Love’s Unselfish Gift Read online

  “Like hell, I’m not!” I screamed, hit, and kicked.

  And a lot of good it did. Alanzo marched to the car, yanked the passenger door open, and swatted my ass a few times as a warning. “So help me, if you don’t sit still when I put you in this car, I will strip you down to bare ass and spank your bottom until everyone in South Padre comes out here for the show.”

  When he put me in the passenger seat, I kicked the dashboard and screamed out. He took his time, even in the pouring rain, before he opened the driver’s door and sat down next to me.

  “What are you doing to yourself, Suzy?” he asked, rain dripping off his dark bangs and running over his forehead and cheeks.

  “I want to go home.”

  “You are home.”

  “Like hell I am!” I kicked the dashboard again.

  “Do you mind?” He used his bare hand and swiped the mud off the interior.

  “Take me to the airport.”

  “I don’t think you want to go home looking like that.”

  “I don’t give a shit. I’m not going anywhere with you!”

  He pulled back onto the main road and then drove along the ocean toward Anna’s South Padre home. I recognized several of the places we passed. We ran into traffic around The Isla Grand Beach Resort, and Alanzo glanced over at me.

  “Don’t stare at me,” I snapped.

  “When the hell are you going to quit acting like a child?”

  “When you and Mother Bitch stop treating me like one.”

  A few minutes later, we pulled into the Sea Vista Condominiums. He waved to a groundskeeper, and we continued deeper into the parking lot. Once he found a parking place, he walked over to help me from the car. I was out before he offered his hand.

  “Suit yourself,” he mumbled, walking toward one of the seaside units.

  “Since when don’t you live at home?” I asked, trailing behind him.

  “Since I bought this place for you.”

  Glaring at the arrogant son-of-a-bitch, I said, “Beachfront or not, I’m not staying here.”

  “Then go ahead, Suzy. Walk away. You’re not going to use me for a hot shower and dry clothes and then leave me once you have Mark or Corby on their way down here. I’ve told you over and over again, I’m going to love you, but I can do that from a distance. I can also practice tough love.”

  I snickered sarcastically. “Yeah, I just bet you can. You are more like your brother than you’ll ever know.”

  “I’m nothing like him. When you move past flesh and bones, you’ll see we are two very different people. My brother is a good man, but he’s also blinded by the love he feels for you.”

  I stilled, gasping and unable to process everything at one time. Everything I knew to be true suddenly seemed like a big, fat lie.

  Marco was alive. I had no reason to doubt that. Alanzo had just spoken about him in the present tense and for whatever reason Alanzo and even Marco wanted me to believe he was dead.

  Taking a few steps at a time, Alanzo stopped in front of unit 210 and retrieved his keys. He opened the door and stepped to the side. Slowly, I approached, calculating what I wanted to say, what I should and shouldn’t ask. If Marco wanted me to believe he was dead, then there had to be a good reason.

  I gulped. Was my mind playing tricks on me or was it possible? Could Marco still be alive?

  “I hope you like your new home.” Alanzo’s words jolted me back to the here and now.

  “Taunt all you like,” I snapped, walking by him. “I’m not staying.”

  “As long as you’re carrying my child, I’m in your life. After you have my son or daughter, then you can walk away forever, but I will know how you spend every waking hour while you’re pregnant whether you’re here or in Dallas.”

  I stopped dead in my tracks. “What did you say?”

  He tossed the small keychain on a slick marble-top table in the foyer. “You’re pregnant, Suzy.”

  “Like hell I am. I had my tubes tied.”

  “Liar. You went to have them tied when you and Mark were married and told everyone you had them snipped. The truth isn’t quite so dark. You didn’t go through with it, thank God. And like you mentioned once before, you aren’t on birth control. A woman who has her tubes tied probably doesn’t have a need to mention birth control, you know? You’re carrying my baby, and I couldn’t be happier.”

