by Penny Jordan
‘There’s a man waiting to see you. Mrs Ward wasn’t for letting him—she told him it was against the rules—but it’s plain to see that he’s the kind that doesn’t pay attention to anyone’s rules but his own,’ she told Annie conspiratorially.
Fear iced down Annie’s spine.
Colin had found them.
Strictly speaking the nursery wasn’t supposed to allow anyone not authorised by a parent to have access to any of the children, but Annie knew how persuasive Colin could be. Nausea curdled her stomach. He would try to take over her life again. He would say it was in her best interests. He would remind her that their parents had left their assets to him because they trusted him to look after her—even though her mother had told her that the house would come to her, because it had belonged to her father.
She mustn’t think about any of that now, she told herself. She would need all her energy and strength to survive the present; she mustn’t waste it on the past.
‘He’s in the carers’ room,’ Mrs Nkobu informed her, referring to the small fusty room with a glass wall through which parents and guardians could watch the children whilst waiting to collect them.
Annie nodded her head, but instead of going to the carers’ room she went to the nursery, busy with other mothers collecting their children. Ollie was sitting on the floor, playing with some toys, and as always when she saw him Annie’s heart flooded with love. The minute he saw her he held out his arms to her to be picked up. Only once she was cradling him tightly in her arms did she feel brave enough to look through the glass panels into the room beyond them.
There was only one person there. He was standing with his back to the glass and he was not Colin. But any relief she might have felt was obliterated by the shock of recognition that arced through her, sending through her exactly the same tingling sensation of deadened sensory nerve-endings awakened into painful life as she had felt earlier in the hotel lobby, when he had held her.
A long-ago memory of herself as a young teenager came back to her. Inside her head she could see herself, giggling with a schoolfriend over a handsome young teenage pop idol they had both had a crush on. She had felt so alive then—so happy, and so unquestioningly secure in her unfolding sexuality. She held Ollie even tighter, causing him to wriggle in her arms at the same moment as the man from the hotel lobby turned round.
He wasn’t wearing his sunglasses now, and she could see his eyes.
The breath left her lungs with so much force that it might as well have been driven out by a physical blow. She knew who or rather what he was immediately. How could she not when the eyes set in the scimitar-harsh maleness of his face were her son’s eyes? That he and Ollie shared the same blood was undeniable—and yet he looked nothing like Ollie’s father, the man who had raped her. Antonio Leopardi had had a soft, full-fleshed face, and pebble-hard brown eyes set too close together. He had been only of medium height, and thickset. This man was tall with broad shoulders, and his body—as she already knew—was hard with muscles, not soft with over-indulgence. He smelled of clean skin, and some cologne so subtle she couldn’t put a name to it, not of alcohol and heavy aftershave.
He was clean-shaven, his thick dark hair groomed, whereas Antonio had favoured stubble and his hair thickly gelled.
Everything about this man said that he set the highest of standards for himself even more than for others. This man’s word, once given, would be given for all time.
Everything about Antonio had said that he was not to be trusted, but despite their differences this man had to be related to her abuser. Ollie was the proof of that.
She wanted to turn and run, fear tumbling through her as she felt her defences as weak as a house of cards; but her fear was not fear of the man because he was a man, Annie had time to recognize. It was a different fear from the one that lay inside her like a heavy stone. Instinctively she knew that this man was no threat to her, and that she was in no danger from him. His focus wasn’t on her. It was on her son—on Ollie.
Her mouth had gone dry and her heart was pounding recklessly, using up her strength. There was no escape for her. She knew that. Still she tried to delay the inevitable, her hands trembling as she strapped Ollie into his buggy and then reluctantly pushed it to the door.
He was waiting for her in the corridor, one strong, lean brown hand reaching for the buggy, forcing her to move her own hand or risk having him close his hand over her own.
Falcon frowned as he registered her reaction to him. Was her recoil part of the legacy Antonio had left her? He had been struck when he had seen her earlier by her vulnerability, and by his unfamiliar desire to reassure her. Now that feeling had returned.
Falcon wasn’t used to experiencing such strong feelings for anyone outside his immediate family. He had never denied to himself his protective love for his two younger brothers, nor his belief that, as their elder, in the absence of their father’s love and their mother’s presence in their lives, it was his responsibility to protect and nurture them.
He had grown up shouldering that responsibility, but he had never before felt that fierce tug of emotional protectiveness towards anyone else.
It was because of the child, of course. There could be no other reason for his illogical reaction.
It had taken him several hours of impatient telephone calls and pressure to track her down via the agency that had employed her—thanks to that wretched receptionist preventing him from following her at the hotel.
This morning he had felt sorry for her. Now he was motivated solely by his duty to his family name to make amends for what Antonio had done, he assured himself. And of course to ensure that Antonio’s son grew up knowing his Leopardi heritage. It had taken him longer than he had wished and a great deal of money to track him down, but now that he had there could be no doubting that the child was a Leopardi. He had known that the minute he had seen him at the nursery. The boy’s blood was stamped into his features, and Falcon had seen from the woman’s expression when she had looked at him that she knew that too.
