It was unusually sunny and warm, so they put on jackets and took their coffee outside to sit on the porch. They were talking about whether she should freeze one or both ducks when the sound of footfalls coming up the drive could be heard.
When the man came around the corner of the house, Kelly gasped. It was Luciano Brazzi. He stopped when he saw Kelly. She shot to her feet when she saw him.
“Luca!”
“Bella,” he said in his deep, heavily accented voice. He nodded his head in a brief bow.
“What are you doing here?”
He reached into a worn leather satchel he carried over one shoulder and pulled out a cell phone. “Ah, Bella. There is so much to explain. You and I—we were tricked and lied to.”
“What?”
Luca looked between Kelly and Lief. “I’m afraid I’m interrupting, I apologize. I couldn’t call ahead—I had the address, but no phone number. I parked in the front of the house and rang the bell, but no one came to the door. And I heard laughter, so I followed the sound. If there’s a time we could have a private conversation—”
“What?” she asked, still a little stunned. “Oh, Luca, this is Lief Holbrook. Lief, Luciano Brazzi, an old…friend of mine. Luca, come and sit down. I’ll get you a glass of wine.”
“I can come back,” he offered.
Kelly leaned to look around the house. “Where’s your posse? All your assistants?”
“I’m alone, Kelly. If you’ll tell me when I can come back to talk to you alone, I’ll busy myself until that time…”
“Now,” she said. “We can talk right now.” She turned to Lief. “Will you excuse me? I think it’s important I have this conversation.”
Lief took her hand. “If you’d like, you can go inside to talk and I’ll wait here on the porch. In case you need me.”
She smiled at him and gently placed her palm on his cheek. “I’m perfectly safe, but thank you. I’m sorry to cut our day short, but you can go and I’ll call you the minute I’m finished talking with Luca.”
He gave a nod. Then he leaned forward and gave her a brief, deep kiss, just in case this interloper had any doubt about who had claimed her. She loved him for it and gave him a little hug.
“I’ll call,” she repeated. Then she ushered Luca into the house.
“Ah! Bella,” he exclaimed, taking in the kitchen. He gestured with an arm wide. “I see at least one reason why you’re here!”
“This is my sister’s house, Luca, and I’m visiting. Is your driver waiting?”
“No driver, no assistant, no valet. I’m alone.”
She pulled a chair out to seat him at the table. “When was the last time you actually drove yourself?”
He sat down. “I’ve been spoiled, but I’m not incompetent. I drove myself. The minute I found out where you were, I came.”
“Wine?”
“Please,” he said. He put the phone on the table, and she recognized it as the one she lost. “Perhaps you should have a glass as well, sweetheart.”
She had to concentrate to close her mouth. “Perhaps,” she finally said in a stunned whisper.
A moment later she was sitting at the table with him.
He raised his glass to her. “To better times…”
She answered the toast with her glass but immediately said, “Explain, Luca.”
He pushed the phone toward her. “My cell phone was stolen,” he said. “I suspected it was lost. I get preoccupied and careless. My assistant immediately replaced it and I called you at once with the new number.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and clicked on to the text screen. “This is the response I got, on my new phone, from you.”
I’m very unhappy with the limbo of our relationship and it’s causing me great stress. I’m taking a few days away from work to think this over—please give me space to do that. Just a few days and then I’ll call you. I ask you to please respect this request. Love, Kelly.
“I didn’t send this.”
“I realize that now,” he said.
“Olivia came to see me, at work. She thought we were sleeping together and asked me to stop. She told me you sent her, that she was often sent to clean up your messes, that you wouldn’t be taking my calls any longer, that you were finished with me.”
“So I’m told,” he said. “I learned this very recently.”
“Luca, I tried calling you, sending you texts, emails. I even got in touch with Shannon to get a message to you! You should have come to the restaurant.”
“Oh, I did that, of course. The very next day. I was told you took some time off for personal reasons, for a family emergency. Something about going out of town to help a family member. I was promised a phone call when either Durant or Phillipe heard from you. I knew your only family was your sister, but I also knew she had moved to some small town and was no longer in the area. I continued to try to reach you, and finally, after a very frustrating two weeks, I went to your flat to confront you. But you were gone.”
“What about my emails to you?”
“Shannon, obviously taking her instruction from Olivia, screened my mail on the office computer and deleted anything from you. When I looked for email on my phone, there was no new message from you. It never once occurred to me to check deleted emails. We were tricked.”
“How did you find out?” she asked him.
“I found your phone in Phillipe’s desk. I was using his office recently, was looking for a ruler to line my paper, and found this.” He put a hand on the phone.
“Why, Luca? Why did Olivia do this? How did she do this?”
