Passionately Ever After Read online

  Maria placed a protective hand over her swollen stomach. He was right. She knew he was right. Suddenly she had images of facing Steven in a courtroom and him demanding custody of their baby. “You would actually fight me for custody?” she asked, hating the quiver that snuck into her voice.

  His expression softened somewhat. So did his voice as he said, “I’m not some kind of monster, Maria. I wouldn’t do that to you or to our child. But I’m not going to walk away from the two of you either. I want you and our baby.”

  “Steven—”

  “I love you. I know you’re afraid our being together will create problems, but our families might surprise us. They could actually be happy for us once we tell them about the baby.”

  “They’ll be furious. The news will destroy them,” Maria assured him. She could already imagine the look of shock and betrayal on her parents’ faces. She didn’t even want to think about how the Contis would take the news. “Our families will disown us.”

  “You could be right. But you could also be wrong. We’ll never know unless we tell them.”

  “And if I’m right?”

  “Then the loss will be theirs. Maria, don’t you see? We owe ourselves and our baby this chance. Whatever they do, we can handle it as long as we face this together. I’ll willing to take that risk.”

  But was she? She thought again of the curse, thought of a pregnant Angelica Barone who’d lost her baby on Valentine’s Day. What if she listened to Steven and something happened to her baby? “I’m not.”

  “Maria,” he began and started to move toward her.

  Maria shook her head. “Please, Steven, I’m very tired. I’d appreciate it if you’d go now.”

  He hesitated, and for a moment Maria thought he was going to refuse her.

  Instead he said, “All right. I’ll go but only as far as my hotel.” He hooked a lock of hair behind her ear and pressed a featherlight kiss to her lips. “I love you and I’m not giving up on us.”

  “There can be no us,” she told him firmly. “Goodbye, Steven. I’ll let you see yourself out.” And with the taste of him still on her lips and her heart heavy with the weight of her decision, she exited the room.

  Steven bit back the urge to follow her. Allowing Maria to walk away from him had been among the most difficult things he’d ever done, Steven admitted. Once she’d disappeared down the corridor and up the stairs, he drew in a deep breath, then released it. The initial anger he’d experienced upon her refusal to marry him had dissolved almost as quickly as it had come when he’d realized how stressed out Maria was. While the pang of her rejection still lingered, his own feelings took a back seat to his concern for Maria.

  He was worried about her. Seriously worried. She’d looked as fragile as glass standing there beside the fireplace staring up at him out of troubled dark eyes in a face that seemed to grow paler by the second. The faint shadows beneath those eyes that he’d noted earlier had deepened and stood out like faint bruises. A closer inspection of her face had revealed taut lines of strain that had formed tiny creases along her forehead. And that strain had been mirrored in the way she’d clasped and unclasped her hands repeatedly. Maria was stressed to the max. Not that she’d ever admit such a thing. She wouldn’t. She’d be more inclined to push herself until she dropped—which would be bad for both her and the baby.

  So he had backed off instead. It hadn’t been easy. Stubbornness and determination were traits the two of them had in common. But it had been necessary, he reasoned. He might as well leave for now, he decided and headed down the same corridor Maria had taken. It was only a temporary retreat, he told himself as he made his way toward the foyer. After all, he’d meant what he’d told Maria. He had no intention of going back to Boston without her. But first he would need to come up with a plan to help her get past her paranoia about the curse and her fears of their families’ reaction to their news. And it would have to be a plan that wouldn’t put her under any further stress.

  Reaching the alcove near the front door where his jacket hung on the coatrack, he was debating whether to search out the Calderones to say his goodbyes or simply call them later, when a smiling Magdalene Calderone turned the corner and spied him.

  “Ah, Steven, there you are. I was just on my way to get you and Maria. The coffee and hot chocolate are ready. And Louis has convinced me that we should all sample those cinnamon rolls.”

  “Actually, Magdalene, I think I’ll pass on the coffee and rolls for now. But I hope you’ll give me a rain check.”

