Something to Prove. Cathryn Parry
True. Jeannie’s wedding weekend had created a logjam of skiers, coaches, friends and ski fans, all clamoring to be made beautiful for the event of the season. Amanda’s stomach dropped. She was reminded of the subject of her interview assignment, and she felt queasy.
“Madam?”
“What? Oh, never mind my foot. It’s winter—I’m wearing closed-toe shoes.”
The European woman turned her doe eyes up at Amanda, insinuating what only doe eyes could insinuate.
Amanda shook her head. “No one’s going to be sucking on my toes anytime soon.”
Which was depressing now that she thought about it, but what could she do?
“It is winter in the Italian Alps, madam. Anything can happen.”
“Yes. Yes, it can.” That was how it had happened for her sister, and in this very resort.
Smiling, Amanda glanced through the plate-glass window at the glistening white slope dotted with pine trees, and for a moment she felt that old familiar tug in her heart. Mountains had been her home from her earliest memories. Now she lived in a concrete city, bustling, alive and powerful. And the demands of New York followed her, even to this snowcapped paradise.
Shaking off her wistful mood, she took one last inhalation of the siren’s call of cedar-and-rosemary-scented massage oil. She felt bad enough as it was, cutting out on her pampering afternoon with Jeannie, but work gave her no choice. She hoped Jeannie would understand.
Amanda pushed off the lounge chair in search of her younger sister, trying not to dwell on what she was missing. She and Jeannie had so little time together as it was. For months Jeannie had been recuperating in a hospital in Milan, healing from a horrific ski-racing crash. Amanda had been in the States, shuttling between her magazine job in Manhattan and their mother’s hospice in New Hampshire.
Home, she thought. Or what used to be home. Now her home was the place that employed her.
Jeannie’s home was Massimo Coletti.
“Ciao, bella.” Massimo ducked his head inside the herb-laced, steamy room, and immediately sent the temperature rocketing upward another few degrees. Her sister’s Italian skier fiancé was a knockout. Chiseled cheekbones, sleek shiny hair, glowing green eyes, dimples and a hard body that didn’t quit. But his sexiest trait, in Amanda’s eyes, anyway, was the way his gaze softened when he looked at her sister.
“Have you seen my Jeannie?” Massimo asked.
My Jeannie. Amanda sighed. Here was the man who made all the difference in healing her sister’s difficult past. “She’s in the massage room. I was just going to look for her.”
But Massimo beat her to it. He swooped in as the masseuse was leaving and gave Jeannie’s massage-radiant skin a hug. Then he leaned closer and kissed her on both cheeks. Amanda’s heart both gladdened and pounded. Jeannie giggled and threw her arms around Massimo’s neck, not shy about the towel that dropped to her waist.
It was the scar that undid Amanda. A long, jagged cut from a surgeon’s scalpel, winding its way down her sister’s left leg.
The old fury came back. This was her father’s fault. And Amanda hated skiing, she truly did. Hated it with a passion.
“Amanda, are you almost ready for the rehearsal luncheon?” Jeannie asked, gently touching her on the arm. “Because there’s this great guy I want to introduce you to. His name is Marco and he’s a friend of Massimo’s.”
“Marco is a writer like you,” Massimo explained, his arms around his beloved wife-to-be.
“He won the Milan Prize for literature. He’s very accomplished.” Jeannie squeezed Massimo’s hand and then looked at Amanda hopefully.
They wanted her to be happy. They truly did.
“You guys are sweet, but I’m an investigative reporter.” Okay, a fledgling investigative reporter. “There’s a world of difference in the kind of writing your friend does and what I do.”
Massimo’s brow scrunched. To a guy who sped down icy mountainsides at eighty-five miles per hour, one keyboard jockey was pretty much the same as the next.
“Just tell him I’m on deadline,” Amanda said. “If he’s a writer, he’ll understand.”
“Deadline?” Her future brother-in-law was so smooth that sometimes she forgot English was his second language.
“That means she can’t make it,” Jeannie said. “Why, Mandy? What happened?”
Amanda looked at her beautiful sister’s disappointed face. “Paradigm gave me an interview assignment here in the hotel. I’ll come back as soon as I’m finished, Jeannie, I promise.”
“I know you will.” The look of faith never left her eyes. Sometimes Amanda didn’t deserve her sister. “And this will give you incentive to come back.” Jeannie leaned over and rustled inside her purse, as if her upcoming rehearsal luncheon wasn’t reason enough for Amanda to hurry.
She felt guilty and sick. Why did her father have to be a famous ski coach, and why did she let it slip to her boss, who took advantage of it to make her interview a skier, of all people?
And not a sweet, hunky Italian skier, but an arrogant, aloof American skier who, her boss informed her, had once skied under her father’s tutelage.
Strike one, strike two. Could anything be worse about this assignment?
But her anger was erased by the photo Jeannie held up of one Marco D’Angeli. Marco of the Angels. Jeannie’s setup for her looked like an angel, with a cherubic face, the same glossy hair as Massimo, and the same soulful brown eyes. Unlike her sister’s fiancé though, Marco was thin and serious and…writerly. He posed with a pen in hand and not a stitch of clothing on his slight, studious frame.
Oh, my. “Is this one of those naked charity calendars?”
“His writers’ club is raising money for diabetes research.”
“Okay,” she joked, “sign me up for two copies. One for home and one for work.”
“Are you sure you can’t postpone the interview until tonight? Because then you could meet Marco in person.”
Amanda glanced at her younger sister’s pleading eyes. The younger sister who only wanted her to share some of the happiness and peace she’d finally found. Then she glanced at the hunky photo of the cute, nonthreatening Italian.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t right now. Chelsea made an appointment with the agent. I have twenty minutes for the interview, then I’ll need an hour or two to write up something quick. It won’t take me long, I swear.”
Jeannie’s head tilted. She would never understand Amanda’s drive—not completely. But how could she be expected to understand when she hadn’t been home when Mom was in hospice? When she hadn’t been there when Amanda couldn’t get their father to cover one godforsaken doctor’s bill?
Because in his world, their mother was a nobody. Just like Amanda was a nobody. Jeannie would never know that feeling, because Jeannie was a somebody.
“I need to secure my job, Jeannie.” Being an investigative reporter at Paradigm magazine was power. It was status. It was the ultimate trump card against people like her father. “Marco is a big shot like you and Massimo. I’m still on my way up in the world.”
“Amanda,” Jeannie said softly. “The right man will love you for who you are inside.”
Easy for her to say. “Sure he will,” Amanda said cheerfully. “Right after I nail this five-hundred-word profile. Now, will you help me prepare my interview questions? Because I have no clue who this guy is.”
“I’ll bet I know,” Jeannie said, the smile in her eyes again.