They were outside now, with no one to overhear them.
‘Who are you?’ Annie demanded unsteadily. ‘And what do you want?’
‘I am Falcon Leopardi, the eldest of Antonio’s half-brothers from our father’s first marriage.’
Colin had mentioned Antonio’s family to her—or rather he had tried to. But she had refused to listen. Antonio had, after all, refused to acknowledge his son.
‘You are Antonio’s brother?’
The tone of her voice betrayed disbelief, and Falcon detected a deeper core of something that sounded like revulsion. He could hardly blame her for that. In fact, he shared her revulsion.
‘No,’ he corrected her grimly. ‘We were only half-brothers.’
How well she understood that need to differentiate and distance oneself from a supposed sibling. But how ridiculous of her to allow herself to imagine that she and this man could have anything in common, could share that deep-rooted antipathy and guilt that had been so much a part of her growing up.
Even now she could still her mother saying plaintively, almost pleadingly, ‘But, darling, Colin is just trying to be friends with you. Why can’t you be nicer to him?’ She had tried so hard to tell her mother how she had felt, but how could you explain what you did not understand yourself? In the end it had driven a wedge between them—a gulf on one side of which stood Colin, the good stepchild, and on the other side her, the bad daughter.
Where had she gone? Falcon wondered, watching the shadows seeping pain as they darkened her eyes. Wherever it was it was somewhere in her past, he recognized. The quality of her silence held a message of her helpless inability to change anything.
It was the present and the future that he was here for, though.
She must resent Antonio—more than resent him, he would have thought. Although her love for
her child was obvious, and backed up by all the information his enquiry agents had been able to gather. She was an exemplary and devotedly loving mother. Apart from the fact that for some reason she had turned down her stepbrother’s offer of a home under his roof. Colin Riley had not been able to furnish him with a logical explanation for that, although he had implied that there had been some kind of quarrel which she, despite all his attempts to repair the damage, had refused to make up.
‘She’s always been inclined to be over-emotional and to overreact,’ he had told Falcon. ‘All I wanted to do—all I’ve ever wanted to do—is help her.’
‘There was no love lost between the three of us and Antonio.’
Falcon’s voice, his English perfect and unaccented, brought Annie back out of the past.
‘I will not seek to hide that fact from you—nor the fact that Antonio was our father’s favourite son. I can also assure you that Antonio’s choice of lifestyle was not ours. It could never have been and was never condoned by us.’
Annie looked at him, and then looked away again, her heart jumping as it always did whenever she had to think about Ollie’s conception. Falcon Leopardi was obviously trying to tell her that he and his brothers were not tarred with the same brush as their younger half-brother. His choice of the word ‘assure’ suggested that convincing her that his morals were very different from his half-brother was something he was determined to do. But why?
‘As to what I want...’
He paused for so long that Annie looked at him again, hard fingers of uncertainty and unease tightening round her heart when she saw that he was looking at Ollie.
‘Before his death,’ Falcon continued, ‘Antonio told our father that there was a child. But he died before he could give more details. Such was the love our father felt for Antonio that he demanded that this child be traced. When no child could be found we assumed that laying claim to its existence had been another example of Antonio’s enjoyment of deceit.’
Falcon paused again. She’d kept her gazed fixed straight ahead of her whilst he was speaking, but he could see from the way her grip had tightened on the buggy how tense she was.
The tale of what had been done to her was one of breathtakingly callous cruelty that would fill any decent person with revulsion. The only merciful aspect of it was that she herself apparently had no recollection of what had occurred. There was no doubt in Falcon’s mind that the rape had been a deliberate act of punishment, intended to humiliate her—not conducted because Antonio had hoped to arouse her to passion and desire for him. That fitted in so well with everything Falcon knew about his half-brother’s warped personality.
‘Naturally, when it came to my knowledge that there might after all be a child, I had to find out the truth.’
He had stopped walking now, forcing Annie to do the same.
‘How...how did it come to your knowledge?’ She had to force the words out.
Falcon looked at her. He believed strongly in telling the truth. The truth, after all, was the only worthwhile foundation for anything that was worth having.
‘A friend of Antonio’s told me about your drink being spiked, about what he did, and I put two and two together.’
Annie had a childish desire to close her eyes, as though somehow by shutting everything out she could magically make herself disappear. Just to hear him say those words was as searingly humiliating as though she had been stripped naked in the street. Worse, because they ripped away her protection, laying bare her private shame.
‘I know you contacted Antonio to tell him of the birth of his son—’
‘No.’ Annie checked him immediately, her pride reasserting itself. ‘I didn’t contact him. I would never— It was my stepbrother who did that. I didn’t know about it until...until Colin told me that Antonio was denying that—that anything had happened.’
Falcon frowned. Was this perhaps the cause of the quarrel between them?
‘Your stepbrother didn’t mention anything about Antonio denying he had fathered your child when I spoke to him. He was most concerned about you, and asked me to keep him informed of any progress I might make in my search for you.’
Annie felt as though her heart had stopped beating.
