The Count's Christmas Baby

“But you couldn’t be that Ric. I wasn’t able to wake him. He died in my arms—”

“No, Sami,” he countered in a husky voice. “I’m right here.”

She was so staggered to hear him use her nickname she clutched the crib railing with both hands. A small cry escaped her lips.

“You’re Ric?” She shook her head, causing her hair to swish against her pale cheeks. “I—I can’t believe this is happening. I—”

The room started to swim. The next thing Sami knew, she found herself on the bed, with the man who’d made her pregnant leaning over her. He sat next to her with his hands on either side of her head.

“Stay quiet for a minute. You’ve had another shock.”

He spoke to her in the compassionate voice she remembered—exactly the way he’d done in the avalanche. With her eyes closed she could recall everything, and she was back there with him in spirit.

But the minute her eyelids fluttered open she saw a stranger staring down at her. In her psyche Sami knew he was Ric. But she couldn’t credit that the striking, almost forbidding male who’d swept past her at the police station was the same Ric who’d once given her his passion and the will to live.

Dear Reader,

Born at the foot of the Wasatch mountains, my family has always enjoyed winter sports in our Rockies, which rise ten thousand feet. In my travels to Europe I’ve also enjoyed the winter ski areas in the Alps. Perhaps there’s no place more breathtaking than Austria, where charming villages are tucked in at the base of the mountains, all covered in snow. Innsbruck is one of my favourite places.

When I read an article about an avalanche that swept through a street in one of those Austrian villages, killing five people, I shuddered. We’re familiar with avalanches in our Utah mountains too. The tragedy stayed in my mind and wouldn’t let me go until I’d written a novel about it.

When a man and a woman are trapped in a similar Austrian avalanche, their outcome beats the odds. I hope their story will thrill you.

Enjoy!

Rebecca Winters

REBECCA WINTERS, whose family of four children has now swelled to include five beautiful grandchildren, lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, in the land of the Rocky Mountains. With canyons and high alpine meadows full of wild-flowers, she never runs out of places to explore. They, plus her favourite vacation spots in Europe, often end up as backgrounds for her romance novels, because writing is her passion, along with her family and church.

Rebecca loves to hear from readers. If you wish to e-mail her, please visit her website: www.cleanromances.com

The Count’s

Christmas Baby

Rebecca Winters

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my darling son John, a wonderful husband and

father, who started skiing at four years of age and can

ski like a champion. His experience

and expertise both in the Utah and Colorado Rockies

have helped me to add authenticity

to the many mountain scenes in my books.

CHAPTER ONE

“PAT? It’s me.”

“Where are you?”

“At the Grand Savoia eating lunch in my room. You were right. It’s a lovely place with every amenity. Thanks for arranging everything for me.”

“You’re welcome. How my gorgeous baby nephew holding up?”

“He’s taking another nap right now, thank heaven. That’s giving me time to pick up where I left off last evening.”

“Couldn’t you have phoned me before you went to bed to tell me how things were going? Your text saying you’d arrived in Genoa was hardly informative. I waited all day yesterday expecting to hear more from you.”

“I’m sorry. After I reached the hotel, I began my search. But the telephone directory didn’t have the listing I was looking for. When I realized I wouldn’t find the answer there, I talked to the clerk at the front desk. He hooked me up with one of the chief phone operators who speaks English who was more than happy to help me.”

“Why?”

In spite of the seriousness of the situation, her suspicious sister made her laugh. “It’s a she, so you don’t need to worry I’m being hit on. When I told her my dilemma, she couldn’t have been nicer and tried to assist me any way she could. But by the time we got off the phone, I was too exhausted to call you.”

“That’s okay. So what’s your plan now?”

“That operator suggested I should call the police station. She gave me the number for the traveler’s assistance department. She said there’ll be someone on duty who speaks English. They’re used to getting calls from foreigners either stranded or in trouble and will help me. I’m going to do that as soon as I hang up from you.”

