A Marriage Made in Italy. Rebecca Winters

Newburgh, New York...

      He lifted his head. “Why didn’t you leave this card at the bank with the security man you talked to?”

      Without hesitation, she said, “Because a call to my work verifying my employment would let everyone know where I am. Since my whereabouts are no one’s business, I wish it to remain that way. The fact is, I’m on vacation and it’s almost over.”

      He slipped the card into his pocket. “You’ll be returning to Newburgh?”

      “Yes. I’ve talked to as many people with the last name Donatello as I’ve been able to locate in Rimini. So far I haven’t found the information I’ve been seeking.”

      “Or a missing person, maybe?” he prodded. “A man, perhaps?” The question slipped out, once again surprising him. As if he cared who she was looking for...

      Her gaze never wavered. “I suppose that’s a natural assumption a man might make, but the answer is no. Not every woman is looking for a man, whether it be for pleasure or for marriage...an institution that in my opinion is overvaunted.”

      She sounded like Leon, only in reverse, increasing his interest.

      “To be specific, the manager at Donatello Diamonds directed me to the Malatesta Bank, but it seems I’ve come to a dead end there, too. Since you prefer not to tell me your name, at least let me thank you for the courtesy of coming to the pension to let me know you can’t help me. I can cross Donatello Diamonds off my list of possibilities.”

      Like a man concluding a business meeting, she put out her hand for Leon to shake. His closed around hers. Unexpected warmth shot up his arm, catching him off guard before he released her. “What will you do now?”

      “I’ll continue to search until my time runs out in three days. Goodbye.” She turned and got in her rental car without asking him for the card back. He watched until she drove to the end of the alley and turned onto the street.

      Her card burned a hole in his pocket. He pulled it out. If he phoned the number on the back of it, he’d find out if she’d been telling the truth about her job. But since he was a person who always jealously guarded his own privacy, he could relate to her desire to keep her private life to herself.

      No matter what, this woman meant nothing to him. If she’d come on a fishing expedition, he hadn’t given her any information she could use to cause trouble.

      By the time he’d driven back to the villa, his thoughts were on his daughter. It wasn’t until later, after he’d kissed her good-night and was doing laps in the pool, that images of the American woman kept surfacing. There was something familiar about her that wouldn’t leave him alone.

      A nagging voice urged him to phone the head office of TCCPI, wherever it was located, to find out if she’d fabricated an elaborate lie including a business card. Leon could do that before he went to bed. If he didn’t make the call, he’d never get to sleep.

      CHAPTER TWO

      EARLY WEDNESDAY MORNING, Belle came awake after a restless night. The tall nameless man in the light blue silk suit who’d tracked her down in the alley last evening was without question the most dangerously striking male she’d ever met in her life.

      With those aquiline features, he embodied much more than the conventional traits one normally attributed to a gorgeous man, such as handsome, dashing or exciting. She couldn’t believe it, but she’d been attracted to him. Strongly attracted. It had never happened to her before.

      Once he’d called out to her, she’d felt his powerful presence before she’d even turned to study his rock-hard physique. His black hair and olive skin provided the perfect foil for startling gray eyes.

      For him to come from the bank armed with information no one could have known meant he was someone of importance. The fact that her inquiry had brought him to the pension convinced her she’d unwittingly trespassed on ground whose secrets were so dark, they had to be well guarded.

      Who better than the man who’d suddenly appeared like some mysterious prince from this Renaissance city? Just remembering their encounter sent a shiver down the length of her body.

      She was being fanciful, but couldn’t help it. His deep voice with barely a trace of accent in English had agitated her nervous system. Even after twelve hours she could still feel it resonating. Though she’d never forget him, she needed to push thoughts of him to the back of her mind. Her flight home Sunday would be here before she knew it, which meant she needed to intensify her search.

      Once she’d showered down the hall, and had slipped on a short-sleeved, belted white cotton dress, she left the pension armed with her detailed street map and notebook. She’d kept a log of every Donatello name so far. Her destination for the last Donatello she could find in the city of Rimini was Donatello’s Garage.

      After following the directions she’d been given on the phone yesterday, she talked to the manager, who spoke passable English. He told her a man by another name now owned the shop. The original owner, Mr. Donatello, and his wife had both died of old age. They’d had no children who could inherit the garage.

      This was the way it had been going since last Sunday, when she’d started working through the list of Donatellos in the Rimini phone directory. In most cases the people she’d talked to were willing to help her, even going to the trouble of finding someone to help them understand her English.

      They were proud of their genealogy. Many of them told her she could come by their house. The others told her their information over the phone, but so far there were no leads on a woman with the middle or last name Donatello, in her late thirties or early forties, who’d been to New York twenty-six years ago. It was like looking for a needle in the proverbial haystack.

      Resolving not to be dispirited, Belle thanked him and headed for the library near her pension, to do more research on the other nineteen cities and towns within Rimini Province. They were ten to twelve miles apart and had much smaller populations, so there wouldn’t be as many Donatellos to look up. That could be bad, if nothing was discovered about her birth mother.

      En route to the library, Belle stopped at a trattoria for breakfast and filled up so she wouldn’t have to eat until dinnertime. She would be doing a lot more driving over the next few days. Before she left Rimini, she approached the woman in the research department, who spoke excellent English and knew she was looking for Donatello names.

      “I have one more question, if you don’t mind. Could you tell me anything about the Malatesta Bank?” The striking Italian who’d shown up at the pension had refused to leave her mind.

      “How much time do you have?”

      That’s what Belle had thought. “Yesterday the manager of Donatello Diamonds directed me to the bank to get information, but I learned nothing. Why would he do that? I don’t understand the connection.”

      “The House of Malatesta was an Italian family that ruled over Rimini from 1300 to 1500. There’s too much history since then to tell you in five minutes. But today a member of that old ruling family, Count Sullisto Malatesta, runs the Malatesta Bank, one of the two largest banks in Italy. They own many other businesses as well.

      “Another, lesser ruling family of the past, the House of Donatello, made their fortune in diamonds, but over years of poor management it started to dwindle. Some say it would have eventually failed if Count Malatesta, then a widower, hadn’t merged with the House of Donatello.

      “He saved it from ruin by marrying Princess Luciana Donatello, the heiress, whose father was purported to have died of natural causes.” The woman lowered her voice. “I say purported because some people insisted both he and his wife had been murdered, either by another faction of the Donatello family, or by the Malatesta family. Soon thereafter, the count made his power grab by marrying her, but nothing definite came of the investigation to prove or disprove the theories.”

      Belle shuddered. The dark stranger from the bank had looked that dangerous to her.