Читать книгу Modern Romance February 2020 Books 5-8 - Мишель Смарт, Natalie Anderson - Страница 25

ORLA COULD NOT suck enough air into her lungs to kill the terror clawing at her as they approached Tonino’s parents. Never minding Finn’s conception and the end of the future marriage with their dream daughter-in-law, they were both powerful people. What on earth were they going to think of a little minnow like her?

The terror only evaporated when Angelica and Paolo Valente both pulled her into tight embraces and smothered her cheeks with kisses.

Who needed to speak a common language when body language so perfectly conveyed meaning? she thought dazedly.

The language barrier was much less a problem when Tonino introduced her to his brother and sister-in-law, both of whom spoke good English and embraced her with equal vigour.

However, the language barrier was the last thing to cross her mind when she was introduced to his sister. Orla recognised her instantly. Giulia Valente, barely a month after giving birth to her third child, looked as young and beautiful as she’d done in the photograph Orla had seen of her and Tonino in the Internet search that had caused Finn to kick her so memorably hard.

What had happened after she’d seen that photo? She knew it was important but, as had been the case for over three years, trying to force a memory only pushed it further into the shadows.

With whispered thanks, she accepted a glass of lemonade made from the fruit of the Valentes’ lemon grove and slowly relaxed. Tonino’s family were wonderfully hospitable. Here, at the customary party Angelica and Paolo always threw to celebrate the birth of a new grandchild—something it seemed, as the entire family had assured her, would be done for Finn too—was all Tonino’s extended family, all his aunts, uncles, grandparents, the multitude of first and second cousins… It sent a pang through her to witness the closeness they all shared. Orla’s family was of comparable size, but they had little day-to-day involvement in each other’s lives. Not a single one of them had visited her or Finn in hospital or offered to help share the load Aislin had taken in caring for them. This Sicilian lot, she thought, would pack the hospital out if one of their own fell ill.

A silent tour of the villa led by Angelica herself, who held Orla’s hand throughout, took her breath away. It matched Tonino’s for size and elegance but with added homeliness.

If she moved in with Tonino, she would have to have a chat with him about feminising the chateau a little.

If…?

Surely the operative word now was ‘when’. Because as the day went on, her indecision evaporated just as her terror had done.

She had to put her own feelings to one side and think of Finn. Sicily was the best place for him to be raised. Just look at all these people fussing over him! These people were his family and they would never let him down or abandon him. If she moved in with Tonino they would have Aislin living close to them, and Dante too.

She wouldn’t be alone as she was in Ireland.

After the tour, she sat with Angelica on a garden bench waiting for Tonino to return from giving Finn his own tour of the villa.

As neither woman spoke the other’s language, they didn’t converse and yet there was something companionable and protective about the way Angelica positioned herself. She had an innate glamour similar to Dante’s mother but if she’d had any work on her beautiful features, it was as subtle as subtle could be. She wore her intelligence much more freely.

A shout from the villa made them both get to their feet to see what the commotion was about.

A moment later, one of Tonino’s nieces came flying out of the villa and raced straight to Orla, tugging her hand. Orla didn’t need to speak Sicilian to know the young girl was begging her to come with her. Distress was its own universal language.

Call it sixth sense, call it mother’s intuition, but she knew immediately what was happening and what she would find, and, clinging to the young girl’s hand, she ran inside.

Finn was on the floor of the living room, Tonino crouched beside him, a crowd of young children surrounding him. His tiny body was rigid, convulsions racking him.

‘Everyone stand back,’ she barked, immediately hitting autopilot.

But, of course, they didn’t understand her.

A visibly distressed Tonino blinked then barked what she assumed was the same order in Sicilian. The circle around her convulsing child parted, leaving only Tonino.

‘You need to stand back too,’ Orla ordered. There was no time for pleasantries.

Dark colour stained his clenched features but he did as she asked.

Sinking to her knees, Orla carefully moved Finn onto his side and placed her hand on his tiny head. His arms jerked, his legs thrashed but it was his eyes she always found the most terrifying. They stared wide open but didn’t see.

