Reckless Night in Rio

chapter SIXTEEN




LAURA hesitated outside the closed doors of the huge, flower-strewn library, frightened out of her mind.

She could hear the rumble on the other side of door, the mutters and whispers. The wedding had been scheduled to start thirty minutes ago, and everyone was obviously starting to assume the worst.

But there was no way around it. She had to get through it. With a deep breath, she pushed the doors open.

The enormous two-story library had been modeled after an old English abbey with walls of gray stone. It was now festooned with white roses and candles, with hundreds of chairs set up to create an aisle down the middle.

At the sight of the bride standing at the end of the aisle, musicians hastily began to play ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring’ on guitars and violins. Laura stopped the music with a chopping gesture across her neck.

Silence fell. She could have heard a pin drop as three hundred pairs of eyes turned to her.

She trembled, passing a hand over her eyes. Then she heard her baby cry out halfway down the aisle. Going swiftly to her cousin Sandy, who held him in her lap, Laura took her son in her arms. Robby looked dapper in a little baby tuxedo just like his father’s, complete with rose boutonniere. She smiled through her tears. For an instant, she just held her baby in her arms, feeling his soft skin and breathing his sweet smell.

Then, squaring her shoulders, she slowly turned to face her family and friends.

‘Thank you all for coming,’ she said loudly, then faltered. ‘But I’m afraid… Afraid that…’

‘What?’ her great-aunt Gertrude demanded loudly from the back. ‘Talk louder!’

Laura’s knees grew weak. Did she really have to announce to all her friends and relatives that the only man she’d ever loved had just left her at the altar? How had she ever thought this was a good idea?

‘Did he leave?’ one of her hotheaded cousins demanded, rising to his feet in the front row. ‘Did that man desert you?’

‘No,’ she cried, holding up her hand. Even now, she couldn’t bear for them to think badly of Gabriel. He’d always been honest with her from the beginning. She was the one who’d arrogantly tried to change him, who’d thought that if she loved him enough, he might love her back. She was the one who’d thought if he knew Robby was his son, he might change, and love the child he’d never wanted. ‘You don’t understand,’ she whispered. ‘I told him to go. I made him leave—’

‘You couldn’t,’ a husky voice said behind her. ‘Though you tried.’

With a gasp, she whirled around.

Gabriel stood in the double doorway, dark and dashing in his tuxedo. And most incredible of all, he was smiling at her, smiling with his whole face. Even his black eyes held endless colors of warmth and love.

‘What are you doing here?’ she murmured. ‘I thought you were gone.’

He started walking toward her.

‘I couldn’t go,’ he said. ‘Not without telling you something.’

‘What?’

He stopped, halfway down the aisle.

‘I love you,’ he said simply.

She swayed on her feet. She was dreaming. She had to be dreaming.

He caught her before she could fall. ‘I love you,’ he murmured with a smile, and he looked down at the baby between them. ‘And I love my son.’

There was an audible gasp. Gabriel looked around him fiercely.

‘Yes,’ he said sharply. ‘Robby is my child. Laura was afraid to tell me about Robby, afraid I wouldn’t be able to measure up to be the man—the father—he needed.’ Gabriel looked back at her. ‘But I will. I will spend the rest of my life proving I can be the man you deserve.’

A sob escaped Laura’s lips. Reaching up, she put her hand to his cheek, looking up at him. ‘You love me?’

He pressed his hand over hers. She saw tears in his eyes. ‘Yes.’

She blinked, sucking in her breath. ‘But what about the deal in Rio?’

He looked down at her. ‘I don’t care about it. Let the Frenchman have it.’

She gasped, shaking her head desperately. ‘But you’ve tried to get the company back all these years. It’s all you wanted. All you’ve dreamed about day and night!’

‘Because I thought it was my family’s legacy.’ He reached down to cup her cheek. A smile curved his sensual lips. ‘But it wasn’t.’

‘It wasn’t?’ she whispered.

‘My family loved me, and I loved them,’ he said. ‘No accident can ever change that. I will honor their memory for the rest of my life. I will honor them by living as best as I can until the day I die.’ He took her hand tightly in his own, looking down at her. ‘And today, I will start the rest of my life loving you.’

‘I love you….’ she choked out. ‘So much.’ She swallowed, then shook her head. ‘But we can get married later. We should leave for Rio at once. I don’t want you to lose your company, your family’s legacy—’

‘I haven’t lost it. I’ve found it at last. My family’s legacy is love,’ he said. ‘My family’s legacy—’ he lifted his shining eyes to her face ‘—is you.’

The autumn leaves of New Hampshire were falling in a million shades of red, gold and green against the cold blue sky when Gabriel and Laura returned home from New York.

Laura sighed with pleasure as their SUV rounded the bend in the road and she caught her first glimpse of the old Olmstead mansion on the hill. It was the Santos house now. The day after their wedding, Gabriel had bought it for her as a present.

‘It’s too big,’ she’d protested. ‘We can’t possibly fill all those rooms!’

He’d given her a sly, wicked smile. ‘We can try.’

And they had certainly done their best. In fact, they’d done excellent work on that front. Laura blushed. Since they’d moved into the house in March, they’d made love in all forty rooms, and also in the secret nooks of the large sprawling garden. They’d shared many warm evenings on the banks of their private lake, swimming and talking and watching the stars twinkle in the lazy summer night. One big pond, she thought, for what was sure to be one big family. She smiled. She would someday teach her own children to swim there, as her father had taught her.

