Sister Swap
Lilian Darcy
APPEARANCES CAN BE DECEIVING…Wealthy businessman Gino di Bartoli Vouldn't put his finger on exactly what was different about the high-profile horticulturist he'd hired to "landscape his villa. But somehow "Rowena" seemed warmer, sexier, more vivacious…and he was suddenly attracted to her! Even more, she'd connected with his troubled, motherless daughter. Hearing his little girl's laughter was music to his ears. But as he tried to find out the truth about "Rowena," dare he risk his baby girl's newfound happiness? And dare he believe that the impostor under his roof was actually the right woman who could transform his house into a home?
“I am sorry that I attempted to trap you with a kiss,” Gino said.
“Not in the plan, for sure,” Roz blurted out. Her insides went tight as Gino stepped closer.
“Who is Louise Odier? You have her name written down on this paper.”
“Omigosh, she’s a rose.”
Gino picked up the paper and read out with lead weights of emphasis, “‘Ask Rowie about Louise Odier!!!’ Three exclamation points, Dr. Madison. And you are an acknowledged expert on roses.” He stepped closer. “If you wrote this, who is Rowie? Or possibly it’s better to ask, ‘Who are you?’ Because despite the uncanny resemblance, the woman who kissed me back with such heat just now—” his gaze dropped to her lips, which suddenly felt soft and wouldn’t stay pressed together “—is quite definitely not the one who outlined her plans for my garden in a meeting several weeks ago, is she?”
Dear Reader,
Just as the seasons change, you may have noticed that our Silhouette Romance covers have evolved over the past year. We have tried to create cover art that uses more soft pastels, sun-drenched images and tender scenes to evoke the aspirational and romantic spirit of this line. We have also tried to make our heroines look like women you can relate to and may want to be. After all, this line is about the joys of falling in love, and we hope you can live vicariously through these heroines.
Our writers this month have done an especially fine job in conveying this message. Reader favorite Cara Colter leads the month with That Old Feeling (#1814) in which the heroine must overcome past hurts to help her first love raise his motherless daughter. This is the debut title in the author’s emotional new trilogy, A FATHER’S WISH. Teresa Southwick concludes her BUY-A-GUY miniseries with the story of a feisty lawyer who finds herself saddled with an unwanted and wholly irresistible bodyguard, in Something’s Gotta Give (#1815). A sister who’d do anything for her loved ones finds her own sweet reward when she switches places with her sibling, in Sister Swap (#1816)—a compelling new romance by Lilian Darcy. Finally, in Made-To-Order Wife (#1817) by Judith McWilliams, a billionaire hires an etiquette expert to help him land the perfect society wife, and he soon starts rethinking his marriage plans.
Be sure to return next month when Cara Colter continues her trilogy and Judy Christenberry returns to the line.
Happy reading!
Ann Leslie Tuttle
Associate Senior Editor
Sister Swap
Lilian Darcy
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Books by Lilian Darcy
Silhouette Romance
The Baby Bond #1390
Her Sister’s Child #1449
Raising Baby Jane #1478
* (#litres_trial_promo) Cinderella After Midnight #1542 * (#litres_trial_promo) Saving Cinderella #1555 * (#litres_trial_promo) Finding Her Prince #1567 Pregnant and Protected #1603 For the Taking #1620 The Boss’s Baby Surprise #1729 The Millionaire’s Cinderella Wife #1772 Sister Swap #1816
Silhouette Special Edition
Balancing Act #1552
Their Baby Miracle #1672
The Father Factor #1696
LILIAN DARCY
has written over fifty books for Silhouette Romance, Special Edition and Harlequin Mills & Boon Medical Romance (Prescription Romance). Her first book for Silhouette appeared on the Waldenbooks Series Romance bestsellers list, and she’s hoping readers go on responding strongly to her work. Happily married with four active children and a very patient cat, she enjoys keeping busy and could probably fill several more lifetimes with the things she likes to do—including cooking, gardening, quilting, drawing and traveling. She currently lives in Australia but travels to the United States as often as possible to visit family. Lilian loves to hear from readers. You can write to her at P.O. Box 381, Hackensack NJ 07602 or e-mail her at lildarcy@austarmetro.com.au.
Dear Reader,
Although I don’t know anywhere near as much about roses as my heroine’s sister, I do consider them to be the most fascinating and beautiful of flowers. My love for them was first kindled when we lived in Columbus, Ohio, within walking distance of the gorgeous Whetstone Park of Roses.
I had toddlers and babies then, and I used to take the stroller and wander around the gardens in all seasons, but particularly when the roses were in bloom…and so were the brides. Many couples chose to exchange their vows in such a lovely setting, and because I’m such a die-hard romantic I loved going to the Park of Roses on a Saturday afternoon and peeking at the bride and her attendants from a discreet distance. I would admire their gowns against the backdrop of pink and yellow and red roses in full bloom, and point them out to my children as I unstrapped them from the stroller so they could play on the grass. “See the beautiful bride?” Happily married myself, I always gave a silent wish that these brides and grooms would be just as lucky.
Sister Swap has this same feeling, I hope. Romance and roses, happiness and hope, set against the backdrop of a beautiful garden, with children playing on the grass.
Happy reading.
Lilian Darcy
Contents
Chapter One (#ue52b75fe-a4ba-52f2-8fc1-5e307efa30c9)
Chapter Two (#u8bf1bcb0-f2a2-52a9-a32e-5556329bd0e8)
Chapter Three (#u5d82fd3e-17c2-5d81-91ba-c6e9f2c08fb9)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One
“So, Mom, she’s been stuck in that hotel room for two days, until you could get there,” Roxanna said, “because she’s been too scared to leave it on her own?”
“This is going to ruin her career, Rox!” Roxanna’s mother answered, over the phone. She was calling from London, a hotel near Heathrow Airport, but she sounded clear enough to be in the next building—and clear enough that every bit of her distress came through.
“Mom, it’s going to ruin her life! She needs treatment. This is a major anxiety disorder, and it’s getting worse. She has to see that.”
“You have to fly to Italy and cover for her at the Di Bartoli family estate. This is a big project, and she needs it on her résumé. She can’t have it turn into a disaster, after all the work and study she’s done.”
“Oh, right! Cover for her, because I know everything there is to know about antique roses and historic garden restoration? You can’t be serious!”
Rox knew almost nothing about the subject, as Mom was well aware. She was a singer…well, a waitress with a music teaching degree she’d never used, but she didn’t want to examine that issue right now.
“Cover for her, because I’m one of the few people in the world who can tell the two of you apart,” Mom said.
“I weigh eight pounds more than she does, and I have way stronger lungs.”
“Nobody notices that. Especially if they don’t even know that Rowena has an identical twin sister.”
“True. She hasn’t mentioned my existence to the Di Bartoli family?”
