Everything pointed to her agreeing to live with Tonino. Or she could do as Aislin suggested and just move to Sicily independently, but that would only cause additional issues.
Marriage was out of the question. Marriage was a commitment that should only be entered between two people who meant their vows. Her mother had been shamed into marrying Aislin’s father because her grandmother couldn’t bear the shame of her daughter having a second illegitimate child by a second man. The marriage had been a disaster and ended after two years.
Deep down was the painful peripheral wish that Tonino’s proposal meant more than a means to having their son living under his roof, but she would not let her mind go there.
She could smack her head with frustration at the choice she had to make.
Time was running out.
Tonino was expecting an answer that evening, when they returned from his parents’ party.
Keen to make a good first impression with his family for Finn’s sake, Orla left Finn with Tonino while she got ready. She went through her wardrobe half a dozen times before selecting a dark blue dress with chunky crystals running the length of its high neckline. It also had the requisite long sleeves and its mid-thigh-length skirt had a slight swing to it. All the sun she’d been living with these past few weeks had given her legs some colour, which was a nice bonus.
Before dressing, she put on matching lacy blue underwear then applied the topical lotion to her itching scars. The scars on her back were itching too and she slipped her robe on and, lotion in hand, knocked on the duty nurse’s bedroom door.
The nurse was halfway through administering it, with her usual lecture of letting the lotion sink into the skin before Orla dressed, when there was a loud rap on the door adjoining the nurse’s room with Finn’s. To Orla’s horror, the door couldn’t have been shut properly for the weight of the knock caused it to swing open.
Tonino stood in the doorway, his hand raised. When he saw the nurse, he immediately burst into a flurry of Sicilian that died on his tongue when he caught sight of a frozen Orla.
The nurse seemed to sense her horror and immediately stepped between them, acting as a barrier so Orla could wrap the robe back around herself and hurry out of the room, cheeks flaming with humiliation.
Tonino wished he’d chosen to drive. It would have given him something to concentrate on.
Instead he sat in the back of his limousine trying to forget that his lover had frozen in horror at him seeing her in her underwear.
It was the closest he’d come to seeing her naked in four years. She’d run from the room like a frightened rabbit.
So much for the progress he’d believed they were making.
Things had been good between them. For the first time in for ever he’d shunned staying at his hotels during his business travels, keen to return home to his son and his son’s mother.
Her frightened rabbit eyes had brought him crashing back to earth. There had been such fear in them that he’d barely registered her lack of clothing or looked at the scars she kept hidden from him.
Orla did not trust him.
She would allow the nurse to see her scars but allowing the man she shared a bed with every night to see them? Not a chance. They made love constantly, but she always kept her top half clothed.
‘Do your parents know Finn was conceived with the woman you ended things with Sophia for?’ she asked shortly after Finn fell asleep to the motion of the car.
He paused a moment before answering. Now was not the time for an argument. Not when they had to deal with his family. He needed to keep his anger contained. ‘I don’t know. I haven’t discussed it with them.’
‘What about when you met with your mother yesterday?’ After his early return home from work, he’d taken Finn out to meet his mother. It was the first time they had done anything without Orla and it had felt strange not having her with them.
‘It wasn’t mentioned.’ Their meeting in a beach café had been the warmest exchange between them in four years. His mother had taken one look at Finn’s huge brown eyes and visibly softened. Her unabashed delight at meeting her grandson had almost—almost—made Tonino soften too.
Orla’s words about forgiveness had played in his head. At first, he’d dismissed it out of hand but her comment about him having his father’s temper had played on his mind too. There was truth in it.
It had taken months for things to settle down into the semblance of normality between Tonino and his parents but, though they all went through the motions of being a family, things had never been the same. There had always been a frisson of ice between them. Embraces were perfunctory. Kisses did not connect with cheeks. For that, he had always blamed them.
