Seduced by the Italian

by Fraser, Diana

  “And that, cara, is your fault. It’s proving impossible to concentrate when I’m near you.”

  Her heart thudded and a fire swept through her body that added to her tension. “You should have employed someone to do it.”

  “Some things are personal. You know that.”

  She shook her head. “Stop it Luca, this is too difficult.” The tears were pricking now and her eyes were beginning to mist.

  “What is it?” He hooked a tendril of hair behind her ear.

  They were coming closer now.

  “Nothing.” She swallowed the lump in her throat, trying to control her mounting hysteria.

  She wouldn’t think about it. She wouldn’t look at the only new black wrought iron posts that marked the place of her accident. She’d just drive past swiftly—even if it was in third gear—and not look at the place where her dreams had died.

  “Hey, what’s this? It’s a Ferragosto procession. Slow down, Isabella.”

  Isabella had no choice. They drove up the main street, the shops and cafes teeming with people. The old railings that separated the street from the footpath were ornately designed, except for one stretch that they were slowly approaching. Then they stopped, people milling all around them.

  “It doesn’t look as though we’ll be going far for a while, there’s people stretching up the road. At least my hand’s stopped bleeding.” He turned to her then. “Isabella, my God, what ever is the matter?”

  They’d stopped directly beside the place where her father had crashed the car seven years earlier. Her eyes were fixed on the railings that didn’t fit in with the old ones.

  Isabella felt the tears threaten inside her and then freeze. She stared at the railings but didn’t see them. She saw only memories: vivid and bloody. Her father’s head, the steering wheel pressed into it; the blood flowing from it and the seat belt that she’d worn, wrenching into her belly, blood flowing from between her legs.

  “Christ! Get out of the car! Blood or no blood, I’ll take over.”

  He jumped out of the car and she absently followed his movement until her gaze rested on the blood that smeared the handle from his cut. He came round and opened her door and grabbed hold of her hand. “Isabella, get out of the car.” She looked up at him and shook her head but did as he said and stepped out and walked round to the other side in a daze.

  With him in the driver’s seat, they sat for a few moments until the crowds cleared. “Are you going to tell me what that was all about?”

  She opened her mouth to speak but no sound emerged. Her mind was filled with the horror of that day, seven years before, when she’d lost her child in an accident that had also killed her father. The two were inextricably linked in her mind. A part of herself had died that day.

  She shook her head, leaned back and closed her eyes.

  Eventually the car moved slowly off and within five minutes they were at the hospital. She opened her eyes and turned to Luca.

  “I’m sorry. I…”

  He brought his good hand to her cheek. “I’m not leaving you until you tell me what that was all about.” Then he got out, walked around to her side and opened the door for her.

  If it hadn’t been for his good hand curled around her waist, she wouldn’t have made it through the hospital doors that she still remembered. That day, seven years ago, when her world had collapsed, her shocked senses had noted the pale green doors and the smooth plaster of the walls, had studied the ornate ceilings of the private hospital as she’d lain back and allowed the doctors to do what they needed to do. While she did what she needed to do and studied the form of everything around her, her eyes and mind gliding along the patterns, colors and textures of the ceiling rose inset with functional, institutional lights. She’d thought at the time she’d have done them differently. Just before she lost consciousness.

  Now she was dimly aware of Luca insisting that she sit with him and of a nurse seating her in a corner of the examination room and pressing a hot drink into her hand.

  She watched as Luca’s hand was cleaned, stitched and freshly bandaged. What she didn’t watch was Luca’s face because she knew he hadn’t taken his eyes off her.

  As soon as the nurse left, Luca came and sat beside her. She looked down at his bandaged hand. “She did a neat job with the stitches.”

  “I’m not interested in my hand.”

  “You should be.”

  “Damn it, Isabella. I want to know what happened out there today. You didn’t look as if you’d seen a ghost, but as if he’d coming running at you with a knife.”

  She blanched at the accuracy of his words. “I suppose I did.” She took a sip of her drink. “I guess you weren’t aware of where the accident took place.”

  “Your father’s accident? No.”

  “It was there, where the new railings are.”

  “Dio! I’m sorry, I didn’t know. All I knew was what your mother told me. That you were returning from the hospital—from the abortion clinic of the hospital.”

  Isabella closed her eyes tight against the pain of her mother’s betrayal. “She told you that?”

  “She took great pleasure in telling me that.”

  Isabella nodded and took another sip. She opened her mouth to speak but her throat felt parched despite the liquid. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know she’d told you that. That would have been my mother trying to hurt me, by hurting you.”

  “What?” His brow contracted in confusion.

  She shrugged. “We weren’t close. There were,” she searched around the room vainly for words that could possibly convey the complex relationship she’d had with her mother, but finding none she closed her eyes. It seemed easier to talk that way. “There were other things that happened that drove us apart. And I’m sorry. I—”

  “Too late to be sorry, Isabella. It’s done. You did what your parents wanted and had the abortion.”

  His words drove down deep like a barbed dagger, destroying all that lay in its path, taking with it all hope of retrieval. How could you forgive someone who’d lied—even a lie of omission—all these years?