“No, she says she definitely hasn’t. Honey, Rowie has promised that if you do this for her, she will get treatment. Yes, even she can see how much she needs it now.”
Rox closed her eyes, seeking inner guidance.
How could she say no? As Mom had just reminded her, she and Rowena were identical twins. Their bond was deep and life-long and complex, and it was important to both of them. They’d developed in such different ways, thanks to Rowena’s much greater frailty at birth and beyond, but the bond hadn’t lessened or changed.
Rowena, in particular, tugged on it a lot. This wouldn’t be the first time Roxanna had bailed her out when she’d been seized by one of her increasingly severe and increasingly frequent attacks of paralyzing anxiety. The one difference was that this time, thank heavens, Row had conceded she needed professional help.
Okay, there were a couple of other differences, too. Firstly, Rox had never been required to cross the Atlantic Ocean to impersonate her sister before. Secondly, her schedule was…um…unusually light right now, so she couldn’t plead a previous commitment.
She’d lost her job last Friday—her waitressing job—because her singing audition had run three hours late. Fortunately, this wasn’t going to send her into major debt, because her expenses were currently low. She’d moved into her parents’ house in northern New Jersey after her divorce late last year, taking care of it for them while they tried out a retirement move to Florida.
Footnote—she’d lost out at Friday’s audition, hadn’t even made the final cut, because the stress over the divorce was still affecting her voice.
Or maybe her voice just wasn’t good enough.
That had been listed as Reason Number Seventeen on the twenty-one-item list her ex-husband Harlan had given her as to why it was her fault, not his, that he’d started an affair and left her. “Your voice isn’t half as good as you think it is.”
“So you’ll fly Rowena back from London and find a therapist for her in Florida?” Rox asked her mother. There was no point in getting treatment for Rowie if they didn’t do it right. “You’ll take care of her until she’s made some progress? You’ll make sure she doesn’t run away from the therapy?”
“That seems like the best plan. The only plan. It was all her mixed-up feelings about Francesco Di Bartoli that triggered this panic attack, but it’s gone beyond anything rational, now. If she can’t even leave the hotel room on her own, she can’t possibly go back to Italy.”
“So what has she told the Di Bartoli family about all this?”
“That she’s been delayed in England, ordering the roses, but she should be back in Tuscany within a few days. Nothing about the underlying problem. So of course you’ll have to fly to Rome via London, so Signor Di Bartoli isn’t meeting you off a flight from the wrong continent.”
“I can’t pull this off, Mom. Surely Francesco will guess?”
“You can pull it off. You have to. He won’t guess. He doesn’t know you exist, and he hasn’t known Rowena for that long. As an impersonation, being your sister is not that big a stretch for you. Rowena is on her laptop right now, collating her notes for you and printing out every detail you’ll need, on top of all the books and notes still in Italy. And you can phone each other. You always left it till the last minute to cram for exams. This will be no different.”
Mom was probably right.
Harlan had mentioned it, too. Reason Number Twelve. “You always leave everything till the last minute.”
“Okay,” she told her mother. “But only because she’s promised to get treatment. I’ll call the airlines and get on the first flight I can.” Being someone who left things until the last minute, she was comfortable with traveling at short notice.
“Tonight?” Mom asked. It was currently Monday morning in New Jersey, Monday afternoon in Europe.
“I’ll try.”
“Call me back with the details. Then I can make plans for Rowie and me. We’ll need to connect with you in London on your way through, so she can give you the information on the garden project.”
Two days later, Roxanna touched down in Rome, wearing her twin sister’s neat, professional clothes but feeling totally like herself inside. Scatty (Reason Number Five), imperfectly groomed (Number Fourteen) and, as previously discussed in Reason Twelve, ill-prepared.
“Pia, stay close to Papa,” Gino said in Italian to his four-year-old daughter.
She strained at his hand, avid to explore the crowded airport terminal. He held her tighter, knowing only too well what would happen next, not having the slightest idea what to do about it.
I can’t deal with one of her tantrums here.
Pia pulled harder, her face getting its stubborn look, her lungs building up a full head of steam, ready to start screaming and kicking and throwing her compact little body about. Miss Cassidy, Pia’s English nanny, spent hours riding out the tantrums. She refused ever to give in, getting stricter and stricter the louder Pia screamed, until finally Pia would exhaust herself and fall asleep.
And I don’t have the time for that, or the patience, Gino knew. Lord help me, what is wrong with my child?
How could a woman as perfect as Angele—serene, cool, competent in everything she did—have given birth to such a difficult little girl?
Abruptly, with his decision made before he even knew it, he released his grip on his daughter and watched her dart between the spring coats and business suits of those waiting to meet the London flight. Passengers had begun to appear. As long as Rowena Madison wasn’t one of the last off the plane, he should be able to keep a rough eye on Pia’s whereabouts and not lose her.
He’d only met Rowena a few times, but he was confident he’d recognize her right away. Based in Rome and with a senior executive role in the Di Bartoli family’s multinational cosmetics corporation, he’d organized the initial interview with her regarding the garden restoration and had sat in on a couple of subsequent meetings to discuss her plans. The day-to-day liaison and supervision on the Di Bartoli estate itself he’d delegated to his thirty-three-year-old younger brother, Francesco.
Apparently Francesco had taken the liaison element way too seriously, however. Francesco had a perfectly charming and exceptionally suitable fiancée in Rome, and yet that hadn’t stopped him from begging Rowena for an affair in Tuscany. According to Francesco, Rowena’s trembling hesitation had only increased his desire.
Yes, well, so it would, Gino thought cynically. Francesco had always wanted something all the more when he found he couldn’t get it too easily. He wasted large chunks of his life this way.
And Gino wasn’t going to let him waste the prospect of a very good marriage on a stupid little affair with an American horticultural expert who didn’t seem to know whether she wanted him or not, even if she was entitled to call herself Dr. Madison, thanks to her doctoral dissertation on seventeenth-century European garden design.
Where was Pia?
His heart thudded suddenly and he looked around in a panic. He couldn’t see her. He should have dressed her in something brighter this morning. There weren’t many bright outfits in her closet, however. As Angele had, Miss Cassidy favored exquisitely made French children’s clothing in the same neutral colors—navy, gray and cream—that most of the adults in the airport were wearing. She was camouflaged as effectively as—
Ah. There she was. Safe. Intently watching a woman struggle with the jammed wheel of her suitcase.
And here was Rowena Madison.
She hadn’t seen him yet. She was scanning faces with her eyes narrowed, and her teeth scraping across her lower lip, as if anxious that he might not have come. She wasn’t to know how much he prided himself on his reliability.
He raised his hand and gestured, smiled and called her name. She saw him, and a strange series of expressions crossed her face, almost as if someone were trying out a series of different screen savers on a computer.