  I processed the new information right along with the new belief that my dead husband never kicked the bucket. Then I did what every woman with child probably does at some point after hearing such blissful news. I sat down on a nearby chair and sobbed.

  * * * *

  Hours later, Alanzo was seated on the lounge chair staring at the sea when I walked out on the balcony. “Feeling better?” he asked without looking in my direction.

  “Some,” I admitted, glancing down at the pink jogging suit Alanzo must’ve left on the bed for me. “Amazing what a shower can do for a girl.”

  He glanced up. “You’re not a girl, Suzy, and now you’re going to be forced to behave like a woman. I can’t have you drinking until you pass out when you’re pregnant with my child.”

  “It’s not yours,” I blurted out.

  “Is that right?” he asked, clearly amused.

  “No,” I said flippantly. “Mark is the father.”

  He rubbed his chin. “Wow, that’s pretty pathetic. Does Cassie know you slept with one of her fellows?”

  “Why, yes, she does. She walked in on us at the house. Ask her. Call her right now and see what she tells you.”

  “You didn’t have sex with Mark.”

  “I did.”

  “After you had sex with me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then,” he said angrily. “I guess the papers were right all along, weren’t they?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked when his shoulder brushed by mine.

  “You’re nothing more than damaged goods, an older woman who finds her thrills in the arms of younger men who, by the way, Suzy, are no longer standing in line to bed a babe used up by one too many football greats.”

  “You bastard,” I whispered.

  “No, I’m not a bastard, and I’ll be damned if the child you’re carrying will be.” He marched inside, pulling the sliding screen door shut behind him. A few minutes later, I heard him on the phone.

  “Mark, this is Alanzo. I have a question for you.”

  Chapter Twelve

  I woke up in his arms. I’d fallen asleep on the balcony, but at some point, I remembered feeling him cradle me against his body. He’d stepped inside the condominium and then later knelt down on the bed with me.

  I also remember how he swiped the hair out of my face, carefully removing one or two extra strands of hair glued to my face because of the rain and tears. The weather was so unpredictable in South Padre. It had been raining when I left the treatment center but later turned into a beautiful afternoon. Apparently, the rain came back again after I fell asleep.

  The weather matched my mood and my inability to make a decision about Alanzo and my feelings for him. I didn’t want to love anyone with the last name Giovanni.

  My hand went to my belly. “That doesn’t include you,” I whispered, touching my lips and remembering the soft and gentle kiss that had been placed there when I was somewhere between waking up and returning to my dreams.

  Rubbing my fingers back and forth across my mouth, I suddenly inhaled a quick intake of minty air and remembered everything. Oh my God, I thought, sitting at once. It’s true! Marco is alive! He’d been there.

  I quickly jumped up and ran over to the closet. Yanking the door open, I felt for the light switch, gasping when I saw a designer closet larger than the average master bedroom in modest homes. I tip-toed inside the L-shaped area, and when I turned the corner, that’s when my suspicions gained merit.

  Lining one wall, photographs from Marco’s PFC days and our wedding pictures were in silver and gold frames. On the other wall, th
e kind of wardrobe Marco liked most. Jeans and sweatshirts, flannel pajama pants, and collegiate T-shirts. Since Marco skipped college in order to go straight into professional football, he’d always kept an assortment of college shirts, especially those from Virginia Tech and the University of Southern California, two schools that once pursued him with scholarship offers.

  I rushed to the hanging garments and pulled them to my face, smothering my head in the material while inhaling the scent of him, the Polo cologne he often wore filling my senses. God love him. He is alive!

  Tears streamed down my face and my breathing increased. Reality punched me in the gut. He’s alive and had gone to this extraordinary trouble to make everyone, including me, believe he was dead. There had to be a reason and a very dangerous one at that.

  What kind of man deserted a love like ours?

  “I didn’t want to go, Suzy,” he said from behind me, and his husky voice spilled into the room like shards of glass breaking against a tile floor. I didn’t just hear the raspy fall of his tone but I also felt it against my skin. He seemed to whisper the statement right above my ear, yet he wasn’t there beside me.

