Seasons of Sin: Misbehaving in summer and autumn... (Series of Sin)

by Clare Connelly

  Another cry escaped her soul. “You’ll never be that.” A noise sounded from somewhere in the apartment and she jumped.

  “The kitchen,” he murmured, moving towards it. Belatedly Kate recalled the water she’d left simmering. When they entered, a small amount had bubbled out from under the lid and was flaming the fire of the cooktop. He flicked it off and lifted the pan from the heat and turned to face her. As if for the first time he noted her apron and fought the smile that was tingling on his lips.

  “You cooked?”

  “Yes.” Her eyes were loaded with pain. Strange now that he didn’t see Augustine in them at all; he saw only Kate. “But it’s my father’s recipe, so I doubt you’ll want to eat it.” She rubbed her hands together and then shook her head. Hopelessness was a pit all around her. “That’s the problem. I am his child. I am his daughter. He is my father. So much of who I am is because of him.” She reached around and untied the apron with fingers that shook. “And you hate him so much. How could I ever have hoped you’d care for me?”

  “It is not you, Kate. None of this has anything to do with you.”

  She arched her brows. “You don’t think? Cause I feel pretty much in the middle of it all.”

  He nodded, but internally he was rejecting everything she thought and felt. “You were just a means to an end at first; a way to hurt him. And as soon as we slept together, I regretted it.”

  He had regretted it, and she had been on cloud nine. Grief was rushing over her. “I hate you right now. Do you get that?”

  “That is probably for the best. You’ll get over this faster if you hate me.” He propped his hip against the bench. “But you are stuck with me for a while longer, I’m afraid.”

  She stared at him in confusion. “Why?”

  “You can’t go anywhere. Not now.”

  “Wrong. I’m leaving you, I’m leaving my father. I’m getting out of here.”

  “Augustine saw you tonight for the first time in years and attacked you. Do you really think anything will lead him to stop? Do you think he’ll let you go because I just kicked him out of my house?”

  She opened her mouth to speak but slammed it shut again. Doubts plagued her. “I … he doesn’t … I don’t know.”

  “He has powerful friends, Kate. He’s a powerful, connected, completely immoral bastard. And I cannot let you go knowing the kind of danger I have put you in.”

  “He hates you, not me. I’m in more danger here with you,” she whispered.

  “That’s a lie, and you know it. He has hurt you. Again and again. How many times did he hit you? How many times did he pull you by your hair as I saw him do just now?”

  “Screw you,” she shouted, holding her hands up to her ears. “Just stop it!”

  “Your inability to talk about it does not change the reality of this situation,” he muttered grimly. “Sit down.” He nodded to a stool and Kate stared at it as though funnel webs had started crawling up the legs.

  “I want to go.”

  “Go where?” He pushed, his eyes loaded with sorrow as he studied her crestfallen face.

  Kate shook her head. She was numb. “Anywhere. Benedetto … this is … this is all I was to you?”

  He shook his head slowly and now, finally, he put his hands on her shoulders. When she might have flinched away from him, he rubbed her arms, until he reached her hands. He grasped them in his and squeezed her fingers. “You have seen how my father lived. You have felt the beauty of the life he created. You can imagine what prison was like for him.”

  Kate flinched and pulled out of his grip, taking a vital step away from him. “Awful. I can understand how that must have been terrible for him.” She frowned and dipped her head forward. “My dad wouldn’t … I can’t believe he’s capable of this.”

  Benedetto felt anger surge in him; he quelled it for Kate’s sake. She had seen enough anger. She had been on the receiving end of more vitriol than she ever should have experienced.

  “I know it to be fact, Kate. But right now, I do not think his actions to my father are what matter.”

  “Of course they matter,” she disputed harshly. “They’re the reason we’re here. The only reason we met.” She stared up at him, stricken. “How did you find me? How did you know I would be at the charity event?”

  “I didn’t. It was sheer luck, if you can believe it.”