  Her smile disappeared. “You are leaving us already? But where is Maria?” she asked, glancing in the direction from which he’d come.

  “She went upstairs to rest. So I thought I’d go back to my hotel for now.”

  “Maria is not feeling well?” she asked, concern lacing her accented voice.

  “She said she was tired and to be honest, she looked tired. But I’m afraid our conversation upset her.” He hesitated a moment, then explained, “As you’ve probably guessed, I didn’t know about the baby.”

  “Yes, I suspected as much.”

  “I suppose I probably should have put two and two together, and in hindsight I don’t know how I could have missed all the signs.” Now that he thought about it, he remembered how tired and under the weather Maria had been those last few times that they’d been together. Idiot that he was, he’d attributed it to the stress of her job and keeping their affair a secret from her family. “But somehow I did manage to miss them. I never suspected she was pregnant.”

  “Obviously.”

  Steven grimaced, thought he detected a note of censure in her tone. Although he’d only just met Magdalene Calderone and he knew it shouldn’t, her opinion of him mattered.

  “Well, now that you know about the baby, what do you intend to do?”

  Considering the circumstances, her question was probably the equivalent of having a shotgun pointed at him by the wronged woman’s family, Steven thought with amusement. The analogy made him realize how such a scenario would certainly answer his problem of getting Maria to marry him.

  Magdalene narrowed her eyes. “You find my question amusing?”

  “No,” Steven told her, sobering at once.

  “So you have not answered me. Maria is expecting your baby. What do you intend to do about it?”

  Steven couldn’t help but admire her bluntness. So he was equally direct as he answered, “I intend to marry her.”

  “A marriage entered into out of duty only will not make either of you happy,” she cautioned.

  “It won’t be a marriage of duty. I love Maria and I want her to be my wife.”

  Magdalene’s expression brightened immediately. She smiled up at him. “I knew I was right about you. You are a good man, Steven Conti of Boston. You will make Maria happy and be a good husband to her and a good father to the little one she carries. Yes?”

  “Yes,” he promised. And he fully intended to keep that promise.

  She tipped her head, stared at him closely. “So why instead of joy in your eyes do I see the look of a man going to battle?”

  The lady was sharp, Steven realized. “It’s a long and complicated story,” he told her.

  “I like long, complicated stories.”

  If she did, he had a real winner to tell her, Steven thought. “How much do you know about Maria’s family?”

  “Other than the fact that she has a large family and that Maria loves them very much, most of what I know about them I’ve learned from Karen. She told us how her father, Timothy Rawlins, bless his soul, was actually Luke Barone. He’d been kidnapped as a child and renamed Timothy Rawlins. I also know that Maria and her family have been very good to Karen. She loves them—particularly Maria—very much.”

  “Has either Maria or Karen said anything to you about the Conti curse?”

  Magdalene’s dark eyes widened. “The Conti curse? There is a curse?”

  “So they tell me.”

  Magdalene made the sign of the
cross, then clasped her hands against her breast.

  Steven frowned. “Personally, I don’t believe in such things. I think it’s nothing more than old Sicilian superstitions and a lot of overactive imaginations at work. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to convince Maria of that.”

  “You are a tall one, Steven, and I’m getting a crick in my neck looking up at you. I think you should come into the kitchen and have that coffee after all. Then you can tell me all about this Conti curse.”

  From his seat at the kitchen table, Steven glanced over to the bright orange and cream draped window. Outside the sun had already set, early as it does in the winter months. But a light snow was falling and he could see the soft blanket of white dusting the pines. Sitting there with the down-to-earth Calderones in the warm, cozy room filled with the aroma of cinnamon and coffee, Boston, the Conti curse and the problems between his and Maria’s families seemed a million miles away.

  The last thing he’d felt like doing was rehashing the details of the Conti/Barone feud. But if he were going to be successful in convincing Maria to marry him and return to Boston, he needed the Calderones’ help. And in order to get their help, they’d need to understand what he was up against.