She turned towards Falcon, imploring him. ‘You haven’t...you haven’t told him where I am, have you?’
Falcon’s frown deepened.
‘He told me that his sole aim is to help and protect you.’
To help and protect her, but not Ollie. Colin didn’t want anything to do with her baby, and if he had his way, Ollie would be removed from her life for ever.
How long did she have before Colin found her and started waging his relentless war to make her have Ollie adopted all over again? Panic clawed at her stomach. Everyone had always said how lucky she was to have such a devoted stepbrother, but they didn’t know him as she did.
‘He mustn’t know where we are.’
In her panic she had revealed more than was wise, Annie recognised as she saw the way Falcon Leopardi was watching her. He was waiting for her to elaborate, to give him a logical reason as to why she didn’t want Colin to find them.
‘Colin believes that it would be better if Ollie was adopted,’ she eventually managed to tell him.
Because he had not been able to get Antonio to pay up? Or because he felt it was the best option for the child? Falcon didn’t think he needed to spend much time considering the two options. Colin had asked him specifically if there were any assets likely to come to Oliver from Antonio’s estate or his family.
‘But you don’t agree with him?’ Falcon asked now.
‘No. I could never give him up. Never. Nothing and no one could ever make me do so.’
The passion in her expression and her voice changed her completely, bringing her suddenly to life, revealing the true perfection of her delicate beauty.
Falcon felt as though someone had suddenly punched him in the chest, rendering him unable to get his breath properly.
‘I agree that a child as young as Oliver needs his mother,’ he told her, as soon as he was back in control of himself. ‘However, your son is a Leopardi—and as such it is only right and proper that he grows up amongst his own family and his own people in his own country. It is my duty to Oliver and to my family to ensure that he is raised as a Leopardi—and that you, as his mother, are treated as the mother of a Leopardi should be treated. That is why I am here. To take you both back to Sicily with me.’
Annie stared at him. His talk of duty was a world apart from the world she knew. Such a word belonged to another time, a feudal ancient time, and yet somehow it resonated within her.
‘You want to take Ollie and me to Sicily—to live there?’ she asked unsteadily, spacing out the words to clarify them inside her own head and make sure she had not misunderstood him.
His ‘yes’ was terse—like the brief inclination of his head.
‘But you have no proof that Ollie is—’
The look he was giving her caused her to go silent.
‘The evidence of his blood is quite plain to both of us,’ he told her. ‘You have seen it yourself.’ He paused and looked down at the stroller before looking back to her. ‘The child could be mine. He bears the Leopardi stamp quite clearly.’
His! Why did that assertion strike so compellingly into her heart?
‘He doesn’t look anything like Antonio.’ He was all she could manage to say.
‘No,’ Falcon agreed. ‘Antonio took after his mother, which I dare say is why our father loved him so much. He was obsessed by her, and that obsession killed our own mother and destroyed our childhood, depriving us of our father’s love and our mother’s presence. That will not happen to your child. In Sicily he will have you—his mother—the love and protection of his uncles, and the companionship of his cousins. He will be a Leopa
rdi.’
He made it all sound so simple and so...so right. But she knew nothing of him of or his family other than that he had taken the trouble to track them down because he wanted Ollie.
How could she trust him—a stranger?
As though Falcon sensed her anxiety, he asked, ‘You love your son, don’t you?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Then you must surely want what is best for him?’
‘Yes,’ Annie agreed helplessly.
‘You will agree, I think, that he will have a far better life growing up in Sicily as a Leopardi than he could have here?’
‘With a mother who works as a cleaner, you mean?’ Annie challenged him.
‘I am not the one who makes the rules of economics that say a financially disadvantaged child will suffer a great deal of hardship in his life. And besides, it is not just a matter of money—although of course that is important. You are alone in the world—you no longer have any contact with your stepbrother; you are all the family Oliver has. That is not healthy for a child, and it has been proven that is especially not healthy for a boy child to have only his mother. In Sicily, Oliver will have a proper family. If you love him as much as you claim, then for his sake you will be willing to come to Sicily. What, after all, is there to keep you here?’
If his last question was brutal it was also truthful, Annie admitted. There was nothing to keep her here—except of course that you did not go off to a foreign country with a man you did not know. You especially did not do so when you had a six-month-old beloved child to protect.
But in Sicily there would no Colin to fear. No dread of waking up to find her stepbrother leaning over Oliver’s cot with that fixed look on his face, as she had once found him when he had visited her shortly after Ollie’s birth.
Something—she didn’t know what, other than that it was some deep core instinct—told her that in Falcon Leopardi’s hands her precious son would be safe, and that those hands would hold him surely and protectively against all danger.
But what about her? What about the disquieting, unwanted, dangerous reaction she sensed within herself to him as a woman to his man? Panic seized her but she fought it down. It was Ollie she had to think of now, not herself. His needs and not hers. Falcon Leopardi was right to say that Ollie would have a far better life in Sicily as a Leopardi than he ever could here in London alone with her. When she added into that existing equation the potential threat of her stepbrother there was only one decision she could take, wasn’t there?