Harvest Moon (20 page)

And she did forget about it, and everything else, once she lay in bed with Aaron, welcoming him into her arms and into her body. Their lovemaking was a prolonged, tender joining, and when they finally released their dammed up passions both were filled with an amazing sense of completeness they had never experienced before.

Regina left the bed at sunrise and managed to complete her morning toilette without waking Aaron. It was Sunday morning, and she wanted to prepare breakfast for him for the first time.

Her step was light and carefree as she practically skipped down the staircase, stopping only to pick up the small sequined bag she had dropped the night before.

She walked into the kitchen and stopped abruptly. Magda was there, filling a coffeepot with water. It wasn’t seven o’clock, and she hadn’t expected to see the housekeeper before that time. The petite woman turned and stared at her, her gaze widening in surprise.

Regina gave her a warm smile.
“Bom dia
, Magda.”

“
Bom dia
, Senhora Spencer.”

Walking across the kitchen, Regina placed her evening bag on a countertop. “You don’t have to make breakfast for Senhor Spencer this morning. I’m going to do it.”

Magda stared at her, unmoving. “I always make Senhor Spencer’s breakfast.”

“Not this morning. I’d like to surprise
my husband
—” The instant the two words were out of her mouth she knew she thought
of Aaron Spencer not only as the father of her unborn child, but as the man she would exchange vows with.

Magda shook her head as if she did not understand. “I’m sorry, Senhora, but I will make the breakfast.”

Regina knew the housekeeper understood what she was saying. She had learned enough basic Portuguese from the young man who helped her in the garden to communicate with most Brazilians.

“I
will
cook,” she said firmly. “You may go back home.”

Magda put down the coffeepot, at the same time mumbling angrily under her breath. Regina stared, her mouth gaping when she recognized a curse she had heard two men exchange during a heated argument when she’d walked down a street in Salvador.

“What did you say?”

Magda spun around, her dark eyes narrowing with resentment. “
Nada
, Senhora Spencer.” There was no mistaking the facetiousness in the title.

“Senhora Pires, I would like to see you—alone!”

Both women jumped at the low, angry sound of Aaron’s voice. Neither had heard him when he walked into the kitchen.

“Agora.”
Even though he hadn’t raised his voice, Magda flinched. He wanted to see her
now!

Regina took a step toward Aaron, hoping to explain to him that Magda probably hadn’t understood her, but he shot her a warning glance which shouted
Don’t interfere
, and she wouldn’t.

Her gaze softened as it met Magda’s when she followed Aaron out of the kitchen.

Aaron waited for the housekeeper to walk into his study before he closed the door. He gestured to the chair beside his desk. “Please sit,” Magda nodded, taking the chair.

Waiting until she was seated, Aaron sat down behind the desk and laced his fingers together as he stared from under lowered lids at the woman who had come to work for the da Costas the year he turned twenty. He had always found her cooperative and
efficient, and there was never a time since his stepmother-aunt had passed away that he’d ever found fault with her household duties.

Except now.

“Did you not understand Senhora Spencer when she said she would prepare breakfast for me?”

Magda kept her gaze fixed on her folded hands on her lap. “I understood, Senhor Spencer.”

His forehead furrowed in a frown. “Then why did you not do as she asked?”

“But I always prepare your breakfast for you.”

His frown deepened. “That was in the past, Magda. If Senhora Spencer elects to prepare breakfast, then I don’t want you to challenge her. She is mistress of this house, and her word is final. Do you understand?”

She nodded, raising her head and giving him a direct stare. “Yes.”

He offered her a gentle smile, his eyes crinkling attractively. “I’ve been thinking about giving you more time off.” Her eyes widened with this disclosure. “From now on you will work from Monday through Thursday.”

“You do not need me on Fridays?”

He shook his head. “No.” He had decided to cut back his own work schedule. He was committed to the three days at the hospital, but now he limited his involvement with the research institute to one day. Medical research was an ongoing laborious task, and his need to care for Regina was much more immediate.

What he did not want to acknowledge was his fear—a fear that she, like his mother, would not survive childbirth. The fear surfaced when he least expected it, leaving him shaking and feeling powerless despite his medical training.

Magda forced a smile. “Thank you, Senhor Spencer.”

“You’re welcome, Magda.”

