The Costanzo Baby Secret by Catherine Spencer Page A

there.”
    She turned and let out a gasp of delight. No more than twenty yards away, a pod of dolphins frolicked in the turquoise water. “I would give the world to be like them,” she breathed, entranced. “They’re everything I wish I was. Playful, graceful, beautiful.”
    “You’re beautiful, Maeve. I told you so the first night you came home again, and nothing’s changed my mind since then.”
    “No, you don’t understand. I’m not fishing for compliments, I’m talking about their spirit. They embody a joie de vivre I seem to have lost. I’m in limbo—a stranger inside my own skin.”
    “Not to me,” he murmured, for once leaning so close that his breath teased the outer rim of her ear. “You’re the woman I married.”
    She leaned against him, loving his closeness, the heat of his body, the scent of his sun-kissed skin. Loving him. “Tell me about that—about our getting married, I mean. Did we have a big wedding?”
    He hesitated just long enough for a shiver of apprehension to steal over her. “No. It was a very quiet, intimate affair.”
    “Why?”
    Again that ominous pause before he said, “Because we were married in Vancouver. I could spare only a few days before returning to Italy, which made planning an elaborate affair out of the question.”
    “So it was a spur-of-the-moment thing?”
    “More or less. I took you by surprise, and popped the question, to coin the rather odd English way of putting it. You had just enough time to run out and find a dress to wear.”
    “What color?”
    “Blue,” he said. “The same shade as your eyes.”
    “And flowers?”
    “You carried a small bouquet of white lilies and roses.”
    “My favorites!”
    “Yes.”
    “Who else was there?”
    “Two witnesses. A former colleague of yours whose name I don’t recall, and a business associate of mine.”
    “Did we have rings?”
    “Yes. White-gold wedding bands, yours studded with diamonds.”
    “Where are they now?”
    “The clinic administrator gave yours to me for safekeeping.”
    “What about a honeymoon?”
    “Just four short days on the yacht. I couldn’t spare more time.”
    She splayed the fingers of her left hand across her knee. “I think I’d like to wear my ring again. Is it at the house?”
    “No. It’s with mine, in the penthouse safe, in Milan. I’ll get them both the next time I’m in the city.” He slid back behind the wheel and put the engine in gear again. “For now, we have more to do and see out here.”
    Slowly they continued their tour of the island, and finally, with the worst heat of the day past, he guided the Donzi between upthrust spears of basalt rock and dropped anchor in a quiet, secluded cove.
    Donning masks, snorkels and fins, they slipped over the side of the boat and drifted facedown over water teeming with marine life. Schools of black-and-orange-striped fish darted among the coral beds. Red starfish, their color made all the more vivid by contrast, clung to dark volcanic rock. Tiny crustaceans scuttled into the protection of miniature forests of algae the likes of which, as far as she knew, she’d never seen before. Close to the mouth of the cove, she came across the remains of an ancient amphora, relic of a shipwreck that had taken place centuries before.
    When, after more than an hour in the water, they at last climbed aboard the runabout again, the sun had slipped low on the western horizon. Tired, content and wrapped in a huge beach towel, she snuggled close to Dario as he weighed anchor and set the Donzi on its homeward course.
     
    As usual, that evening they dined on the terrace, or ducchena as Dario had taught her to call it. Maeve dressed with particular care before joining him. Much though she’d enjoyed the afternoon, it hadn’t produced the results she’d hoped for. She had no more recollection of visiting the cove previously than she had of marrying Dario, and she was determined that notanother night would pass without her making some sort