Tonino had never felt so useless in his life. Or as scared. His heart had stuck in his throat the moment he’d seen his son topple from his sitting position on the floor of the living room where Tonino had put him so he could play with his cousins. His body had gone into spasm with the movements Tonino had seen on videos when learning all he could about his son’s condition.

The sounds that had come from his son’s poor throat…

Those were sounds that would haunt him.

Thank God for Orla.

All she did was sit beside their son and stroke his hair and whisper soothing words, but it acted like magic. There was not one person in that room who didn’t feel it too.

Tonino had no idea if Finn heard his mother’s voice or saw her face until the convulsions began to subside, but he was as certain as he could be that his son felt her presence even if only on a subconscious level. When his eyes slowly regained their focus, they stayed on Orla; he was clearly frightened but taking every ounce of comfort he could from his mummy.

It struck Tonino that she only knew what to do and could handle it so calmly because she had lived it many times before.

And it struck him too that she had pushed him aside because she didn’t trust him to handle the situation and look after their son.

The harsh truth was that Orla would never trust him.

Orla smoothed Finn’s bedsheet over him and kissed his forehead. He was already asleep.

Tonino hovered in the doorway, watching, waiting for his turn to kiss their son goodnight.

She waited for him in the corridor.

He shut the door and looked at her with exhausted eyes. ‘I need a drink.’

She closed her eyes. ‘I think I could do with one too.’

She followed him to the outdoor bar, which overlooked the swimming pool. The terrace area had a canopy overhanging individual round sofas that were perfect for curling up on and she sank into one with a grateful sigh.

Checking the volume of her phone was switched on, she placed it on the sofa’s arm. If the nurse had any concerns, she would be able to reach her straight away.

A crystal glass with a small measure of amber liquid in it was thrust at her.

She took it from Tonino’s hand with a muttered thank you and had a tiny sip of it. When heat flowed down her throat she was glad she’d stuck to a tiny sip.

‘That was the most terrifying thing I have ever seen,’ he said bluntly as he sat heavily on the seat across from hers, putting the bottle of liquor on the floor beside his feet while he cradled his full glass.

She smiled ruefully and tucked her legs under her bottom. ‘Yes.’

‘You didn’t trust me to help you.’

‘Sorry?’

He breathed heavily through his nose. ‘As soon as you reached Finn you took control and pushed everyone out. Including me.’

‘No, I didn’t,’ she denied, confused.

He tipped a third of his drink down his throat and angrily brushed away the residue on his mouth with his thumb. ‘You did.’

‘If I insulted or hurt you, then I’m sorry.’ She shrugged her shoulders helplessly. ‘When Finn has these fits, I go into automatic pilot.’

There was the slightest softening in his stance. He ran a hand over his bowed head. ‘Does it get easier?’

She shook her head sadly. ‘No. You just get better at dealing with it while it’s happening. It happens rarely now that he’s on the new medication but the first time it happened in front of me, I practically ran around the room banging into the walls in panic.’

He lifted his head to meet her stare. ‘When you say the first time it happened in front of you…?’

She sighed and took another tiny sip. ‘When the convulsions started, I was still in the rehab centre. Aislin was the one to deal with it. She had to deal with everything about his condition until I was well enough to play my part.’

His dark brown eyes stayed on hers thoughtfully. She thought he was going to say something but he didn’t.

With the warmth from the liquor making her feel calmer inside, she decided now was the time to tell him.

‘I’ve been thinking about your suggestion of Finn and I moving in with you,’ she said tentatively.

He raised a brow.

‘And I think you’re right. It would be better for Finn to live here.’

He continued staring at her expressionlessly.

‘We’ll move in with you…if the offer still stands,’ she added when the lack of emotion on his face injected a jolt of ice up her spine.

He took a much larger drink of his liquor. ‘Are you prepared to marry me?’

‘You already know the answer to that.’

‘You still refuse my proposal?’

‘Come on, Tonino, it’s nothing personal. I just don’t want us to marry.’

‘Then I decline.’

She uncurled her legs and sat upright. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I have been thinking too and I have decided it has to be marriage or nothing.’

‘What? But why?’

‘Because it’s the only way I can trust that you’re committed to us.’

‘Living with you would show that commitment.’