“And what if you still don’t have success?”

“Then I’ll fly home in the morning as planned and never think about it again.”

“I’m going to hold you to that. To be frank, I hope you’ve come to a dead end. Sometimes it’s better not to know what you don’t know. It could come back to bite you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I said. You might be walking into something you wish you could have avoided. Not all people are as nice and good as you are, Sami. I don’t want to see you hurt.”

“You’re not by any chance having one of your premonitions, are you?”

“No, but I can’t help my misgivings.” Pat sounded convinced Sami had come to Italy on a fool’s errand. Maybe she had.

“Tell you what. If he’s not in Genoa, then I’ll be on the next plane home.”

“I’m going to hold you to that. Forgive me if I don’t wish you luck. Before you go to bed tonight, call me. I don’t care what time it is. Okay?”

“Okay. Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

Sami hung up, wondering if her sister was right. Maybe she shouldn’t be searching for the grandfather of her baby. If she did find him, he might be so shocked to find out he was a grandfather, it could upset his world and make him ill. Possibly their meeting could turn so ugly, she’d wish she’d never left home.

That’s what worried Pat.

If Sami were being honest, it worried her, too. But as long as she’d come this far, she might as well go all the way. Then maybe she could end this chapter of her life and move on.

She looked at the number she’d written down on her pad and made the phone call. The man who answered switched to English after she said hello. “Yes?”

His peremptory response took her back. “Is this the traveler’s assistance department?”

“Yes—”

“I wonder if you could help me.”

“What is it you want?”

Whoa. “I’m trying to find a man named Alberto Degenoli who’s supposed to be living in Genoa, but he’s not listed in the city phone directory. I’ve come from the United States looking for him. I was hoping y—”

But she stopped talking because the man, whom she’d thought was listening, was suddenly talking to another man in rapid Italian. Soon there was a third voice. Their conversation went on for at least a minute before the first man said, “Please spell the name for me.”

When she did his bidding, more unintelligible Italian followed in the background. Finally, “You come to the station and ask for Chief Coretti.”

Chief?

“You mean now?”

“Of course.” The line went dead.

She blinked at his bizarre phone manners, but at least he hadn’t turned her away. That had to account for something.

Next she phoned the front desk and asked them to send up the hotel’s childminder. Sami had interviewed the qualified nurse yesterday and felt good about her. While she waited for her to come, she refreshed her makeup and slipped on her suit jacket.

Only four people knew the private cell phone number of Count Alberto Enrico Degenoli. When the phone rang, Ric assumed it was his fiancée, Eliana, calling again to dissuade him from leaving on a business trip in a few minutes. She was her father’s puppet after all.

Now that Ric was about to become the son-in-law of one of the wealthiest industrialists in Italy, her father expected to control every portion of Ric’s life, too. But Ric had crucial private business on Cyprus no one knew about, and it had to be transacted before the wedding.

Love had no part of this marriage and Eliana knew it. The coming nuptials were all about money. However, once they exchanged vows, he planned to do his part to make the marriage work. But until Christmas Eve, his time and business were his own concern and his future father-in-law couldn’t do anything to stop him.

When he glanced away from his office computer screen long enough to check the caller ID, he discovered it was his private secretary phoning from the palazzo.

He clicked on. “Mario?”

“Forgive the interruption, Excellency.” The older man had been in the service of the Degenoli family as private secretary for thirty-five years. But he was old-fashioned and insisted on being more formal with Ric now that Ric held the title. “Chief of Police Coretti just called the palace requesting to speak to you. He says it’s extremely urgent, but refused to tell me the details. You’re to call him back on his private line.”

That would have irked Mario, who’d been privy to virtually everything in Ric’s life. In all honesty, the chief’s secrecy alarmed even Ric, whose concern over the reason for the call could touch on more tragedy and sorrow for their family. They’d had enough for several lifetimes.

“Give me the number.”

