The Count's Christmas Baby Read online

  Mr. Degenoli appeared so shaken, she decided to end their inane question-and-answer session. Without hesitation she reached for her purse and pulled out a brown envelope. “Here—” Sami handed it to him. “I brought this to show my baby’s grandfather. It will explain everything.”

  He eyed her suspiciously before he opened it and pulled out the birth certificate.

  “As you can see there, I named my baby Ric, after his daddy. Ric Argyle Degenoli. You see, b-both Ric and his father, Alberto, were caught up in the same avalanche I was buried in last January.” Her voice faltered. “I assume Alberto was a relative of yours. Maybe your uncle?”

  Her uninvited guest didn’t make a sound. It led her to believe he was finally listening to her. “I’d just stopped in one of the hotels for a minute to check it out and get a hot drink in the dining room. As I was about to go outside again to do a little sightseeing, the avalanche swept through the three-story hotel like a supersonic freight train.

  “Ric and I were entombed for several hours. I knew he’d died before I lost total consciousness, but until you told me at the police station, I didn’t realize Alberto had been killed, too.

  “After I woke up in a clinic, I assumed Ric’s father had survived, because only one male victim named Degenoli was listed among the fatalities. That was Ric, of course. His father must have died later from his injuries, after the list was put out.”

  Sami couldn’t stop the tears from spurting. “It was a nightmarish time. My sister came to Innsbruck to get me and fly home with me. I didn’t realize until six weeks later that I was pregnant. At that point I determined that one day I’d look up Alberto and let him know he had a grandchild. But as you’ve let me know, this trip was in vain.”

  The man listening to her story had gone eerily quiet.

  “My sister calls my son Ricky, but I love the Italian version. I named him after his heroic father to honor him.”

  “Heroic?” he questioned in a gravelly voice.

  “Yes. One day when Ric is old enough, I’ll tell him how courageous his father was.”

  “In what way?”

  “You would have to have been there to understand. Ric was an amazing man. After the snow buried us, he kept me from losing my mind. You see, I suffer from claustrophobia. You can’t imagine what being trapped did to me. I wouldn’t be alive if it hadn’t been for him.

  “We were total strangers sealed in a black tomb together. We heard each other moan, but had no idea what the other one looked like. I know I was on the verge of a heart attack when he started talking to me and urged me to relax, because he believed we’d get out of there if we didn’t panic. He pointed out that by some miracle, we were trapped by beams that kept the whole weight from falling on us, providing us a pocket of air and room to wiggle.

  “At first I thought I was dead and that he was an angel the way he took care of me and never let me panic. But when he reached for me and held me in his arms, promising me we’d be all right, I knew he was mortal.

  “His only thought was to protect me. At first his kisses on my cheek held back my terror. I returned them, needing his comfort while we lay there slowly suffocating. We talked a little. He told me he’d just come from a wedding with his father, Alberto. I explained I was on a trip, but we didn’t go into details.

  “As time went on and no help came, we realized we were going to die. At that point we drew warmth and comfort from each other’s bodies.” She took a fortifying breath. “We made love. It happened so naturally, it was like a dream. Then I heard a shifting sound. The next thing I knew a piece of wood had pierced his forehead.”

  A sob caught in her throat. “It knocked him unconscious and his warm blood spilled over both of us. I couldn’t get a pulse and knew he was gone. When I woke up in a clinic, the last thing I remembered was that he’d died in my arms.

  “We’d been literally tossed together with the broken walls and furniture in the darkness of a catastrophic avalanche that hit the hotel. But for the time we were together, hanging on to life because we knew they were our last moments on this earth, I felt closer to him than to anyone I’ve ever known.

  “When I look at my adorable Ric, I know I’m seeing his father. My only hope now is to raise him to measure up to the great man who gave him life. I know he was a great man because he was so selfless in the face of terror. He never once thought of himself, only of me. So now I hope that explanation answers your questions, Mr. Degenoli.”