  Now, she sunk into the chair, and the shaking was almost unbearable. Her knees knocked together violently. “Not luck for me,” she muttered, pressing her palms into her eyes. It drew Benedetto’s attention to her wrist and he swore silently. “I wasn’t even meant to be part of it.” Kate’s words were so soft Benedetto almost didn’t catch them.

  “No?” He prompted, crossing to the kettle and flicking it to life.

  “My boss was sick. She asked me to cover for her.” Kate shook her head. “If she hadn’t …”

  “We never would have met,” he concluded grimly. “I was a fool to believe I could do anything that would remove the pain of injustice. Nothing I could ever do to your father would bring my father back, nor change the fact that he lived out his last years in such awful circumstances.”

  “No,” she agreed, grief making her feel hollow down to her toes.

  “I knew you were starting to care for me, Kate. I did not want that.” He shook his head. “I knew that we could never be more than this. That one day it would all implode.” He added a tea bag to a mug, then filled it with water.

  Kate nodded. His words were calm, measured and accurate. And yet her heart was splintering at his bald admission that this was the end of the road for them. Did she still want him? Love him? Despite what he’d done?

  He placed the tea cup on the bench beside her. “I want you to stay with me.”

  Her huge eyes flicked to his face and something seared into her when their eyes clashed. An invisible force of emotion; a wave that she couldn’t fight. Her feelings for him were a tsunami, swamping her with their intensity.

  “Don’t you see, Ben? Of all the things I fear in life, of all the dangers I see before me, being here with you is by far the worst.” She stood without touching the tea and moved gingerly through the kitchen.

  “You cannot seriously be afraid of me?”

  Her expression was one of profound sadness. “Benedetto, I love you. Or I love the man I thought I knew.” She swallowed. “I hate what you’ve done. I hate that you did this to me. And I know there can never be a future for us.” She squeezed her eyes shut because she couldn’t bear to look at him. “You would never be able to love me, would you? You would never want to marry me. To agree in front of all of our friends to spend the rest of our lives together?” Her voice shook. “You would never want to have children with me, knowing that my father’s blood would be in their bodies?”

  “No.” It was a completely instant revulsion to the very idea, and he regretted the biting word as soon as he’d uttered it. It was a pile of blackened roses, thrown to her feet.

  He shook his head. “I cannot say that would have happened for us in any event. I am not interested in marriage, nor love. I am not looking for a person to travel by my side.”

  His words were perfectly aimed darts and her heart the bull’s-eye. She nodded but she wondered how she could still be standing.

  “I hate that I hurt you. I hate that you’re crying.”

  Was she? Kate hadn’t realized.

  “I hate that you are standing there, afraid and in pain, and wanting to leave my house and my protection.”

  “Your protection?” She whispered thickly. “You did this to me. It’s because of you that he found me.” She squared her shoulders and straightened her spine. “I can’t stay here.”

  She thought of her apartment, and wondered if her father knew where she lived? Was it safe?

  It was better than being here with Benedetto.

  With a decisive nod, she moved away from him.

  “Kate.” The word was torn from his chest; the sight of her wal
king bravely towards the door was filling him with an electric shock of feelings. He stared at her and waited for her to turn, to stop walking, but she didn’t. She pulled the front door inward and walked out of his home without a backwards glance. It took several minutes for him to realize that she hadn’t been wearing a coat and that it was freezing cold outside. He paced quickly to the door and pulled it inwards. “Kate!” He looked left, then right, and then left again, but Kate had vanished.

  She was nowhere to be seen.

  It was over.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Three months later.

  The coffee was bitter. In the several weeks she’d been frequenting this little bar, she’d never had a coffee that wasn’t exceptional. Kate was strict about drinking only one a day, and so it was an insult beyond bearing to have it wasted on one as unpalatable as this, but she was desperate. She’d been kept up all night by the revelers in the downstairs apartment. She had been on the cusp of going downstairs to complain when they’d begun calling loudly, Buon Anni!