He had no idea what Francesco saw in her, despite how pretty she was with those deep blue eyes, the pale, creamy skin, the long dark hair loosely swept back. To Gino, she always seemed so prim and tame, like pasta cooked to mush instead of al dente—quite edible, yes, but not at all appetizing.
She pushed her way through the crowd toward him, a little breathless, with her wheeled and long-handled suitcase trundling behind her. She wore a neat beige pantsuit with a white silk blouse beneath. The blouse wasn’t as neat as the suit. One of the middle buttons had come unfastened, showing the lower part of a white lacy bra and a shadowed stretch of the skin between her ribs. “Francesco…?” It wasn’t quite a question.
“…couldn’t come,” Gino answered in his near-perfect English. He didn’t apologize on his brother’s behalf, since it wasn’t his brother’s fault.
He’d virtually ordered Francesco to stay in Rome to cool his head, while he himself took over the role of working with Rowena Madison on the garden. He could manage Di Bartoli business for a few weeks while based on the family’s Tuscan estate, and he desperately wanted to get Pia out of Rome.
To see if that made a difference to the tantrums.
To find out how she behaved without the presence of the English nanny whom Angele had always praised to the skies.
To get to know his child.
“Francesco couldn’t come,” Rowena echoed. Her voice sounded a little throaty, deeper and richer than he remembered, as if it had gotten strained by the poor-quality air during the flight. Or maybe she had a cold.
“Sorry,” he said, about Francesco’s absence.
He wasn’t sorry.
Was Dr. Madison? She did look a little shocked.
“Guess I’ll just have to make do with you, then…uh… Gino.” She threw him a dazzling, panicky grin.
The dazzle sent an odd jolt through him, and the panic made him curious. He’d already seen that she was somewhat an anxious, nervous type, but this seemed different. This wasn’t a cage bunny’s terror on being let out, but a wild hare’s panic on being shut in.
But where was Pia?
Another, different kind of jolt. He’d lost Pia’s mother, first through divorce and then through her untimely death. He wasn’t going to lose his only child, as well.
This time, he really couldn’t see her, and cursed her dove-gray dress again. Why not pink or bright lilac or something red with flowers? What sort of color was gray for a little girl?
“Is something wrong?” Roxanna asked Francesco’s older brother.
Sheesh, she’d had a narrow escape on that one!
Never having seen either man before, she’d actually called him Francesco, but he’d thought she was talking about Francesco, asking why he wasn’t here, so she’d gotten away with it. Then it had taken her three seconds too long to think of Gino’s name. That was the problem with cramming for an exam the night before. Vital facts flew out of your head at the worst moments.
“Yes,” he said, his dark eyes searching over Rox’s shoulder. He was dressed for business in a charcoal suit, a white shirt and a conservative dark tie. As she watched, he reached for the tie knot and loosened it, which gave him a rakish, Cary Grant sort of look. Rox could tell he didn’t even realize what he’d done. “I can’t see my daughter. She’s only four…”
And that was the problem with working from crib notes. Sometimes the vital facts just weren’t there. She’d had no idea that Gino Di Bartoli had a daughter.
Did he have a wife?
And had Rowena met the daughter?
Because if Row has, then I should help look for her, because I’ll supposedly know what she looks like. But I haven’t met her, so how can I? What’s her name?
“Pia!” Gino said, his voice rising. He spoke in Italian. “Pia, where are you?”
Whew! Again.
Pia, Pia, Pia. Remember that.
And luck was really running in Rox’s favor today, because as soon as she saw the little girl in the pretty gray dress, she knew this had to be the one. She looked soooo like her daddy! She had fabulous, intelligent, dark hazel-brown eyes, a stubborn, perfectly shaped mouth, an equally stubborn jaw and lustrous ebony hair.
Rox pushed past several people to where Pia stood scribbling on a travel poster with a blue pen she’d probably found on the terminal floor. Gino had arrowed off in the opposite direction and didn’t know yet that his daughter had been found, but Rox decided it would be better to actually collar Pia before alerting her papa. She looked like the kind of child who might disappear again at any moment.
“Pia, your papa is looking for you,” she said in English.
Did Pia speak English?
“I’m drawing,” she said, which answered the question.
Roxanna spoke a bit of Italian, majored in it at college eight years ago when she had—no surprises, here—crammed for her Italian exams the night before. She hoped Pia’s command of English was more extensive.
“Well, I think your papa would love to see your drawing,” she said, “but then we have to get in the car and go, so let’s stay right here until we see him.”
“Very well,” Pia said. Not okay Not even all right. Who the heck had taught her to say very well?
“Are you channeling Queen Victoria today, honey?” Rox murmured.
She grabbed a handful of Pia’s full-skirted dress so that the child would be safely tethered in one spot without realizing it, and looked around for Signor Di Bartoli, whom she knew from Row’s instructions she was supposed to call Gino.
Nice name.
Snappier than Francesco.
When she’d thought that he was Francesco, she’d had just enough time to decide it was no surprise that a man like this had triggered one of Rowie’s major anxiety episodes. Even to Rox herself—and she never had anxiety attacks—he seemed a little scary. The kind of man who didn’t put up with idiots or shirkers or cowards. The kind of man who demanded a lot from the people around him and got it. The kind of man who would kick Roxanna out of his palatial Tuscan estate the second he discovered she wasn’t her twin sister, the garden expert.
She saw him over the tangle of arrivals. Couples kissed, businessmen shook hands, but Gino was still searching in the wrong direction. She waved and yoo-hooed.
Nope.
Then she put her voice into gear and practically sang, “Signor Di Bartoli! Giii-nooo!” Oh, those wonderful, operatic Italian names! It might be fun to brush up on her language skills while she was in Italy. “She’s here. I’ve found her. We’re over here.”
A look of relief washed over his face like a tidal wave. It made Rox curious. Of course he cared about his little girl, but had he decided so fast that she was seriously lost?
Apparently, yes. When he reached her, he dropped low and gave her a huge hug, as if he hadn’t seen her for weeks. But then he didn’t really pay her drawing the proper attention, and that left Pia feeling way more lost than she’d felt while her papa was frantically looking for her.
Roxanna knew this because she knew how it felt when someone you cared about brushed your creativity aside. Harlan’s Reason Number Sixteen—“You always expect me to make such a big ******* deal out of your singing.” And she really could have done without the word he’d used between big and deal.
Uh-oh. What now?
Pia wanted to take the drawing with her. She’d already defaced a whole big corner of the travel poster. Actually removing it altogether would not look good for a thirty-five-year-old senior executive and principal shareholder in the renowned Di Bartoli Cosmetics Corporation.
“No, Pia,” her papa said, speaking down at her from the impressive height he’d risen to after letting go of the hug. His face tightened. With anger?
No.
With dread.