“She had far more control of the business than I ever realized. I didn’t know she controlled so many of my people. She was obviously threatened by the prospect of anyone ever replacing her, both in her business and social stature. Bella, everything I told you was true—we’ve been living separately under the same roof for twenty years. We were always on the best of terms. I thought she was devoted to our business even if she wasn’t in love with me. And yes, we were trying to negotiate a divorce. I thought we were doing so amicably. Certainly she was asking me for the earth, but I had no problem with that—I’m a fair man and she’s the mother of my children. Even if her motivation was strictly selfish, there was little doubt she worked like a crazy woman, both as my partner in business and as head of our family.” He shrugged. “I’m old-fashioned. It was always my intention to see she was taken care of.”
“But she said there were other women! That there were children outside your marriage!”
“Women, yes—my marriage was over and sometimes I was lonely. From time to time, with the greatest of discretion, my eye wandered. But not for a long time, Bella, I promise you. And there were never children.” He shook his head. “So many lies.”
“Unbelievable. What if I hadn’t left the restaurant? We’d have found her out!”
He laughed remorsefully. “We’d only have learned that she tried to drive you away by lying to you and asking you to end our friendship. She would have played the desperate, injured wife. She’s been making excuses about not feeling the divorce was right, that we should continue as we were for the sake of the family, but I wouldn’t go along with that idea. I never found my phone—I’m sure it’s at the bottom of a river. It was finding your phone that pried open all the lies. One confession led to the next.”
“Who confessed first?”
He lifted a brow. “Who do you suspect? Phillipe, of course. Under the threat of losing his position and never finding another one in the Bay Area. Next it was young Shannon, in a flood of tears. Then some of the accounting staff admitted they answered to Olivia. Durant was also her man. That doesn’t even account for household staff.”
“What did you do to Phillip?” she asked.
“Oh, I fired him on the spot. He accused me of not keeping my word and I confessed that he was right.” He grinned a bit evilly. “But not until he told me where he mailed your last check. How could I keep a man like that around? He’d sell me to the devil!”
“Olivia said she lifted your phone from the nightside table…”
“No, Bella. I don’t have proof of this, but I believe I left it in the car. We were riding into the city together and I remember using it en route. Shortly afterward I couldn’t find it and had the driver tear the car apart in search of it.”
Kelly rested her forehead in her hand. “She must have worked very quickly after that,” Kelly said.
“Very quickly, with Phillipe agreeing to steal your phone from your purse while she talked to you in his office.”
Kelly laughed lightly. “And shortly after that, I was taken out of the kitchen on a stretcher!”
“What?!” Luca said, sitting forward with a shocked look on his face.
“It didn’t have all that much to do with you, or with Olivia for that matter. Her visit was a blow, but at that point I didn’t even know my phone was gone. I thought it fell out of my purse in the kitchen.”
“Bella, what happened to you?” he asked, grasping her hands.
“Oh, Luca, I wasn’t going to survive in that kitchen. The stress was too much. I’m not as stubborn or hard-headed as you are—Durant was eating me alive and Phillip was constantly conspiring against me. And that was before either of them knew our friendship was special.” She gave a shrug. “I crashed in the kitchen. Grabbed my chest, could hardly breathe, passed out cold.”
“And now?”
She waved her hand at Jillian’s kitchen. “Now? Clean bill of health, feeling well, rested and I have very little stress in my life.”
“And the man?”
She smiled fondly. “A wonderful man. I’m sorry, Luca,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m no longer available, even if you are.”
“Ah,” he said, dropping his chin. “This is the worst of what Olivia has done to me. She took you away from me.”
“Not really. I wasn’t really yours and you were never mine. Your life is too complicated for me and it’s far too late for you to have a simpler life. And for that matter, I may not be able to work things out with my very special man for similar reasons. But I’m going to try, Luca.”
“It makes me very sad,” he said. “I don’t know where I’ve met a more perfect woman.”
“What’s happening with Olivia now?” she asked. “Did you leave her in the Bay Area to wreak havoc on your home, family and business?”
“No, darling, no. She’s in lockdown,” he said with a smile. “That’s what we used to call it when the children were in trouble and we removed all their entertainment as punishment—no cars, no phones, no TV, no friends. Bank accounts are frozen, credit accounts on hold, lawyers and auditors on the premises taking an accounting, many people terminated. I called all the children, explained that the thing we’d been talking about for years was taking place—there would be a separation and divorce. I promised them it would be fair, amicable and wouldn’t affect their plans. I hope I can count on that, but there are no guarantees.”
Whew, she thought. Certainly not with Olivia backstage, orchestrating all kinds of melodrama and deceit, it could be a horrible ordeal. But that wasn’t her problem. It was even more evidence that she wasn’t cut out to take on a man like Luca.
“I should leave you,” he said. “You have a good life here, that’s obvious. And there’s a special shine in your eyes. I only wish I’d put it there.”
