Rush to the Altar. Rebecca Winters

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СКАЧАТЬ them to her bosom. “Who could forget such a beautiful face? Now you are a beautiful man.”

      With her free hand she touched his cheek where the skin had been grafted. “I saw you in the tea leaves. I saw fire. Life has been hard for you.”

      “My father died last year.”

      She nodded, “I know. Come in.”

      Though modest, her place appeared comfortable. She’d decorated the living room in the same vivid purple color he recalled seeing in her tsara.

      “Sit down.”

      Riley complied while she put the flowers in a vase on her small dining table. Then she sank into the black hand-painted rocking chair he’d admired as a youngster. “How is it you have come to call on an old woman after all this time?”

      “I meant to visit you long before now, but circumstances made it impossible.”

      “Life with your father has taken its toll on you.”

      “Let’s not talk about me. You look well.”

      Her eyes narrowed. “You always were a good liar. You see the picture of us there? I felt good then.”

      Riley glanced at the framed photograph propped on the end table. The two of them had sat on a bench inside a doorless closet hooked up with a camera that took their picture at the carnival. He’d been six years old. She’d had black hair. A lump lodged in his throat to think she’d kept that photo all this time.

      “I took care of you from the age of two until seventeen when your father left the circus and dragged you away. He should have left you with me.”

      With that statement he realized what a wrench that must have been for Mitra who’d never married or had children of her own.

      “My father needed me too much and was jealous of my relationship with you. But even if he took me thousands of miles away, I always missed you. Did you get the postcards I sent you through the circus?”

      She motioned to a black lacquered basket sitting on a bookshelf. He walked over to it and looked inside. It appeared she’d kept all of them.

      Pleased to know she’d received them he said, “Why didn’t you get one of your family members to help you write back? I always left an address where you could reach me.”

      “I didn’t want to give your father any more reasons to make your life miserable.”

      Mitra had understood everything.

      “When he didn’t drink, he was all right.”

      “You deserved better,” she muttered.

      Riley took a deep breath before reaching in his pocket for an envelope. Enclosed was Italian lire amounting to five thousand dollars. Anything more and he knew she wouldn’t accept it. He put it on the table next to the picture.

      “What is that?”

      He stared into her eyes. “I know what you did. No amount of money in the world could compensate for the mother’s love you gave to me. This represents a small token of my affection for you.”

      Like Sister Francesca, she turned her head to hide her emotions. Whether disciplined saint or stoic Gypsy, both were women with hearts bigger than their bodies. Riley had been the lucky recipient.

      “You once told me that if you could have your wish, you would buy fresh lavender flowers for your tsara every day. This apartment isn’t the exciting Gypsy wagon I used to play in. It needs flowers. Now you can buy all you want.”

      After an extended silence she fastened haunted eyes on him. “You are in a great hurry, rushing down a path even more dangerous than the one before.”

      He smiled and shook his head. “Did you read death in the tea leaves for me, too?”

      Her expression grew fierce. She made a fist and pounded her breast. “Without a woman in your life, you’re already dead here.”

      “There’ve been plenty of women.”

      A guttural sound came from her throat. “You think I don’t know that? But they’re always the wrong kind for my Gadja!”

      “There was one exception,” he drawled. “But it turns out she didn’t want me.”

      “You mean she had too much respect for herself to fight a duel over you like those two she-cats? Good for her!”

      “You have to admit that duel was really something.” He grinned.

      “Go ahead and laugh, but remember it was I who had to get you out of that filthy prison after the police carted the three of you off.”

      “I could always depend on you, Mitra. You know what the problem was? You were too old for me to marry,” he teased her the way he’d done Sister Francesca.

      She pushed her hand away as if to say, enough! “I have lived too long to find out you are still tormented. Go—”

      Mitra always meant what she said. Nothing about her had changed except that she was twelve years older than the last time he’d seen her. He rose to his feet. “I’m leaving now, but I’ll be back.”

      “Do not come again unless you bring me news I want to hear.”

      His expression sobered. “Unfortunately that’s the one wish I can’t promise to grant you.”

      CHAPTER TWO

      SINCE Ann’s last visit to Turin, a new sign in Italian spanned the two posts of the gate leading into the wooded property where Callie lived with her husband and worked.

      Valentino Animal And Bird Preserve.

      Lower down on one of the posts was another sign printed in Italian, English, French, German and Spanish.

      This preserve is open and free to the public 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Monday through Saturday. Stay on the indicated paths. Do not touch or feed the wildlife.

      Please bring any homeless animals or birds who are sick or injured to the hospital by following the arrows. The hospital is open twenty-four hours.

      After Ann had flown in from Los Angeles last evening, she’d gone straight to bed with a migraine. She always got one on a long plane ride. But this afternoon she was feeling much better and decided to take two-and-half-month-old Anna for a walk in her stroller before she got hungry for her next bottle.

      To Ann’s amusement, Chloe, her sister’s pug, and Valentino, Nicco’s boxer, decided to join her.

      The four of them had started out along a private footpath at the rear of the small Baroque palace which eventually led through a security gate to the street. From there they circled partway round the property until she came to the public entrance to the preserve.

      Following the arrows she headed for the eighteenth century hunting lodge located on the former royal estate. It had been converted to a hospital and stables. Callie did СКАЧАТЬ