Dread of the screaming that he could obviously see was going to start at any moment.
Rox could see it, too.
“Because, Pia,” she said, quickly stepping close and bending down, “if we take it with us, everyone won’t be able to see it anymore. All these people. Why don’t we leave it here so it makes the airport prettier?”
She looked across the top of Pia’s thick, satiny black hair, seeking Gino’s approval. He looked startled. His mouth was shut hard—lips not too full, not too thin, she noticed. For a moment, she thought they were going to get the tantrum from him, instead. Then he gave a tight little nod.
“That’s a very good idea, isn’t it, Pia?” he said.
The little girl nodded and smiled and took the hand he held out. He looked relieved, and ready to flee the airport before something worse happened.
Another whew!
Lady Luck is soooo blowing things my way today, Rox thought. Rowie would be happy with me, but it can’t last.
It didn’t.
Walking toward the exit, Gino said, “You gave in to her.” It was an accusation, not a compliment.
“Gave in to her?”
“But at least we avoided the tantrum.”
Okay, so maybe that was kind of a compliment, but she couldn’t let the You gave in to her bit go by.
Harlan’s Reason Number Nine, incidentally. “You jump on every tiny thing.”
“I didn’t give in to her!” she said. “I made a positive suggestion that appealed to her, and deflected her feelings of frustration.”
“We have been having serious problems with Pia’s tantrums for a long time,” Gino said, in a tone that could have frosted a pond. “We have a clear policy in place for dealing with them, and that involves never giving in to her. I appreciate that this time, in a very public locale, you managed to avoid the tantrum, but please, in the future, once we’re at the family estate, I would ask you to stay within your own area of expertise.”
My own area of expertise…
Would you like your eggs easy over or sunny-side up? And with a side order of opera or cabaret?
“Sure,” Roxanna said, resisting the temptation to start mentally running through the list of antique rose varieties she’d been trying to memorize on the plane.
She noticed that Gino didn’t specify who we was. Himself and Mrs. Gino Di Bartoli, she assumed. No prizes for guessing who the chief architect of the tantrum policy was, however. Hint—someone who didn’t appear to understand bright, creative kids.
Someone who drove a Ferrari, she discovered a few minutes later.
A red Ferrari.
And who drove it fast.
Oh, it was wonderful! Rox didn’t feel scared for a second. Gino drove to suit the conditions, and she’d seen the careful way he’d strapped his daughter into a child seat in the back before they started. On curvy or traffic-filled streets, he didn’t attempt to weave between lanes or put his foot hard on the gas. Even the odd aggressive gesture or muttered curse were pretty restrained, compared to what Rox understood about Italian drivers.
When they hit the motorway heading to the north, however…
So cool.
She looked sideways at him, expecting to see a lazy grin of satisfaction, an enjoyment of the power and speed and sheer exhilaration, but no; his face still looked tight.
“Children grow out of tantrums,” she blurted out, feeling stupidly responsible for the tight look and stupidly eager to make it go away.
Bleahh! Reason Number Eight. “You never think before you speak.”
His mouth snapped open just far enough for speech. “They don’t grow out of them if they’ve learned that tantrums are the secret to getting their own way.”
“Does she ever get her own way?”
“No. As I said, we’ve been very strict about it. I should say, Miss Cassidy has been very strict about it, since she is the one who has spent the most time with Pia.”
Miss Cassidy.
Had to be the nanny.
Explained Pia’s perfect English, with its occasional scary overtones of deceased British royalty.
Gino pronounced the nanny’s name as Meess Cassidi, which was—so far—the only cute thing about him.
Once again failing to think before she spoke, Rox said, “I think sometimes a child needs to get her own way. She needs to know that people understand what’s important to her. And she needs to learn…oh…how to tell the difference between the things she really wants and should have, and the things that are just a passing whim or in conflict with what others need. Isn’t a blanket no just as bad as a blanket yes? Does anyone ever actually listen to her?”
Gino felt a steel band tighten around his head.
Had she made up her mind to sleep with Francesco? Did she think she was going to marry him? Was that why she’d suddenly shed her rabbity image and started offering opinions on issues that were none of her business? Did she think that they were her business now, because she was about to become a permanent part of the Di Bartoli family?
“I am not interested in discussing this with you any further, Dr. Madison.”
Short silence.
“No. Of course. I’m sorry.” She sounded more than sorry. She sounded chastened, as if she were really angry with herself. “I’ve been told before that I tend to do that.”
“To interfere in things that aren’t your business?”
“To speak first and think afterward. Foot-in-mouth disease.”
“What? A disease!”
She was diseased? He was bringing her into his home with his precious daughter and she was—
“No, no. Oh, gosh! Language barrier. American slang. It’s supposed to be funny. If you’re tactless, if you say things you shouldn’t have said, people say you’ve put your foot in your mouth. Foot-in-mouth disease. Get it?”
“Okay.” He couldn’t help grinning. Not so much at the allegedly humorous expression, but at her manic, anguished reaction to their misunderstanding.
“I’m so sorry if I gave you a heart attack there!” She was wincing and flapping her hands, clasping them together, begging him to understand, acting sincerely distressed. “I do that. I say things. And—oh my gosh! My blouse isn’t even done up right. You’re never going to beli—” She stopped, then fastened the slipped-through button that had caught his attention when she’d first come up to him in the terminal.
“Never going to what?” he asked.
He was curious.
And he’d started to have a theoretical inkling about what Francesco might have seen in her.
There was a beat of silence.
“Never going to forgive me,” she said.
“Don’t be ridiculous. It was a small misunderstanding.”
“No, um, I meant for my comments about the t-a-n-t-r-u-m thing.” She spelled out the critical word.
“I will forgive you if it’s not mentioned again.”
“Right. Okay. It won’t be.” She stopped flapping and clasping her hands, settled a little deeper into her seat and turned to look out of the window.
Glancing in the rearview mirror, Gino saw that Pia had fallen asleep. It was three-thirty in the afternoon. They’d be home in an hour and a half. If she slept until then, she’d be difficult to settle tonight, and he was essentially on his own. Miss Cassidy was taking a four-week paid break in England, at his request. It was the right thing, he was sure of it, yet he felt daunted.
Even utterly capable, immaculate, Paris-born Angele had been daunted by taking care of Pia. Gino and Angele had separated when Pia was just six months old, and of course she had gone with her mother—and with Miss Cassidy, whom they’d hired before their baby was even born. Miss Cassidy had been part of the divorce settlement, if you wanted to look at it that way, a live-in fixture at the spacious apartment Angele had rented in Rome.
During Angele’s illness two years ago…such an aggressive form of cancer… Gino hated to think about it…he’d moved Pia and Miss Cassidy back into his own apartment, but he hadn’t changed anything about their routine. He hadn’t felt it was his place. He had consulted with Angele’s older sister Lisette, also married to an Italian and based in Rome, and she had agreed.