  Was it really the first day of the year? Kate threw back the last of her macchiato and placed the delicate cup on the bar.

  “Grazie, ciao.”

  “A domain, singorina,” the handsome young man called after her.

  She waved and pushed out of the door. It was bitingly cold. Kate pulled her jacket more tightly around her shoulders and began the walk through the winding streets of Firenze back to her small apartment. She passed the florist and admired the beautiful flowers, as she always did.

  “One day you buy the bunch, si?” The woman called with a grin, and Kate smiled. At least, she did her best to impersonate the kind of smile she’d seen on other people. It seemed to be similar to what she remembered doing, before Benedetto.

  Something kicked inside of her and she sighed. How she loved flowers. Only now, even they reminded her of him. More specifically, of the farm house in Tuscany. She pushed one foot in front of the other, moving closer and closer to the flat. But she was unable to control her mind as well as she could her legs.

  The farm house was only perhaps thirty minutes from Florence. She’d thought about hiring a car and driving past it, to see how strong she was. But it was too difficult to imagine. How could she bear to see that house? The house she’d come to love, as she loved Benedetto?

  “Buongiorno.” She waved at her neighbor and then fumbled for her keys in her bag. She slid the heavy brass key into the lock and pushed the door inwards.

  There was no relief from the frigid cold there. She bent down to pick up a pile of letters on the floor and sifted through them. None of the envelopes bore her name. Then again, that was hardly surprising. Melania was the only person who knew where Kate had moved to, and only because she’d allowed Kate to stay on doing basic administrative jobs from the safety and privacy of her home.

  Kate placed the pile of mail neatly on the communal table and took the stairs quickly. She unlocked her own door and opened it, rubbing her hands together as she stepped inside, before pulling the door shut behind her.

  A frown flickered across her face as she saw the flowers in the middle of the table.

  Flowers just like she admired every day at the little street cart in the alley.

  Her heart began to race as her eyes quickly scanned the room.

  And there he was.

  Benedetto Arnaud, conjured from her memories, standing in her small kitchen, staring back at her as though he too couldn’t believe his eyes.

  She loosened her scarf self-consciously, leaving it hanging around her neck and down her front. He looked so good; dressed in a charcoal suit with a crisp white shirt unbuttoned at the throat to reveal his thick column of neck and hair roughened chest. She swallowed, pushing down on the instant flash of desire.

  That was a base physical reaction. It had no place in what she should feel for him.

  “What are you doing here?” She demanded, dropping her handbag to the floor and taking another step into the flat.

  “You need to start living in apartments that have better security,” he responded, attempting a joke to ease both of their discomforts.

  But Kate didn’t smile.

  She couldn’t. She couldn’t see Benedetto again. Not now, not ever. She swallowed and took a step away from him, towards the wall on the other side of the room.

  “You have no right to be here.” She shook her head. “You broke into my apartment.”

  “I had to see you.”

  Her enormous eyes were closed to him. She was cold and unavailable, as he’d believed her to be when first he’d met her.

  “No, you didn’t,” she responded caustically. “Ben … I can’t …” Kate felt as though she’d been winded. She dug her hands in her pockets, simply for something to do. Her heart was pounding so fast she couldn’t believe that he didn’t hear it. “I just can’t do this.”

  “Can’t do what, Kate?” He murmured, taking a step towards her. She flinched as though he’d struck her and Ben felt pain slash his core.

  “This is over. You and I said … we’re over. You can’t be here. My father …”

  “You cannot live your entire life in hiding. You cannot fear him forever, cara.”

  “Don’t. Don’t call me that,” she snapped angrily, pacing away from him. “And I was doing better until I met you. Do you know how long it took me to settle into life in Rome? How long it took me to feel like I finally had a place that was my own? A little slice of earth I could call home? And you ruined that. You’re going to ruin it again.”

  A muscle jerked in his cheek. “I did not come here to ruin your life.”