  The silence had driven him to his feet. She watched as he paced like a caged animal, stopping at the windows, below which the Ferragosto festivities continued. His shoulders were tense. She realized then that the dagger had cauterized in some way, killed the rot.

  She rose and came behind him. He took her hand and placed it over his heart without looking at her. The lights of the town were reflected in his dark eyes, which looked so far away. “I missed that child, Isabella. I missed her. I wanted her.” He paused and she swore that neither breathed. “But you didn’t.” His last words came out in a rush of exhaled breath as if he didn’t want them inside him. Didn’t want to face the thought that she’d aborted their child.

  “It wasn’t like that.” She swallowed back the tears. She had to force herself to tell him, to face the pain for his sake, to give him some peace.

  He pulled her to him. “Whatever your reasoning, it’s done. It’s over. I blamed you at first—was angry—but I shouldn’t have. Everyone has their reasons for their actions and I should have respected yours.” He lifted her face to his. “I would have told you that if you’d let me see you. Tell me, why wouldn’t you let me see you?”

  He frowned as he brushed away her tears.

  “We were on our way there,” the words tumbled out in a rush and she gasped to get her breath, “to the abortion clinic.”

  “Yes, your mother took great delight in telling me you’d had an abortion.”

  “But I didn’t, Luca, I didn’t.” Her words were like a soft moan of regret. “Don’t you hear what I’m saying? We were on our way there, not returning.”

  He grabbed both her arms. “Tell me.”

  “My father discovered you’d returned and told me we were going to Montepulciano to see you. Turned out he was lying. When he told me where we were really going, I went crazy. Screamed, shook him. In the end he simply said that he would rather s
ee me dead than see me with you. I watched as he swerved into the fence.”

  “You were on your way there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then, the baby?”

  “Died from my injuries.”

  She literally saw the shock slam into him: his body jolted, his mouth opened as if to speak but no words came, his eyes widened and then closed as he brought her hands to his closed eyes and held them there for a long moment.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Then he let her hands fall.

  This was it. This was the moment when he’d walk away. She’d let Luca believe a lie: Luca, a man to whom honesty was everything.

  But instead he pulled her to him and held her in his arms. He stroked her hair down its length—again and again—but she couldn’t relax, just held herself stiffly waiting for the rejection. Instead he pressed a kiss to her forehead before he pulled away but she held her eyes fast shut. He cupped her cheeks with both hands and kissed her eyelids. Only then did she open her eyes to look at him. Was the impossible happening?

  “I’m so sorry. But, cara, why didn’t you tell me something like that? Why didn’t Nonna tell me?”

  She lowered her head. “She didn’t know. No-one knew.”

  He shook his head in disbelief. “Why? Why did you want me to believe that you’d aborted our child?”

  She shrugged. “I was numb. I couldn’t think straight.”

  “But then later. You could have told me at any time.”

  She pressed her lips together as if to stop any words, and shook her head, feeling helpless to reply. How could she tell him what she’d been through in one sentence? She sucked in a breath. She needed to say something. She owed him. “I’m sorry, Luca. I just couldn’t have. I can’t explain.” She looked into his eyes that revealed both sorrow and hurt. “My child was dead.”

  “Our child, Isabella, our child.”

  “Please, Luca, you must understand.”

  He shook his head and she felt the tension in the slight movement that contained a world of meaning. “I don’t understand.”

  Panic rose inside her. “You must. What difference would it have made if I’d told you?”

  “All the difference in the world.”

  There was a knock at the door and a nurse entered.

  Luca picked up the car keys. “We must go.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The lights flickered as he drove fast along the motorway toward the castello like so many years passing him by, fleeting, insubstantial. Except the difference was that the years had left their mark.

  His belief that Isabella had aborted their child had led to a series of events and consequences: some of which he couldn't regret, some of which would be even harder to tell her about now.

  He glanced at her but saw only her profile that looked eerily colorless in the regular flashes from the street lights.

  And that she hadn’t trusted him with the truth? He gripped the steering wheel tightly with his bandaged hand and winced. What could that mean, but that she had been rejecting him, wanting him to believe the worst of her, pushing him away. Again.

  He flexed his cut hand in the bandage and rested it once more on the steering wheel. At least his fingers were agile enough to maneuver the gearstick. He couldn’t have taken another ride like the first and it gave him something he could concentrate on. He pressed his foot hard against the accelerator, needing the speed of the car to drown out the confusion that raged inside and that he was helpless to express.

  He turned off the motorway and began the long climb up the winding roads with its hairpin bends that would take them up to the small village and the Castello Romitorio: Romitorio or retreat. And so it had been for the monks who’d originally lived there, followed by miscreant royals wishing to be close to the city but far enough away to retreat to a defensible home. No wonder Isabella had found it safer to stay there over the years.

  He looked over at her and felt instant guilt. He’d been roaring around the bends with his usual abandon, forgetting Isabella’s fear of being driven. She was using her legs to wedge her in securely. One hand clung to the door handle and the other one clasped the edge of her seat.