“Of course, you must think of what my sister would have done and what she would have wanted!”
“I need you to help me with all of that, Lisette.”
“I’m here, Gino. You know I am.”
Pia had lost her mother. Miss Cassidy gave her continuity of care and affection. Gino himself had been very tied up with the acquisition of a rival company that year and with his complicated feelings about his ex-wife’s death. He worked long hours, and he traveled frequently.
“I’m not sure how much Francesco has told you about my situation,” he suddenly said, dragging Roxanna Madison’s rapt attention from the unfolding views of Tuscany in early spring.
As a horticultural expert, it made sense that she was enthralled. He should probably have left her in peace. But with Pia safely asleep and with the prospect of the three of them living under the same roof for several weeks, he wanted to make sure everything was clear. And he wanted it to come from him, not from Francesco over the phone, or from the staff employed at the Di Bartoli palazzo and surrounding tract of land.
“Um, not much,” she answered.
So he told her about Angele, Miss Cassidy, the apartment in Rome and his own growing belief, over the past few months, that he needed to get more involved with Pia, get more of an idea about the reason behind the tantrums. Was it because of her mother’s death? Was there some area in which her needs were not being met? He was her father. It was his duty to understand his little girl.
“Thank you for sharing that with me,” Roxanna said when he’d finished speaking, and he realized he’d gotten more personal and detailed than he’d intended and that he’d shown more vulnerability also.
It didn’t make sense. On top of the two narrow misses on major tantrums, those few moments of fearing that he’d lost Pia at the airport must have unsettled him more than he’d thought.
Still thinking about his daughter, he made the final turn into the graveled avenue that led to the estate, and the palazzo came into view, its terra-cotta-tiled roof softly washed by the thin late-afternoon March sunshine, and the first hints of spring green dusting the landscape all around.
“Ohhh, it’s beautiful!” Dr. Madison said beside him. “I mean, today. It looks particularly beautiful today. Compared to when I was last here, last week, when it was, when it was—”
“Probably raining,” he finished for her, not really thinking about it.
Pia was still asleep, and he wondered how disastrous the consequences would be later on tonight if he left her that way, parked safely in front of the palazzo with the car windows open. Or should he wake her up at once? He knew from recent experience that this would definitely make her cry.
Chapter Two
In her room at midnight that night, Rox very much wanted to call Rowie and Mom to report, like a covert operative, that she’d achieved successful and undetected insertion into the target zone. She’d managed to greet Maria, the housekeeper, as if the two of them had met before. She’d correctly matched the three gardeners’ names with the descriptions of them that Row had given her. She’d used the sketchy map of the palazzo’s interior to navigate her way to her bedroom, and had only gotten lost once.
But Rowie and Mom were on the plane to Florida, so she couldn’t.
At least, she really hoped they were on the plane to Florida. What if Row couldn’t bring herself to leave the hotel, even when she had Mom with her every step of the way?
How much of the difference in their personalities came down to the fact that Rox had been born first and heaviest and healthiest and easiest? It had always seemed to her like such a random quirk of fate. She’d held the winning ticket in that particular lottery, and she wasn’t going to let her sister suffer for it.
Since she couldn’t call Mom and Rowie, she called Dad instead. “You haven’t heard from them?”
“No, which means they must be safely on the plane.” He sounded relieved about it, also.
“That’s great! Tell Rowie as soon as you see her that everything is going fine here, no problems, and she’s not to worry about a thing. She’s to focus on herself, on getting the right therapist and the right treatment, and getting better.”
“Will do, honey.”
“Talk to you soon.”
“Thanks for doing this for your sister.”
“Oh, it’s a walk in the park, it’s a breeze,” Rox lied. “It’s going to be fun. Make sure she really knows she doesn’t have to worry about me.”
Roxanna didn’t feel sleepy, since her body was still set on New Jersey time. When Gino had taken his still-wide-awake and protesting daughter up to bed an hour ago, Rox had almost blurted out something about jet lag and understanding how Pia felt. She’d shut her treacherous mouth just in time.
You weren’t supposed to get jet lag going from London to Italy, since their time zones were only an hour apart, so she’d put on a fake yawn, said good-night, and hidden her raring-to-go energy levels in this gorgeous, high-ceilinged, powder-blue-painted room, with adjoining bathroom, that Francesco had assigned to her sister.
It was no coincidence, Roxanna knew, that the room was situated just along the corridor from where Francesco had slept. She wondered whether Rowie might have been able to hold herself together here in Italy, enough to complete the garden project, if she hadn’t faced Francesco’s constant and seductive attempts to sleep with her.
Water under the bridge now.
Rox had other, more urgent things to think about.
She would have to study Rowena’s plant lists, work schedules, delivery dates and garden bed layouts for a few hours until she really got sleepy. And there was no alarm clock in the room, so she’d have to leave the painted wooden shutters open and trust to the morning light to wake her at an hour that wasn’t suspiciously late.
Considering that she didn’t feel tired, Rox found it hard to concentrate on the pages of notes Rowena had given her in London, or on the bundle of stuff she’d sneaked up to her room from the sunny and spacious office Rowena had been given downstairs. She loved flowers and shrubs and gardens, sure, but not the way Rowie did, not on the same level of detail. She loved beautiful vistas, dramatic groupings of color, and sweet, heady scents…
But did she really need to know exactly what quantity of Souvenir de la Malmaison, Belle de Crecy, Eglantine, Celsiana and a dozen other varieties of rose Row had ordered for the Pink Walk? Did she need to know that crested moss was also known as Chapeau de Napoleon?
Cram, cram, cram.
Exam tomorrow.
Concentrate, Rox!
Instead, her mind kept straying to Gino and his daughter. They made such a gorgeous pair, with their dark coloring, their lashes as thick as sable paintbrushes, their satin-smooth olive skin, their impeccable bone structure.
You could have photographed them at a pavement café or in a cobbled town square for one of those evocative postcards of Italian street life that looked like a black-and-white movie still from the era of the young Sophia Loren…if you could have gotten arrogant, supersuccessful Gino to stop frowning at Pia and looking so totally at sea about his daughter.
The little girl had been difficult tonight, Rox had to admit. Pia wouldn’t sit properly at the big dining room table to eat—Roxanna had thought the food was fabulous—but had just wanted to run around and play. Afterward, she seemed bored with her fancy, pristine dolls. She darted into some vast, echoing formal sitting room—the salone, they seemed to call it—lifted the lid on the grand piano and started to tinkle the keys. When she got into trouble for it, instead of stopping she pounded them harder and harder.
Had a great sense of rhythm, actually.