  She stared at the tall figure still standing there. His face had gone ashen. The birth certificate had fallen to the floor. How odd he’d left it there...

  “If you still don’t believe me, then I don’t know what more I can say to convince you. Maybe now you’d answer a question for me. Was Alberto your uncle?”

  “No,” he answered in a voice as deep as a cavern. “He was my father.”

  “Chief Coretti introduced you as Alberto, but that really isn’t your name, is it? He did it to protect you. I can understand that.”

  He moved closer to her. “Let me explain this another way. My father was christened Alberto Enrico Degenoli, and was called Alberto. I was also christened Alberto Enrico Degenoli, but I go by Enrico. However my immediate family calls me...Ric.”

  As Sami stared at him, the world tilted.

  “But you couldn’t be that Ric. I wasn’t able to waken him. He died in my arms—”

  “No, Sami,” he countered in a husky voice. “I’m right here.”

  She was so staggered to hear him use her nickname, she clutched the crib railing with both hands. A small cry escaped her lips. “You’re Ric?” She shook her head, causing her hair to swish against her pale cheeks. “I—I can’t believe this is happening. I—”

  The room started to swim. The next thing Sami knew, she found herself on the bed with the man who’d made her pregnant leaning over her. He sat next to her with his hands on either side of her head. “Stay quiet for a minute. You’ve had another shock.”

  He spoke to her in the compassionate voice she remembered—exactly the way he’d done in the avalanche. With her eyes closed, she could recall everything and was back there with him in spirit.

  But the minute her eyelids fluttered open, she saw a stranger staring down at her. In her psyche Sami knew he was Ric. But she couldn’t credit that the striking, almost forbidding male who’d swept past her at the police station was the same Ric who’d once given her his passion and the will to live.

  * * *

  Sami’s hair spilled onto Ric’s fingers. If he closed his eyes, he could recall the same silky mane he’d played with in the darkness. The strands had been as fragrant as every part of her face and body. It was the same now, but at the time he’d had no idea its coloring resembled spun gossamer.

  Still noticing her pallor, he got up from the bed to get her a cup of water. When he returned from the bathroom, she sat up. He handed it to her and she drank thirstily. “Thank you,” she whispered in a tremulous voice before lying back again like a spent flower.

  Ric put the empty cup on the side table, then sank down next to her once more. “Our survival was a miracle,” he began.

  “Yes. I’m still trying to deal with the fact that you didn’t die and are here where I can see you.”

  She wasn’t the only one. “When we were trapped together, I would have sold my soul to know what you looked like,” he confessed emotionally. “Feeling you told me that you were a lovely woman, but I must admit that no dreams I’ve had of you could measure up to your living reality.”

  Like someone shell-shocked, she lifted one of her hands to his face in wonder. She traced his features, bringing back memories he would never forget. “Ric—” Her fingers traveled over his lips. “Maybe I’m hallucinating again.”

  He kissed the palm of her hand. “It was never an hallucination. We were mortal then and now.”

  Tears trickled out of the corners of her eyes, eyes that were alive like the green of a tropical rain forest. “When I thought you
were dead, I wanted to die. While you were still breathing, I could hold on. But after that beam hit you and I couldn’t get a response, it was the end of my world.”

  Ric heard the same pain in her voice he’d carried around for months afterward. He studied her facial features, overlaying his memories of her through eyes that could see the throb at the base of her slender throat. Tears trembled on the ends of long dark lashes so unusual on a blonde.

  She kept looking at him with incredulity. “I feel just like I did after the avalanche struck. Maybe I’m hallucinating and none of this is real, but it has to be real because I’m touching you and it’s your voice. You’re actual flesh and blood instead of the stuff of my dreams.”

  “You were the flesh and blood I clung to while we were entombed,” he confessed. “You saved my sanity, too, Sami. Like you, I felt I was in this amazing dream. When we made love, I remember thinking that if it was a dream, I never wanted to wake up from that part of it. Everything about our experience had a surreal quality.”

