Mediterranean Men & Marriage: The Italian's Forgotten Baby / The Sicilian's Bride / Hired: The Italian's Bride

He wanted to thank her. He thought he should say something. But she didn’t give him a chance. She sailed down the wide staircase and out into the parking lot before he realized what she was doing, and by the time he reached her, she’d started the Vespa and was backing out of the parking space. With a cheery wave, she was off, and all he could do was stand there and watch her go.

Chapter Five

MARCO SAT drinking black coffee and trying to stop staring at Shayna as she made her rounds of the tables, smiling and laughing with the customers. Today she was dressed in a brightly colored pareau, a Tahitian wrap skirt and a matching halter top, leaving a beautiful expanse of silky bare skin between the two. As he watched her, he had a twinge of unease. She was always lovely to look at, but today there was the hint of something more. Hadn’t he seen her somewhere before?

Well, of course, there was yesterday, and then there was the time his mind had stolen from him. Those were givens. But something else, something older and longer ago teased at him. He wished he could think of what it was. But even more, he wished he could get back his two missing weeks.

Maybe if his brain were clearer. He’d had a horrible night, tossing and turning, and it had nothing to do with drinking too much. Dreams had slithered in and out of his sleep and then he’d woken and tried to capture the fleeting images his dreams had left him with. He had a feeling the dreams were built out of those missing memories, and if he just woke up in time, he could pin the facts to the wall and then he would be able to unravel the truth.

Pulling out his sketchbook, he tried to concentrate on what he did best, dig into problems of sailing design. But as he put pencil to paper, he realized his doodling was turning out to be a woman’s face instead of the hull of a sailing craft. He stared at it. He hadn’t done any figure drawing since his days at university, but here he was, making a pretty decent stab at getting Shayna right.

She came toward him with a coffeepot and he quickly flipped the page on the sketchbook. There was no point in being blatant about the fact that she fascinated him.

“Have you had any sudden revelations this morning?” she asked as she freshened his coffee.

He had a hard time focusing on her words. Something about that beautiful expanse of tan and creamy skin, revealing a neat little belly button and a lovely curving waistline made him feel like a stammering schoolboy. He couldn’t seem to rip his gaze away from her midriff. So near and yet so far. He had a sudden fantasy of his lips against that gorgeous flesh, his tongue exploring that belly button, and he had a hard time keeping down the groan of pleasure that threatened to come out of his chest.

Wow. He hadn’t realized he could be caught out like that at his age.

“What?” he said vaguely, forcing himself to look up at her eyes but completely unable to remember what she’d asked him.

She frowned disapprovingly. “Revelations,” she repeated. “New ideas. Light bulbs going off over your head.”

“Huh?” he said, then began to regain control. “Oh. You mean about where the plans might be?” He took a quick, cleansing breath. “Not yet. How about you?”

“Me?” She looked startled. “What do you expect from me?”

“Memory. You still have yours.”

She frowned. “Yours has got to be in there somewhere. Try harder.”

He shrugged. “I have tried harder. And I’ve done relaxation therapy. And I’ve gone to hypnotists. You can’t get blood from a stone.” Shaking his head, he swore softly. “My Roman ancestors conquered the world, you would think I could conquer this one stupid thing.”

His frustration was mirrored in his dark eyes and she regretted being impatient with him. After all, he was the one who actually wanted his memory to come back—as far as she was concerned, it could stay lost.

“That’s very true,” she said more sympathetically. “But you are hardly a stone.” She smiled at him. “Don’t worry. It’s bound to come back to you eventually. Patience is a virtue.”

“And I am nothing if not virtuous,” he said wryly.

That made her smile. She couldn’t resist a quick, admiring glance at how he looked today. He wore chinos, deck shoes and a pale blue polo shirt that molded itself to the muscles of his upper body like cling wrap. It was all good. Too good.

She’d spent most of the late evening making phone calls. From the station chief at the airport to the manager of the hotel, she’d contacted anyone she could think of who might have an idea where the plans had gone. She’d even come in to work early to search the back rooms here in the café, just in case he’d stopped in for a snack before heading to his flight back on that fateful day. Perhaps he had left the portfolio at his table and someone had stuck it in a cupboard somewhere and forgotten about it. So she’d searched, but so far, no luck. Maybe their trip today would bear fruit, though she didn’t have a lot of hope. Somehow she had a feeling that anything left behind two weeks before would have shown up by now.

Biting her lip and shaking her head, she turned away. “Hang in there. I’ve got two more tables and then I’ll be ready to go.”

He watched her head for a table full of young couples and he flipped back to the portrait he’d been drawing. He stared at it for a long moment. What was it about this woman that kept tangling with his emotions? His mouth twisted and he ripped the page out of the book, crumpled it in his hand, and aimed at a nearby trash can. It was a decent attempt, but it had missed all her special magic, and he wasn’t going to accept anything less.

A half hour later, she finished up and they headed for the shed where she kept her Vespa. She kick-started it and he climbed on behind, but this time his hands didn’t go to the edge railing to hold on. With no hesitation, his large hands clamped down on either side of her waist, practically spanning the distance and holding her completely in his control.

She felt as though she’d just taken a sudden drop off the edge of a tall cliff, and it took a second or two to get her equilibrium back. Then she turned to look at him. He looked right back at her, not smiling, almost daring her to complain. She stared at him for a moment and then gave a small, almost imperceptible shrug.

“So I guess you don’t feel like such a stranger anymore, is that it?” she noted dryly.

A slow smile tilted the corners of his wide mouth. “Just drive,” he said.

Shayna drove, but she took note of Marco’s move toward a new level of intimacy. They were going to have to get this task done quickly. It was obvious he was beginning to feel he could take over for the old Marco, in more ways than one. That just couldn’t be allowed to happen. She was highly susceptible to male influence. She knew that. It was the reason she was here, as far from her father as she could get. Did she have to stay away from Marco, too?

Maybe so.

They swung by her house so that she could change, and there was Jilly waiting on the front stairs, a small boy of about three in her arms.

“Hi Auntie Shayna,” she called out as they left the Vespa and started for the house. “I brought Eddie over. He really wants to see Mr. Smith.”

Marco recoiled for a moment, glanced at Shayna, then at the children.

Jilly looked up at him, so young and bright-eyed and innocent. He almost grunted aloud, but stopped himself in time.

“Marco,” he reminded her carefully. “The name is Marco.”

She blinked like a young owl. “Okay, Mr. Marco,” she said. “Here’s Eddie.”

She released the little boy and Marco stared down at him. His thumb was planted firmly in his mouth, but the huge, almond-shaped eyes were filled with some sort of earnest hope that took him by surprise. Marco almost took a step backward. No one should depend on him this much.

“Hi, Eddie,” he said, putting on a slightly forced smile.

Eddie didn’t say a word. Never taking his eyes off Marco’s, he took a few steps forward, and then his free hand reached out and took hold of Marco’s slacks, the grubby little fingers curling tightly into the fabric as though he would never let go again.

“Hey, little guy,” Marco said, half laughing, but somewhat startled as he patted the boy’s head a bit awkwardly.

“He missed you lots and lots,” Jilly told him in her matter-of-fact manner. “When I told him you were back, he smiled.”

It was heartwarming to be missed, and the child seemed pretty darn adorable, but Marco didn’t have any memory of ever having seen him before in his life. It would seem the two of them had developed some sort of relationship. That was unusual for him. He usually avoided getting too close to little ones. You never knew how long they were going to be around. He’d had enough experience losing contact with a cherished child to make him wary of repeating the situation.

He patted the boy’s head again, hoping to be friendly but detached, then looked to Shayna for help. “Don’t you have a cookie or something Eddie might like?” he asked, trying not to sound too desperate.

“Coming right up,” Shayna said with a reassuring wink. “Let’s all go in and see about it.”

Eddie didn’t want to let go of Marco’s slacks, which made walking a bit awkward, but once inside, Shayna was able to coax him away with a huge chocolate chip cookie and a cartoon DVD in the player. She served milk with the cookies and they left the youngsters in the front room with the entertainment.

“He’s such a duck,” she whispered to Marco as he followed her into the kitchen. “But he hasn’t said a word since his father went missing last month. I think he must be transferring the attachment to you.”

“Pop psychology,” he muttered, glancing back into the room where the kids were. “What happened to his father?”

“Went overboard on a fishing trip.” She shrugged, then added as an aside, “Though rumor has it he’s AWOL on purpose. Who knows?”

Marco looked at the little guy with a larger measure of sympathy after hearing that. A moment later, as he lowered his long body to sit on the rattan couch in the front room, Eddie shot up beside him and sat very close, little legs out straight, as though trying to copy whatever he did.

Shayna watched, touched at the scene. Marco hadn’t gone out of his way to cultivate Eddie when he’d been here before, but the boy had been fascinated by him from the first. She was glad to see that Marco wasn’t trying to fend him off. Poor Eddie was having a rough time of it with his father missing and his mother gone trying to get work wherever she could.

And so was Jilly. She had a lot of sympathy for the girl and what she was going through. Losing a parent when one was just beginning to learn what life as an adult was all about was rough. She knew from experience, though for her it had been a little different. Her mother and brother had died in a car accident when she was about Jilly’s age. Instead of having to take over the family chores and babysitting responsibilities, she’d been drafted into providing emotional support for her father. If her mother had lived, would she have gone down that glittery yellow brick road she took into her twenties? She hardly thought so. If her brother had been there to help deflect some of the intense influence from her father, would she have been a more normal adult? She had no doubt of it. She’d missed them both so much; they still haunted her dreams.

“Is your mom working at the hotel today?” Shayna asked Jilly.

Jilly looked up and nodded. “She’s going in after lunch. She likes to work there. Sometimes people give her tips.” A look of alarm came over her face. “Oh! We better go back. She’s probably looking for us now.”

As she turned toward her little brother, Eddie’s little hand shot out and curled around the seam of Marco’s slacks again, fingers digging in.

“Eddie! We have to go home.” She tried to pry his fingers off the fabric, but the little boy’s face was set with determination. “Oh, Eddie!” she wailed.

“Here.” Marco put his hand out, palm up, in front of the boy. He looked down at him and smiled, this time with genuine warmth. “We’ll make a deal,” he said.

Eddie looked at him, then at his hand, but didn’t take the bait. His dark eyes were watchful, but unforgiving.

“Come on,” Marco said gently. “We have to shake on it.”

Eddie’s questioning gaze looked at Shayna, then back at Marco. Tentatively, he put out his left hand.

“Nope,” Marco said firmly. “The other hand. Come on.”

Eddie’s little face was pained. Slowly, almost undetectably, his fingers began to loosen their hold on the pants.

“I’m going to promise you something,” Marco told him. “Shayna and I have to go on a trip around the island, but we’ll be back tonight.”

His hand finally slid off the fabric and landed in Marco’s, looking small and vulnerable there. Marco turned his own hand and enveloped the little one so that they were shaking.

“We’ll be back,” he said, looking earnestly into Eddie’s face.

Alarm bells rang in his head the moment the words were out of his mouth. It was so easy to make promises to little kids. And so easy to break them. He knew that from his own childhood. How many times had he waited at the tall windows in his mother’s house, hoping and praying that his father would show up for his visitation day? And how often had his prayers been answered?

No, if he made this promise to this boy, he had to keep it. No matter what.

“We’ll be back,” he said firmly, “and I’ll bring you a red licorice whip. Okay?”

Eddie’s face lit up and for a second, it almost looked as though he were going to say something. But the moment faded as quickly as it had begun, and there was no sound from the child. Still, he pumped hands with Marco. They had a deal.

Shayna watched this whole scene, entranced. Not matter what, Marco was great with little kids. She smiled at the handshake gimmick, but the smile froze when he mentioned the licorice whip.

Wait a minute. How had he remembered that Eddie was a fool for red licorice? He couldn’t have just plucked that out of the air…could he?

Who knew? Maybe he had. But she kept thinking about the day, a few weeks ago, when they’d stopped in at the little general store for supplies, and Marco had casually picked up a package of red licorice for Eddie. His gift had been received with a rapture that had surprised and pleased him. Could he be starting to remember things? Could that reaction from Eddie have stayed with him when nothing else had? It didn’t seem logical.