He waited for the tiny woman to leave, then sat for several
minutes staring at the closed door. A foreign emotion had not permitted him to fire Magda though he registered the slur she made about Regina. It was as if something had swept away the red-hot fury, temporarily paralyzing his tongue.

He suspected Magda resented Regina’s presence. For more than three years no other woman had occupied the house, and she had probably come to think of herself as mistress of the da Costa estate.

Aaron closed his eyes, shaking his head slowly. If Regina Spencer did not become mistress of his house, no other woman would ever claim that status.

R
egina sat at the dressing table in the expansive dressing room, outlining her lips with a brown liner before filling them in with a flattering, orange-brown color. A gleam of anticipation glimmered in her dark eyes as she looked forward to spending the afternoon with Jeannette Benedetti. They had agreed Jeannette would come to the da Costa estate for brunch for their first social engagement.

Surveying her face, Regina was pleased with the results. She had had her hair trimmed the day before, when she went to Salvador with Aaron for her monthly checkup with Dr. Nicolas Benedetti. Her trip to the hair salon was followed up with an afternoon of shopping for Christmas gifts for family members, and instead of waiting for Aaron to drive her back home she had secured the services of a taxi for the return trip. She offered the overly polite, friendly driver a generous tip, prompting him to propose his services as an on-call driver. She accepted his pager number, promising to call him whenever the need arose. Having a
private driver at her disposal would eliminate the need for Aaron to purchase a car for her personal use.

The light from a lamp on the dressing table glinted off the stones on the ring on her left hand, and she stared down at Arlene Spencer’s ring. She had promised herself she would only wear it the night of Jeannette’s surprise party, but two days had passed since that event. Twisting the wide band around her finger, she pulled it off and left it on the table.

Rising to her feet, she made her way over to the armoire where her clothes were stored, opening one of many small drawers. The sequined purse she had carried to the dinner party lay beside another covered with a profusion of black bugle beads. She picked up the purse, retreated to her bedroom, and poured its contents out on the antique quilt covering the large bed. A jeweled compact, tube of lipstick, and a small sable brush lay on the bed covering. Vertical lines appeared between her eyes as she shook the purse vigorously. The ring was missing!

Closing her eyes, she tried remembering the events wherein Aaron had removed Oscar’s ring from her finger. He had given it back to her, and she had dropped it into the purse, she was certain. But then she remembered dropping the purse on the staircase when he carried her up the stairs to their bedroom later that night.

She opened her eyes. However, she had found the purse the following morning in the exact place where she had dropped it, and she was sure it hadn’t opened to spill its contents on the staircase.

A lump rose in her throat. The ring was her last inanimate link with Oscar Spencer, and she wasn’t ready to let him go—not yet. There were times when she wondered why she had not accepted Aaron’s marriage proposal, rationalizing there was no rush to marry him because she was carrying his child. On the other hand, there were occasions when she believed the enmity between Aaron and Oscar continued despite the latter’s death.
After all, Oscar had married the first woman Aaron had ever loved. And the memory of a first love usually did not fade—not even with time.

Her jaw hardened as she returned to the dressing room and retrieved Arlene’s ring. It was safer on her finger than lying around. She intended as soon as Aaron returned from the hospital to ask him if he had removed the ring from her purse.

She made her way down to the kitchen to solicit Magda’s assistance to set the table on the pergola. After their Sunday morning confrontation Magda had come to her and apologized profusely. She accepted the apology, with a promise it would never occur again.

Taking several steps back from the table in the pergola, Regina surveyed her handiwork. The round wooden table was set with a sunny, yellow linen tablecloth with matching napkins. Blooming yellow tea roses entwined with ivy, climbed over the trellis, filling the warm air with their delicate floral scent.

A closet off the kitchen contained century-old sets of china, silver, crystal, and linens, and she had selected a place setting of bone china with sprigs of yellow flowers circling the edges and sterling silverware with heavy handles designed with an elaborate baroque design.

She had spent the morning preparing a menu which was certain to surprise her guest, hoping to bring a touch of the American South to Bahia, Brazil. The sound of voices filtered in the warm summer air, and Regina turned to find Magda escorting Jeannette into the pergola.

“What’s up, Girlfriend?” Jeannette asked, grinning broadly.

Regina hugged her new friend, returning the smile. “We’re having soul food for lunch,” she whispered close to her ear.