She had been physically removed from the instrument and then from the room, and she had started to kick and scream. Gino had looked embarrassed, upset and at the end of his rope. His vulnerability called forth an odd connection to him that Roxanna didn’t think she could have felt with a man like that in any other situation. She didn’t like the commanding type, and she ought to know, since she’d been married to one for six years.
As the tantrum had unravelled, Maria the housekeeper clearly hadn’t known whether to step in or say nothing. Rox had felt seriously out of place. She had mumbled something about going for a walk, even though it was dark outside by that time.
Back and forth along a terrace she had gone, then round and round a beautiful old fountain that hadn’t yet been restored. The place was fabulous with its air of age-tarnished grandeur and luxury. Inside, she had still been able to hear Pia letting loose. When silence finally had descended and she had ventured back indoors, she had found the little girl up at the polished rosewood table where she should have been an hour earlier, face sticky with ice cream, screaming forgotten, mood utterly content.
Oh, so we never give in to Pia’s tantrums, do we?
Not very fair of her to gloat over it like that, when Gino looked as if he’d aged ten years in the process.
She didn’t usually gloat.
Harlan hadn’t even mentioned it on his list.
And now, here in her big, silent bedroom, she couldn’t stop thinking about Gino, wondering how he’d dug himself into such a hole, wishing too strongly that she could help, knowing that she never could. A man like that wouldn’t let her.
She didn’t get to sleep until after four.
Was Dr. Madison ever going to wake up?
Gino had passed a sleepless night himself, but he’d risen at eight. Now it was ten and there was still no sign of her. He’d scheduled a part of the morning for touring the garden together, with her plans in hand, but if she didn’t appear soon, the morning would be gone. He didn’t feel comfortable about rapping on her door to waken her since they hadn’t agreed on a starting time, but he was getting annoyed.
Meanwhile, he tried to get some work done, but that wasn’t much of a success.
He’d naively imagined that he could put on a DVD for Pia, which she would watch quietly in the background while he made business calls, sent e-mails and worked on his laptop. But Pia had seen the DVD movie before.
“Sixteen times!” she said.
And she certainly seemed to know the songs in it by heart.
He tried to settle her with a book instead, but she wanted him to read it with her. “Because I can’t read.”
“Can’t you look at the pictures?”
“I want to read the words. With you.”
He read the words with her.
Actually, she almost could read on her own. She knew all of her letters, and when there was an easy word like boo or cat—it was a book in English—she could sound it out with his help. He felt a stirring of pride, found an Italian book and tried that with her, and she did just as well. He must ask Miss Cassidy how much time she’d spent on this sort of thing with Pia.
All the same, both books together only occupied twenty minutes, and when they were finished, she was bored again. He began to follow her from room to room, hoping she’d settle on something and racking his brain about a new strategy.
Should he hire a temporary nanny? He could easily go through an agency and have someone in place by the beginning of next week. But wouldn’t that defeat his whole purpose of getting to understand Pia better? He’d been frustrated in recent months by Miss Cassidy’s staged, formal and prearranged sessions of father-daughter time, with Pia always freshly bathed and fed, and outfitted like the window display at a Parisian fashion boutique.
Anyhow, here was Dr. Madison at last, dressed in her garden clothes—khaki stretch pants and a fleecy zippered top in a slightly lighter shade. The zipper was only pulled halfway up, showing a white T-shirt that looked a little too tight—the kind of tight that no man would ever complain about. Beneath it, her very nice breasts bounced as she hurried down the stairs.
“Good morning, uh, Rowena,” he said. He’d asked her weeks ago to call him Gino, and she did, but for some reason he found it hard to reciprocate with her first name today, and kept thinking of her by her formal title of Dr. Madison, instead.
“Good morning… Oh, but I am so sorry!” she gasped, radiating remorse like electrical energy. “I don’t know what can have made me sleep in like that! If it’s possible for me to have an alarm clock in the room, I would appreciate it, because I really do not want this to happen again!”
Her cheeks were flushed. Her hair was damp at the ends. If she’d brushed it just now, she hadn’t done a very good job, because it was all over the place, like the hair of a woman caught in bed with her lover.
“That’s fine,” Gino answered. “I’ve been reading with Pia. The alarm clock is a good idea, however.”
He couldn’t find the right tone. He was annoyed, yes, but at the same time he had an image of those rounded, bouncing breasts in his mind, wondering if they were a big part of the attraction for Francesco. He’d begun to understand that Dr. Madison did have some good…uh…features, surprisingly.
He also wanted to grin in sheer appreciation of the energy she gave off. He hadn’t noticed that, the other times they’d met. She’d been so focused on her scrupulously researched lists of rose varieties and their history. She’d seemed to direct too much of her energy inward and had been a little colorless to his eye.
“Would you like some breakfast before we start?” he offered.
“Um, if it’s not too much trouble.”
It was.
Far too much trouble.
Another delay in his already shattered morning.
But he couldn’t ask her to tramp around the gardens with him on an empty stomach, so…
“I’ll call Maria, and you can tell her what you would like. There may still be coffee on the sideboard in the dining room. Will you excuse me while I make some phone calls? Come along, Pia.”
“If they’re business calls, why don’t I keep Pia with me?” Dr. Madison suggested quickly. “Pia, you can pour my juice and tell me what breakfast foods are called in Italian. You can be my teacher. Would that be nice?”
Gino held his breath, waiting for No, I wanna go with Papa, and wondering whether his saying Okay, come with me, then would count as immediate capitulation to a tantrum that hadn’t quite happened yet but surely would if he insisted she was to go with Dr. Madison.
“Yes! It would be delightful!” Pia said and reeled off several breakfast words in Italian.
“You might have to go a little slower than that, Your Majesty, and you might have to get quite strict with me when I make silly mistakes. I think I’m going to be a very bad student!”
Pia laughed. She was already halfway to the dining room, her hand stretched out to take Dr. Madison’s, which was reaching back to her, open and inviting. The horticultural expert looked across at Gino, raised her eyebrows and grinned at him as if to say, “Didn’t I handle that well!”
He grinned back, too surprised not to, even though the grin felt…rusty.
Yes, I have to admit, you handled it well.
Then he let the grin drop and went to get some work done.
It was well after eleven when he surfaced from negotiating an unexpected problem in the Paris office and realized that even if Dr. Madison had ordered a full American breakfast, she must have finished eating it by now and must have learned by heart every Italian breakfast word Pia could think of to teach her. He went in search of them, clued in to their whereabouts by the sound of the piano that Pia had gotten into so much trouble over last night.
Dr. Madison had taught Pia to play “Chopsticks.”
As a duet.
With the doctor herself improvising some impressive, wild-fingered variations in the bass.
