Sister Swap. Lilian Darcy
here was Rowena Madison.
She hadn’t seen him yet. She was scanning faces with her eyes narrowed, and her teeth scraping across her lower lip, as if anxious that he might not have come. She wasn’t to know how much he prided himself on his reliability.
He raised his hand and gestured, smiled and called her name. She saw him, and a strange series of expressions crossed her face, almost as if someone were trying out a series of different screen savers on a computer.
He had no idea what Francesco saw in her, despite how pretty she was with those deep blue eyes, the pale, creamy skin, the long dark hair loosely swept back. To Gino, she always seemed so prim and tame, like pasta cooked to mush instead of al dente—quite edible, yes, but not at all appetizing.
She pushed her way through the crowd toward him, a little breathless, with her wheeled and long-handled suitcase trundling behind her. She wore a neat beige pantsuit with a white silk blouse beneath. The blouse wasn’t as neat as the suit. One of the middle buttons had come unfastened, showing the lower part of a white lacy bra and a shadowed stretch of the skin between her ribs. “Francesco…?” It wasn’t quite a question.
“…couldn’t come,” Gino answered in his near-perfect English. He didn’t apologize on his brother’s behalf, since it wasn’t his brother’s fault.
He’d virtually ordered Francesco to stay in Rome to cool his head, while he himself took over the role of working with Rowena Madison on the garden. He could manage Di Bartoli business for a few weeks while based on the family’s Tuscan estate, and he desperately wanted to get Pia out of Rome.
To see if that made a difference to the tantrums.
To find out how she behaved without the presence of the English nanny whom Angele had always praised to the skies.
To get to know his child.
“Francesco couldn’t come,” Rowena echoed. Her voice sounded a little throaty, deeper and richer than he remembered, as if it had gotten strained by the poor-quality air during the flight. Or maybe she had a cold.
“Sorry,” he said, about Francesco’s absence.
He wasn’t sorry.
Was Dr. Madison? She did look a little shocked.
“Guess I’ll just have to make do with you, then…uh… Gino.” She threw him a dazzling, panicky grin.
The dazzle sent an odd jolt through him, and the panic made him curious. He’d already seen that she was somewhat an anxious, nervous type, but this seemed different. This wasn’t a cage bunny’s terror on being let out, but a wild hare’s panic on being shut in.
But where was Pia?
Another, different kind of jolt. He’d lost Pia’s mother, first through divorce and then through her untimely death. He wasn’t going to lose his only child, as well.
This time, he really couldn’t see her, and cursed her dove-gray dress again. Why not pink or bright lilac or something red with flowers? What sort of color was gray for a little girl?
“Is something wrong?” Roxanna asked Francesco’s older brother.
Sheesh, she’d had a narrow escape on that one!
Never having seen either man before, she’d actually called him Francesco, but he’d thought she was talking about Francesco, asking why he wasn’t here, so she’d gotten away with it. Then it had taken her three seconds too long to think of Gino’s name. That was the problem with cramming for an exam the night before. Vital facts flew out of your head at the worst moments.
“Yes,” he said, his dark eyes searching over Rox’s shoulder. He was dressed for business in a charcoal suit, a white shirt and a conservative dark tie. As she watched, he reached for the tie knot and loosened it, which gave him a rakish, Cary Grant sort of look. Rox could tell he didn’t even realize what he’d done. “I can’t see my daughter. She’s only four…”
And that was the problem with working from crib notes. Sometimes the vital facts just weren’t there. She’d had no idea that Gino Di Bartoli had a daughter.
Did he have a wife?
And had Rowena met the daughter?
Because if Row has, then I should help look for her, because I’ll supposedly know what she looks like. But I haven’t met her, so how can I? What’s her name?
“Pia!” Gino said, his voice rising. He spoke in Italian. “Pia, where are you?”
Whew! Again.
Pia, Pia, Pia. Remember that.
And luck was really running in Rox’s favor today, because as soon as she saw the little girl in the pretty gray dress, she knew this had to be the one. She looked soooo like her daddy! She had fabulous, intelligent, dark hazel-brown eyes, a stubborn, perfectly shaped mouth, an equally stubborn jaw and lustrous ebony hair.
Rox pushed past several people to where Pia stood scribbling on a travel poster with a blue pen she’d probably found on the terminal floor. Gino had arrowed off in the opposite direction and didn’t know yet that his daughter had been found, but Rox decided it would be better to actually collar Pia before alerting her papa. She looked like the kind of child who might disappear again at any moment.
“Pia, your papa is looking for you,” she said in English.
Did Pia speak English?
“I’m drawing,” she said, which answered the question.
Roxanna spoke a bit of Italian, majored in it at college eight years ago when she had—no surprises, here—crammed for her Italian exams the night before. She hoped Pia’s command of English was more extensive.
“Well, I think your papa would love to see your drawing,” she said, “but then we have to get in the car and go, so let’s stay right here until we see him.”
“Very well,” Pia said. Not okay Not even all right. Who the heck had taught her to say very well?
“Are you channeling Queen Victoria today, honey?” Rox murmured.
She grabbed a handful of Pia’s full-skirted dress so that the child would be safely tethered in one spot without realizing it, and looked around for Signor Di Bartoli, whom she knew from Row’s instructions she was supposed to call Gino.
Nice name.
Snappier than Francesco.
When she’d thought that he was Francesco, she’d had just enough time to decide it was no surprise that a man like this had triggered one of Rowie’s major anxiety episodes. Even to Rox herself—and she never had anxiety attacks—he seemed a little scary. The kind of man who didn’t put up with idiots or shirkers or cowards. The kind of man who demanded a lot from the people around him and got it. The kind of man who would kick Roxanna out of his palatial Tuscan estate the second he discovered she wasn’t her twin sister, the garden expert.
She saw him over the tangle of arrivals. Couples kissed, businessmen shook hands, but Gino was still searching in the wrong direction. She waved and yoo-hooed.
Nope.
Then she put her voice into gear and practically sang, “Signor Di Bartoli! Giii-nooo!” Oh, those wonderful, operatic Italian names! It might be fun to brush up on her language skills while she was in Italy. “She’s here. I’ve found her. We’re over here.”
A look of relief washed over his face like a tidal wave. It made Rox curious. Of course he cared about his little girl, but had he decided so fast that she was seriously lost?
Apparently, yes. When he reached her, he dropped low and gave her a huge hug, as if he hadn’t seen her for weeks. But then he didn’t really pay her drawing the proper attention, and that left Pia feeling way more lost than she’d felt while her papa was frantically looking for her.
Roxanna knew this because she