‘It’s not silly. It’s good that you have such great memories of your childhood. Are you close to your father?’
‘I used to be once.’ Sophie bit her lip. Hearing Nicolo playing the piano so exquisitely had stirred emotions inside her that she usually kept buried.
‘When I was growing up I adored my father. My mother was busy with her law career and I spent a lot of time with Dad.’ She smiled. ‘I remember for my ninth birthday he designed and made me a fantastic doll’s house. And he taught me how to play tennis, and chess.’ Her throat ached as she recalled her happy childhood. ‘Everything changed when my parents divorced.’
Sophie tried to block out the memories of the day her father had walked out of the family home for the final time. She had felt an acute sense of betrayal and had longed to run after him and plead with him to stay. Weak from months of chemotherapy, she hadn’t understood how he could leave at a time when she needed his love and support. She had thought that, having beaten cancer, her life would return to normal. But as she had watched her father drive away Sophie had realised that her pre-cancer, carefree life had disappeared for ever.
‘I was going through a … difficult time and I was angry with Dad for moving away when I needed him. For a long time we didn’t talk.’ She sighed. ‘He tried to phone me, but I refused to speak to him. I guess I sound like a spoilt brat, but I was so upset that he had left.’
Sophie fell silent, wondering why she had revealed so much of herself to Nicolo of all people. She was about to get up from the piano stool when he spoke.
‘I think your reaction to your father leaving was understandable,’ he said gently. ‘You must have felt that he had abandoned you.’ His voice hardened. ‘Believe me, I know how that feels. I was a very angry and confused teenager after my mother left. You said your father moved away. Where does he live?’
‘In Scotland, with his new wife.’ Sophie hesitated. ‘He has two daughters with Janice. Kirsty and Laura are only eight and four years old.’ She did not admit that she found it hard to think of her father and Janice’s children as her sisters. Even harder to admit to herself was the jealousy she felt that her father’s little girls had taken her place in his affections. She wondered if he taught them to play the piano.
‘Your father’s young daughters must love having an older half-sister,’ Nicolo said. ‘I expect you are very important to them in the same way that Lucilla was to me and my younger brothers and sister.’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t see them very often. Working for Christos is pretty full-on, and I don’t get the chance to go up to Edinburgh much.’
Guilt niggled at Sophie as she thought of the last time she had visited her father and his family the previous Christmas. On the surface the visit had gone smoothly; the adults had been ultra-polite and the little girls had been sweet and touchingly friendly. But Sophie’s inner tension had been mirrored in Janice’s taut smile. Memories of old hurts and emotional wounds had hovered in the atmosphere, and Sophie had sensed that both her father and his wife had breathed a sigh of relief, just as she had done, when Christos had phoned and asked her to return to work early.
She jerked back to the present when she realised that Nicolo was speaking.
‘It was Lucilla who suggested I should learn to play the piano.’
He had pushed his shirtsleeves up his forearms before he had started to play, and now he rested his scarred hand on the keys. His mottled, red skin made a stark contrast to the smooth white keys and Sophie could not drag her eyes from his disfigured hand, imagining how painful his injuries must have been in the weeks and months after he had been burned.
‘My sister did a lot of research about burn injuries and thought that playing would be good physiotherapy for my fingers.’ Nicolo played a few scales, his fingers moving effortlessly across the keys. ‘Immediately after the fire I had virtually no movement in my fingers. Learning to play the piano was not just good for exercising the muscles in my hand, it also gave me a purpose—’ his voice deepened ‘—and it helped me to cope with the pain of my burns.’
Sophie’s eyes flew to his face and she guessed from his ravaged expression that he was reliving the horrors of the past.
‘I know tonight is the anniversary of the fire,’ she said softly. He gave her a surprised look and she explained. ‘Beth told me the date. She didn’t want you to be on your own this evening.’
Immediately she realised she had made a mistake. Nicolo frowned darkly. ‘Did Beth ask you to stay?’ His eyes flashed with anger. ‘Did you remain at Chatsfield House because of some misguided idea that I might need a shoulder to cry on? Dio.’ His lip curled sardonically. ‘Who do you think you are—Mother Teresa?’
He sprang up from the piano stool and said savagely, ‘I don’t want your goddamned pity!’
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘I DON’T PITY you,’ Sophie insisted as she leapt to her feet. Nicolo towered over her and she tilted her head to meet his furious gaze. ‘But I don’t understand you. Why do you hide away here? Why have you cut yourself off from your family, and in particular your father and the business he built up?
‘Being trapped in that fire must have been terrifying, and your injuries must have been agony,’ she said huskily. ‘But you survived. Surely you must realise better than most people how precious life is?’ Having faced death herself, she appreciated every day of her second chance at life.
‘You did a wonderful thing,’ Sophie continued when he made no response. ‘You rescued a member of the hotel staff from the fire. You were a hero and you should be proud of what you did.’
‘Proud?’ Nicolo gave a bitter laugh. Sophie’s words mocked him. The fire had happened so many years ago but his memories would never fade. Tonight, especially, he was filled with the self-loathing that had haunted him for almost two decades.
‘I’ve said it before, