Rush to the Altar Read online

  “You mean you thought I was capable of selling my soul.” Pain shot through her. “It hurts to realize I gave you that impression. I have only myself to blame.”

  “You’re damn right about that! When I get back to my office there’ll be at minimum forty calls my secretary has taken since nine this morning from two-bit actresses who’d walk through fire to be in your position right now.”

  “I know.” Once upon a time she’d been one of them. “Thank you for the delicious lunch. I’ll pay next time.”

  “There may not be one.”

  “All I’m asking for is a decent script!”

  “Don’t hold your breath,” he muttered before skirting the tables to make his exit.

  As soon as he was gone, a dejected Ann left the restaurant and headed for her condo only a couple of miles away. After letting herself inside, she dashed to the kitchen to call her sister. But the red blinking light on the phone prompted her to listen to her messages first.

  “Ann?”

  It was Colin.

  “How come you haven’t been returning my calls? What’s going on? I don’t care if it’s the middle of the night. Phone me, otherwise I’m getting on a plane to L.A. to find out what’s wrong!”

  He didn’t bang down the receiver, but she sensed he’d wanted to. She couldn’t deal with him right now and clicked to the next two messages from some actress friends of hers. After listening to their various plights, she punched in her sister’s phone number.

  There was a nine hour time difference between Hollywood, California, and Turin, Italy. It would be quarter to ten at night there. She doubted her sister was in bed yet…unless their baby Anna was being good and Nicco wanted some private time with his wife. He always wanted to be alone with her.

  Ann had never seen a couple more in love.

  Since her return from witnessing the christening of their adorable daughter a month ago, Ann had been experiencing a vague dissatisfaction with her own life.

  The kinds of scripts D.L. had told her to look over only added to the strange emptiness building inside of her. She was almost frightened by the feeling because it reminded her of the way she’d felt after her father had died years ago.

  She closed her eyes tightly. D.L. was right. She had changed in recent months. She’d been restless and out of sorts. Unable to focus.

  In truth she longed for the comfort of precious Anna in her arms. The first time that tiny bundle of wiggling warmth cuddled up against her body, Ann’s heart had melted. It had been a wrench to leave her niece when it came time to return to L.A.

  Colin had attended the christening service with her. Afterward he’d accused her of caring more for the baby than she did for him.

  “Ann?” her sister cried out excitedly after picking up on the fourth ring. “Nicco and I were just talking about you! We’ve been waiting to hear if you’re contracted to do a new film yet.”

  Ann bit her lip. “Not yet…Callie? H-how would you like a babysitter for a couple of weeks so you and Nicco could go on a trip?” she stammered. “I know you could both use some time alone together. I promise to love her like my own and guard her with my life.”

  There was a pregnant pause.

  “Until Anna’s quite a bit older we couldn’t bear to leave her for that long, but you don’t have to be her babysitter to visit us!” Her sister sounded hurt. Callie always did have a heart of gold.

  “As we told you before, there’s a whole suite in the palace that will always be your home when you come. You can live here forever if you want. There’s nothing I’d love more. You’re the only family I’ve got, you know,” she said in a quiet voice.

  Ann did know. That’s what was wrong. Callie was her only family and they were separated by an ocean. Tears stung her eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I don’t intend to live with you, but I’m between scripts at the moment and—”

  “And things aren’t working out with you and Colin,” her sister read between the lines.

  Being identical twins made the two of them telepathic.

  “Listen to me Annabelle Lassiter—you’re getting on the next plane to Turin. Little Anna misses you terribly. We all do.”

  “As soon as I get off the phone I’ll make reservations.” She gripped the receiver tighter. “Are you sure Nicco won’t mind? He must feel so stressed with all the responsibility now that Luca Danelli has passed away. The last thing he needs is another worry.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. From the beginning he’s been doing Luca’s work along with his own. His death was very sad, but he was getting on, it was expected.

  “Nicco’s the one who told you you’d always have a permanent home with us. My husband never says something he doesn’t mean.”

  “That’s because he’s so in love with you, he wouldn’t do anything to upset you if he could help it.”

  “That’s true,” Nicco’s rich male voice spoke into the phone, surprising Ann. “But there’s another reason and you know what it is. If it hadn’t been for you, I’d have never met Callie.

  “Because of you I’ve found my happiness. I love you, Ann. We both do. Let us know the number and time of your flight and we’ll be there to pick you up.”

  By now the tears were streaming down her cheeks. “I love you both, too. Thank you, Nicco. See you soon.”

  The sights and smells of any carnival grounds brought back so many vivid memories of Riley’s childhood, he had difficulty believing he hadn’t been swept back in time.

  Before he’d left L.A., Riley had made a phone call to determine the exact location of Rimini’s Traveling Circus. When he’d found out it was performing in Rome for the latter half of September, he’d booked his flight there.

  That part was easy. The hard part was tracking down Mitra.

  The circus Riley’s father had performed in for close to fifteen years was under new management. Though a few of the old troop members were still working, no one seemed to know what had happened to the Gypsy woman who’d once traveled with them and had read tea leaves for the crowds.

  But Mitra had done a lot more than that. She’d been a surrogate mother to Riley though he hadn’t recognized it at the time.

  With a few more questions, Riley found out another Gypsy with a bear act had been added to the circus repertoire. He walked to the older man’s trailer, speaking to him in the Romany tongue he’d picked up from Mitra. That broke the ice.

  He learned she’d left the circus a year ago to join her own people in Perugia, north of Rome. The Gypsy had no idea if she was still alive.

  After thanking him for the information, Riley left for the charming hill town overlooking the Tiber where he’d received his first formal schooling. It had all been thanks to Mitra who knew his father had been drinking heavily again after his third wife left him.

  Though Mitra shied away from schooling, she’d said Riley was a Gadja, an outsider, and Gadjas belonged in the classroom.

  Now he understood why she’d suggested that particular town. Years before her Gypsy heritage had brought her ancestors to the old Etruscan settlement that had become Perugia. The people who’d housed and fed Riley during those years his father struggled had been Mitra’s extended family.

  At first he’d fought his schooling and had gotten into serious trouble on several occasions. But with hindsight he realized she’d done him an enormous favor. He’d learned history and math, and of course how to speak fluent Italian.

  None of that could have been accomplished without money which Riley’s father didn’t have. That meant someone else had to have put up the funds, probably at great personal sacrifice. Only one person would have cared enough about Riley to do that.

  Once he’d revisited his old haunts, one of the men he remembered recognized him and gave him directions to her apartment. Thankful she was still alive, he hurried to her door and knocked. A deep voice called out in Romany, “Who’s there?”

  He answered back in kind. “Your Gadja child!”

  In a mome
nt Mitra opened the door. She was a medium sized woman in her late seventies now. She wore a familiar looking purple scarf around her hair which was turning white, but her black eyes were as alert as ever. They studied him with the same intensity that used to make him feel guilty if he’d done something wrong.

  “You—” she whispered as if she’d seen a ghost.

  He smiled. “You remember.” He handed her a bouquet of lavender flowers he’d bought at a stall near the bottom of the hill.

  She clutched them to her bosom. “Who could forget such a beautiful face? Now you are a beautiful man.”

  With her free hand she touched his cheek where the skin had been grafted. “I saw you in the tea leaves. I saw fire. Life has been hard for you.”

  “My father died last year.”

  She nodded, “I know. Come in.”

  Though modest, her place appeared comfortable. She’d decorated the living room in the same vivid purple color he recalled seeing in her tsara.

  “Sit down.”

  Riley complied while she put the flowers in a vase on her small dining table. Then she sank into the black hand-painted rocking chair he’d admired as a youngster. “How is it you have come to call on an old woman after all this time?”

  “I meant to visit you long before now, but circumstances made it impossible.”

  “Life with your father has taken its toll on you.”

  “Let’s not talk about me. You look well.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You always were a good liar. You see the picture of us there? I felt good then.”

  Riley glanced at the framed photograph propped on the end table. The two of them had sat on a bench inside a doorless closet hooked up with a camera that took their picture at the carnival. He’d been six years old. She’d had black hair. A lump lodged in his throat to think she’d kept that photo all this time.

  “I took care of you from the age of two until seventeen when your father left the circus and dragged you away. He should have left you with me.”

  With that statement he realized what a wrench that must have been for Mitra who’d never married or had children of her own.

  “My father needed me too much and was jealous of my relationship with you. But even if he took me thousands of miles away, I always missed you. Did you get the postcards I sent you through the circus?”

  She motioned to a black lacquered basket sitting on a bookshelf. He walked over to it and looked inside. It appeared she’d kept all of them.

  Pleased to know she’d received them he said, “Why didn’t you get one of your family members to help you write back? I always left an address where you could reach me.”

  “I didn’t want to give your father any more reasons to make your life miserable.”

  Mitra had understood everything.

  “When he didn’t drink, he was all right.”

  “You deserved better,” she muttered.

  Riley took a deep breath before reaching in his pocket for an envelope. Enclosed was Italian lire amounting to five thousand dollars. Anything more and he knew she wouldn’t accept it. He put it on the table next to the picture.

  “What is that?”

  He stared into her eyes. “I know what you did. No amount of money in the world could compensate for the mother’s love you gave to me. This represents a small token of my affection for you.”

  Like Sister Francesca, she turned her head to hide her emotions. Whether disciplined saint or stoic Gypsy, both were women with hearts bigger than their bodies. Riley had been the lucky recipient.

  “You once told me that if you could have your wish, you would buy fresh lavender flowers for your tsara every day. This apartment isn’t the exciting Gypsy wagon I used to play in. It needs flowers. Now you can buy all you want.”

  After an extended silence she fastened haunted eyes on him. “You are in a great hurry, rushing down a path even more dangerous than the one before.”

  He smiled and shook his head. “Did you read death in the tea leaves for me, too?”

  Her expression grew fierce. She made a fist and pounded her breast. “Without a woman in your life, you’re already dead here.”

  “There’ve been plenty of women.”

  A guttural sound came from her throat. “You think I don’t know that? But they’re always the wrong kind for my Gadja!”

  “There was one exception,” he drawled. “But it turns out she didn’t want me.”

  “You mean she had too much respect for herself to fight a duel over you like those two she-cats? Good for her!”

  “You have to admit that duel was really something.” He grinned.

  “Go ahead and laugh, but remember it was I who had to get you out of that filthy prison after the police carted the three of you off.”

  “I could always depend on you, Mitra. You know what the problem was? You were too old for me to marry,” he teased her the way he’d done Sister Francesca.

  She pushed her hand away as if to say, enough! “I have lived too long to find out you are still tormented. Go—”

  Mitra always meant what she said. Nothing about her had changed except that she was twelve years older than the last time he’d seen her. He rose to his feet. “I’m leaving now, but I’ll be back.”

  “Do not come again unless you bring me news I want to hear.”

  His expression sobered. “Unfortunately that’s the one wish I can’t promise to grant you.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  SINCE Ann’s last visit to Turin, a new sign in Italian spanned the two posts of the gate leading into the wooded property where Callie lived with her husband and worked.

  Valentino Animal And Bird Preserve.

  Lower down on one of the posts was another sign printed in Italian, English, French, German and Spanish.

  This preserve is open and free to the public 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Monday through Saturday. Stay on the indicated paths. Do not touch or feed the wildlife.

  Please bring any homeless animals or birds who are sick or injured to the hospital by following the arrows. The hospital is open twenty-four hours.

  After Ann had flown in from Los Angeles last evening, she’d gone straight to bed with a migraine. She always got one on a long plane ride. But this afternoon she was feeling much better and decided to take two-and-half-month-old Anna for a walk in her stroller before she got hungry for her next bottle.

  To Ann’s amusement, Chloe, her sister’s pug, and Valentino, Nicco’s boxer, decided to join her.

  The four of them had started out along a private footpath at the rear of the small Baroque palace which eventually led through a security gate to the street. From there they circled partway round the property until she came to the public entrance to the preserve.

  Following the arrows she headed for the eighteenth century hunting lodge located on the former royal estate. It had been converted to a hospital and stables. Callie did the main of her veterinarian work there.

  When any animals or birds were dropped off with special nursing needs, she took them to the west wing of the palace. Nicco had remodeled several of the rooms into a kennel to board the sick or injured wildlife during their convalescence.

  If the animal or bird could be saved, Callie brought them back to health. Then they were freed to live in the huge preserve with its giant trees, greenery and small fresh water lakes donated to the public by Nicco’s younger brother Enzo, the ruling prince of the House of Tescotti.

  Though Ann’s agent had given her a hard time about her former willingness to do anything to get noticed by a talent scout, she wasn’t sorry she’d entered for the Who Wants to Marry a Prince? benefit.

  In begging Callie to take Ann’s place at the last second because of an emergency, her sister had ended up married to the elder Tescotti prince who’d renounced his title so he could lead a normal life. Callie and Nicco were now a divinely happy working couple with a precious daughter and two pets they doted on.

  Ann wanted that same kind of happiness. After being
around them again last night, she realized she needed to end it with Colin. He had many wonderful qualities, but the fire simply wasn’t there. To go on seeing him would be cruel. For both their sakes it was time to end it.

  Only one man had ever made her feel she was about to go up in flames, and he’d been able to accomplish that by simply looking at her with those silvery eyes. But he was the kind of man who set every woman’s heart on fire. A rogue she’d instinctively known was not husband material.

  She may have made a lot of mistakes in her life, but getting involved with Don Juan incarnate wasn’t one of them, thank heaven!

  While she stood there on the path wondering how to tell Colin the truth so it would hurt him the least, Valentino forged ahead. He knew exactly where to find his mistress. Chloe followed wherever Valentino went, prancing like a deer.

  “Come on, Anna. We’re going to have to hurry to catch up with them.”

  Halfway to the lodge she saw a dark head peer around the trunk of a massive chestnut tree. It was a boy of olive complexion and curly black hair who couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve. He was too thin for the worn-out white T-shirt and baggy pants he was wearing. His solemn black eyes swallowed up his piquant face.

  Intrigued, she called out “Buon Giorno!” in her best Italian. Ever since her sister’s marriage, she’d been studying the beautiful language on the side. If Callie was already speaking it fluently, so could she in time.

  Her greeting must have frightened him because he disappeared behind the tree without saying anything. He was supposed to stay on the path. No doubt he’d come to the preserve without supervision. Taking it upon herself to investigate, she let go of the stroller.

  Before she could reach him, he darted off in another direction, making it impossible for her to catch up to him. As she turned on her heel to get back to Anna, she saw a small black basket with a lid at the base of the tree. It wasn’t like any workmanship she’d ever seen.

  Curious, she picked it up and lifted the lid to see inside. As far as she could tell it was a baby squirrel, but it lay so still she had no idea if it was alive or not.