Passion (In Wilde Country 2)

PROLOGUE

It was New Year’s Day, and Times Square still bore the remnants of last night’s big party.

Ariel knew that because she was watching channel four and a pretty brunette reporter kept talking about the celebration and the crowds. The reporter never stopped smiling, even though she seemed surrounded by an island of trash.

Ariel wondered how she could manage it.

Smiling non-stop was difficult.

She had to smile that way sometimes, when Anthony wanted her to. After a while, her mouth would tremble.

Anthony didn’t like that.

The scene on the big flat-screen TV changed. Now a male reporter was talking from behind a desk. He was almost as pretty as the brunette and he, too, kept smiling.

“…scenes of last night’s party,” he said, “and here’s how everything looks now.”

Ariel frowned.

The pretty brunette was in Times Square again, but the streets were clean.

Was she watching something that was happening now? Was this New Year’s Day, or was it New Year’s Day night? She had trouble with things like that lately. With days. And nights. And time.

Concentrating was hard.

Everything was hard.

She was confused. As if she were outside herself, looking in. It was difficult to explain, but then, there wasn’t actually anyone to explain it to. She’d tried with the nurse, who’d said uh huh and interesting and right, but the way she’d said those things made it obvious she didn’t mean them at all. And when she’d tried to explain to Anthony…

Ariel shuddered.

No. She wouldn’t think about Anthony. She’d block him from her thoughts. She was learning how to do that. To not think about Anthony or the things he did to her, the things he said.

Like that she was crazy.

Was she? Maybe. She wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure of much anymore, only that she was unhappy. She cried a lot.

She cried when it rained. She cried at the sound of gloomy music.

She cried over the fact that she cried, and she cried because things lacked substance.

She felt as if she were moving in slow motion, swimming through a sea of shadows.

An awful metaphor, she thought, and then she made a strangled little sound that might have been a laugh because how could that have been an awful metaphor when she didn’t even known what the word ‘metaphor’ meant?

She had the feeling she’d known it, once. She’d known a lot of things.

Then again, maybe not.

Something was wrong with her. Terribly wrong.

Anthony told her the doctor said she was ill. Not that she could recall seeing a doctor, but when she told that to Anthony, he looked worried and said yes, that was an additional problem.

Her memory was failing.

Ariel shivered.

The room was cold. She was cold. And that didn’t make sense, considering the nurse had dressed her in a flannel nightgown and a wool robe before she left, and she was sitting in a big chair, wrapped in a blanket.

Still, nothing made sense anymore, so why would that?

Noise blared from the TV. Two housewives were talking about dish detergent. One said how much she loved her detergent. She said it had changed her life.

Could detergent change your life?

Anything was possible.

Ariel picked up the remote and clicked it. A black-and-white movie came on. It was old. She could tell by the way people were dressed. She stared at the screen where a man and woman in white coats stood in what looked like a laboratory, gazing out a window at a heavy fog.

“We have to defeat it,” the woman said.

Ariel nodded in agreement. She hoped they could. She felt as if she were in a place that was thick with fog. A better metaphor than swimming through dark shadows, she thought, and the laughter in her throat turned to sobs.

Suddenly, the door to her room swung open.

“Ariel,” Anthony said, “what are you doing awake at this hour?”

His voice was soft. At least, it sounded soft, but she shrank back in the chair as he came toward her.

“It’s late, and you need your rest. You know what the doctor said.”

The doctor, again. Why couldn’t she remember the doctor?

Anthony picked up the remote control and pointed it at the TV.

“No,” she said. She wanted to find out if the fog took over the entire city or if the scientists trying to combat it eventually found a way to defeat it.

Defeating the fog seemed very important.

“What did you say?”

She looked at him. She could see surprise in his eyes. She swallowed hard.

“I said… I said I was watching—”

The TV screen went black. “Just look at that. You haven’t taken your medicine. You should have had it an hour ago.”

Ariel looked at the table beside her. A rainbow assortment of capsules and tablets lay in a dish, next to a glass of water. The nurse had tried to get her to take them, but she’d pushed the nurse’s hand away.

It was not the first time she’d done it, but it was the first time the nurse had backed off.

“Too many pills,” Ariel had whispered.

The nurse’s lips had thinned. “Damn right, too many pills,” she’d muttered, or had Ariel only imagined it? It was possible. Anthony said she imagined lots of things.

But not this.

She wasn’t imagining him picking her up as if she were a sack of rags.

“Let’s get you into bed.”

He put her down on the bed and stood looking at her.

“Despite everything,” he said, “you’re still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known.”

His voice had turned low and thick. She knew what that meant and her heart began to race. He reached for the blanket. She tried to clutch it to her and he made a tsk-tsking sound.

