“In my experience, no one involved in a fatal accident ‘gets off light’.”
“Your experience as a grief counsellor?”
She shifted a little, wondering what it was about Raf that made her want to open up and tell him everything. Perhaps the safety of knowing they’d defined this as ‘casual’, that neither had expectations beyond what they’d just done. It meant that this was a safe space. She could be herself. She didn’t need to push him away because he already understood that she was closed off to the idea of anything more.
“I’m an ICU nurse, by training,” she said. “But after Thom died, I couldn’t – I found the hospital setting, the equipment –,” her voice tapered off as she paused to consider. “You know how smell is supposed to be highly-evocative of memories?”
He nodded.
“For me, it’s sounds. The whirring of the ICP Monitor, the IV Pump, the buzzing of the Pulse Ox. These are the orchestral accompaniment to my nightmares,” she grimaced. “I spent so much time with Thom in ICU towards the end, I found that even when I was ready to go back to work, I couldn’t face nursing.”
There was sympathy in the depths of his eyes. “So you chose to do this instead?”
“It chose me. A nursing friend suggested I might be able to help a couple who were struggling with their son’s terminal diagnosis. It was hard, but I found – the work is – I guess it’s rewarding, to be able to help people at a time when life feels impossible.”
“I bet you’re great at it.”
“Thank you.”
She moved a little, the weight of his body on hers making that difficult. He dropped his head, pressing a light kiss to the tip of her nose. “Are you hungry?”
She blinked in surprise. “What time is it?”
“Six?”
“Oh my God. Six? I have to get back. Yaya will be –,”
“Fine,” Raf promised gently. “She has an army of nurses looking after her.”
“But she’ll be looking for me.” She bit down on her lip. “She likes me.”
Raf studied her for a moment and then sighed, nodding once. “Okay, fair enough.”
She ignored the prick of disappointment.
“On one condition.”
“What is it?”
“Come back here with me another time.”
She hesitated for only the briefest moment. “Any time.”
Yaya was exhausted. As Lauren had suspected, the visit from her family, spanning several days, had refilled Yaya’s heart-well but depleted her energy stores. She ate only a little sweet donut for dinner, half a zeppole, with a tea, and fell asleep as Lauren sat at her side. Lauren remained longer than she needed to, the rhythmic breathing of Yaya’s sleep filling the room and making it difficult for her to leave.
It was relaxing, and Lauren realised that she’d been wound up the last few days. Wound up because Raf had become a part of her soul, he’d taken over her every thought, commandeered the direction of her dreams, so that avoiding him had demanded all her concentration. The first time they’d slept together, it had become worse, because she’d started to vibrate at a different frequency, her eyes had become attuned to him and would seek him out without her permission. Avoiding him had become difficult, because her body had seemed to want to draw her towards him, against her will. But now?
Now, here with Yaya, she breathed in and out and a smile crossed her face, making her eyes sparkle. For the first time in a very long time she felt excited. For the first time in a long time she felt…happy.
Chapter Seven
“STOP IT.”
Raf eyed his grandmother over the rim of his glass, the aperitivo they were sharing a zesty orange flavour.
“Stop what?”
She glared at him, nothing diminished in those eyes of hers.
“You are letting me win, Rafaello, and if you don’t stop it at once I’ll hurl the board across the room.”
He barked a laugh at the mere thought.
“You’re having good luck.”
Her eyes carried a threat. “How many times have we played chess?”
He couldn’t even begin to count. As a boy of eight or nine, it was every night for many years, then it became every Saturday morning. In recent years it had been less frequent, perhaps once a month or so, but the games were always challenging.
“A lot,” she supplied, when he failed to answer promptly. “And I’ve won perhaps ten per cent of those games, and very few recently.”
“That’s not my recollection.”
“Your recollection is being shaped by your desire to flatter my ego. As is your poor playing today.”
He didn’t have the heart to tell her that his mind wasn’t on the game. On the contrary, he was focussed almost exclusively on Lauren.
He forced himself to concentrate now, aware he wasn’t giving his grandmother the respect she deserved. “I’ll try harder,” he grinned.
“You’d better.” She slid a piece across the board, collecting one of his.
He took another sip of the drink, studying the play carefully, as instructed.
“You’re getting older.”
He jerked his gaze to Yaya’s, a quizzical expression on his brow. “We all are.”
She was impatient though, an impatience for only the truth, born of age. “Come on, Rafaello. You know what I mean.” She sighed. “I’m not planning on going anywhere,” she said gently. “But nor will I be here forever.”
Her frankness shifted something deep inside him. He ignored her words, and their depressing sentiment. “Come on, Yaya, there’s no need for this.”
“There is,” she insisted. “I’m worried about you.”
He frowned. “What the he—for?” He cut the curse off swiftly, remembering Yaya’s dislike for language.
“Of all my grandsons, you were the one most devastated by the move.”
His heart thundered, her words invoking an ancient pain. “What move?” He said, though, not wanting to discuss it.
She didn’t play that game. “You used to cry, every night. Do you remember?”
