In Wilde Country (8 page)

Would she be pissed off at his months of silence? Would she rant and rave? Would she
be involved with someone else? Or would she tumble into his bed again?

She’d tumble, he decided.

She definitely would. And what could be wrong with one last tumble?

He was feeling pretty good by the time he reached his place. He parked the bike and
then, whistling happily, he went up the old stone steps to the front door, key in
hand…

Except, he didn’t need the key.

The front door flew open.

“Brutto figlio di puttana bastardo,”
Angelica snarled, and launched herself at him, arms out, hands fisted.

He had no time to react.

She punched him in the jaw. Punched him twice, bam-bam, left hand-right hand.

Johnny staggered back, but not from the blows.

He staggered because even a fool like him could see that his Sicilian spitfire was
hugely pregnant.

CHAPTER TEN

J
ohnny Wilde stood
on the rocky cliff overlooking the sea behind his Sicilian vacation home.

Vacation home?

He almost laughed.

Prison was more like it.

The woman he’d taken to his bed for one exciting, sex-filled week a handful of months
ago was carrying his child.

His child.

Maybe.

Johnny frowned and made his way slowly down the cliff to the narrow strip of sand
below.

Was it his? A lot of time had gone by. Angelica liked sex, and there were lots of
young men in this village, lots of older ones, too.

And she was hardly a nun…

“Shit.”

She’d been a virgin when he met her. If she’d wanted to screw around, she’d have done
it by the time she came to him on that beach.

“Face it,” he mumbled as he kicked a small sea-polished stone into the water. “The
kid is yours.”

His.

A child.

A responsibility.

And what could he do about it?

“Nothing,” he said.

Was he in such bad shape that he was talking to himself?

He knew Angelica would never consider ending the pregnancy. He wasn’t even sure he’d
want her to end it. He had no particular religious leanings, but snuffing out a small
life just because it was inconvenient…

Inconvenient?

It was a death knell.

Once word got out, his career would be over. No question about that. If he was very,
very lucky Halvorson might let him resign. If he wasn’t lucky…

Johnny shuddered.

Disgraced. His reputation. His name.

Alden’s name.

Which was nuts.

This wasn’t about his brother, it was about him, but if things had gone the way they
should have, if Alden had become an officer…

There had to be a way out of this situation. There
had
to be!

Right. There was. Marriage. A wedding band on his Sicilian mistress’s finger. Then
he could take her with him to the Netherlands. To Halvorson.

General, I’d like you to meet my bride.

My bride-from-the-back-of-nowhere. My bride who speaks Sicilian, not Italian. My bride
who mops up pasta sauce with chunks of bread she’s torn from the loaf with her hands
and yes, that might be sexy and cute in a rustic setting, but it sure as hell wouldn’t
go over big in an embassy ballroom.

Johnny sat down in the sand and buried his face in his hands.

Angelica didn’t even know he was in the army. She knew nothing about him. She’d asked,
just once, what he was doing in Italy and he’d told her he worked for his government.
When she’d tried to ask more, he’d kissed her and said he really couldn’t talk about
his job.

“Ah,” she’d said in a sexy purr, “you are my James Bond.”

He’d laughed and said no, not very likely, and she’d put her mouth to his ear and
whispered how exciting it was to sleep with a spy…

Johnny sat up straight. A spy. A secret life. A story woven from a cobweb of deceit.

“Gianni?”

He looked up. Angelica had come down the rocky cliff to the beach. They’d made up
a couple of days ago; she’d apologized for calling him names and he’d apologized for
not having been in touch—he’d invented some stupid story about being away on hush-hush
government business—and they’d avoided the topic of her pregnancy altogether.

It couldn’t be avoided any longer.

Not with that great big belly hanging out in front of her.

She looked—she looked beautiful.

Her hair was a ribbon of dark silk in the hot glow of the sun; her eyes were wide
and filled with despair.

An emotion he could not identify twisted inside him.

Jesus.

It was desire.

A month ago, a couple of days ago, if anyone had asked him if he could be turned on
by a pregnant woman he’d have roared with laughter.

But he
was
turned on. She was incredibly lovely and the life in her belly was his.

“Gianni.
Il mio cuore.
What are we going to do?”

He reached for her hand, tugged her onto his lap, wrapped his arms around her.

“What does your
nonna
say about this??”

He had not thought to ask her until now; he watched as her mouth trembled.

“She is gone,” she whispered. “She became ill and—and she is gone.” She crossed herself.
“It is for the best. If she had known… The disgrace…”

Later, he would chastise himself for having made the decision without thinking it
through—just as he would also remind himself that it was the only decision possible.

“How would she have felt if she knew you were going to be my wife?”

She turned her face to his. “What?”

“I want you to marry me, Angelica. I want you to be my wife.”

“Your wife.” Tears filled her eyes. “Oh, Gianni! Gianni…”

“People here can know, but nobody else.”

“I do not understand. Our marriage is to be a secret?” Her lovely eyes flashed. “I
am not good enough for the world to know I am your wife?”

He wove the story easily. She had been correct; he was a spy. It was the reason he
spent his holidays in Sicily, where no one was likely to recognize him. No, he could
not tell her in what city he was stationed; in fact, he never worked out of any one
city for very long. And no, he could not take her to live with him. It would be too
dangerous for her. For their unborn child. And, when she still protested, he sighed
and said he didn’t wish to worry her, but it would also be dangerous for him.

“You and our child could be the threat an enemy could use to get me to do whatever
they wanted. Do you understand? If they, if anyone knew I had a wife, a family, I
would become terribly vulnerable.”

She nodded.

This was a tiny mountain village in a place forgotten by time, but she had seen movies.
She understood that spies led lonely, deliberately isolated lives.