  Sami wiped the tears off her face. “I know. Until I found out I was pregnant, there were times when I thought I’d made it all up.” She stared at him. “What happened to you after you were rescued?”

  He grasped her hand. “I was told that another few minutes and the medics wouldn’t have been able to revive me. I knew nothing until I woke up in a hospital in Genoa. I was in a coma for two days. When I came out of it, I was surrounded by my family. My first request of the doctor was to find out if you were one of the victims.

  “He came back with the message that you must still be alive because there was no name of Sami or anything close to it on the list of fatalities. After hearing that news, I determined to go after you once I got better. After our family held funeral services for my father, then I started looking for you.”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “Why are you so surprised? What we’d shared together was something so unique, I’ll never forget. But when your name didn’t show up on any established tour-group lists in the area, I had to look further afield. I remembered you’d told me you were from Oakland, California. That’s all I had to go on. I put my people on it while we searched for you for several months.”

  “Oh, Ric—” she cried softly before sliding off the other side of the bed to come around.

  He got to his feet. “You were my first priority, but you weren’t listed in the Oakland phone directory. No flights leaving Austria for the States with your name. No planes arriving in Oakland or San Francisco had a name that could be traced to you. It was as if you’d disappeared off the face of the earth.”

  “That’s because you didn’t know my real name,” she cried out in dismay. “I was nicknamed Sami because my father’s name was Samuel. After my parents died, my grandparents took over raising me and my sister, and my grandfather said I reminded him so much of his son he started calling me Sami, and it stuck.”

  “I thought it had to be short for Samantha, but your passport says otherwise.”

  “That’s what everyone assumes who doesn’t know me. To think you searched all that time for the wrong name. I can’t bear it.”

  He couldn’t either, considering the promise he’d made to his father when they’d gone to Austria for an important family wedding. Ric had done everything humanly possible to find her. When he’d exhausted every avenue to no avail, he’d got on with his life and eventually fulfilled that promise.

  “It’s true I was born and raised in Oakland,” she went on to explain, “but after I went back to college, I started to feel ill and went to a doctor. When he told me I was pregnant, I couldn’t believe it. My sister, Pat, insisted I move to Reno, Nevada, to be with her and her husband. Their travel agency is growing all the time. They’re the ones who gave me a working vacation during my break from college.”

  Nevada... The avalanche had changed both their lives in ways Ric was only beginning to understand. “Were you ill the whole pregnancy?”

  “No. After the morning sickness passed, I didn’t have other problems. Since Pat’s my only family and I wanted to be close to her and their children, I moved to Reno and started classes there. Without my legal name, no wonder you couldn’t trace me.”

  He rubbed his chest absently while he was digesting everything.

  Her anxious gaze fastened on him. ‘Do you have any ill effects from your head wound?”

  “Only the occasional headache,” he answered, touched by her concern.

  “I’m so glad it isn’t worse. That was the most terrifying moment.” Her voice shook.

  “Thankfully, I don’t remember.”

  “I don’t like to think about it. Throughout my pregnancy I decided that after Ric was born and I’d had my six-weeks checkup, I’d take him to Genoa and look up his grandfather. My own parents had already died, and I thought it would be wonderful if Ric grew up knowing he had at least one grandparent who was still alive.” She hugged her arms to her waist. “How tragic you lost your father.”

  “Yes,” he whispered, but right now everything else seemed very far removed.

  “I thought about him all the time,” she said. “Naturally I feared how he would take the news. It might have been the worst thing he could hear, but I hoped it might comfort him a little to know you weren’t alone when you died.”

  Ric’s breath caught. “Ringrazio il cielo you looked for him! Otherwise I would know nothing! Be assured my father would have wanted to be a grandfather to our son.” Once he’d gotten over the shock of learning the circumstances of his grandson’s conception. Ric was still having trouble taking it all in.

