Penelope believed her. The iron gray that mixed with her dark hair seemed indicative of her character, and those black eyes ruthlessly surveyed her world.
“But your connections aren’t right this time.” Penelope felt almost gleeful at correcting her. “I’m not staying.”
“Not staying?” Looking thoughtful, Mrs. Marino sipped her beer and examined Penelope like a bug under a microscope. “You’re not taking the job for the Di Lucas?”
“No.”
“They’re good people. A little snooty, but good people. We’re related, of course.”
That figured. “Of course.”
“Sarah Di Luca was born a Marino.”
“Really?” Penelope had never suspected that. “I am going to see her before I leave.”
“So why aren’t you staying?”
“A person could get killed in this town.”
Mrs. Marino nodded, lips pursed. “Especially when a person—like you—has connections with Joseph Bianchin.”
The woman took Penelope’s breath away. “What do you know about me and Joseph Bianchin?”
“I know you went to his house this morning.”
“How do you know that?” Penelope could not believe this depth of knowledge. “How do you know these things?”
“Look.” Mrs. Marino sounded practical and brisk. “We Marinos have lived here for a long time. We work all over the county. Did you see a gardener at Bianchin’s? That was my husband, Daichi.”
“The Asian guy? That skinny little…?” Penelope abruptly shut her mouth. She could not say with any amount of political correctness that broad Italian Arianna Marino and the tall, thin, Asian gardener were an odd match.
But they were.
Mrs. Marino seemed to understand and, for all intents and purposes, she didn’t give a damn about political correctness. “Daichi is my second husband. The first one was a good Italian Catholic boy. He got me pregnant when I was sixteen, married me, and made sure I knew he was doing me a favor, beat me when he was sober. Luckily for me, that wasn’t often. I beat him when he slapped our daughter and knocked her into the wall. Three kids and he was out the door. Died in an accidental gas explosion in his home while he was sleeping. Good riddance.” She smiled, a square smile that scared the hell out of Penelope and made her wonder whether that gas explosion was really an accident. “After that, Daichi worked hard to convince me to live with him. After about twenty years I finally gave in and married him. Glad I did. Contrary to most of the evidence, not all men are bums.”
“I know. Keith was such a good guy. We would have been married… forever.” Penelope’s voice sounded wistful, even to her.
“Anyway, Daichi is how I knew you visited Bianchin’s estate and didn’t get in.”
“I couldn’t get in. Joseph Bianchin is not home.”
“He is,” Mrs. Marino said flatly.
Penelope took a long breath. She didn’t doubt her. Only a fool would doubt Arianna Marino. So that flash of light at the house… Penelope hadn’t been imagining it. Someone had been watching her. “Then why didn’t he let me through the gate?”
“I don’t know. A few days ago, Daichi saw him drive up in a limo with a bunch of guests. Possibly Bianchin was busy entertaining them. Probably he didn’t think you looked important enough to bother with. That’s the kind of man he is.” Mrs. Marino scratched her chin. “You want to see him?”
“I do.”
“My cleaning crew goes in every week and cleans that old pile of rock Bianchin loves so much, dusts and washes the toilets and the floors. You could go in with them. I’m not going to say he’ll welcome you. I’ll almost guarantee he won’t be pleasant.” Mrs. Marino stood, threw her beer bottle into the trash can hard enough to make the white plastic smack against the wall. Turning, she looked Penelope in the eyes. “But at least you’ll get your chance to tell him he’s your father.”
Chapter 21
Penelope froze. Her heart stopped.
This wasn’t possible. Someone knew the truth? “What do you mean, m-my father? What do you know about my father?”
Mrs. Marino smiled that scary square smile again. “I know what your mother told me.”
“My mother told you stuff?” She thought the whole truth had died with her mother, but here was someone alive today who knew the story about her birth? “My God. I know nothing about what happened. I don’t know why my mother wouldn’t tell me who he was. And you… know.…” Penelope couldn’t quite say it. “Did Mom tell you how it happened and… why she never told me the truth?”