  Scared, frightened to death that all of this was an illusion, I slowly turned around. I gasped. Sure as I was standing there, my husband was standing there too.

  My hand flew to my chest, and my heart pounded against my palm. “Is…is…this a dream?”

  His lips thinned, and he shook his head. “No, sweetheart.”

  “But I saw you. In the casket, I…I watched them bury you.”

  A peculiar smile tilted his lips even though he looked burdened; deeply saddened by the events he’d placed in motion. “Suzy, what you saw was a replica of me, a doll made to order.”

  “You can’t be serious,” I said evenly.

  “Thanks to your little fascination with sex dolls, I found a company that created a perfect copy of me. The year before I died—left—I ordered it, claiming I wanted to give it to you for Christmas.”

  “You ordered a sex toy manufactured to bring about pleasure in order to bring about pain and heartache?”

  I was furious!

  “That wasn’t my intention.”

  “Then what was your intention?” I bellowed. “You always said those dolls were a waste of money and time. You were the very one who said I couldn’t fake orgasms with a damn doll, but then you buy one specifically for the purpose of faking your own death? Who does such a thing?”

  “Suzy, let me explain.”

  “Why would you do this? Why would you leave me?” I was shaking so hard, locks of hair fell into my face. Swiping them away, I glared at him, and that’s when I melted.

  “Honey, you don’t know how difficult it was. I didn’t have any other choice.”

  Honey? He’d also called me sweetheart, speaking to me with such compassion that he fully expected me to what? Forgive and forget? Rush into his arms and beg him to touch me? Love me? What?

  “You’re alive,” I whispered, unable to tear my eyes away from his piercing gaze.

  “Yes,” he said. “And I want to explain everything to you, but first…can I please hold you?”

  I shuddered. I thought of the Marco and Suzy we used to be. I thought of all the joy he once brought into my life only to strip it away and let me experience more pain than I’d ever endured.

  He looked like he fully expected me to accept the fact that he reentered my life with few initial explanations. He acted like he’d simply disappeared rather than created a façade while faking his own death. Either way, and much to my good fortune, Marco was back again and apparently ready to act like a husband.

  Too many emotions collided at one time. “How could you?” I asked on a whisper. “How the fuck could you?” The second time around, I spat the words, and my fists went to his chest. Rushing him was far better than staring at him from across the room.

  He held my wrists with one hand and stared at me. I saw the pain and the truth of many burdens he’d had to carry all this time. “Everything I did, Suzy, I did for us. I had to do this to save us.”

  “What the hell are you talking about, save us? You’ve fucking destroyed us!”

  Alanzo walked in at some point. “No, honey, he didn’t. He saved your life and his own. He couldn’t keep up with the demands anymore. The mob bosses wanted more and more.

  “Marco didn’t have the means to satisfy what they wanted once they discovered he used me to profit on the games they taught him how to throw. He was losing everything he had that was important to him, including a career he deserved.”

  “And you lost that anyway, didn’t you?”

  Marco nodded. “Geoff Alberto is a very powerful man. When he lost his daughter to a drunk driver, he blamed me as much as the driver who struck our car. I was, after all, driving Francine. He’s made a sport out of trying to recoup what he lost in his daughter’s life by making sure I never have financial gain, making me pay again and again for something I had no control over.”

  “You could’ve gone to the police,” I said.

  “And what then? End up dead? Stand by and watch something happen to you or Alanzo? These people don’t play around, Suzy.” He reached for me then like he couldn’t withstand the urge any longer. “I have a lot of explaining to do but first I need a hug from my wife.”

  He wrapped his arms around me, and the second his forearms crossed right above my ass, I was home again. I felt his love surround me, and sensed the security I missed when he went away.

  Clawing at his head then, I pushed my fingers into his thick hair and kissed him with an open mouth. I needed to inhale him, kiss him, and breathe in his life all at the same time.