“Now we’re going to do it sad, Pia,” Gino heard her say. He paused in the doorway. “Listen, stop for a minute, can you hear me slowing down? Can you hear me changing the notes?” She went into a minor key. “Does it sound sadder to you now? Can you play it sad with me? Oh, boohoo, our chopsticks are bro-o-o-ken. Oh, it’s tragic, it’s terrible, we’re so, so sad, our notes are going so slowly, our fingers are so heavy on the keys, boohoo.”
He came farther into the room and she caught sight of him, nodded to show that she understood he was ready for their tour.
“Pia, someone’s fixed our chopsticks!” she said. “We’re happy again. We can get fast. Our fingers are moving so fast we can’t see them. I’m chasing you. Can you play as fast as me? I’m catching up, go faster, Pia. Faster, faster!”
Pia’s playing collapsed into laughter and fractured rhythm and thumping keys, and Dr. Madison sank sideways against her little shoulder in an exaggerated parody of breathlessness and exhaustion after a race.
“There! Whew! Fabulous! Thank you! It’s not nearly as much fun playing ‘Chopsticks’ on my own. Do you remember what this note is called, Pia?” She touched a key, and the sound of a single note vibrated from the instrument.
“Middle C,” Pia said.
“That’s right. Now if I shut the piano lid and open it again, can you still find Middle C?” She did as she’d described, and Pia’s finger went straight to the right note. “Very good!” She stood up, closed the lid once more, and turned to Gino. “We’re ready. I’m sorry, I felt I should—”
“No, that’s fine. You’re right. You needed to finish properly. Pia, Dr. Madison is going to show us her plans for the garden, now.”
Crunch time, Roxanna thought.
She’d decided to wing it without Rowena’s written and sketched-out plans, because she knew that her sister would have had the whole thing locked down in her memory the way Rox had locked down the lyrics and music to all her favorite songs. Without those comforting scrolls of paper clutched in her hands, however, she felt like an actress caught without a vital prop.
Gino was dressed down today, in a white Polo shirt that showed off the natural tan on his arms and on that very nicely shaped column of neck appearing from inside the Polo collar. He wore his hair short at the back, but not too short; just the right length for a woman’s fingers to run through—not too prickly, not too soft.
Rox happened to be an authority on exactly what this length was, because she’d never convinced Harlan to let his hair grow to it. He’d always kept it as short as cornfield stubble.
After she’d retrieved some of Rowie’s notes from the office, Gino led the way outside, and asked her about what she’d been doing with Pia. “Was it a lesson, or just fun?”
And that was a much safer subject than either garden restoration or the best length for a man’s hair, so she snatched it up.
With too much enthusiasm, as usual.
“Lessons and fun should be the same thing for a four-year-old, I think, especially with something like music, if you don’t want to put them off for life. So it was both, really. And she was very responsive. She was great!”
“Really?” He sounded skeptical, as if he didn’t dare to hope for too much where his daughter was concerned. And that was just ridiculous!
“Gino, she’s a very bright, creative little girl, hungry to learn. She latched on to what we were doing incredibly fast, and she loved it. I think you should consider music lessons for her.”
He thought about it for a minute, then shook his head. “When she’s older.”
Oh, okay, right.
Older.
You mean, when she’s snowed under with schoolwork. When that great big spark of joy and curiosity has been completely snuffed out by gray dresses and repressive tantrum control. When you can hit her with endless scales and finger exercises, and toss poor old Beethoven’s trampled-on “Fur Elise” at her like tossing a bone.
Makes total sense.
But, as we discussed yesterday, it’s none of my business, so I’ll keep my trap shut.
“You’re very talented at music, by the way,” he added, distracting her.
“Oh…not half as talented as I’d like to be. I love it, but, no, I’m coming to realize—”
That Harlan is probably right about my voice.
Oops, and that Harlan has nothing to do with any of this, because I’m pretending to be my twin sister.
“Gardens are my real love, of course,” she quickly added.
“Talk me through the whole plan,” he invited her.
Examination time.
Half an hour later, she was pretty confident she’d earned a passing grade. When you had to do all your exam preparation the night before, jet lag did have its advantages. Walking around the extensive and beautiful but dilapidated and overgrown old gardens, only part of which had yet been cleared under Rowena’s supervision, they managed the odd snatch of polite but slightly more personal conversation, also, which made Rox relax more than she’d expected to.
She asked Gino whether he had any kind of a garden in Rome, and he told her, “Only the one in the oil painting on my wall. It’s from the French Impressionist school. Not by a world-famous artist, but pretty.” He asked her why she’d chosen to go into a field like this. The combination of dry historical research and outdoor work was unusual, wasn’t it?
And since Roxanna knew her twin sister so well, she could find an answer that was true for Row and true for herself, as well. Something about how you can appreciate and enjoy something more when there’s more than one layer to it. A seven-foot-high Harrison’s Yellow rosebush in full bloom is beautiful all on its own when you’re standing in front of it on a gorgeous day, but when you also know that pioneers on the Oregon Trail packed the same rose in their wagons to plant out west… Well, that adds something, doesn’t it?
She didn’t express it very well. Rambled on a sentence or two too long, no doubt. Reasons Number One and Two, by the way: “You’re always so (expletive deleted) enthusiastic,” and “You never know when to stop talking.”
But this morning she was supposed to talk, so she did, and Gino listened, while Pia played in sunshine that definitely felt as if it were part of spring today.
“Impressive,” Gino said, when Rox had finished.
Was that an A grade?
Sounded like an A.
She relaxed a little too much, and that mouth of hers opened right up and she said, “Of course, if it were me, I’d do it the other way around.”
Gino looked at her blankly. “But it is you.”
“I mean, if it were my garden, if I weren’t working for you, the client. Fulfilling your—”
Help, help, help!
Why did I say it?
“Tell me what you’re talking about.” He frowned, sounded impatient. “The other way around?”
They stood at the end of a long, south-facing wall that marched along the side of the formal part of the garden, edged by a gravel track and overlooking a sloping field of vines that were just showing the first hints of green growth. Pia was throwing bits of gravel toward the vines. It was a very pretty spot, but since they were on the far side of the wall, it wasn’t visible from the main garden, the terrace or the house.
Rox had just finished dutifully describing to Gino how she—i.e. Rowena, as per Rowena’s plans—envisaged a single line of roses growing all along the wall, chosen not for their heritage value, like those in the main garden, but for other features, such as color and scent. And now, instead of leaving it at that, Rox had gone and blurted out her own opinion.
Harlan’s Reason Number Three: “You have an opinion about everything.”
“Well…” she said cautiously. Was there a way she could get out of this? Backtrack? Fob Gino off? No. She’d already put one foot in it. She had no choice now but to jump in with both. “I just mean that, even though, historically, the antique roses would obviously have been a part of the main garden, I think it could work better to have them along this wall instead.”
“Yes?” Gino said, indicating that she should please continue to insert her feet even deeper.