Jeannette pulled back, her mouth gaping in surprise. “Oh, no you didn’t!” she exclaimed once she found her voice. “What did you make?”

“Oven-fried chicken, cornbread, sweet potatoes, and steamed
kale. I couldn’t find any collard or mustard greens, so the kale was the next best substitute.”

Jeannette’s head bobbed up and down in slow motion as she wrinkled her nose. “Did you slip any smoked meat in the kale?”

“I put just a sliver in, for seasoning purposes only,” she confirmed, feeling like a conspirator. “You know your husband’s warnings about sodium intake.”

Waving a hand, Jeannette glanced at the table set with the heirloom china, crystal, and covered silver serving dishes. “Nicolas can be a pain in the behind when he wants to. My blood pressure is normal, and my feet and legs haven’t swelled, so I don’t know why he monitors my diet so closely.” She glanced down at the ballet slippers on Regina’s narrow feet. “And judging from the spikes you were wearing Saturday night I know you haven’t been retaining fluid.”

Regina nodded. “I’m giving myself until Christmas for the heels, then I’m going to put them away for a while.” Taking Jeannette’s hand, she led her to the table. “Let’s sit and eat before everything gets cold.”

Jeannette Benedetti sat down, visually admiring her hostess. This Regina Spencer looked vastly differently from the one she had met at her dinner party. She looked younger, almost too young for Aaron Spencer. A pair of slim, black Capri pants she had paired with a tailored, white linen smock concealed her physical condition. Pregnancy agreed with her. Her skin was clear, her eyes bright, and her coiffed hair full and lustrous. Jeannette had been as surprised as her husband when Nicolas revealed that Aaron had married and his bride was expecting a child.

Jeannette took a forkful of each portion, shaking her head in reverence. “Girl, you can cook for me anytime. Where did you learn to cook like this?”

Regina raised her goblet filled with chilled lemonade and took a sip. “My father. He won’t admit it, but he’s always been a
frustrated chef. I don’t know how he does it, but he manages to make grilled franks taste wonderful.”

Smiling, Jeannette stared at Regina over the rim of her own goblet of lemonade. “Does Aaron cook?”

“Yes. And very well.”

“It seems as if you married a man like your father.”

Regina’s expression sobered when she analyzed Jeannette’s statement. Aaron was more like her father than she realized. Both were tall and powerfully built. And whenever Aaron sat and draped one leg over his knee the motion was the same graceful movement she had seen Martin Cole execute over and over.

Even their personalities were more similar than dissimilar. Aaron saw to her every need in the manner that her father had taken, and continued to take, care of her mother. The most important factor was that they were honorable men, and she knew if she married Aaron it would be for a lifetime.

“You’re right about that,” she confirmed with a bright smile.

“I don’t like spreading gossip, but you have to know that Aaron was quite the bachelor before he married you.” Jeannette had lowered her voice. “I don’t mean that he ran around with a lot of women, because he didn’t. Some women were just downright shameless whenever they tried coming on to him.”

“What did they do?” Regina did not know why she’d asked the question, but a part of her always wanted to know more about the man she now shared a house with before he had come into her life.

“It wasn’t so much a
they
as it was one person in particular.”

“Elena?”

Sitting up straighter, Jeannette stared directly at her. “You know about Elena?”

“What I do know is that we will never become friends.”

Wiping a corner of her mouth with the napkin, Jeannette
frowned. “I’m surprised Dr. Elena Carvalho hasn’t come at you with a scalpel.”

Regina felt a flicker of apprehension race up her spine. “She’s a doctor?”

“Aaron didn’t tell you?”

“Aaron and I do not discuss the
lady
.”

Jeannette registered the sarcasm immediately. “Nicolas and I have had long, heated conversations about her. She’s one of the best surgeons on the continent, but she’s also obsessed with Dr. Aaron Spencer. She had a prestigious position at a major hospital in Rio, but transferred to Salvador about eighteen months ago after she met Aaron at a medical conference. He was dating someone else, but that ended a week after Elena joined the staff.”

“Was the other woman also a doctor?”

Jeannette shook her head. “No. She was a television news commentator.”

“What did Elena do to her?”