  She bit her lip. “I didn’t know the right thing to do. That’s the reason why I was so secretive with the police chief.” Ric warmed to her for her desire to be discreet. “I didn’t want to embarrass your father or cause him pain in front of anyone else. I really thought if I could find him, he’d refuse to believe me and that would be the end of it. But for the baby’s sake, I felt I had to try.

  “When the police chief suggested maybe I had the wrong city, I didn’t know what to believe. I thought you’d told me you were from Genoa. The thought of flying to Geneva and starting another search sounded overwhelming, but I was prepared to do it for your son’s sake. Oh, Ric—”

  The woman he’d been trapped with had to be one in a billion.

  His eyes strayed to the crib. The baby sleeping so peacefully was his son. It was unbelievable! Throwing off his own shock, he walked over to the crib and looked down at the baby—his baby—lying on his back with his arms outstretched, his hands formed into fists.

  “In spite of all that death and destruction coming for us, we managed to produce a son!”

  “Yes.” She’d joined him. “Incredibly, he’s perfect.”

  Ric had thought the same thing the second he’d laid eyes on him. In that moment he’d suffered pain thinking his parent had fathered such a beautiful child with her. Ric had been so convinced of it that he was still having trouble getting a handle on his emotions.

  But it wasn’t his father’s— It was his own!

  His elation was so overpowering, he reached for the baby and held him against his shoulder, uncaring that he’d wake him up again. Ric wanted him to wake up so he could get a good look at him. Warmth from the little bundle seeped into his body’s core, bonding them as father and son.

  The baby must have sensed someone different was holding him. He started wiggling and moved his dark silky head from side to side. He smelled sweet like his mother. He was such a strong little thing that Ric was forced to support his head and neck with more strength. He lowered him in the crook of his arm so he could pick out the unique features that proclaimed him a Degenoli and an Argyle. Both sets of genes were unmistakable.

  “Ciao, bambino mio. Welcome to my world.” He kissed his cheeks and forehead. His olive-skinned baby grew more animated. Ric laughed when those arms and legs moved and kicked with excitement. The first Degenoli in this generation to live.

  Hi
s sister, Claudia, had barely learned she was pregnant before she’d suffered a miscarriage. It had happened soon after she’d heard their father had been killed in the avalanche. His sorrow for her and her husband, Marco’s, loss would always hurt, but as he looked down at his son, there wasn’t room in his soul for anything but joy.

  When Ric looked up, he caught Sami’s tear-filled eyes fastened on the two of them. After wondering what she’d looked like, he couldn’t get his fill of staring at her.

  “I can’t fathom it that you’re alive, that you’re holding him,” she cried. “When I left the police station, I was heartbroken. If I didn’t find Alberto in Geneva, it meant going home knowing my baby would never know the Italian side of his family. What if you hadn’t followed me here?” she cried.

  “Nothing could have stopped me. I had to find out who you really were because I couldn’t believe there was another woman alive who sounded like you.”

  “I know what you mean. The second you spoke to me, I should have stopped trying to be cautious and just called you Ric to see what you’d do. It would have saved us both so much trouble.”

  Ric would have responded, but his cell phone rang. It jerked him back to reality. He had a strong idea who it was.

  “I’ll take the baby while you answer it.” Sami plucked the baby out of his arms and walked the floor with him.

  He watched his little boy burrow his head in her neck. The action brought a lump to his throat before he wheeled away from her and checked the caller ID. Though he’d finally come to the end of his search for the woman named Sami, time had passed during that search and other dynamics had been set in motion.

  Ric groaned when he thought of how this news was going to affect negotiations with Eliana’s father, let alone with Eliana herself. Theirs was no love match, but news of an unknown baby would be difficult for any bride-to-be to handle. He’d need to deal with her carefully. As for his own family, they would be in shock.

  “Eliana?” he said after clicking on.

  “I thought you would call me before you left the office, but your secretary said you weren’t there.”