Fragments, like broken shards of glass. He remembered her arms though, wrapping around him in the darkness of midnight, keeping the shadows at bay, breathing warmth back into his soul.
“It was a long time ago.” He moved a piece then realised it was a silly mistake. He ground his teeth together, straightening his spine.
“Not so long. It feels like yesterday. Six little boys all heart-sore and teary,” she shook her head. “I knew we had to do it, to keep you here, but there were many days I wondered if we had any clue what we were getting ourselves into.”
“You did the right thing.” He swallowed past the emotions that lodged in his throat. “I was so young, but my earliest memories are – not good. I can only imagine what life would have been like if we’d stayed with our parents.”
A sheen of tears filmed her eyes and he regretted that. He wracked his brain for a conversation change and came up blank. Yaya, in any event, wasn’t prepared to let it go.
“You were heartbroken and I didn’t know how to make you better. Strawberries helped,” she smiled fondly.
He matched it, but his heart was strangely heavy.
“You’re wrong,” he said quietly.
“Am I?”
“On two scores.”
Her frail fingers moved a piece, capitalising on his mistake.
“You knew exactly how to make me better.” He hoped she could understand what her comfort had meant to him; how much it had helped. “And there was no single one of us more affected by our parents’ failings than the other. It was devastating to each of us, in different ways. But don’t you think, for one moment, we are not grateful every day of our lives that you and Gianfelice brought us here. Don’t you ever doubt how much we love you.”
She was fighting tears. He reached across and ran the back of his hand over her cheek.
“You were so good to us.”
She shook her head.
“I always hoped I was what you needed.”
He nodded.
“But Raf,” more urgency. “You are alone. You fly around and you do your adventures but all these years I have never heard of you falling in love, letting your heart know what that pleasure is. You are like a flame in the breeze, bright and warm but always going away again.”
He ignored the analogy and her sentiment. “I’m my own person.”
“Are you? Sometimes I wonder if you’re not too much the person your parents created.”
He stared at her, the question intriguing.
“You were only two, but they broke your heart, of that I have no doubt. Maybe you want it to stay broken forever?”
IT WAS UNLIKE ANYTHING Lauren had ever felt in her life. She wrapped her arms more tightly around Raf’s waist as he took a tight corner, so their knees dipped towards the road and she found it almost impossible to believe they weren’t going to slide onto the road. A noise filled her helmet and it took Lauren a second to realise she was laughing.
The sound of the motorbike, the sight of Tuscan cliffs falling away to their left, the verdant hills to their right, and the setting sun spraying beams of gold over them, Lauren clung to Raf almost as if she feared this was a dream or something. The pressure of the bike between her legs stirred memories and desire deep inside her, making her impatient to be off this thing and back in Raf’s arms.
Yaya had still been tired today. She’d slept late, but when she’d woken, she’d been full of talk of ‘her boys’. It had been all she’d wanted to talk about and Lauren had popped in and out, her blood heating whenever Raf’s name was mentioned and memories of the time they’d spent at his home ran through her mind like a movie on repeat. Every muscle in her body felt different, she was aware of her nipples, her thighs, her lower back, every inch of her that he’d touched and kissed and made a part of him.
In the afternoon, Yaya had eaten a small omelette and been left to the care of the nursing staff, meaning Lauren was at a loose end. And Raf was only too obliging in tying it up.
“Where are we going?” She asked but it was impossible – of course he didn’t hear. She reconciled herself to simply waiting and seeing. A short time later, he pulled the bike onto a dusty mountain track cutting across a gentle slope. Huge trees loomed over them, some olives, some oak, and a little squirrel scampered out of their way as they roared past. Lauren held on more tightly. Finally, he slowed down and pulled the bike to the side of the path, killing the engine. There was silence at first, but only while her ears grew accustomed to the lack of the motorbike’s roar. Then, she heard the choir of noises – birds tweeting, trees rustling in the dusk breeze, crickets throbbing with their high-pitched, rhythmic call.
She stepped off the bike first; Raf followed as he removed his helmet, then turned towards her, his fingers finding the release of her helmet and pressing it, lifting it off her head. Without moving away from her, he reached behind himself to place the helmet on the bike, then pushed his fingers into her hair, loosening it around her shoulders. She stared up at him with a strange feeling inside her chest.
This is temporary.
It doesn’t mean anything.
I love Thom; this means nothing.
Her smile was over-bright, hiding the feelings that were permanently at war within her. The sense of betrayal had ebbed slightly, at the start of their agreement, but that wasn’t a permanent state of relaxation. If anything, it came back with a blinding intensity whenever she found herself having too much fun. She tried to ignore the gnawing sense of guilt, but it was right there inside of her.
“Come on,” his voice was husky. So, so husky. Her stomach tightened in knots. He was ridiculously hot. Impossibly sexy. An incredible lover. She needed to remember that this was just sex, a purely physical connection, and then the guilt abated. It was the polar opposite of what she’d shared with Thom. That had been based on love and life-long affection, on respect and friendship. Sex had been very beside the point for them – his illness had necessitated that.