After writing it down, he thanked Mario, then clicked off and made the call. “Signor Coretti? It’s Enrico Degenoli. What can I do for you?”

He hadn’t talked to the chief since the funeral for his father, who’d died in an avalanche in January. The chief had been among the dignitaries in Genoa who’d met the plane carrying his father’s body. The memories of what had happened that weekend in Austria would always haunt Ric and had changed the course of his life.

“Forgive me for interrupting you, but there’s a very attractive American woman in my office just in from the States who’s looking for an Alberto Degenoli from Genoa.”

At first his heart leaped at the news, then as quickly fizzled. If this American woman had been looking for him, she would have told the police chief she was looking for a man named Ric Degenoli.

Ric and his father bore the same names, but his father had gone by Alberto, and Ric went by Enrico. Only his siblings ever called him Ric. And the woman who’d been caught with him in the avalanche.

“Does she know my father died?”

“If she does, she has said nothing. To be frank, it’s my opinion she’s here on a fishing expedition, if you know what I mean.” He cleared his throat. “She’s hoping I can find him for her because she says it’s a matter of life and death,” he added in a quiet voice.

What?

“Since she’s being suspiciously secretive, I thought I should let you know before I told her anything.”

The intimation that this could be something of a delicate nature alarmed Ric in a brand-new way. He shot out of his leather chair in reaction. Up to now he’d done everything possible to protect his family from scandal.

Unfortunately he hadn’t been able to control his father’s past actions. No matter that Ric was a Degenoli, he and his father had differed in such fundamental ways, including the looks he’d inherited from his mother, that the average person wouldn’t have known they were father and son.

One of Ric’s greatest fears was that his father’s weakness for women would catch up with him in ways he didn’t want to think about. With his own marriage coming up on New Year’s Day, it was imperative nothing go wrong at this late date. Too much was riding on it.

His father had been dead less than a year. It wasn’t a secret he’d been with several women since Ric’s mother’s sudden and unexpected death from pneumonia sixteen months ago. He recalled his mother once confiding to him that even if his father were penniless, he would always be attractive to women and she had overlooked his wandering eye.

Ric couldn’t be that generous. If the woman in Coretti’s office thought she could blackmail their family or insist she had some claim on his deceased father’s legacy, then she hadn’t met Ric and was deluding herself. “What’s her name?”

“Christine Argyle.”

The name meant nothing to him. “Is she married? Single?”

“I don’t know. Her passport didn’t indicate one way or the other, but she wasn’t wearing a ring. She called the traveler’s aid department and they turned it over to me. At first I thought this must be some sort of outlandish prank, but she’s not backing down. Since this is about your father, I thought I’d better phone you and learn your wishes before I tell her I can’t help her and order her off the premises.”

“Thank you for handling this with diplomacy,” Ric said in a level voice, but his anger boiled beneath the surface. To go straight to Genoa’s chief of police to get his attention was a clever tactic on her part. She wouldn’t have taken that kind of a risk unless she thought she had something on Ric’s father that the family wouldn’t like made public. How convenient and predictable.

She’d probably met Alberto at a business party last fall when he’d decided he didn’t want to be in mourning any longer. More often than not those dinners involved private gambling parties. Many of them were hosted for foreign VIPs on board one of the yachts anchored in the harbor where the police had no jurisdiction.

There’d be plenty of available women, including American starlets, to please every appetite. But it would be catastrophic if this last fling of his father’s was the one that couldn’t be hushed up and resulted in embarrassing the family morally and financially.

Not if Ric could help it!

Anything leaked to the press now could affect Ric’s future plans in ways he didn’t even want to think about. He saw red. Before the wedding, the negotiations in Cyprus had to go through as planned to safeguard his deceased mother’s assets so Eliana’s father couldn’t get his hands on them. Ric refused to let anything get in the way.