  Framing his face, I smothered him with kisses, loving the taste of him, loving the way he eagerly held on to me while allowing me the pleasure of having him the way I wanted him.

  “Oh, Marco!” I cried out, draping my arms over his back and sobbing into his shirt. “I’ve missed us.”

  Gasping when I heard Alanzo shift behind us, I peered over Marco’s shoulder and came face to face with a new obstacle. I moved away from Marco abruptly and studied the brothers.

  Alanzo looked skeptical, like he might believe he’d lost me forever. Marco looked expectant, like he probably felt I should forget the fact he died in front of my eyes, right on national television so the whole world could see him go down on the football field. The papers had later printed press releases from the PFC Commissioner and doctors who’d worked tirelessly to save him. And all of it was a scam.

  They made the mob bosses into believers.

  Why hadn’t he told me the truth? Didn’t he trust me enough? I searched Alanzo’s eyes and saw the hurt inching its way into his moist eyes before he turned to walk away.

  “Don’t go,” I whispered. “You promised you’d never leave me.” I eyed Marco. If what I said hurt Marco, he’d have to deal with the consequences of his premeditated actions.

  There was a time for everything. The time had come for us to practice a little honesty and try to keep our integrity in check at least when we were around one another.

  “I’ll never leave you,” Alanzo said, looking past his brother and eyeing me.

  “But you lied to me,” I reminded. “You knew Marco was alive.”

  “No, he didn’t. He found out a few days ago when mother finally told him.”

  “Your mother knew you were alive all along?”

  Marco studied Alanzo briefly. They were twins, but more than brothers, they had been best friends. Did Alanzo feel as betrayed as I did?

  “I had to have someone in the family watching for Francine’s family members, waiting for them to surface. Mom knew the Alberto family well. It was too dangerous to tell Alanzo everything considering his business.”

  Of course it would be, and yet that truth alone devastated me all the more. I shot Alanzo another quick glance. I wanted to cry for him.

  I saw his pain and understood he was so distraught over his loss that he could barely
comprehend it when his brother died. Then, when he loved me the most, when he’d gone through as many trials and tribulations as a man could suffer with one woman, the only true competition he’d ever had, resurfaced.

  “I love Alanzo,” I blurted out all at once, watching the acceptance wash across Marco’s expression.

  “I know,” Marco said, unaffected by my confession.

  “I’m not giving him up.”

  Alanzo arched a brow. His smile warmed my heart and his expression mirrored his brother’s.

  Marco took a deep breath, diverting my attention back to him. “Well then, we’ll deal with it, won’t we?”

  “Yes,” I whispered, smiling at Alanzo. “And I think we’d better do that now.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  I used to wonder what life would’ve been like to have two men biding for my time and loving me with everything they had to give. There were countless times when I even wanted to suggest a threesome with Alanzo, but because of Marco’s love for me, I pushed my desires aside.

  I loved Marco. I didn’t want to hurt him. Maybe everything happened for a reason. Perhaps I was always destined to love Marco and Alanzo. Since the longing for one brother matched the other, I imagined we finally made it to the place where we were always destined to be.

  Watching Marco and Alanzo act somewhat uncomfortable as they waited for me on the bed, each with a white sheet draped across his lap, I couldn’t help but feel loved from all sides.

  I didn’t want something I couldn’t have. There would never be another time when I would wonder what might have been. I was going to experience everything I’d longed to enjoy.

  Standing in the doorway, I eyed my men, the lovers I couldn’t wait to feel taking me, sharing me, loving me.

  Marco had come back to me. Alanzo, even after everything we’d been through, still wanted me.

  Alanzo winked and Marco motioned for me with a crook of his finger. When my knees hit the mattress, they surrounded me.

  “What a beautiful woman we have,” Marco said, licking the lobe of my ear and pulling me to him.

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Alanzo rasped, kissing my forehead and then running his fingers over the sheer straps of my thin camel-colored slip.