  Magdalene refilled the coffee cup in front of Louis and topped off Steven’s cup, then returned the glass pot to the counter. “And even after all this time your two families still are sworn enemies?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Steven replied. “If a Barone is walking down the street and he sees a Conti on the same block, he’ll cross the street to avoid being near him. And when they do come face-to-face, it can get ugly.”

  “Obviously you and Maria didn’t have that problem,” Magdalene pointed out as she resumed her seat at the table.

  A smile tugged at Steven’s lips at the memory. “Since I’m not involved in my family’s restaurant business and travel a lot for my own firm, I don’t often cross paths with members of the Barone family or them with me. So when Maria and I met, she didn’t realize I was a Conti and I didn’t know she was a Barone. But even if I had known who she was, it wouldn’t have stopped me from pursuing her. I wanted her the moment I set eyes on her,” he admitted honestly.

  “And Maria? How did she feel when she discovered who you were?” Magdalene asked him.

  “Let’s just say she’s very loyal to her family,” he answered, remembering Maria’s dismay when she’d learned his identity. “It took some convincing on my part to get her to see me again. Fortunately, I did.”

  “And the two of you fell in love, but your families remain enemies,” Magdalene surmised. “It is almost like Romeo and Juliet.”

  Steven hadn’t thought of his and Maria’s relationship in quite those terms before, he realized. But he could understand how Magdalene had drawn such an analogy since their situation presented a similar problem with their families. Only he had no intention of their love affair coming to the same tragic end as the famed Shakespearean lovers.

  “When Karen told us that her cousin Maria was pregnant and under a lot of strain and needed to get away for a while, we had no idea what she was facing,” Magdalene said. “And since Maria never mentioned her baby’s father, we thought there might have been some sort of a lovers’ quarrel between the two of you. But we never dreamed it was anything so complicated.”

  “It is small wonder that Maria has seemed so unhappy,” Louis said. “All this feuding between your families, it cannot have made things easy for her,” he added. “For you, either, I imagine.”

  “It’s been hardest on Maria,” Steven told him. “Other than Karen, no one else in her family knows about us.”

  “And your family?” Louis asked.

  Steven shook his head. “They don’t know either. I wanted to go public with our relationship months ago, but Maria wanted to wait. There were some sabotage problems at Baronessa and because of the years of animosity, suspicion fell on my family. Maria felt the timing was all wrong and wanted us to wait until things settled down, and I foolishly agreed. I should have just insisted then that we come clean and tell our families about us.”

  “Perhaps. But knowing Maria, whether you insisted or not, if she was determined to keep your relationship a secret, I doubt that you would have been able to change her mind,” Magdalene offered.

  Steven suspected the comment was meant to ease his conscience, but he found it to be of little comfort. “Well, it won’t be a secret much longer,” Steven informed them.

  “No, it won’t,” Magdalene agreed.

  “The baby is due in a little over two months and her family doesn’t even know she’s pregnant,” he said, unable to keep the frustration from his voice. “And I’m sure she’s worrying herself sick over how they’re going to take the news that a Conti is the baby’s father.”

  “Given all that you have told us about the history of your two families, her concern is justified, don’t you think?” Magdalene asked.

  “Yes,” Steven admitted. “But I hate knowing what all this stress is doing to her.” He pushed aside his coffee cup, leaned forward. “I love Maria and I intend to marry her no matter what either of our families wants.”

  “Good for you,” Louis told him.

  Magdalene beamed like a proud mama.

  “But if I’m going to be successful, I’ll need your help.”

  “You have it,” Magdalene assured him. She glanced toward her husband and Steven witnessed the silent question that passed between them.

  Nodding his assent, Louis placed his hand atop his wife’s. Then he brought his gaze back to Steven’s. “Tell us what it is you want us to do.”