  “Then why did you?” She stalked over to the windows, and stared down at the street below. The beautiful street that she had come to love, would soon form another part of her past. How could she stay here now? “No one is meant to know where I am.”

  “No one does. Except me.”

  “If you found me, he will too.”

  Benedetto raised a hand in front of him, imperiously commanding her to be quiet. But Kate’s emotions were going haywire.

  “You can’t be here!” She shouted. “You can’t just … break into my flat! Again! I need you to go.”

  “I came here to talk to you.”

  “We have nothing to talk about,” she snapped, pulling the ends of her pony tail over her shoulder and toying with the hair nervously. Did he know? Had he somehow discovered the truth about her?

  His lips twisted in a sardonic grimace. “That is completely untrue.”

  “My father …”

  “Is in prison.”

  The words dropped into the room like tiny little pieces of flint. Kate stared at the ground as though she might even be able to see them hitting the floor. Is in prison. Is in prison. My father is in prison.

  “I don’t understand.” Her enormous eyes sought his. “When? What happened?”

  And shock kept her immobile, even when he crossed the room and stood right in front of her. “I found Connor.” Benedetto’s eyes searched hers. She stared up at him, waiting for him to continue. Kate wasn’t sure she would be able to speak, even if she knew what she wanted to say.

  “He was working in Australia, doing research for a Supreme Court justice. Living in fear, as you were, of Augustine.”

  “Why?” She stammered, her expression completely unreadable.

  “You do not want these details, dear Kate …”

  “Why?” She repeated through gritted teeth.

  Benedetto weighed his words carefully, afraid that Kate was about to pass out. She was so pale, so fragile looking. “Augustine exercised his power over Connor to make sure Connor never revealed what he knew. Please do not make me discuss how, for I do not think you want to hear it.” He pressed a finger under her chin and lifted her face to his. “Suffice it to say, your father knew how to get to Connor, and Connor took the threat seriously.”

  Kate shuddered. “But Connor told you …”

  “Connor did better than that,�
�� Benedetto corrected darkly. “He had kept documents that proved your father’s guilt. If I had not felt jealous as hell of the man, I might even have walked away liking him.”

  Kate shook her head. “You had no reason to be jealous of Connor,” she whispered.

  Benedetto arched his brows cynically. “Of course I do. Kate, you slept with him. You cared for him. How do you imagine I would not envy this man?”

  She swallowed. It didn’t mean he cared for her. Or that he ever had. It meant only that he viewed her as ‘his’, someone he had possessed for a time, as one might a pair of shoes or a coat. “That’s absurd. And irrelevant.” She forced her eyes to meet his. “You’re serious about this? Dad being in jail?”

  “Si. I was close to having enough evidence to take to the authorities before meeting you.” He frowned, his expression somber. “If I could go back in time, I would do that, Kate. Instead of indulging a childish need to wound a man not worth such consideration. And to use you as my instrument.”

  Kate nodded. “You and me both.” She pulled her lower lip between her teeth. “Why are you here?”

  He furrowed his brow. “I thought you would want to know about Augustine.” He shook his head then, a rueful expression at the corners of his eyes. “And I wanted to see you.”

  Her stomach rolled. Anxiety caused perspiration to gather at her hairline. “I’m glad you told me, but it doesn’t change anything.” She sidestepped away from him, putting distance between them physically.

  “No, it doesn’t,” he agreed with the appearance of calmness.

  Kate lifted a hand to her stomach on instinct and then dropped it. Guilt perforated her gut, but she knew it was for the best. “Can you please go, Benedetto?”

  “No.” His smile was wry. “I don’t think I can. Having seen you again I don’t know why I waited until now to do this.” He propped his shoulder against the wall, perfectly affecting the appearance of nonchalance.

  “To do what?”

  “To tell you that we should still be together.”

  She sucked in a breath and shook her head instinctively. “No. That’s not possible.”