“Um, you see, initially, conforming to…uh…what I thought the family wanted, I attempted to combine the…uh…botanical-historical dimension of the main garden with the…uh…aesthetic dimension, but in some ways this may well mean that neither goal is effectively fulfilled. Whereas—”
She took a breath.
A very large, shuddery and somewhat desperate breath.
“—if we were to treat this wall as a kind of time line, we could create quite a fascinating walking history lesson on the development of rose species, dating from sixteenth-century varieties such as Eglantine and Austrian Copper and—and—” Yikes! “—Maiden’s Blush…” Whew! “…through to the hybrid teas cultivated since, um, 1867—” Was that date right? “—going from one end of the wall to the other. And that would mean we could leave the main garden as an exercise in pure drama.” She stopped channeling Rowie for a minute and dropped right into Rox. “And I love drama in a garden, don’t you?”
Harlan’s Reason Number Four: “You always think other people will agree with you.”
“Color and scent and big, showy effects,” she went on, knowing it was too late to stop now, so she might as well sell the idea as best she could. “A garden you can really breathe and see and feel and be passionate about.”
Gino looked blank again.
He was good at that.
Blank, arrogant shock at the fact that other people were so much slower to grasp things than he was. “Then why didn’t you plan it that way in the first place?” he said.
Rox’s turn at doing the blank look. “You mean you like the idea?”
“Yes. Very much. You’re right. We should keep the history and the drama separate. Why haven’t you suggested this before?”
“I—I thought—at the meeting—you wanted—”
“I don’t remember saying so.”
“Well, Francesco…”
“Hmm, possibly Francesco might have, but I doubt he gave it much thought. Look, is it too late to do it this new way? The other way around, as you put it? Would it drastically change which roses you’ve ordered, and how many, and your timetable for planting?”
Yikes, again.
How should I know?
“I—I’d have to check my notes.”
And call Row.
Even if it is, what, around six in the morning in Florida.
“Do that, then, and get back to me with your answer as soon as possible. I like the new idea better.”
He was already moving toward the house, calling Pia’s name over his shoulder as he went. Pia didn’t come. She was still throwing bits of gravel. “Pia, it’s time to come in now,” he said more sternly. “And I will not have any nonsense about it!”
The pale gravel looked like fallen blossom on the brown earth beside the vines. Pia picked up another piece, scowling just like her daddy.
“Go in,” Gino told Rox. His mouth had gone tight. “I’ll handle this.”
Back at the palazzo, from which Pia’s frustrated screams could barely be heard, the housekeeper told Roxanna that there was a phone message waiting for her.
Whew! In Florida, Rowie was up early. Rox could call her right back and learn just how deep a hole she’d dug herself into.
“From Francesco,” Maria said.
“I’ll, uh, phone him from my room.”
Once I’ve thumbed frantically through Rowena’s notes to find his number in Rome. I know she wrote it down for me somewhere…
“Hi-i-i, Francesco!”
“You’re back? It’s so good to hear your voice.” His breath swept heavily into her ear through the earpiece of the phone. “I left you alone while you were in London, I knew you needed time. But I’ve missed you, the way a thirsty flower misses rain. Have you missed me, sweetheart?”
“I’ve been thinking about you…” True, but not the way he thought.
“And have you made a decision?”
“About…” Rox let the word hang, hoping he’d fill in the blank for her, even though she was pretty sure what decision he was talking about.
And it didn’t involve roses.
Instead, he took her hesitation as an answer he didn’t want. “Haven’t I given you long enough? More than long enough? Let me tell you, my darling little American, there comes a point where a woman’s holding back stops increasing a man’s interest and becomes only annoying.”
Annoying?
Annoying?
Roxanna thought about the long, tearful session she’d had with Rowie in London, when they should have been talking detail on the Di Bartoli garden. She thought about all of Row’s doubt, her anguished questions about what she really felt and what Francesco really wanted. She unfortunately didn’t think about whether opening her mouth and speaking her mind might endanger the very contract she’d come here to protect.
Francesco had a fiancée, dang him. He’d said all these fervent, romantic, irresistible European-type things to Rowena, but did he love her? Really? Would he put his money where his mouth was and break it off with Marcellina? Did Rowena want him to?
“I just can’t, Rox,” Rowie had said in London. “I can’t give him what he wants. I—I don’t think he means any of it. N-not really. I’m so confused. I want him to mean it, but in my heart…”
And Francesco had no clue about the anxiety disorder, no clue about Row’s strong principles, her sweet, naive belief in a perfect happy-ever-after, her pretzel-like attempts to please everyone she cared about and her determination not to hurt his fiancée, a woman she hadn’t even met, and dismissed all of this as merely annoying?
“You want an answer right now?” Rox asked him.
“I am hungry for it! I am hungry for you. Marcellina means nothing to me. I will marry her, yes, of course, because, you understand, it is what I owe my family, but you will always be—”
“Okay, here’s my answer. Go take a flying leap! Is that enough of a decision for you?”
“Rowena…?”
“Go take a flying flip at the moon, Francesco Di Bartoli. Clear now?”
With a tingling, light-headed sense of satisfaction, Roxanna slammed down the phone.
Chapter Three
So…I, um, said no to Francesco for you, Rowie.” They’d already discussed the major change to the design concept of the garden. At just after six on a Thursday morning in Florida, Rowena had been a little taken aback, but then she’d quickly seized on the idea and gotten inspired.
She hadn’t thought to go so far beyond the original design, but she loved the idea of a historical time line, and yes, it should only make a small difference to which roses she’d ordered. She could tell Roxanna exactly what changes would be required, and she’d only need to make one follow-up call to each of the two specialist rose nurseries.
Meanwhile, she could work on creating bilingual plaques in Italian and English describing the history of each antique variety. The information could be tied in to historical developments in cosmetics and medicine, making that part of the garden a showpiece for visiting business associates of the Di Bartoli Corporation. Rosa gallica officinalis, for example, was used for medicinal purposes for centuries, as well as for perfume-making.
If Rowena did some more research on the subject…
After just a few minutes, she had sounded so much more energetic and confident than she’d been in London, only two days ago. She really loved her work, loved those dusty libraries and archives, those steamy greenhouses and rows of young plants. If she could find a good therapist who could help her get the rest of her life under control, she’d soon find a man who deserved her way more than Francesco Di Bartoli did.
Rox held her breath, waiting for her sister’s reaction to what she’d said about her own recent phone conversation with the man.
“Oh, you did? An absolute, one hundred percent no?” Rowie said.
“Um, yes. Pretty much one hundred percent, I’d say.”
Okay, she really had to breathe now. Before this next bit. The bit that might have Francesco arguing to his older brother that the American garden expert should be sacked on the spot and replaced with someone who had a more appropriate idea of her humble place in the Di Bartoli universe.
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