  Four

  “Oh those look absolutely wonderful,” Magdalene said several afternoons later as Maria transferred the tray of Italian fig cookies from the cookie sheet onto the wax paper lining the countertop.

  “They taste even better,” Maria informed her. Reaching for the bowl of green-colored icing she’d prepared, she began to drizzle the confectioner’s sugar, milk and anise-flavored topping over the still warm cookies. The traditional Italian cookies had always been a favorite of hers and were one of the most popular items at Baronessa. No small wonder, she thought with pleasure, since the recipe used was the same one that had been handed down by her great-great-grandmother. While preparing the treat for Silver Valley’s church Christmas Bazaar had helped to keep her busy, it had also made her homesick for her family.

  “Do you want me to put those little sprinkles on top as you ice them?” Magdalene asked, motioning to the bowl of multicolored candy sprinkles that Maria had placed at the end of the counter.

  “Please. That way the sprinkles will harden with the icing,” Maria told her. She moved down the line of cookies and continued to drizzle the sweet topping with practiced ease. When she’d been a young girl, icing the fig cookies had been one of the first jobs that her grandmother had assigned her at Baronessa, Maria recalled fondly. Thoughts of her grandmother set off another pang of loneliness. If her grandmother were still alive, what would she say about Steven and the baby? Would she be disappointed in her? Would she feel betrayed?

  Trying to shake off the disturbing thoughts, Maria glanced up from her task and went still at the sight of Steven walking past the kitchen window, his arms loaded with fresh-cut firewood.

  “Uh, Maria, pequeña, I think you may have put a bit too much icing on that one.”

  Maria dragged her attention from the window to the fig cookie she’d been icing and groaned. Instead of a few swirls of green icing across the top of the inch-long cookie, the thing was a solid lump of green. Chastising herself silently, Maria slapped the spoon back into the bowl. Then she began wiping up some of the excess icing that had overflowed onto the wax paper and was oozing along the edges of the other cookies.

  Magdalene chuckled. “Why don’t you just leave it. I’m sure Louis and Steven will be happy to eat any of our mess-ups.”

  Maria scowled at Magdalene’s remark. In the five days since she’d turned down Steven’s
proposal and had refused to return with him to Boston, he had been back to the Calderones’ each day. Although he’d made no further mention of marriage and hadn’t pressured her again to tell their families about the baby, he had somehow managed to befriend the Calderones and weave himself into their daily lives. She didn’t like it. She didn’t like it at all, she admitted. Not for one minute was she buying Steven’s “taking a break” act. Using a spatula, she lifted the overiced cookie from the wax paper and plopped it onto a plate.

  “You know, perhaps we should mess up a few more of these,” Magdalene said with a sly smile. “That way we can have them tonight for dessert.”

  “I thought you said you were putting Louis on a diet and had outlawed desserts,” Maria reminded her.

  Magdalene waved aside the objection and said, “I am putting him on a diet. But since we’re having a guest for dinner, we should at least offer some type of dessert. Besides, we both know what a sweet tooth my Louis has. I can hardly expect him to resist these cookies,” Magdalene continued as she scooped up a fingerful of icing and licked it.

  “What guest?” Maria asked.

  “Steven,” Magdalene replied innocently. She picked up her dish of sprinkles. “The other tray of cookies will be ready soon. Don’t you wish to finish icing the rest of these cookies while they are still warm?”

  Maria snatched up her bowl of icing. “Just because Steven is…because he and I…” She huffed out a breath and started over. “You didn’t have to invite Steven to dinner on my account,” she told the other woman as she whipped the remaining frosting in the dish with a vengeance, then began drizzling it over the rows of cookies.

  “I didn’t invite him. Louis did.”

  “Well, Louis shouldn’t have felt obligated to invite him for my sake.”

  “Louis did not invite him because of you,” Magdalene informed her. “It was to repay him for helping mend the fences.”

  “Oh,” Maria said and nearly cringed at how inane she had sounded.