“Per favore—keep her in your office until I get there. Don’t use my title in front of her. Simply introduce me as Signor Alberto Degenoli and I’ll go from there.” This woman wouldn’t have gotten involved with his father if he hadn’t had a title, but Ric intended to play along with her ruse until he’d exposed her for a grasping opportunist.

“Understood. She went out for a while, but she’ll be calling me in a few minutes. If you’re coming now, I’ll let her know you’re on your way.”

His thoughts were reeling. “Say nothing about this to anyone.”

“Surely you don’t question my loyalty to the House of Degenoli?”

“No,” Ric muttered, furrowing his hair absently with his fingers. He stared blindly out the window of the Degenoli Shipping Lines office. For well on 150 years it had overlooked the port of Genoa, Italy’s most important port city. “Forgive me, but when it comes to my family …”

“I understand. You know you can rely on my discretion.”

“Grazie.” Ric’s voice grated before he hung up.

Whatever was going on, Ric didn’t want wind of this to reach his siblings. Claudia and Vito lived with enough pain and didn’t need to take on more, especially with Christmas only a week away. It was absolutely essential this be kept secret.

After he told his driver to meet him in the side alley, he rang security to follow them and left the office with his bodyguards. He needed to take care of this matter now, before he left for the airport.

For the second time today, Sami paid the taxi driver and got out in front of the main police station in Genoa with trepidation. The police chief had told her one of his staff had found the number of the man she was looking for and had contacted him.

It was a miracle! She couldn’t have done it without the phone operator’s help. After searching for Alberto Degenoli without success, she’d almost given up hope.

No telling what would happen at this meeting, but she had to go through with it for her baby’s sake. His existence would come as a total surprise to Mr. Degenoli, but her son deserved to know about his father’s side of the family.

Of course, the baby was too little to know anything yet. It was up to Sami to introduce them and lay a foundation for the future, if Mr. Degenoli wanted a relationship. If not, then she’d go back to Reno and raise him without feeling any attendant guilt that she hadn’t done all she could do to unite them.

Once through the doors, she realized it was just as busy at four o’clock as it had been earlier. Besides people and staff, it was filled with cigarette smoke, irritating her eyes and nose. The nativity scene set up on a table in the foyer reminded her how close it was to Christmas and she’d done nothing to get ready for it yet. But she’d had something much more important on her mind before leaving Reno than the upcoming holidays.

Having been in the building earlier, she knew where to go. She’d just started to make her way down the hall when a man strode swiftly past her and rounded a corner at the end. He was a tall male, elegantly dressed in a tan suit and tie. Maybe he was in his mid-thirties. For want of a better word, he left an impression of power and importance that appeared unconscious and seemed to come as naturally to him as breathing.

Sami passed several men and policemen who eyed her in masculine appreciation before she turned the corner and entered the reception area of the police chief’s office. With the exception of the uniformed male receptionist she’d met before, the room was empty. Where had the other man gone?

After she sat down, the receptionist picked up the phone, presumably to let the chief know she’d arrived. Once he’d hung up, he told her she could go in. After removing a few blond hairs from the sleeve of her navy blazer, Sami thanked him and opened the door to the inner office.

To her shock, the stranger who’d passed her in the hall moments ago was standing near the chief’s desk talking to him. Obviously the chief of police was busy, so she didn’t understand why his secretary had told her she could go in.

At a glance she took in the other man’s lean, powerful physique. Her gaze quickly traveled to the lines of experience etched around his eyes and mouth. Maybe she was mistaken, but beneath his black brows, those dark eyes pierced hers with hostility after he’d turned in her direction. That wasn’t a reaction she was used to receiving from the opposite sex.

Of medium height, she had to look up to him. His unique male beauty fascinated her, especially his widow’s peak formed by hair black as midnight. Swept back like that, it brought his Mediterranean features and gorgeous olive skin into prominence.

The chief spoke in heavily accented English, drawing her attention away from the stranger. “Signorina, may I present Signor Alberto Degenoli.”