They waved goodbye to the children from the front porch, and then Shayna gave him a sideways smile. “You were sweet to Eddie. He needs a good male role model.”

“Whoa,” Marco said quickly. “I’m not a role model.”

“Maybe not,” she said with a sigh. “But poor Leila can’t do it all by herself. She tries to get all the work she can, especially at the hotel, and Jilly tries hard to be a good babysitter. But she gets distracted and Eddie takes off on his chubby little legs. The next thing we know, there’s Eddie showing up at the hotel or wherever Leila is working that day. They have to watch him like a hawk.”

Marco tilted his head, considering that little story and taking it to heart. “Well, you can’t blame him, poor little guy. After all, with his father missing, I’m sure he’s scared he’ll lose his mom, too. So he takes off after her, just to be sure she comes home.”

She shrugged. “I suppose so.”

He sighed and turned to her.

“Where the hell am I going to find red licorice?” he asked distractedly. “Do you suppose anyone has it here?”

She smiled, feeling a small flutter of relief. It didn’t seem that his memory was coming back after all. “Don’t worry, we’ll find some. I’ll help.”

They went back into the house and she headed for her bedroom to change for the island trip. She took off the pareau with regret. She probably wouldn’t get to wear that again for another year at least. Any moment now, she would start expanding at the waistline.

“How come you’re Aunty Shayna and I’m Mr. Marco?” Marco called from the living room. He’d slipped onto a bar stool and leaned against her counter with both elbows.

“They know me better,” she called from her room. “It’s sort of a tradition here in the islands. To the children, close family friends are called Aunty.” She chuckled. “You want to be an uncle?”

“That’s not necessary,” he said. “Mr. Marco is better than Mr. Smith, though.” He groaned, rubbing his face as though trying to wake from a bad dream. “Are you seriously trying to convince me that I was using a phony name when I was here before?”

“Yes, Marco. We all knew you as Marco Smith, and probably no one over twelve bought it for a minute. But that’s the way things are here. If you wanted to be a Smith, everyone was okay with that. We’re easy.”

He grunted. “It must be confusing to a little guy like Eddie,” he noted more to himself than to her.

“Maybe.” She sighed. “Poor Leila—their mom. She’s having a hard time of it since her husband went missing. And Jilly has pretty much become the nanny for the babies.”

“There are more of them?” he said, then winced at the horror he’d allowed to show in his tone.

“Besides Jilly and Eddie?” she responded. “Two more. Jamu is eight months and Ali is about ten.” She poked her head out and grinned at him. “Here in the islands, we consider children a blessing, not a burden. It does change your outlook.”

“I suppose so,” he murmured, but he wasn’t really listening. Memories of another little boy came tumbling back into his heart and he turned away, fighting it. A little boy named Carlo who had been the child of a woman he was pretty seriously dating at one time. When she’d decided to move on to other relationships, he’d lost his connection to the boy, and it had hurt more than he’d ever thought possible. That was a painful chapter in his past, a chapter he didn’t want to revisit. If he had to lose a period of his life to amnesia, why couldn’t it have been that one?

He glanced at Shayna as she came out of the bedroom. She didn’t know about little Carlo, of course. No matter how close they had become before, he knew he wouldn’t have told her about Carlo. Setting his jaw, he pushed thoughts of the little boy he’d cared so much about away and turned his mind to the woman in front of him.

She’d changed into denim capris and a bright Hawaiian shirt and he had a moment of regret that the naked stomach was gone. But she’d pulled her hair back into a ponytail and she looked downright adorable anyway. Good enough to kiss. Only she didn’t have that “Hey, why don’t you kiss me?” look in her eyes that a man liked to see before he made that move. So he let the moment pass.

“I’ll bet you were a tomboy,” he remarked, looking her over. “All you lack are the freckles on the nose.” His eyebrows rose as he surveyed her feet. “But I hope you’re not planning on hiking or climbing any trees today,” he said.

She lifted her chin. “Why not?”

“Flip-flops?” he said, looking askance. “You really want to drive around on your Vespa in those?”

He glanced pointedly at her feet and she flashed her sandals proudly.

“You call them flip-flops. Some people call them thongs. Here in the islands, we call them zoris and everybody wears them.”