He shook his head violently and downed the last of his drink. ‘No, dolcezza, all it would show is that you’re committed for the next five minutes.’

‘You still don’t trust me?’

His burst of laughter was loud and bitter. ‘Unfortunately I have the opposite problem. I do trust you. I know you well enough now that I believe you always intended to tell me about Finn. I know you well enough to say with confidence that your reasons for keeping the pregnancy secret from me were justified—I still think they were wrong, but I believe you believed you were doing the right thing.’

‘I don’t understand what you’re saying.’

He unscrewed the bottle and poured himself another full glass. ‘I’m saying that you always do what you think is best for Finn. He is your priority.’

‘As he should be.’

‘Agreed. But not at the cost of tying yourself to a man you don’t love or trust. If you loved or trusted me, you would marry me. But you don’t so all you’re prepared to give is a half-hearted commitment that you can walk away from any time you like.’

‘I wouldn’t do that.’

‘No? You say that when you don’t deny you neither love nor trust me?’

‘Well, it’s hardly as if you love me.’

‘Don’t I?’

She blinked. ‘Do you?’

His gaze held hers before he shook his head grimly and had another drink. ‘When we were on the beach last week, you accused me of treating you like a joke four years ago. The truth is, you were the one who treated me like a joke. You treated me like I was nothing.’

Indignant, she snapped, ‘I did not…’

‘Then why did you not give me a chance to defend myself against Sophia’s lies? You have never explained that to me.’

She opened her mouth to answer but nothing came out.

Why hadn’t she confronted him?

‘Why did you run?’ he asked roughly. ‘Why block my number? If you’d cared for me in any way, you would have given me that chance.’

‘I ran because I was already an emotional wreck,’ she blurted out.

He stared at her grimly. His mouth clamped shut, forcing her to fill the silence.

‘The day you went to Tuscany, I went to see my father. I knew he was due back in Sicily that day and I was desperate to finally meet him.’ Her eyes filled with tears and she blinked them back. The last thing she needed right then was to cry but the memory had surfaced with painful vividness. She wished it would lock itself back in its box. ‘He wouldn’t see me. He refused. The dirty little secret had to remain a dirty little secret. And then I got to the hotel and found Sophia waiting for me with evidence that the man I’d been sleeping with was engaged to another woman and I felt sick with myself and so ashamed.’

Not a flicker of emotion crossed his stony face. ‘Even if Sophia had been telling the truth it wouldn’t have been your fault.’

‘Maybe not but that’s not how it felt. In the space of two hours I’d been rejected by my father and learned the man I was falling in love with was a cheat and a liar. All I could think of was getting out of Sicily and away from the Sicilian men who’d lied and hurt me.’

‘So because your father was a womanising coward, you decided I was of the same mould? Without giving me the right to reply, you grabbed the chance to run away, and when you found you were pregnant and discovered the family I come from is powerful, it gave you another excuse to keep your distance for that bit longer, didn’t it? You don’t trust anyone.’

‘I trust you…’

‘Do not lie to me,’ he snarled with such force she jumped. ‘The only person you trust is your sister. If you trusted me even a little you wouldn’t go to such great lengths to hide from me. You share your body with me every night, you sleep in my arms, yet you think me a shallow misogynist who runs at the first sight of a blemish on a woman’s skin.’

‘I don’t think that about you.’

‘Then explain yourself. Tell me why I am not good enough to look at you.’

‘It isn’t like that,’ she beseeched, fighting even harder to stop the tears from falling. ‘My scars will disgust you.’

‘Your opinion of me is even worse than I thought.’

‘No, that is not what I’m saying. My scars…’ She tugged at her hair and tried to verbalise everything racing through her burning brain. ‘I remember the woman I was—the woman you remember—and then I look in the mirror and see the woman I’ve become, and I’m reminded of everything I’ve lost and everything Finn’s lost. That seizure he had today…that was mild compared to the ones he used to have. He has suffered every single day of his life and he will never have a normal childhood. I woke up in a hospital unable to move and unable to communicate. I didn’t know if the child in my belly was dead or alive. I couldn’t hold him until he was a year old and even then Aislin had to help because I was too weak to hold him on my own. I screamed with pain every day for a year and pushed myself harder than I would have believed possible to get home to my child and all I have to show for it now are the scars on my body. My pain is over, but his suffering will never end. I look at my scars and my heart shreds for the suffering our child has to bear, which he will have to bear every day for the rest of his life, and you think I should flaunt them to you?’