Sami’s spirits plunged. This isn’t the man I’m looking for. But perhaps he is a relative? “How do you do?” she murmured, shaking the hand of the striking Italian male who’d extended his. He had a strong, firm grip, like the man himself.

“How do you do, Signorina?” His polished English was impeccable with barely a whisper of accent. But it was the depth of his voice that sent a curious shiver through her body, recalling an echo from the past. Maybe she was mistaken, but she thought she’d heard that voice before.

But that was crazy. They’d never met.

“You’ve gone pale, Signorina. Are you all right?”

“Yes—” Sami gripped the back of the nearest chair. “I-it’s just that you’re not the person I’m looking for and I’m disappointed,” she stammered before gazing at him again. “You have his name, but you’re … too young. Obviously there’s more than one Alberto Degenoli living in Genoa.”

He shook his head. “No. There’s only one.”

“You mean you?”

“That’s right.”

“Perhaps instead of Genova, you meant Geneva in Switzerland, Signorina,” the chief inserted. “Many Americans become confused by the two similar spellings.”

She frowned. “Possibly I misunderstood. Mr. Degenoli’s in shipping.”

“So are others on Lake Geneva.”

“But he’s Italian.”

“Thousands of Italians live in Switzerland.”

“Yes. I know.” Maybe because of the differences in pronunciation, she’d gotten the name of the city wrong. How odd. All this time … “Thank you for the suggestion.” She looked at Mr. Degenoli. “I’m so sorry you’ve made this trip to the police station for nothing. I’ve put both of you out. Please forgive me.”

“Perhaps if you gave me a clearer description of him?”

“Well, he’d probably be in his sixties. I’m not sure. I feel terrible about this. Thank you for coming here on such short notice.” She glanced at Chief Coretti. “Please excuse me for taking up your time. You’ve been very kind. I’ll leave now so you can get on with your work.”

At her comment, he squinted at her. “You sounded desperate when you came to me, Signorina. Therefore I will leave you to get better acquainted with this gentleman you’ve inconvenienced, and the two of you can discuss … business.”

Business? “What on earth do you mean?”

“Surely you’re not that naive?” the chief replied.

Upset by the distasteful insinuation, she felt heat rush to her cheeks. “You’ve evidently questioned my motives, but whatever you’re thinking, you’d be wrong—” she blurted. At this point she felt oddly reluctant to be left alone with the intimidating stranger studying her with relentless scrutiny. “I haven’t found the person I’m looking for, so there’s no point in this going any further. I truly am sorry to have caused either of you any inconvenience.”

Chief Coretti gave her a nasty smile. “What is going on, Signorina? You said it was a matter of life and death.”

“It is.” She hated the tremor in her voice.

He threw up his hands. “So explain!”

“I know I’ve been secretive, but I’m trying to make this inquiry as discreetly as possible to protect all concerned. When my other searches failed yesterday, I came to you for answers and hoped nobody would get hurt in the process. But the fact remains I’m looking for an older gentleman. I suppose he could even be in his early seventies.”

Time seemed suspended as Mr. Degenoli swallowed her up with those jet-black eyes of his. “Signor Coretti—if you’d be so kind as to leave us alone for a moment.”

“Of course.”

After he left, the room grew silent as a tomb except for the thudding of her heart. It wouldn’t surprise her if the stranger could hear it.

His lips twisted unpleasantly before he moved closer. “You’ve been secretive long enough. I’d like to see your passport.” Sami had the strongest conviction he was curious about her, too. At this point she knew she’d heard his voice before. But where? When she’d come to Europe a year ago, she hadn’t visited Italy.

While she rummaged in her purse, her mind was searching to remember. He stood there waiting, larger than life with an air of authority much more commanding than any police chief’s. She handed the passport to him. After he read the information, he gave it back.

“I’ve never heard of you.” His eyes glittered with barely suppressed anger. “The Alberto Degenoli I believe you’re looking for is no longer alive, but I think you already knew that. How well did you know him?” he demanded.