She’d been in New York City with Gabriel for only a single night, but she was already glad to be back home. She hadn’t known it was possible for a man to fuss so much over his wife.

As the SUV stopped, she started to open the door, but Gabriel instantly gave her a hard glare. ‘Wait.’

Laura sat back against her seat with a sigh.

He raced around the SUV and opened her door. Gabriel held out his hand, and his dark eyes softened as he looked down at her. She placed her hand in his, and felt the same shiver of love and longing that she had the very first time she’d touched his hand, in the days when she was only his secretary.

After helping her from the SUV—it wasn’t as easy as it used to be—he closed the door behind her. He followed her constantly, anxiously, always concerned about her safety and comfort. It might have been irritating, if it wasn’t so adorable.

‘I can close my own door, you know,’ she observed.

He stroked her cheek, looking down at her fiercely. ‘I have a lot to make up for. I want to take care of you.’

Glancing at the sweeping steps that led to the front door, she lifted her eyebrow wickedly. ‘Want to carry me up the stairs?’

Grabbing her lapel, he pulled her against his dark wool coat. ‘Absolutely,’ he whispered, nuzzling her hair. He gave her a sensual smile. ‘Especially since the next flight of stairs leads straight to our bedroom.’

Lowering his head to hers, he kissed her.

His lips were hot and soft against her own, and a contented sigh came from the back of Laura’s throat. As he held her, a cold wind blew in from the north around them, scattering the fallen leaves and whispering of the deep frost that would soon come to the great north woods. But Laura felt warm down to her toes.

‘You’re a furnace,’ Gabriel said with a laugh as he pulled away. Then he smiled. ‘I think the baby is glad to be home.’

‘So am I,’ she said, then laughed. ‘For one thing, you won’t be trying to throw yourself in front of trucks, trying to protect me on the crosswalk.’

‘Fifth Avenue is insane,’ he muttered.

‘Yeah, all those crazed tourists and limo drivers,’ she teased. Turning, she started to walk toward the front steps. She was excited to see Robby, after his first overnight apart from them. He’d had two loving babysitters fighting over him, Grandma Ruth and nanny Maria. ‘Thanks for a lovely night. It was nice.’

‘Yeah.’ Lifting a dark eyebrow, he grinned wickedly, clearly remembering their time alone together in front of the fire last night.

She elbowed him in the ribs. ‘I meant with the girls.’

‘Right.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Your sisters seem to be settling well. It’s the first time I’ve seen them since they started college.’

‘You’re not in New York very much these days,’ she teased.

‘I have better things to do than work,’ he growled. ‘Like make love to my beautiful wife.’ Grabbing her again by the lapels of her warm camel-colored coat, he kissed her again, long and hard, before she pulled away.

‘You are insatiable!’

He gave a dark, wicked grin. ‘I know.’

A flash of heat went through her. After they’d married that blustery day in early March, he’d made love to her without protection for the first time. The sensation was so new to him that they hadn’t left the bed for a full week after their wedding. In some ways, Laura thought, she’d been his first, just as he’d been hers. And they’d gotten pregnant on their honeymoon.

Laura put a hand on her jutting belly. Their baby, a little girl, was due in just a few weeks.

‘Thanks for moving up here,’ she whispered. ‘I am so happy to be close to my family.’

His eyes met hers. ‘So am I. And I have you to thank for that.’

Maybe it was pregnancy hormones, but Laura still felt choked up every time she thought of the three girls now living in the same city, all going to college. Two of them were her sisters. Brainy Hattie had transferred to Columbia University, and eighteen-year-old Margaret had opted for NYU.

But the greatest miracle of all—Gabriel’s young niece, Lola, was now at Barnard.

Last spring, shortly after Laura had found out she was pregnant, she had tracked down Izadora, Lola’s mother, and invited their family to come up for a weekend visit to New Hampshire in the private jet. To Gabriel’s shock, they’d accepted.

After twenty years, Gabriel had finally made peace with Izadora and met her American husband, a restaurant owner in Miami. Gabriel had hugged his young niece for the first time since she was a baby. And he’d convinced Izadora to allow him to create a trust fund for Lola. ‘It’s what Guilherme would have wanted,’ he’d said gravely, and put like that, how could Izadora refuse? Lola was now at Barnard College studying art.

‘All this family around us.’ Wiping away her tears with a laugh, Laura shook her head and teased, ‘And you paying for three students at college already. Robby will probably want med school. And now this little one. Are you sure you’re ready for more?’

Gabriel put his hands on her swelling belly beneath her long T-shirt. At nearly nine months along, she could no longer button her wool coat. Half the time she was too hot to wear it, anyway. ‘Just a few weeks now,’ he whispered. Dropping to one knee, he impulsively kissed her belly.

‘Gabriel!’ she gasped with a laugh, glancing up at the big windows of the house.

Her husband looked up at her. His eyes glowed with tenderness and love. ‘I’ll be here this time, querida,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Every step of the way.’

‘I know,’ she said, her throat choking with tears of joy. Tugging him to his feet, she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. And as the cold wind blew, carrying dry leaves down their long driveway, she felt only warmth and love in the fire of their embrace.

And Laura knew two things.

The fire between them would always last.

And second, that they had an excellent chance of filling all forty rooms.