Pride (In Wilde Country Book 1) (3 page)

The Wildes sisters smiled. After a couple of seconds, so did the others.

The atmosphere in the room underwent another subtle change. Hands dropped from hips, mouths relaxed, faces took on a kind of ease.

“It would seem he treated us all with indifference,” Luca said, after a minute.

“He was probably afraid to spend too much time in any one place. He might have said something that would give the game away.”

“It is not easy to be a cheat,” Matteo said. “And a liar.” He tucked his hands in his trouser pockets. “That endless it-wasn’t-my-fault story he told us last night. How he was torn apart by his brother’s death, how his father blamed him for it, how he tried to set things right by living the life his brother would have lived and, oh yes, in the process, he made a fool of our mother.”

“Of ours, too,” Travis said.

“You need to know that our mother was a good woman,” Bianca said. Everyone turned toward her. “Her name is—was—Angelica. She was a wonderful person, a devoted mother, and her sole mistake was believing the lies told her by that—that
stronzo
, your—
our
father.”

“What does that mean?
Stronzo
?” Jake demanded.

“It means—”

“It means ‘asshole,” Emily said. Luca’s gaze flashed to her. She smiled tentatively, lifted her shoulders in a little shrug. “I’m good at languages.”

“He is, indeed, an asshole. And a
bastardo
.”

“Wrong,” Caleb said. “He’s not a bastard. Look around you, Luca. There are ten of us in this room, hell,
ten
of us, and we have the same father.” He gave a choked laugh. “Dear old dad isn’t the
bastardo
. We are. Maybe not all of us, legally, but the word suits us better than it suits him.”

“
Bastardi
,” Emily said. They all looked at her. She blushed and spread her hands in front of her. “Sorry.”

“No,” Jake said, “don’t apologize, Em. There’s nothing wrong with getting the syntax right…”

There was a communal groan, followed by laughter. It was obviously a Wilde family joke, but even Luca found himself on the verge of a smile. Then his smile faded.

“You were not happy to see us last night.”

“Well, no,” Travis said. “Did you expect us to be? What if we showed up in Italy—sorry, Sicily—walked in on you four and said, ‘Hey, guess what? Your old man is our old man.’
Would that have set off cheers?”

Luca gnawed on his bottom lip.

“No,” he said slowly, “but—”

There was a tick of silence. Luca looked from one Wilde to the other. They still looked angry, but now he understood that their anger was not meant for him.

And his anger was not meant for them.

The enemy was John Hamilton Wilde.

Four star general. Or brilliant government spy. Take your pick. Whichever you chose didn’t matter, because they were one and the same man—and that man was the enemy of them all.

“And you say he’s gone?” Luca said. “Do you know where to?”

“No idea,” said Jake.

“Headed back to DC, maybe,” said Travis.

“He probably figures he won us over with that dog-and-pony show last night, that endless drivel about the mistakes he made when he was a kid, how the life he led never felt as if it were really his,” Caleb added.

“You know,” Emily said carefully, “I mean, not that I’m excusing him or anything…” Every eye in the room fixed on her. Her chin lifted. Bianca had that same habit, Luca realized, that uplifted, defiant chin. “I’m just saying, it’s a sad story when you think about it.”

“There is some truth to that,” Bianca said, just as carefully.

“
Old Yeller
was a sad story,” Lissa said coldly, “and I had a lot more sympathy for the dog than for our father.”

“Old Yeller?” Alessandra asked.

“Dog saves family. Gets rabies. Bad ending.”

“At least the dog did something heroic. Our father is nothing but a—”

“—coward,” Matteo snapped. “It’s the reason he was never honest with any of us or with our mothers.”

The three Wilde brothers murmured their agreement. So did Luca. And, as he looked around the room, he felt the knot in his belly easing.

Five men. Five women. Strangers until last night. In actuality, strangers still and yet—and yet, they were not strangers. Anyone observing them would surely see that they were not strangers at all.

They were sisters and brothers, joined by blood.

It was the first time he had permitted himself to see it that way.

Learning that your father had a secret family across the ocean, that he had other children, another wife, was hard.

To accept that truth was even harder.

Once he, Matteo, Alessandra and Bianca had done so, they’d stopped thinking of themselves as Wildes. Actually, Luca and Matteo had given up the name several years ago, long before they’d learned their father’s secrets, but not calling themselves Wildes didn’t change the fact that they were Wildes, every one of them.

Luca considered saying that aloud, but perhaps it was too soon. Perhaps it was enough that they were not snarling at each other anymore.

He wasn’t a fool.

He had no illusions, no thought that the ten of them would gather around a campfire any time soon and sing
Kumbaya
the way he’d seen people do in an American movie when he was a kid. Years of bitterness still separated them; it would take time to overcome that.

“You know what would make me feel better?” Jake said. “If he just admitted that he wronged us instead of trying to justify what he did.”

“Yes,” Travis said. “If he just said, okay, here’s the truth…”

“He can’t handle the truth,” Luca said.

It was vintage Jack Nicholson, only with the faintest possible Italian accent. It startled the Wildes. Hell, it startled Luca. He hadn’t meant to joke, but—

Caleb chuckled.

Travis grinned.

Jake and Matteo smiled.

Emily, Jaimie, Lissa, Bianca and Alessandra laughed out loud.

And, to his own amazement, so did Luca.

It felt great to laugh, as if a heavy weight were easing from his shoulders.