“No one knows. The word was she handed in her resignation and left the country. I really can’t say that Aaron and Elena were ever a couple, because the few times I saw them together I realized there were no sparks, no passion. I watched him with you Saturday night. Seeing the way he touched you and looked at you said more than a spoken admission of love. We had no idea that when he took a personal leave of absence for more than a month it was to get married.”

“Aaron is a very private person,” she said truthfully—so private he would not permit his full-time household staff to reside under his roof.

It was apparent Aaron had not told his friends and colleagues that he had left Bahia to bury his father—subsequently seducing his father’s widow.

“How did you find your way to Bahia via North Carolina?” she queried Jeannette, smoothly changing the topic.

Jeannette’s expression brightened. “I came here for Carnival three years ago and met Nicky. I was a partner with three of my college soros in a travel agency, and each year one of us visited a different place to update our travel packages.

“We offered trips to Rio for Carnival, then decided to add Bahia. I was chosen to cover the festivities, and after several hours of dancing and mingling with local Bahians and visitors I was literally cooling my heels in a small restaurant. I had taken my sandals off and put my aching feet up on a chair when Nicolas Benedetti walked in with two of his friends. They were seated at a table next to mine. He kept staring and smiling at me while I tried ignoring this hulk of a man who looked like the
after
for a Rogaine ad. I much preferred his taller, darker friend, whom I later discovered was Dr. Aaron Spencer.”

Regina shifted a naturally arching eyebrow at this disclosure. She remembered Aaron saying that he stayed away from Carnival because it had become too boisterous for him.

“How did you finally meet Nicolas?”

“He walked over to my table, sat down, and began massaging my bare, dusty, aching feet. I was too shocked to do anything but stare at this gentle giant while he whispered softly in Portuguese about how much he liked my face. He said it reminded him of a beautiful sculpture he had on a wall in his house.”

“You understood Portuguese?”

Jeannette nodded. “I was a language major in college. At that time I spoke fluent Spanish, French, and Italian. My Portuguese was limited, but my knowledge of Spanish helped a lot. I’ve lived here for two years, and there are times I still have to grope for the words because I find myself thinking in Spanish. Nicky was talking about me coming to his house to see his sculpture when most guys I knew would talk about taking a girl home to see the etchings on their ceilings.”

Leaning forward, her eyes shining with anticipation, Regina said, “What happened after that?”

“I turned him down, but hadn’t noticed that his two friends left the restaurant without him. When I told him why I was in Bahia, he offered to act as my tour guide. We spent the next six hours together, talking and laughing. He took me back to my hotel, and as we stood outside the door to my room his beeper went off. I let him in to use the telephone to return the page, and when he hung up I saw a very different Nicolas Benedetti. Gone was the smiling, joking man, and in his place a very serious Dr. Benedetti. He told me he had to get to the hospital to deliver a baby.”

“He hadn’t told you he was a doctor?”

Shaking her head, Jeannette said, “No.”

“What happened after that?”

“He came back to the hotel around four o’clock the next morning, exhausted. His patient had been unable to deliver vaginally, and he’d had to perform a C-section. He laid across my bed and slept for six hours without waking up. When he woke up I ordered breakfast for us and we spent the day together until he left to go back to the hospital.

“I saw him every day until it was time for me to return to the States, and in all of the time we spent together he never tried to touch or kiss me. At first I thought that he hadn’t found me attractive, but a month later he called me and he said he was sorry he let me go without kissing me. I told him that I would give him the opportunity when I came back to Bahia for the next Carnival.”

“Did you?”

“No. I came back sooner. Nicky called me every Sunday night for four months, and we’d talk for hours. Then one day without warning I decided to fly down and surprise him. I told myself I was crazy, but I didn’t care. I walked into the hospital, went to his office, and asked to see him. His bushy eyebrows shot up so far on his forehead that I thought they would never come down. I stared at him, realizing he looked nothing like the men I had
ever dated in the States, but at that moment I didn’t care because I had fallen in love with him.

“I spent the week with him at his house, and before I left Bahia to fly back to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, I had accepted his proposal to become Mrs. Nicolas Benedetti. My girlfriends thought I had lost my mind until Nicky came to the States to see me that Christmas. I invited them over to my apartment for a Kwanzaa party, and showed them my engagement ring. Needless to say, my three very beautiful, unattached girlfriends left later that night just a tad jealous.”