“She worked for me. Remember? We had a lot in common. Crappy life choices. Sacrificed for our children. Had to make our own ways.” Mrs. Marino stood tall. “We talked.”
Penelope could hardly breathe. She didn’t know how to proceed.
That Joseph Bianchin was her father… that was her deepest, darkest secret. For good or evil, this was the truth her mother had hidden from her all these years. She had barely discovered her father’s identity, and now… now this woman she hardly knew, this woman whom she suspected of every kind of ruthlessness, could perhaps fill in the details.
How to proceed? How to convince Mrs. Marino to break her mother’s confidence?
Putting her beer down, Penelope leaned forward, elbows on her knees, and looked up at Mrs. Marino. “Mom never told me. She refused. Right up until the end, she refused. But the lady she worked for all those years—she knew. Since Mom’s gone, the old lady is slipping into dementia. Mrs. Walters thought I was my mother, and she told me I needed to tell my daughter—tell Penelope—the truth. Apparently she’d told my mother that more than once, and Mom never would. Once I realized Mrs. Walters knew my father’s identity, I questioned her. It wasn’t fair, probably, to ask a lady so lost in senility to betray a confidence, but I had to know, and it was my last chance. Could you… Do you know what happened? How my mother came to be involved with him? Why she wouldn’t tell me even his name?”
“It’s the usual story. She was young. She loved him. He seduced her. She got pregnant and then…” Mrs. Marino audibly ground her teeth. “Then she discovered what a pig he was.”
“But she was only eighteen. Why would she get involved with a man in his fifties? I mean—ick.”
“Honey, you lived with your mother’s father.” Mrs. Marino pulled another bottle of beer out of the refrigerator and popped the top. “He was an abusive, nasty jerk. Your mother wanted out, she was beautiful, she worked as a singer in L.A., and Joseph targeted her. He was charming, rich, and flattering. She saw what she wanted to see, believed what he wanted her to believe.”
“What did he want her to believe?”
“That he would rescue her from the squalor and desperation of her life.” Mrs. Marino seated herself in that squeaky desk chair again. “That he’d marry her and keep her in luxury forever.”
“God. How heartbreaking.” Penelope’s eyes filled with tears for the innocent that her mother had been.
“He kept her in his hotel suite while he did business in L.A., and when his business was concluded, he left. But before he walked out, he told her she could keep the clothes he had bought her.”
“Nice,” Penelope said sarcastically.
“He said that if she was pregnant, she should come to Bella Terra and give him the child, and if he was the father, he’d make sure the boy was raised with all the privileges he could offer.”
“Wow. What an asshole.”
“Your mother had her reasons for not wanting you to have anything to do with him.” Mrs. Marino rocked and drank. “But give her credit—the reason she got you an internship with Fiasco Designs and brought you here to Bella Terra was so she could check him out, see if he’d changed, and if he had, introduce you so that in case her cancer proved fatal you wouldn’t be alone.”
Penelope’s smile twisted with pain. “He failed the test? He wasn’t nice to her?”
“Nice to her?” Mrs. Marino brayed with laughter. “He never noticed her.”
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“What? He didn’t recognize her?”
“She went in with the cleaning crew. She saw him. He saw her. But he never looked at her. Joseph Bianchin does not look at the people who work for him. They are below him, and therefore of no interest.”
Penelope could not imagine what it must have been like for her mother to see the man she had once loved and have him ignore her. “He never recognized her? He slept with her and he never recognized her?”
“No.”
“They never spoke?”
“On the contrary. She spoke to him every week. He would be in his office. She would ask him if he would like it cleaned. He would get up and leave.” Mrs. Marino smiled. “She knew then she would not tell him about you, or you about him. She said you were better off alone in the world than being forced to face that sour old face every day lamenting the fact you weren’t a boy, raised by him to be like him.”
“There’s probably justice in that, and I do understand why she wanted to protect me. In those days, I was a fragile flower. I’ve got some calluses now, and I know how to handle the jerks of this world.” Penelope drank another swallow from her bottle, and the beer was not as bitter as the taste in her mouth. “You should have met my mother-in-law.”