Raf was definitely nothing like Thom. Where Thom had been gentle and cerebral, bookish and sort of a dweeb, Raf was pure alpha-male.
She breathed out slowly, calming down with all the reassurances. She let him lace his fingers through hers and pull her gently away from the bike, further from the path on which they’d driven. Through a row of oak trees, to a gently sloping hill. After a few minutes he slowed, released her hand and shrugged out of his leather jacket, laying it on the ground.
He gestured for her to sit and she did, stretching her legs in front of her in an attempt to catch the last of the late-afternoon sunshine. The hill was covered in the softest, most lush grass, creating the effect of a pale green blanket, interspersed with tiny blue and white flowers, spread like confetti. Lauren reached for one absentmindedly, picking a blue flower and twirling it by the hair-thin stalk between her fingertips and thumb.
Beyond the hill lay a tapestry of greens, different shades and shapes, some covered in grape vines, others in poplar trees, with pale grey roads winding through them in whimsical loops. There was a town a little way off in the distance, and from up here it looked like something Thom might have made as a model – another of his habits. Tiny little brown and rust-red buildings with their tiled rooves, bursts of colour at the windows courtesy of boxes overflowing with geraniums and lavender.
She closed her eyes for a moment and drew in a breath, inhaling the fragrance of the summer evening, the flowers, the air, the masculinity of Raf as he came to sit beside her, casually placing one arm in the space behind her back, creating a frame for her, close without being overbearing, as though he instinctively understood her need for room.
“This is beautiful.”
“Si.”
“Where are we?”
“On a hill, on the outskirts of Amarona.”
“Amarona?”
With his other hand he gestured to Thom’s little model village. “There. Can you see it?”
She nodded, but it was difficult to concentrate now with Raf so close. “Yes, I do.” She angled her face, and they were suddenly so close that breathing became difficult. “Do you come here often?”
He reached for her chin, tilting her face towards his. “Not often, no. When I was younger – a teenager – I did more so.”
“Why?”
He frowned, his eyes a little distracted. “I liked the space.”
She couldn’t help but smile at that. “As opposed to the tight confines of Villa Fortune?”
“It’s more confined than you might think,” he responded with a lazy grin, before laying back, his hands behind his head, his eyes fixed on the dusk sky overhead.
She wriggled down to the ground, propping herself on one elbow so that she could see him clearly.
“What, miles and miles of outdoor space with a villa that could better be described as a mansion at the centre?”
His eyes flicked to hers. “With six of us and Yaya and Gianfelice, it felt pretty full. That’s a lot of testosterone. A lot of ego.”
“You think you have an ego?”
“Everyone has an ego. It just depends on how in check people keep it. Gianfelice encouraged us to believe we could be the best at everything we turned our hands to. He was tough on us, in many ways, but he had high ambitions for us. He expected us to do well at school, well at sports, and to show an interest in the business from when we were quite young.”
“It must have been nice to have someone take such an interest in you.”
His smile was wry, but his words spoke of a deeper pain. “Particularly given our parents didn’t care to know we existed.”
Yaya had spoken about this, when Lauren had first come to work at Villa Fortune. The older woman had been prone to over-sharing, a side effect of one of her medications. Her inhibitions had been lowered, temporarily, and she’d spoken a great deal of the disappointments of her children – sons who had chosen to live a life of spoiled indulgence rather than take an
interest in the business or their own children. A daughter she spoke of rarely, even then, and Lauren had understood that whatever had happened between Yaya, Gianfelice and their daughter, it was serious and had traumatised Yaya in some vital way.
“How come they passed custody of you over to Yaya? Was it really because they wanted to party?”
Raf’s eyes widened in surprise.
“Yaya spoke a lot when I first came here. Naturally, whatever she says to me is in complete confidence. I would never betray that.”
He nodded slowly.
“You don’t mind she mentioned it? That I know?”
“It’s not a secret,” he brushed aside. “It’s another fact you could easily Google about my family. My parents are famous for their abandonment, despite my grandparents’ best efforts to re-write it, at least so far as the press was concerned.”
“Your grandparents must have felt you were in some form of danger, to take such an extreme measure.”
His lips compressed into a grim line and she felt as though she’d reached a wall. His manner barely shifted and yet she sensed it – the tightening of his guard, his withdrawal. Lauren had to remind herself that was for the best. They weren’t supposed to be sharing their secrets, nor baring their souls. That wasn’t what they were.
She lay down on the ground beside him, signalling that the conversation was at an end, and instead pointed to a cloud overhead. “Look, do you see it?”
“The clouds?”
“No, that’s not a cloud. It’s an elephant. Can’t you recognise the trunk and tusks?” Her finger traced the pointed outline of two wispy shapes, and in between them, a thicker, curling line, just like an elephant’s trunk.
“You see an elephant? I see the stem of a flower.” His own hand lifted to point to the sky. “See, what you think of as the body is actually its bloom.”
“It’s drifting away,” she murmured.
He turned to face her, his eyes darker than usual, intriguing her with their silent depths. “Nothing lasts forever.”
Nothing Lasts Forever (The Montebellos Book 4) Page 8