His jaw throbbed. ‘No, dolcezza, I do not expect you to flaunt them. I expect you to share them with me as the father of your child who feels terrible guilt that his bit of fun with a beautiful Irishwoman had such tragic consequences.’

Feeling all the emotions inside her leech out, Orla put her glass on the floor and buried her face in her hands. ‘You have nothing to feel guilty about. You have only tried to do the right thing since you learned about Finn.’

‘I missed the first three years of his life. Those are years I will never get back.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘We are both beyond apologies, do you not think? We both feel guilt, but we have to try and accept that it does not solve anything. You have put our child first since the day you learned you carried him. It is time for me to put him first too. I want to be a permanent part of his life, but I see that it is impossible.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘That you should return to Ireland with him. It’s his home. His language. Where he is comfortable and familiar.’

‘But…’

‘I will still see him. I visit Ireland regularly. And I will have him visit for holidays.’

‘That does not sound like the joint custody we spoke of.’

‘Joint custody will not work for Finn. He needs stability. You are his stability.’ Tonino squeezed his eyes shut as he recalled the look in Finn’s eyes when he’d come out of the seizure and locked onto Orla’s loving stare. Orla was his son’s world. He had to accept that.

‘Stay here for a few more days to let him recover from the seizure. I will take myself away somewhere.’

‘What are you talking about?’

Dragging air into his tightened lungs, he picked up the bottle, got to his feet and took three heavy paces to the bar.

‘Tonino…’ she said tentatively. ‘Are you calling it a day between us?’

He laughed. ‘Dio, you nearly sound upset.’

Four years ago Orla hadn’t known of his trappings of wealth and had fallen for him regardless. She’d looked into his heart as no one else had done and fallen for him…but only to a point. The moment doubts had crept in she’d run away like the coward she was. And now, four years on, when she knew perfectly well his wealth, still she looked in the heart of him and decided he wasn’t enough. She did not love him. She did not trust him.

He did not believe she would ever trust him. Without trust there could never be love.

‘But is that what you’re saying?’ she persisted. ‘You want to call it off because I won’t marry you? And you’re the one who laughed at me for being old-fashioned?’

‘Do not dare use humour to wriggle out of this,’ he snarled, twisting round to face her. ‘I have done nothing but my best to accommodate you.’

‘For Finn’s sake,’ she whispered. All the colour had drained from her face.

‘And for yours.’ He swore loudly and poured himself another drink. ‘Everything I have done has been with you in mind too and all you do is resist me. You won’t give an inch and you won’t trust me, not with your heart, your body or our son’s health.’

‘That’s not fair and it’s not true—’

‘For the last time, stop lying!’ He slammed his glass on the bar, spilling amber liquid all over his hand and the bar surface. There was clarity in the spilled liquid that focused the mind and made him take a long breath to find clarity in his thoughts. ‘If you can’t stop lying to me then at least stop lying to yourself.’

Tonino would not lie to himself any more either. After four years of lies, the truth he had buried deep in his subconscious had risen up as clear as the spilt liquor on his hand.

He had never got over Orla.

He suspected that he’d fallen in love with her four years ago. He’d certainly never forgotten her or got over her, even when he’d carried on with his life and pushed her from his mind. Only in his dreams had she come back to him. Orla was the reason he’d never settled down. It was nothing to do with punishing his parents—it was because there was no room left in his heart for anyone else.

He suspected too that his purchase of the Bally House Hotel in Dublin had been a subconscious effort to put himself on the same soil as her.

And he suspected, too, that if he continued to live under the same roof as her, knowing his love for her would be unrequited for ever, he would drive himself insane.

All these years he’d been waiting for Orla to come back to him and he hadn’t even known it.

He’d finally had a taste of life as a family with the woman he loved and the child he worshipped but it wasn’t enough for her. He wasn’t enough for her.

Any ties they’d forged together had been ripped apart.

It was time to say goodbye.