“Not me,” he said stoutly.

She grinned. “Not yet,” she amended for him.

He couldn’t resist grinning back, then shook his head. There was so much about her he didn’t know. “Where are you from, Shayna?”

Something flashed in the depths of her blue eyes. He sharpened his own gaze, trying harder to read them, but whatever it was he’d noticed for just those few seconds proved elusive.

“What makes you think I wasn’t born right here on this island?” she challenged, her gaze clear as glass.

He shook his head slowly, taking in her various assets one by one. “I don’t buy it. You give off cosmopolitan vibes. You’ve been around. Haven’t you?”

“Have I?” she shot back, though a veil seemed to draw a shadow over her eyes. “That’s pure speculation and a pretty subjective evaluation.”

He shrugged. “It’s mine and I’m sticking to it.” He turned as she walked around him, as though keeping her pinned with his steely gaze and planning to reel her in eventually. “The question is, where?”

She sighed, avoiding him.

“The U.S., I’d say. East Coast. Maybe even New York. Hmm. Let me think…”

A look close to alarm swept across her face and she glanced up, pressed her lips together, and then shrugged in a sort of mini-surrender. “Okay. You’re right. I wasn’t born here.” She flashed him a stern look and grabbed her keys before she started out the door. “But I mean to die here. And that’s what counts.”

He followed, frowning. He didn’t get her at all. Why was she still avoiding every personal issue? “Just hold off on that for a while, okay?” he said wryly. “At least until we find my plans.”

“Don’t worry,” she said back over her shoulder. “You’ve got me for the duration.”

He didn’t bother to react. Anything he might have said would gain him nothing but scorn from her and he knew it. Still, he had to chuckle, deep inside. He had her, did he? Funny, it didn’t feel that way. It seemed more likely that she had him—over a barrel.

Fifteen minutes later, they were cruising down a winding road that threaded a trail between two junglelike thickets of tall, slender trees and opened out onto an endless white sand beach, rimmed with multiple coconut palms. The trees looked as though they would be reaching for the sky if it weren’t for those darned old trade winds bending them toward the ground.

“This is Tanachi Beach,” she told him as he dismounted from the scooter. “What do you think?”

He didn’t say anything for a moment. Slowly, he turned, taking it all in—the gleaming sand, the black rock formations, the crystal blue sea, the white foam of the waves pounding out on the reef.

“Wow,” he said softly, shaking his head.

She came up beside him, pleased with his reaction.

“We came here, you know. The second day you were on the island. We set a blanket down right over there and had a picnic lunch we’d brought from home.”

“Really.” He turned to look at her, bemused. “Why didn’t we bring along a picnic lunch this time?”

She met his gaze with a touch of defiance and decided to tell him the truth. “Because we’re not playing around with the idea of beginning a romance today,” she said firmly.

That set him back on his heels for a second, but he didn’t waver. “We aren’t?” he countered with a gleam of humor in his eyes. “Speak for yourself.”

She managed a simple glare before starting off toward the rocks. He followed her through the sand, and then they stood side by side and watched the water lap against the shore.

“So you’re telling me we did play around with that very idea when I was here before, aren’t you?”

“More or less,” she allowed.

He searched her brilliant blue eyes. “So what happened, Shayna? What came between us? What ruined everything?”

She stared at him for a long moment, then looked away. “It was a short-term thing,” she said. “We both knew it was just for fun, just for the moment. Neither one of us expected anything long-term from it.”

It was easy to say those words and it didn’t even hurt too much to say them. But once they were out there, they wouldn’t fade. They hung in the air, mocking her, and she couldn’t get them to move on out of the way. Mainly because they were lies. She’d expected a lot more than a bit of fun. She’d thought she’d found a man like no other, the sort of man she’d been waiting for all her life. Knowing Marco, seeing the sort of man he was—at any rate, the sort of man she’d thought he was—had thrilled her at the time.

Her eyes stung for a moment and she had to turn away from him. She’d had dreams. Oh, yes, how did the song go? Clouds in her coffee. That was the way it felt now. No one much liked dreams gone bad, did they?

“When people talk about tropical beaches, this is what they have in mind, isn’t it?” he was saying, still reacting to the scenery.