  He was scaring the hell out of her. He slowed down, taking the bends more carefully and sensed her relax a little. But only a little. He knew she would never recover from the car crash. But he also knew he wouldn’t now, either.

  He might not be left with vivid memories or physical scars, but Isabella—the one person he’d believed in and loved without question—had lied to him and rejected him, as surely as his parents had.

  He slowed the car as he went through the now deserted village and then up the narrow drive to the castello where he swung the car into the driveway with a last-minute show of power and pulled on the brake hard.

  “Luca…”

  He didn’t answer, just turned to her. What he saw in her face shocked him. He’d not seen behind the mask, and the poignant mix of grief and confusion hit him in the gut. He turned away, unable to face her and she opened the door, obviously believing that he wouldn’t or couldn’t speak with her. She was right. He couldn’t. Not yet. Because he didn't know how to tell her what he needed to tell her.

  He followed her into the castello. The lights were on. The staff had returned. Everything was normal. Everything was different.

  “Luca, please, talk to me. Tell me what you’re thinking, tell me what you’re feeling.”

  He turned to face her. He felt as if he were looking at her down the wrong end of a telescope, she seemed so distant. He reached out and traced the line of her face, lingering on her jaw. “Not now, Isabella.” He brought her to him and held her briefly, trying to tell her by his embrace what he couldn’t tell her in words. He closed his eyes against the barrage of emotion that assailed him.

  He now knew what she’d gone through—the full extent of her pain—and he hadn’t been there when she needed him. But he also felt her lie, her lack of faith in him, like a wash of suffocating oil lying on the surface of his feelings, stifling them, depriving them of life. “I can’t. Not now.”

  He watched her walk, head held high, her back stiff and straight. He rubbed his temple with the heel of his hand, wanting the pounding to stop. But it didn’t. Seven years of believing a falsehood. So much had happened because of that lie, so much which had led him to where he now stood, unable to run after her and hold her and make everything all right. He shook his head, turned and walked away.

  He would see her. He would listen to her.

  Isabella had kept the truth close to her for years. No-one knew. Her mother had guessed, Nonna may have suspected, but no-one else knew for certain. But now she had to tell Luca.

  If he was disgusted, if he walked away and she never saw him again, then so be it. He could think what he liked of her, but he would hear her out. He would listen to her. She couldn’t continue the lies her father had begun so many years before.

  The castello was alive with people. Masons repairing stonework that she’d had no money to fix. Carpenters, electricians, builders, hammering, sanding, chipping away at the years of neglect, bringing the castello back to life again. Just like her, Isabella thought ruefully. She’d changed more in the last few weeks than in the previous seven years. And it was down to Luca. She owed him the truth. And she owed it to herself too.

  She greeted the assistant who had a desk in the small room beside the library. To her surprise he immediately jumped up and stood before the door.

  “Apologies contessa. Signore has left specific instructions that no-one, on any account, is to disturb him today.”

  She smiled tightly, controlling her hurt. He didn’t want to see her.

  “Of course. Thank you.”

  She turned away but instead of returning to the main castello she went toward the rear where the servants’ quarters were.

  He was making it difficult for her. That was fine. But he would see her. The willpower that she depended on formed a solid knot in her st
omach. She could do this.

  She stepped outside onto the terrazza. It was deserted but a quick glance half way along the wall showed her what she’d anticipated. The library doors were flung open to let in the soft mountain breeze. She walked quietly up to the door and was about to knock when she stopped, her hand arrested at the sight of him. His fingers were spiked through his hair and he had his head gripped in his hands, his eyes closed tight. It wasn’t the relaxed look of a tired man, it was a man in the depths of despair.

  She knocked at the window. “Luca?”

  He didn’t even bother to move his hands, simply tilted his head up to hers, a weary smile rested on his lips. “Isabella.” He didn’t seem surprised to see her.

  “I’d like a few minutes of your time.”

  He stood up but didn’t move to her. “Please, come in, take a seat. I was going to see you,” he looked down at the large tidy pile of papers, obviously untouched since his assistant had deposited them there, “after I’d finished this lot.”

  Their eyes locked. It was an excuse and they both knew it.

  She smiled tentatively and stepped into the room, now so different to when it had been hers. Gone were the old ornaments, antiquities, paintings, books. In their place were sundry photos of people and families she didn’t know, a few gadgets and little else.

  He waved his hand for her to sit. She sat forward on the leather chair and met his gaze full on.

  She tried to utter the words she’d rehearsed. Alone, with only her thoughts and memories, the idea of revealing to Luca the feelings she kept buried had seemed possible. But here, under the ambiguity of his complex gaze, her convictions slipped away.

  “You had something you wanted to say to me?” His tone was gentle, encouraging.

  “Yes, I…”

  An understanding smile quirked the corners of his mouth. “It’s difficult, no?”

  She nodded.

  “I don’t want to make it any more difficult than it is. What can I do to help?”

  “You can listen.”

  He sat back in his chair, his head resting on its back as if he hadn’t slept for a week. “I’m listening.”