Mrs. Marino looked grim. “One of those, hm?”
“When Keith was killed, you would have thought she was the widow.” Penelope paused for a long breath, remembering. “So I can handle Bianchin. He didn’t get a son, and according to the research I did, I’m his only offspring.”
“Unless some other intelligent woman did the same as your mother and refused to tell him about her baby.”
Penelope nodded jerkily. Yes. She might have a sibling or two somewhere.
So what? She had a father to meet first.
“But I think it’s doubtful.” Mrs. Marino cackled. “If there’s one thing about Joseph Bianchin that the whole town has relished, it’s the fact that he never could father a child. He tried hard enough, too. In his youth, lots of innocent girls fell to him.” Her tone changed from reminiscent to sharp. “You really want to meet him?”
“I’ve got nobody else. I would like to at least speak to him. I could do as you suggested, as my mother did, and go in with your cleaning crew and meet”—what should Penelope call him?—“meet Joseph.”
“It’s the best plan.”
“When?” The sooner the better.
Mrs. Marino went over to a grubby desk calendar and flipped through the pages. “We clean his house on Monday.”
“Monday?” This was Thursday. In that amount of time, Penelope could run into Noah countless times. “But I was going to leave.”
“You pays your money, you takes your chances.” Mrs. Marino shook her finger at Penelope. “You already got the motel room for seven days, and I don’t give refunds.” At Penelope’s openmouthed surprise, Mrs. Marino said, “Honey, I’m running a business here! I’m bringing you in, doing you a favor. You talk to Bianchin and he could get mad and fire me, and that’s a big account. I’d say I’m doing plenty for the cause.”
“Yes, but I… If I have to stay for a while, I mean, if in the end it’s going to take more than seven days… I don’t have much of a budget. I wasn’t exactly flush when I came to Portland, and my mom’s illness pretty much drained the bank account.”
Mrs. Marino shrugged her massive shoulders. “I can get you an actual job on the housekeeping team.”
That summer nine years ago, Penelope had occasionally helped her mother clean motel rooms. The memory made her shudder.
“Or you could get something on your own,” Mrs. Marino said.
Penelope didn’t really need to get anything on her own. Just this morning, she had found a job.
And this afternoon she had quit.
She glanced up at Arianna Marino.
Mrs. Marino wore a slight smile, like she wanted Penelope to be stuck here in Bella Terra.
But why? That didn’t make sense. Why would she care what Penelope did?
Maybe she wanted to make trouble for Joseph?
Of course. That was it.
Everyone in this town hated Joseph Bianchin. Mrs. Marino wanted him to be uncomfortable, unhappy, uncongenial, upset—and what better way to accomplish her dream than to present him with a daughter when he wanted a son, a daughter who was guaranteed to make trouble for him, a daughter who had not been raised in the manner he would deem appropriate? Penelope would be nothing but a horrible surprise and a complete disappointment to him.
Mrs. Marino waited and watched Penelope work through the ramifications, and when Penelope looked up, Mrs. Marino smiled that square smile again. “I can give you a good monthly rate on the room.”
With a sigh of mingled relief and dismay, Penelope put down the phone and turned into the dim hotel room.
Brooke had welcomed Penelope back on the job with open arms.
Once more, Penelope was temporarily employed in Bella Terra. Once more, she would be judged on her creativity and her craft.
Employment was a good thing, especially considering the state of her finances, but now that she’d committed to the job, she was stuck here until it was finished.
Going to the bed, she flung back the bedspread and flopped onto the sheets.
The motel room hadn’t really changed from the first time she’d stayed here. Different thin carpet, different ugly flowered bedspread—Mrs. Marino’s way of making sure no one stole it, Penelope supposed—and free Internet. But direct light never touched this motel room. The window at the front opened onto the asphalt parking lot and faced the Beaver Inn. The window at the back opened onto a gravel expanse, where a huge blue Dumpster rusted and the garbage stank. Beyond that, a fence surrounded cars and car parts that alternately baked and disintegrated.