Johnny thought of the endless intelligence officers he’d met over the years, of how
visible they often were; he thought of how only the few who lived in the dark underbelly
of the profession that no one ever talked about lived the kind of existence he was
describing.

He thought of how monumental his lies were, and then he thought of how necessary they
were for Angelica, for himself and for their child, and he helped her up, rose to
his own feet and led her up to the house, where he took her to bed and they made gentle
love.

* * * *

They were married a little more than two weeks later.

He had feared marriages had to be performed by priests, but they didn’t.

The mayor of the village said the necessary words.

The only possible problem was in the documentation he needed. His passport. His birth
certificate. He ended up using the real ones; he could not imagine that either document
would somehow transmit information to the embassy, the army or to Halvorson.

But he needed to fill out something called a
Dichiarazione Giurata
and it required not a lie, exactly.

It required creativity
.

One of the benefits of his job was that he worked with all kinds of people and all
those people had contacts. He made up a tale about a friend of his, an American who
needed a document notarized—the
Dichiarazione Giurata
—verifying that there was no legal reason he, the friend, could not marry.

“He’s divorced, it’s all legal, but he’s afraid his ex will go crazy if she finds
out he’s getting married again,” Johnny explained, and the guy he was dealing with
nodded in sympathy and put him in touch with someone who could help him.

A forger, basically, but he tried not to think about that.

The wedding ceremony was brief and almost businesslike. To offset that he’d brought
white orchids and a diamond wedding band with him the day he flew in. He wore a dark
suit; Angelica wore a long white satin gown that she’d remade to allow room for her
ever-expanding belly, and a white lace veil in her hair.

She looked beautiful and old-fashioned and sweet, and when he could not get an erection
that night, their wedding night, he told himself it was only because he was concerned
about hurting her or the baby, and that it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact
that he either was or was not married, depending on how the Italian and American courts
would interpret the chain of lies he’d created, if it ever came to that.

Five days later, he flew back to the Netherlands.

He told Angelica he would send her money every month, that he would come home whenever
possible, and that he was, now and forever, her husband.

And as his plane lifted off and Sicily disappeared from view, what he told himself
was that, considering the circumstances, two out of three wasn’t at all bad.

* * * *

To his surprise, he was able to put Sicily, Angelica, the baby and what might or might
not be a marriage out of his head.

A month went by.

He sent money, phoned once a week, assured his wife—what an amazing word—that he missed
her and he did, though not enough to fly home on weekends.

He told her that he couldn’t and she asked no questions.

The truth was, he just didn’t feel married. Didn’t want to feel married. He’d faced
a difficult problem and solved it.

Why make things more complicated than they were?

Things were going well.

Each time he called, Angelica told him she missed him. He said he missed her, too.
He asked about the baby. She said her back hurt a little—she was almost six months
pregnant—but she felt fine otherwise. He told he would be home for a visit soon, that
he had one assignment coming up and then he’d see her.

That was true enough.

He’d been called to Washington. He was to be promoted to lieutenant colonel.

He was to be given his own command in the States.

It was the most exciting thing that had happened to him, the next step in what he
now knew was his path straight to the top.

In the not-too-distant future, he would become a general.

Christ, a general! Amazing.

What would Alden think?

Alden. Alden, who should have been wearing these oak leaves, one on each shoulder,
as
he
now was.

The day after he received his insignia, Johnny arranged for a flight to Dallas. He
rented a car at the airport. He didn’t want a military escort; he wanted to be alone.

He drove to Wilde’s Crossing. To the church cemetery where his father and brother
lay. He walked past Amos’s grave without stopping. When he reached Alden’s, he saluted.
Then he took off his cap, bowed his head, shut his eyes and told his brother how much
he missed him.

“I’ve done everything you wanted to do, Alden,” he said softly. He grinned. “Except
it took me twice as long.” His grin faded. “And I’ve done a couple of things you’d
never have done. Bad things. I didn’t mean to. I just, I don’t know, I just did. And
I regret them. Angelica. The pregnancy. Connie. Yeah, brother. Your girl, Connie.
She’s as good a woman as a man could want—well, you knew that. And I didn’t treat
her right. I can’t turn back time, can’t make up for it…”

No.

But he could set things right.

Go to see Connie. Tell her that she was, just as he’d said, as good a woman as a man
could want. Hell, if he’d done things right, if he hadn’t been so fucking stupid…

He said goodbye to Alden. Took a pair of shiny silver oak leaves from his pocket and
tucked them against the headstone. He put on his cap, gave his brother another brisk
salute and returned to his car.

The drive to the Grimes house took only a few minutes.

Connie’s parents had died years back. She’d inherited their small house and he assumed
she was still living there.

Would she be home? He hoped so. He wanted to see her, apologize for how he’d treated
her. Yes, it was a little late for apologies. He hadn’t seen her in, what, four months?
Five?

“Better late than never,” he told himself as he stepped from the rental car.

It had started raining. That was good; it meant nobody was on the nearby porches or
out walking the family dog. The last thing he wanted was to bump into somebody he
knew and have to come up with a meaningless round of
Good to see you. What’s new? How’ve you been?

One last deep breath. One last long exhalation. Then he climbed the steps to her door.
He smoothed down the jacket of his uniform, his trousers, tucked his hat under his
arm and rang the bell.

Nothing.

He rang it again.

Still nothing.

OK. She wasn’t home. Half disappointed, half relieved, he started to walk away…

And heard the door open.

“John?”

Johnny felt a muscle knot in his jaw.

“Oh my God, John, is that you?”

He cleared his throat. Turned around. “Connie,” he started to say, but the word caught
in his throat.

Connie Grimes was pregnant.

And he knew, sweet Jesus, he knew without question that the child she carried was
his.