“You know I care about you. That I wish you well.”
When the man came around the corner of the house, Kelly gasped. It was Luciano Brazzi. He stopped when he saw Kelly. She shot to her feet when she saw him.
“Luca!”
“Bella,” he said in his deep, heavily accented voice. He nodded his head in a brief bow.
“What are you doing here?”
He reached into a worn leather satchel he carried over one shoulder and pulled out a cell phone. “Ah, Bella. There is so much to explain. You and I—we were tricked and lied to.”
“What?”
Luca looked between Kelly and Lief. “I’m afraid I’m interrupting, I apologize. I couldn’t call ahead—I had the address, but no phone number. I parked in the front of the house and rang the bell, but no one came to the door. And I heard laughter, so I followed the sound. If there’s a time we could have a private conversation—”
“What?” she asked, still a little stunned. “Oh, Luca, this is Lief Holbrook. Lief, Luciano Brazzi, an old…friend of mine. Luca, come and sit down. I’ll get you a glass of wine.”
“I can come back,” he offered.
Kelly leaned to look around the house. “Where’s your posse? All your assistants?”
“I’m alone, Kelly. If you’ll tell me when I can come back to talk to you alone, I’ll busy myself until that time…”
“Now,” she said. “We can talk right now.” She turned to Lief. “Will you excuse me? I think it’s important I have this conversation.”
Lief took her hand. “If you’d like, you can go inside to talk and I’ll wait here on the porch. In case you need me.”
She smiled at him and gently placed her palm on his cheek. “I’m perfectly safe, but thank you. I’m sorry to cut our day short, but you can go and I’ll call you the minute I’m finished talking with Luca.”
He gave a nod. Then he leaned forward and gave her a brief, deep kiss, just in case this interloper had any doubt about who had claimed her. She loved him for it and gave him a little hug.
“I’ll call,” she repeated. Then she ushered Luca into the house.
“Ah! Bella,” he exclaimed, taking in the kitchen. He gestured with an arm wide. “I see at least one reason why you’re here!”
“This is my sister’s house, Luca, and I’m visiting. Is your driver waiting?”
“No driver, no assistant, no valet. I’m alone.”
She pulled a chair out to seat him at the table. “When was the last time you actually drove yourself?”
He sat down. “I’ve been spoiled, but I’m not incompetent. I drove myself. The minute I found out where you were, I came.”
“Wine?”
“Please,” he said. He put the phone on the table, and she recognized it as the one she lost. “Perhaps you should have a glass as well, sweetheart.”
She had to concentrate to close her mouth. “Perhaps,” she finally said in a stunned whisper.
A moment later she was sitting at the table with him.
He raised his glass to her. “To better times…”
She answered the toast with her glass but immediately said, “Explain, Luca.”
He pushed the phone toward her. “My cell phone was stolen,” he said. “I suspected it was lost. I get preoccupied and careless. My assistant immediately replaced it and I called you at once with the new number.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and clicked on to the text screen. “This is the response I got, on my new phone, from you.”
I’m very unhappy with the limbo of our relationship and it’s causing me great stress. I’m taking a few days away from work to think this over—please give me space to do that. Just a few days and then I’ll call you. I ask you to please respect this request. Love, Kelly.
“I didn’t send this.”
“I realize that now,” he said.
“Olivia came to see me, at work. She thought we were sleeping together and asked me to stop. She told me you sent her, that she was often sent to clean up your messes, that you wouldn’t be taking my calls any longer, that you were finished with me.”
“So I’m told,” he said. “I learned this very recently.”
“Luca, I tried calling you, sending you texts, emails. I even got in touch with Shannon to get a message to you! You should have come to the restaurant.”
“Oh, I did that, of course. The very next day. I was told you took some time off for personal reasons, for a family emergency. Something about going out of town to help a family member. I was promised a phone call when either Durant or Phillipe heard from you. I knew your only family was your sister, but I also knew she had moved to some small town and was no longer in the area. I continued to try to reach you, and finally, after a very frustrating two weeks, I went to your flat to confront you. But you were gone.”
“What about my emails to you?”
“Shannon, obviously taking her instruction from Olivia, screened my mail on the office computer and deleted anything from you. When I looked for email on my phone, there was no new message from you. It never once occurred to me to check deleted emails. We were tricked.”
“How did you find out?” she asked him.
“I found your phone in Phillipe’s desk. I was using his office recently, was looking for a ruler to line my paper, and found this.” He put a hand on the phone.
“Why, Luca? Why did Olivia do this? How did she do this?”