“Now, Ariel, I have the right to see you.”

The blanket fell open. Her robe fell open next. The sound of his breathing seemed to fill the room.

He put his hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t,” she whispered.

“Now, baby, I know what’s best for you. You have to remember that.”

He smiled and stroked her shoulder. Then he slid his hand into the neckline of her nightgown.

His thumb rubbed across her nipple.

She made a little sound of despair.

He made a sound, too. A little humming noise, deep i

n his throat.

“Beautiful,” he said. “Crazy, but beautiful.”

He began undoing the tiny buttons down the front of her gown. His fingers were thick and clumsy, and she groaned each time they brushed against her skin.

“Please,” she said.

He laughed.

“Please, what? Please, Anthony, I want you? Is that what you’re saying, Ariel?”

She shook her head. He laughed again, pushed her back against the pillows and settled his weight over her.

Bile rose in her throat. Exhausted as she was, she tried to buck him off.

“That’s it,” he said. “Move those hips. Show me how much you like this.”

Tears rose in her eyes. Rolled down her face.

“Ariel.”

She heard the sound of his zipper. Felt his engorged flesh press against her.

“This will relax you,” he said, and then he grunted and pushed into her and she closed her eyes and thought about the fog and the start of the new year and the Weather Channel.

When it was over, she turned her face away.

“You’re not even good for that anymore,” he said as he rolled off her and got to his feet. “You’re not worth a damn to me or to anyone else. I only fuck you because it’s my duty as your husband, and because you need it to calm you. Here,” he said, scooping all the capsules and pills into his hand. “Take these.”

She wouldn’t look at him. He grunted, picked up the glass of water and held out his hand. The pills and capsules glinted malevolently in the lamplight, blues and reds and purples, all in a heap like a witch’s brew.

“Take them.”

“Too many pills,” she whispered and the nurse’s voice seemed to sound inside her head. Damn right, too many pills. Too many. Too many…

“Take them, Ariel, or I’ll make you take them.”

She knew he meant it. He’d done it the other time she’d protested, pried her mouth open with his fingers, dumped the pills on the back of her tongue, and she’d had no choice except to gag them down.

She didn’t want that to happen again.

Obediently, she took the pills from his outstretched hand and put them in her mouth. Took the glass. Drank some water.

Anthony smiled.

“Good girl. And if you go on being a good girl, a very good girl, I’m going to reward you. I’m going to take you out for the evening. Not tomorrow, but in a couple of days. Would you like that?”

She didn’t answer. Was she supposed to say yes or no? Sometimes, he tried to trick her.

“Say Thank you, Anthony. And say it nicely.”

It was true, then. He was taking her out of this room. Would this be the chance she’d waited for? Her heart was racing. It had to be. God, it had to be!

“I’m waiting, baby.”

She ran her tongue over her dry lips. “Thank you, Anthony,” she whispered.

“That’s it? I tell you I’m taking you out, and that’s all you can say? Well, that’s all right.” He laughed. “I didn’t marry you for your conversational talents.” Suddenly, his laughter stopped. She could almost see his change of mood as his gaze swept over her. “Puttana, just look at you! Lying there like a whore, with everything showing.” He grabbed a blanket from the foot of the bed and threw it over her. “Cover yourself.”

Ariel clung to the blanket and rolled on her side, her knees drawn up almost to her chin.

“Are you going to behave?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, Anthony.”

“Yes, Anthony,” she said.

She heard his footsteps. Heard the door close. Quickly, she sat up. Spat the mouthful of pills into her hand. A couple of them had started to melt from being tucked between her gum and her cheek, but most of them were still whole.

She stumbled to the bathroom. She dumped the pills in the toilet, turned on the water in the sink, washed her hand, dipped her face to the faucet and rinsed out her mouth. Then she flushed the toiletf. The pills and tablets swirled in color-shot circles, then vanished from sight.

Ariel looked in the mirror.

She was pale. Her eyes seemed huge. She could see the pulse beating in the hollow of her throat.

She bit back a sob.

She wanted to wash away Anthony’s possession, but showering might be dangerous. He might hear her. Would he realize she hadn’t taken the pills? If he did, he would surely force her to take more of them, and she couldn’t let that happen, not if the fog and the pills were somehow connected.

He was taking her out of this room in a couple of days.

What if she managed not to take any pills until then?

She drew a deep breath. Expelled it. Then, slowly, carefully, she made her way back to the bed.

Darkness beckoned.

Her lashes fluttered, and she let it swallow her up.

CHAPTER ONE

The Wildes and the Bellinis had gathered at El Sueño for a long weekend.