“Not bad,” a voice drawled. “That Nicholson bit, I mean. You want a part in my next movie, I might be able to fix you up with something.”

Luca frowned.

A tall guy was coming toward him. There were other people walking into the room, as well. Three women. Two men besides this one…

But he knew this one.

Not knew him. Recognized him. The voice. The face. The slight limp.

“Nick Gentry,” the guy said.

“The actor?”

Nick smiled. “Lissa’s husband.” He held out his hand. Luca could almost hear all the indrawn breaths. A handshake? Surely, it was far too soon for that…

“Take it from me, dude,” Nick said softly. “You only hurt yourself by hanging on to the past.”

The past, Luca thought. A past that no one in this room had created.

“Luca Bellini,” he said, and clasped the hand that had been extended to him.

* * *

It turned out that Lissa had been up at dawn, baking blueberry muffins.

“When in doubt, eat,” Jake said, smiling across the dining room table at his sister.

Bianca tore off a piece of muffin and buttered it.

“I’d love your recipe. These are so good… What?” she said indignantly, when Matteo snorted.

“Our Bianca collects recipes as some people collect stamps. She loves to own them, but she’s smart enough not to try and use them.”

Everyone laughed, even Bianca.

Luca reached for his coffee.

Amazing.

There was the buzz of conversation all around the table, Wildes talking to Bellinis, Bellinis talking to Wildes, Wilde spouses joining in.

The women were more at ease than the men.

He understood that.

Men were warriors. Women were peacemakers.

Here he was seated right next to Travis, and after a handshake, they’d yet to say more to each other than “pass the sugar.”

Okay. Time to change that.

Luca cleared his throat and looked at Travis.

“So,” he said briskly, “you manage El Sueño?”

Travis nodded. “Yeah. I have my own place, too, but what I do for the one spread is pretty similar to what I do for the other.”

“Spread?”

“Ranch.” Travis reached for his coffee. “Of course, my ranch is nothing like this.”

“Two hundred thousand hectares, yes?”

“If two hundred thousand hectares is half a million acres, yup, that’s El Sueño.”

“There are countries smaller than that.”

Travis laughed. “I’m sure there are.”
“It must be quite a responsibility. Managing such a property.”

“It’s like any other corporate structure. I have people working for me who I trust. They handle a lot of the day-to-day stuff. Well, everything but the horses.”

“
Si
. I saw your horses in the paddocks out back.”

“You saw some of them. There are more running free in the hills for the summer.”

“Morgans?”

Travis raised his eyebrows. “Among others. You know horses?”

It was Luca’s turn to shrug. “A little.”

“Why do I get the feeling
a little
really means much more than that?”

Luca smiled. “Well, I have what you would call a ranch. In Tuscany. I breed Arabians.”

“Magnificent animals.”

“Does your brother breed them, too?”

Luca laughed. “Matteo is into a different kind of horsepower. His passion is Lamborghinis. No, the horses are mine.”

“Are horses your business?”

“A hobby. I spend whatever free time I can manage at the ranch, but it’s never enough.”

“What do you do, then?”

“I design. And build.”

“Build? Houses, you mean?”

“Houses, hotels, commercial properties. In fact, I’ve just opened an office in Manhattan.”

“Ah. You should talk to Marco. Em’s husband. He’s in that same field.”

“Marco? Do you possibly mean Marco Santini? I know the name. He has a fine reputation.”

“Marco did the guest wing you guys stayed in last night.”

“Are you two talking about me?”

Luca and Travis looked toward the other end of the table. Marco Santini, Emily’s husband, smiled at them.

“We were,” Travis said. “Luca’s a builder, too. He says he’s heard of your terrible reputation.”

Luca grinned. “Don’t listen to him,” he said. “Of course I’ve heard of you.”

“Actually,” Marco said, with a little smile, “I have heard of you, too. A fellow Sicilian, a man who owns one of the biggest construction companies in Europe…”

“How nice for you both.”

The female voice, though low-pitched, even husky, cut through the pleasant conversational buzz.

All heads swiveled toward the door where a woman stood, hands on her hips, legs apart. She was tall—five nine, five ten, Luca thought as he stared at her.

Hell.

A man would have to be dead not to stare.

She was beautiful.

Long, straight, lustrous black hair pulled back from her face. Eyes the color of the Mediterranean. Cheekbones that could cut glass. An elegant nose above a full mouth.

His glance dropped lower.

The rest of her was as stunning as her face.

High breasts pressed against a white T-shirt. Curved hips cradled by faded jeans. Long legs that ended in what seemed to be the sole deviation from her no-nonsense look: chestnut leather boots with heels so thin and high no cowboy in his right mind would ever have worn them.

“Shit,” Travis said under his breath, but he smiled politely as he rose to his feet. “Good morning, Cheyenne.”

Cheyenne? Was she Native American? What Luca knew of American Indians he’d learned watching Western movies as a kid. The high cheekbones. The slight arch to her nose. Perhaps she was.

And… He frowned. Was there something familiar about her? No. There couldn’t be. Any man who’d met her before would surely remember the encounter.

Every man in the room was staring at her. Then, as if on signal, they scraped back their chairs and rose to their feet.

The woman ignored them. Instead, she cast a deliberate look at the grandfather clock in the corner.

“Morning? It’s almost afternoon.”

Luca glanced at the clock. It was barely ten.

“Yeah. Well, I’m sorry I’m late, but—”

“You were due at my place an hour ago. I have a full schedule today, but I went out of my way to accommodate you.”