Maybe it was time to look at his own actions and put himself in their shoes. He’d caused the end of a great friendship and, like it or not, he’d brought shame on them both.
He despised the selfishness of their reaction but for the first time he accepted Orla’s observation that it had been provoked by anger; a rush of blood to the head. When he’d effectively gone into hiding by practically chaining Orla to his bed and disconnecting his doorbell and turning his phone off, it had given his parents time for their fury to percolate. When he’d re-emerged, all their fury had blasted at him like a solar flare.
Shattered from Orla’s desertion, he’d fired back at them. All the pain her leaving had caused him, he’d thrown onto his parents’ shoulders.
He’d been an idiot, he acknowledged grimly.
‘Your family can do rudimentary maths.’ Orla’s lyrical brogue cut through his thoughts. ‘They will know Finn’s conception coincided with your engagement ending. What if they take against him for it?’
‘Why on earth would they do that?’ he asked, astonished she would even suggest such a thing.
She stared out of the window. ‘People have a habit of blaming children for the sins of their parents.’
‘Are you talking generally or from experience?’
‘Both. Dante was tarnished because of our father’s gambling problem and womanising. Those things were nothing to do with him and completely beyond his control, yet he almost lost a business deal because of it.’
‘And you? Have you had something similar happen?’
Turning her head to look at him, she said simply, ‘My conception is something that’s hung over me my entire life.’
Unsure if she was joking—hoping she was joking—he responded with a bemused, ‘It’s the twenty-first century.’
‘That doesn’t mean everyone has twenty-first-century ideals, especially in the village I grew up in. I was a walking reminder of my mother’s shame—or should I say, her lack of it?’ She gave a laugh that contained no humour at all.
‘Should she have felt shame?’ he asked curiously. He despised Orla’s mother for abandoning her daughters and grandson when they needed her most, but it wasn’t like Orla to be judgemental. ‘She wasn’t the married party in the affair. Salvatore was.’
‘I don’t know.’ She shrugged in a helpless fashion and sighed. ‘I used to know. It was all very cut and dried when I was a child. I had the mummy who went on holiday to Sicily and came home knocked up by a married man. Everyone knew I was the product of an affair.’ She sighed again and rested her head back. ‘I get it now, why you didn’t tell me who you really were. It was similar to my reasons for not telling you I was Salvatore Moncada’s illegitimate daughter. I didn’t want you having any preconceived thoughts about me or for you to think I was easy like my mother.’
‘I would never think that.’
‘I know that now.’ She caught his eye and smiled sadly. ‘I’m really glad your mother has been so kind to Finn and that she wants a relationship with him, and I know I’m being selfish but I can’t help worry about how your family will feel about me. I mean, you said the other week that reputation matters to them. Do they
know who I am?’
‘Yes. Believe it or not, the fact you’re Dante Moncada’s sister and half Sicilian works in your favour.’
Her nose wrinkled. ‘Really?’
He gave a short burst of humourless laughter. ‘Really. You have the required pedigree.’
‘I’m not a dog,’ she said, visibly affronted.
‘Obviously,’ he answered wryly. ‘But trust me on this; you have nothing to worry about with my family. They’ve been so worried that I’ll never settle down and produce grandchildren that they wouldn’t care if you were part of the Cosa Nostra.’
‘Charming!’ she said with a roll of her eyes. ‘Is that why you never settled down after Sophia? To punish your family for not supporting you?’
Her question threw him.
Had he been punishing them? Punishing his parents for destroying his trust in the unconditional love he’d always taken for granted by not attempting to understand his feelings?
Didn’t he bear some responsibility for it too?
He remembered seeing his father’s face go red with fury when he’d broken the news and feeling his own anger rise in turn. They’d been like a pair of rutting bulls.
Whatever the truth, when his parents’ villa came into view, for the first time in four years the rancid curdle of acid he usually felt to be there was absent.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
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.’
Her Sicilian Baby Revelation (Mills & Boon Modern) Page 14