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exactly how the Orsinis wanted it.

That way they could avoid the reporters from the Times and the Wall Street Journal as well as

the ones from the tabloids. It wasn’t easy to keep your privacy when you’d created a company

worth billions—and your old man was still numero uno whenever some damned investigative

reporter dredged up the M word.

So, The Bar was the logical place to get together every couple of Friday nights, or maybe after

closing on Saturday night if a date had proved especially memorable. It was also where you went

if you just wanted to talk.

Like today.

Falco and Nick, back from their business meetings overseas, were already there when Rafe

arrived. Only Dante was missing. He was off somewhere in South America. Nobody knew where

or why. Rafe figured it had something to do with that Sunday morning meeting with Cesare but

decided it was Dante’s business to talk about it, not his.

He sure as hell wasn’t going to say anything about what had happened at his Sunday morning

meeting with his father…and if he wasn’t, what was he doing here? he thought, as he stepped

from the sunlight into The Bar’s artificial gloom.

He’d phoned Nick and Falco on the spur of the moment. They’d both been at work, as he should

have been, when he called. “Got time for a beer?” he’d said, and they’d said sure.

Now, seeing them, his gut knotted.

Why he’d suggested getting together was beyond him. He had a problem on his hands but he

wasn’t about to lay it out for discussion. There was still time to turn around and walk away—but

Nick looked up, spotted him and it was too late.

Nothing to do now but fake some casual conversation. Rafe fixed what he hoped was a smile on

his face, sauntered over to their usual booth and slid in beside Falco.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

So much for casual conversation.

The bartender, who’d spotted Rafe the second he walked in, came over with an icy mug of ale.

Rafe nodded his thanks. His brothers watched as he took a long swallow.

“Well,” he said brightly, “it’s good to see you guys.”

Nick looked at Falco. “At least he doesn’t look as bad as he sounded.”

And so much for getting through this unscathed. Rafe concentrated on his mug of beer.

Falco shrugged. “He looks worse.”

Okay. Enough. Rafe looked up.

“I am,” he said, “right here. No reason to talk as if I weren’t.”

“Sure.” Nick nodded agreeably. “No reason not to tell you, to your face, that Falco’s right. You

look like caca.”

“Thank you.”

“You want compliments, you’re in the wrong place,” Falco said, but his usually hard expression

softened. A bad sign, Rafe thought glumly. “So, you want to tell us what’s going on?”

Rafe thought of making another clever response, but what was the point? His brothers knew him

too well to be fooled. Besides, he was the idiot who’d called this meeting and brought this on his

own head.

“Nothing. It’s just been a long couple of days.”

Nick raised his eyebrows. “That’s it?”

Another shrug. Another swallow of beer. Then Rafe pressed the icy bottle against his temple,

where a Chinese orchestra playing traditional Mandarin melodies had moved in to replace the

departed trolls.

“I, ah, I have some things to sort out.”

“Such as?” Nick asked.

“Just…things.”

Nick looked at Falco. “Your turn.”

Falco scowled. Nobody could scowl quite like Falco.

“You want to tell us what’s happening? You don’t show up at the office—”

“I’m entitled to a day off,” Rafe said, trying not to sound defensive.

“You don’t show up,” Falco continued, “then you phone us and say you need to talk—”

“I never said that.”

“You didn’t have to. It’s Monday, the market’s in the toilet and here we are, taking a break at

your request. You really think we’re going to think it’s just so we could all say ‘hello, what’s

new, how was your weekend?’”

“Hello,” Rafe said, “what’s new, how was your—” A muscle knotted in his jaw. “Okay. It’s true.

I have a, uh, a slight problem.”

“Blonde or brunette?”

“That’s insulting, Nicolo. I mean, why jump to the conclusion that it’s a female problem?”

“Blonde or brunette,” Nick repeated, and Rafe sighed.

“Brunette.”

“What happened to the Valkyrie?”

“She’s history.”

“How come?”

Rafe narrowed his eyes. “Are we going to discuss the past or the current situation?”

“Don’t get testy,” Falco said mildly. “Okay. So, what is the current situation?”

Rafe stared at his brothers. The thing was, he did know why he’d phoned them. Who else would

he turn to when he was in a mess straight up to his eyeballs? And, damn it, yes, this thing was a

mess.

He was married. Married, him, a man who’d never even contemplated marriage, who’d run like

hell anytime a woman so much as breathed the word. He was married to a stranger from a world

so unlike his it would have been funny if it hadn’t been so unbelievable.

That was item one in the “current situation.”

Item two was that even though he was going to end the marriage as quickly as he could pull it

off, that hadn’t kept him from, item three, damned near making it with Chiara on his kitchen

counter, which led, inexorably, to item four, that she was almost certainly a virgin and having

sex with her would, oh damn, item five, make ending the marriage more complicated, never

mind item six, that he’d introduced her as his wife and she wasn’t, well, she was, legally, and—

“Rafe?”

And what a disaster of a scene that had been. His housekeeper had all but burst into

congratulatory song. Not Chiara. She’d turned bright pink.

“I am not your wife,” she’d said, “and if you think that—that assaulting me makes it so, you are

wrong!”

Then she’d fled.

He’d thought about trying to explain things to his housekeeper—who’d gone from looking at

him through misty eyes to regarding him as if he’d turned into a serial killer right in front of

her—given that up and gone after Chiara instead, but she’d locked her door and when he’d tried

to talk to her—

“Raffaele!”

Rafe’s head came up. “Why’d you call me that?” he said, glaring at Nick.

“Because it’s your name. Because you’re a thousand miles away. Because one of us is nuts and

the odds are excellent I’m looking at him. What’s the brunette’s name?”

Mrs. Orsini, Rafe thought wildly, and choked back what began as an insane cackle.

“This is amusing?”

“No,” Rafe said quickly, “believe me, it isn’t.”

“So, what’s the lady’s name?”

“Chiara.”

Falco raised an eyebrow. “Very nice. Very sexy.”

“She isn’t.”

“Nice? Or very sexy?”

“She’s not like that, is what I’m saying. She’s, ah, she’s different.”

“They’re always different,” Falco said, “until they get to feeling comfortable.” He made

interlocking damp rings on the beat-up tabletop with his beer mug. “I take it this one isn’t feeling

comfortable yet.”

Comfortable? A muscle tightened in Rafe’s jaw. She was living in his apartment. Somehow he

didn’t want to admit that. He didn’t want to admit anything. He wished to God he’d never started

this conversation. In another few minutes his brothers would go from calling him nuts to figuring

he needed to be committed.

“Okay,” Falco said, “I get it. You got involved on the rebound. Now you want out. You do, don’t

you? Want out? I mean, that’s what this is all about?”

Rafe nodded. “Absolutely.”

“I don’t see the problem. Take the lady to dinner. You know, the it’s-been-great-but-it’s-over

meal.”

“It isn’t like that. She wants out, too.”

Nick stared at him. “Well, then there isn’t any problem.”

“There is.” Rafe hesitated. “It’s…it’s complicated. I mean, we both want out. But—”

“But?”

“But, she’s, ah, she’s new to the city.”

“Buy her a guidebook,” Falco said coldly.

“And, ah, and I came on to her and that, ah, that kind of upset her.”

Falco and Nick grinned at each other. “So much for those smooth Orsini moves,” Nick said.

“Hey, I’m trying to be serious here. What I mean is…See, the lady in question is a little wary. Of

men. Of sex. Of me. And, uh, and now I’m wondering if I…if I—” He swallowed hard. “She

won’t talk to me.”

This time nobody grinned. “She’s frigid?” Falco said, his eyebrows aiming for his hairline.

“No. Yes. I mean, maybe. I mean, it doesn’t matter because I have no intention of keeping her

around very long.”

His brothers were looking at him strangely. He couldn’t blame them.

“Back to what Falco suggested,” Nick said. “Dinner. She won’t talk to you? No problem. Leave

a message on her voice mail. Tell her to meet you somewhere for dinner. When she shows up,

tell her things aren’t working. Give her a little gift, you know, not the little-blue-box-from-

Tiffany’s kind of thing, but…What? Why are you shaking your head?”

“No phone. No voice mail.” Rafe cleared his throat. “She’s living in my apartment.”

The look of incredulity on his brothers’ faces said it all.

“She’s—”

“—living with you?”

“It’s temporary.”

“You sent the Valkyrie packing a couple of days ago and moved this Clara—”

“Chiara.”

“Clara, Chiara, whatever. You moved her in, what, five minutes later?”

Rafe gave one last thought to explaining, but how could he, when not even he could make sense

out of everything he’d done? The only certainty was that he’d gotten himself into this mess and it

was up to him to get himself out of it.

“Hey,” he said brightly, after a glance at his watch, “look at the time!”

“Rafe. Wait a minute—”

But he was already on his feet. “Great seeing you guys,” he said, and scrambled for the door.

Nick and Falco watched him go. Then they looked at each other.

“You got any idea what just happened?” Nick said.

Falco shook his head. “Not in the slightest.”

Nick nodded and signaled for another round of beer.

Rafe had taxied downtown.

His condo was on Fifth Avenue, in the midsixties. Any way you looked at it, it was a long walk

home, but that was a good thing. Long walks usually helped clear his head.

Involving his brothers had not been a good idea. Not that he’d really involved them. He hadn’t

told them much of anything, but what he had told them was not good.

Still, the confrontation, if you could call it that, had had one positive effect. It had made him face reality. He’d been dealing with this as if he were standing outside the problem, observing it. He

wasn’t. What he was, he thought as he passed a group of suburban women in for some shopping

and dressed more for a New Jersey mall than for the eclectic streets of Soho, what he was, was a

man standing in a hole six feet deep, busy digging himself in deeper.

He’d married Chiara, yes, but given the same circumstances, he’d have done it again. What kind

of man would turn his back on a desperate woman? And it wasn’t because of how she looked,

those big violet eyes, that trembling mouth, or of how that mouth had felt under his, or of how

she’d felt in his arms.

She’d needed help. He’d offered it. So, okay. The marrying part had been necessary.

What had been going on since then was not. The arguing. The accusations. What was the point?

It was a done deal. And then, this morning…Proof of how crazy things had gotten. He couldn’t

imagine why he’d tried to jump her bones.

To say she wasn’t his type was a laugh. She had a pretty face, yeah, but so did a million other

women, and none of those million other women went around looking like little old ladies. None

of them would ever look at him as if he were a mustachioed villain.

None of them was a wife he didn’t want. And none of them had hang-ups about sex.

Not that Chiara had seemed to have many of those this morning. That kiss. The way she’d clung

to him. Moaned into his mouth. Arched her body against his, lifted herself to him…

Just what he needed. Turning himself on while he walked down a crowded street. Oh, yes, that

was a great idea.

He swung toward a shop window, found himself staring at a display of hammers and power tools

while he fought for control. That was another thing. When had he ever had to struggle for self-

control? Never. Not since he’d left the Marines. Now he fought for it all the time. Either he was

furious at his wife or so turned on that he couldn’t see straight for wanting her and—

“And she isn’t your wife,” he said sharply.

A couple coming out of the store gave him a wary look.

“Sorry,” Rafe said, “sorry. I was just—”

He was just losing his mind. The couple moved quickly past him. He took some deep breaths,

began walking again.

It was time to move on. She wanted a divorce. So did he. He pulled his cell phone from his

pocket as he reached the corner. The light turned red. Time to separate the tourists from the

natives. The tourists stayed on the curb. The New Yorkers, Rafe among them, kept going. A car

horn bleeped. A voice shouted something. Rafe met the driver’s eyes, flashed a look that silenced

him.

Rafe stepped onto the curb, brought up his contact list, selected Marilyn Sayers’s number. Her

phone rang and rang. When it finally picked up, what he got was not her but her voice mail.

“Marilyn,” he said impatiently, “it’s Rafe Orsini. Pick up if you’re there. Or call me back, fast.

It’s urgent.”