No one in her right mind would open the stiff, off-white, plastic-lined curtains. That would expose her to drunks reeling out of the Beaver Inn and toward their vehicles, or to the psychoses of the madmen who made their homes in the junkyard.
Today she had been so proud of herself for deciding to run away from Bella Terra. Only a fool would remain in a place where violence happened far too often. Only a fool would stay where she had to fight loneliness and sorrow so deep that it made her long for a relationship with Joseph Bianchin. Only a fool stuck where she was sure to see her former lover on a frequent basis and remember that he had once broken her heart… as he could, oh, so easily, do again.…
But she would learn from the past. Had learned from the past.
She was so much wiser now.
Chapter 22
P enelope stood in the great room of Bella Terra resort, pen in hand, her notebook tucked into the crook of her arm, writing frantically while Storm Fiasco shouted out his thoughts for the redesign of the hotel. She’d been on the job only one day, and already she could see he was a genius. An eccentric genius, but a genius, for as he spoke, he created the new space in her mind: a native stone fireplace that rose all the way to the twenty-foot-high ceiling, with a series of three gas fire inserts created to look like fairy lights. A gathering of low seats and tables around it. A long leather-and-mahogany bar in the corner to serve breakfast in the morning and drinks in the evening.
For all intents and purposes, she thought he paid her no heed. But when he announced they would take out that—he waved an airy hand at the brick wall between the great room and the courtyard—and replace it with tall windows, her eyes narrowed.
He turned on her, his long blond hair swirling around his broad shoulders. “What? You don’t agree?”
“No. I… No, I think it’s a wonderful idea.” She realized her voice was squeaking like a mouse, and lowered it to a more reasonable level. “But how is that possible? Isn’t that a bearing wall?”
“My dear intern,” he said with exaggerated patience, “this is your first day, so I’ll make an exception this once. In the world of design, there are three tiers. The top, of course, is the interior designer. We take crude space and make it
glorious or comfortable or a showcase—or all three. Next are the architects. They usually have some artistic talent, although I find all too often their understanding of interior space is limited by practicalities. And then”—his Mick Jagger lips sneered—“there are the engineers. They are peasants. They have no creativity, no appreciation, no soul. They are bound by the realities of life.” He paused as if he expected a response.
She nodded vigorously.
“I am Storm Fiasco of Fiasco Designs.” He straightened his long leather duster. “I do not bother myself with such pedestrian matters as the laws of gravity. Let the peasants meet the challenge and figure that out. It makes them so happy when they do. Now.” He waved a long-fingered hand toward the wall once more. “Small bistro tables will sit close against the windows for a view into the arboretum.”
The plants were pretty out there, but she would have never called it an arboretum. Yet already she’d learned—someone else would handle those practicalities. Right now, as an intern, that someone was her. On her page, she noted, Arboretum—call a landscape architect.
The great room opened into the lobby, and Storm paced into that space and stared fixedly at the desk clerk until she blanched and backed away from the counter; then, with a swirl of his duster, he paced back into the great room and stood where the fireplace would rise in all its glory.
He was silent for so long Penelope sidled close to him and tried to do what he was doing—create the finished product in her mind.
A young man, tall and handsome, and a petite elderly woman stepped in the door.
Penelope barely glanced at them, all her attention on the room.
In a sudden flurry of urgency, Storm said, “All the furniture will have to go, of course.”
“Not all,” she said thoughtlessly.
Storm was tall, commanding, built like an Oklahoma linebacker, but his voice was soft. “I beg your pardon?”
The two people still watched, but if Storm could ignore them, so could Penelope.
“The rocking chair.” Penelope walked slowly toward the simple piece of furniture that sat close to the wall. “It’s handcrafted.” She ran her fingers over the curved sweep of the back. “Figured maple, I think. Someone took a lot of time to build this piece. You can see the loving care in each piece of wood.” She turned back to Storm. “Think of it tucked into the corner by the fireplace, next to it a small table piled with books and an old-fashioned reading lamp. It would tie the new great room to the roots of the hotel. Weary guests would relax and read. Mothers would rock their cranky children.…” Too late she saw Storm’s narrowing eyes, and her fantasy skidded to a stop.