Two days into that weekend, they woke to an unexpected snowstorm.

Actually, by north Texas standards, it wasn’t really much of a storm.

Snowflakes drifted from a winter-crisp sky. The flakes were big and lacy as they settled over the roof of the sprawling mansion. Half a dozen Morgan horses kicked up their heels in the paddock just down from the house, as if they knew how handsome they were with snow in their manes. Farther away, scarlet cardinals dined at the bird feeders.

Matteo Bellini sipped at his coffee and thought the view was like something you’d see on a Christmas card. A New Year’s Day card, to be accurate, because that was the reason the Bellinis and Wildes had come together.

Celebrating the end of the old year and the start of the new was, it seemed, a long-standing Wilde tradition.

“It goes back at least a couple of years,” Jake, one of Matteo’s half-brothers had told him solemnly, and they’d all laughed.

“Here’s to tradition,” Luca, Matteo’s twin brother had said, and all of them, Wildes and Bellinis alike, had raised their glasses in a toast.

Matteo took another mouthful of coffee.

It had been a delightful weekend.

And, man, was he glad it was almost over!

“Isn’t this perfect?” his sister, Bianca, had said to him at breakfast just that morning. “All of us together like this, I mean.”

“Perfect,” Matteo had said dutifully.

But as with many things, perfection was in the eye of the beholder.

The Bellinis and the Wildes had gathered in full force, and Matteo suspected as far as the rest of them were concerned, things were, indeed, perfect—if you didn’t mind never having a solitary moment.

He minded.

He’d always needed privacy.

By now, after three days and two nights, he craved it, but privacy at El Sueño, he’d come to realize, was an impossibility.

It had nothing to do with the size of the house.

It was big.

Matteo looked around him and mentally rolled his eyes.

To call it big was to do it a disservice.

It was enormous.

Eight, or maybe it was nine bedrooms and adjoining bathrooms. A dining room that could double as a banquet hall. A kitchen that could easily provide that banquet. A library that served as an office, or maybe it was an office that served as a library. There was also a den, and a playroom for the kids, and a living room large enough so the Steinway Grand tucked at one end of it looked about the size of an upright. And you couldn’t leave out the wraparound screened porch, now glassed-in for the winter.

Added to all that was a guest wing.

So, no. The house was not big, or even enormous.

It was huge.

But six Wildes, plus six Wilde spouses, plus heaven only knew how many kids—Matteo had given up counting after the fourth or fifth one had scampered across his feet, his legs, his lap—tended to fill the place, and that was before you added in the Bellinis. The Bellini-Wildes, as his half-sister—one of

his half-sisters, Emily—had taken to referring to him and Bianca and Alessandra and Luca.

And then there was Luca’s wife.

His bride. Cheyenne, and how could anyone forget her? She was smart and funny and beautiful, and Matteo liked her well enough, but Luca…Luca was crazy about her. There he was, right across the room, gazing at his bride of two weeks like a man lost to everything but his woman.

Matteo tilted his coffee mug to his lips.

Maybe the lack of privacy wasn’t really the problem. Maybe it was all this domestic togetherness.

Hell.

Maybe it was that it was impossible to ignore the fact that his fraternal-but-really-damn-near-identical twin brother, his once-upon-a-time-oh-so-logical twin brother, had taken a wife.

It was hard to accept.

Actually, it was impossible.

Luca, married? How could that have happened? He’d always known Luca’s thoughts on marriage. On love. Because those thoughts were the same as his.

Both were, to put it succinctly, bullshit.

Was it love that had made their father a liar? A fraud? A bigamist? Was it love that had made him marry two women, have two families, commit to neither?

And what of their mother? Had love so blinded her that she’d never suspected her husband was lying to her? She had not been a fool. In all probability, John Hamilton Wilde’s American wives had not been fools, either. Surely, they had sensed something was wrong, but love, or the stupidity that passed for love, had kept all the women in the bastard’s life blind to the truth.

Matteo went to the sideboard in the dining room and refilled his mug.

He and Luca had agreed on those things. Why wouldn’t they? They were like two sides of the same coin. They were both tall. Six feet three inches. They were both lean and muscular. Yes, Luca’s hair was a little darker; his eyes were blue and Matteo’s were green, but there was no mistaking they were brothers.

They had similar tastes, too. In food. In wine. In their fondness for New York City, for the tiny hamlets of their native Sicily.

For freedom and honesty, meaning no forever-after nonsense, except here was Luca, happily relinquishing his need for space, for control, for the calm certainty of logic, trading it all in for…

Love.

Matteo came back into the living room and walked to one of the big windows that overlooked the endless acres of El Sueño. He’d been trapped inside a sticky web of it for three days. And two nights.