“She had far more control of the business than I ever realized. I didn’t know she controlled so many of my people. She was obviously threatened by the prospect of anyone ever replacing her, both in her business and social stature. Bella, everything I told you was true—we’ve been living separately under the same roof for twenty years. We were always on the best of terms. I thought she was devoted to our business even if she wasn’t in love with me. And yes, we were trying to negotiate a divorce. I thought we were doing so amicably. Certainly she was asking me for the earth, but I had no problem with that—I’m a fair man and she’s the mother of my children. Even if her motivation was strictly selfish, there was little doubt she worked like a crazy woman, both as my partner in business and as head of our family.” He shrugged. “I’m old-fashioned. It was always my intention to see she was taken care of.”
“But she said there were other women! That there were children outside your marriage!”
“Women, yes—my marriage was over and sometimes I was lonely. From time to time, with the greatest of discretion, my eye wandered. But not for a long time, Bella, I promise you. And there were never children.” He shook his head. “So many lies.”
“Unbelievable. What if I hadn’t left the restaurant? We’d have found her out!”
He laughed remorsefully. “We’d only have learned that she tried to drive you away by lying to you and asking you to end our friendship. She would have played the desperate, injured wife. She’s been making excuses about not feeling the divorce was right, that we should continue as we were for the sake of the family, but I wouldn’t go along with that idea. I never found my phone—I’m sure it’s at the bottom of a river. It was finding your phone that pried open all the lies. One confession led to the next.”
“Who confessed first?”
He lifted a brow. “Who do you suspect? Phillipe, of course. Under the threat of losing his position and never finding another one in the Bay Area. Next it was young Shannon, in a flood of tears. Then some of the accounting staff admitted they answered to Olivia. Durant was also her man. That doesn’t even account for household staff.”
“What did you do to Phillip?” she asked.
“Oh, I fired him on the spot. He accused me of not keeping my word and I confessed that he was right.” He grinned a bit evilly. “But not until he told me where he mailed your last check. How could I keep a man like that around? He’d sell me to the devil!”
“Olivia said she lifted your phone from the nightside table…”
“No, Bella. I don’t have proof of this, but I believe I left it in the car. We were riding into the city together and I remember using it en route. Shortly afterward I couldn’t find it and had the driver tear the car apart in search of it.”
Kelly rested her forehead in her hand. “She must have worked very quickly after that,” Kelly said.
“Very quickly, with Phillipe agreeing to steal your phone from your purse while she talked to you in his office.”
Kelly laughed lightly. “And shortly after that, I was taken out of the kitchen on a stretcher!”
“What?!” Luca said, sitting forward with a shocked look on his face.
“It didn’t have all that much to do with you, or with Olivia for that matter. Her visit was a blow, but at that point I didn’t even know my phone was gone. I thought it fell out of my purse in the kitchen.”
“Bella, what happened to you?” he asked, grasping her hands.
“Oh, Luca, I wasn’t going to survive in that kitchen. The stress was too much. I’m not as stubborn or hard-headed as you are—Durant was eating me alive and Phillip was constantly conspiring against me. And that was before either of them knew our friendship was special.” She gave a shrug. “I crashed in the kitchen. Grabbed my chest, could hardly breathe, passed out cold.”
“And now?”
She waved her hand at Jillian’s kitchen. “Now? Clean bill of health, feeling well, rested and I have very little stress in my life.”
“And the man?”
She smiled fondly. “A wonderful man. I’m sorry, Luca,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m no longer available, even if you are.”
“Ah,” he said, dropping his chin. “This is the worst of what Olivia has done to me. She took you away from me.”
“Not really. I wasn’t really yours and you were never mine. Your life is too complicated for me and it’s far too late for you to have a simpler life. And for that matter, I may not be able to work things out with my very special man for similar reasons. But I’m going to try, Luca.”
“It makes me very sad,” he said. “I don’t know where I’ve met a more perfect woman.”
“What’s happening with Olivia now?” she asked. “Did you leave her in the Bay Area to wreak havoc on your home, family and business?”
“No, darling, no. She’s in lockdown,” he said with a smile. “That’s what we used to call it when the children were in trouble and we removed all their entertainment as punishment—no cars, no phones, no TV, no friends. Bank accounts are frozen, credit accounts on hold, lawyers and auditors on the premises taking an accounting, many people terminated. I called all the children, explained that the thing we’d been talking about for years was taking place—there would be a separation and divorce. I promised them it would be fair, amicable and wouldn’t affect their plans. I hope I can count on that, but there are no guarantees.”
Whew, she thought. Certainly not with Olivia backstage, orchestrating all kinds of melodrama and deceit, it could be a horrible ordeal. But that wasn’t her problem. It was even more evidence that she wasn’t cut out to take on a man like Luca.
“I should leave you,” he said. “You have a good life here, that’s obvious. And there’s a special shine in your eyes. I only wish I’d put it there.”
“You know I care about you. That I wish you well.”
