessandra leaned back on her hands. “I hate to tell you this, mio fratello, but so are we.”
“We were raised by our mother.”
“So were they. By more than one mother, if you want to be accurate. And just in case you didn’t notice, not a one of them had anything good to say about our father last night.”
“Do not call him that!”
“È quello che è,” Bianca said.
Matteo nodded. “Si. It is what it is. We all know that.”
“I know that the Wildes were raised by a general,” Luca said, “and we were raised by a man who pretended to be a spy.”
“He is the same man,” Alessandra said.
“And he is a liar. A fraud. A bigamist.”
“Si. He is a scoundrel.”
“Don’t call him a scoundrel,” Bianca said. The others looked at her and she shrugged. “It’s too polite a word. It makes him sound charming.”
Matteo walked over to his sister and affectionately ruffled her hair.
“She’s right,” he said. “If there is one thing General John Hamilton Wilde is not, it is charming.”
“Agreed,” Luca said. “And neither is this place, this El Sueño. I would like to leave here as soon as possible.”
The Bellinis all nodded in agreement.
“We did what we came to do,” Luca added. “The Wildes know about us. We know about them. Now let the man who sired us all live with the results of his deception. Let him try to explain it.”
“He tried last night,” Alessandra said. The Bellinis gave her sharp looks. “Well, it’s true. All those hours of explanation. His life story. The twin brother who died—”
“In an accident of his doing,” Matteo said coldly.
“He tried to make up for it by leading the life his brother had been destined to lead,” Bianca said.
“Cristo!” Luca threw out his hands. “Are you actually defending him?”
“I’m simply trying to make sense of what happened.”
“What happened,” Luca said, “is that he married an American woman as well as our mother. Two marriages. No divorces. He lied to our mother, lied to us…”
“He lied to everyone, si, but it doesn’t help to be bitter. We need to accept the truth, painful as it may be, before we can move past it.”
“My sister, the psychologist.”
Bianca shot to her feet. “A little more psychology and a little less pork-headedness would not hurt you, Luca.”
Matteo snorted. Bianca, Alessandra and Luca flashed him irritated looks.
“Sorry,” he said, “but it’s pig, not pork.”
“Pig,” Alessandra said, “pork, what’s the difference? This is a ridiculous argument. We confronted our father with the facts. We confronted his American children with the same facts. It’s time to go home.”
Everyone murmured agreement.
“In that case,” Luca said, “give me time to shower and dress, and we’ll meet out front in fifteen minutes. Va bene?”
“Va bene,” the Bellinis said, and after quick, very Italian exchanges of double-cheek kisses, they all trooped from the room.
* * *
It was a holiday weekend.
An American holiday, to be sure, but still, it was a holiday.
Normally, Luca would have worn jeans and a T-shirt, but it suddenly seemed important not to appear casually dressed in this, the home of his father.
The home of his enemies.
So he ran a razor over his face to get rid of the dark stubble that shadowed his cheeks and jaw, showered quickly, dried off and took a dark grey Brioni suit from his small suitcase. A crisp, custom-made white shirt, black onyx cufflinks, a navy silk tie, black loafers made for him by a shoemaker in Firenze, and he was ready for the drive to Dallas and the private jet that awaited the Bellinis.
One final glance in the mirror.
Good. Fine. He looked like a man who was the king of his own world, and wasn’t it amazing that though there were those who called him that, this was the very first time he’d wanted the designation?
Luca straightened his tie, put on his watch, dumped yesterday’s clothes in the suitcase and zipped it shut. He picked it up, strode to the French doors, grabbed the handle…
And frowned.
What in hell was he doing? Was he really going to sneak out of this house? It was not his, but he had every right to be here.
Damn right, he did.
Luca turned on his heel, marched to the guest room door, opened it and stepped out into the hall.
Last night, he’d been too drunk to
look at the house. Really look at it, beyond seeing that it had walls, ceilings and floors.
Now, he saw that the rooms in this wing were built around a second story loft. An enormous skylight in the cathedral ceiling let in the morning sun; a floating staircase made of maple and wrought iron led down to a vast open area below.
Clearly, this part of the house was an addition. The main structure had to be at least one hundred years old. This wing, obviously meant for guests, was very different from the original house though it blended with it. Not an easy thing to accomplish, Luca knew, and gave a grudging mental salute to the architect or builder who’d designed it.
He was an architect himself. He knew how difficult it could be to blend the new with the old.
He went down the stairs, his footsteps beating a loud tattoo as he descended. A square Oriental carpet—very old, very handsome—lay centered against the maple floor. The walls were whitewashed, highlighted with brilliant splashes of modern art. Was that a Jasper Johns? An O’Keefe?
The Bellini in him tried to find fault with what he saw—the design of the wing, the materials, even the paintings and carpet—but the architect in him had no choice but to admire it.
Luca’s mouth twisted.
The last thing he wanted to do was admire anything about the Wildes.
He quickened his pace, entered a narrow gallery that he faintly remembered would lead into the main house…
And heard voices.
Men’s voices. Women’s. People talking over each other, the sounds strident despite some deep-in-the-heart-of-Texas softening of vowels and consonants.
His steps slowed.
The Wilde clan was meeting, no doubt to discuss what to do with the Sicilian interlopers.
He considered making a quick trip into the room on his right. A glance told him that it was the dining room and, si, they were all standing around, not sitting at, a big cherrywood table.
One detour and he could tell them exactly what they could do, not with the Bellinis but with themselves.
But why would he do that?
If they wanted to pick apart the Bellinis, let them. Nothing they said would change the facts and he was not the least interested in making them see the truth, that they were in the wrong, not he and Matteo, Alessandra and Bianca.
The Wildes were the offspring who had commanded all their father’s time and energy, not the Bellinis. They were the ones he had spent holidays with, the ones who had celebrated birthdays with him.
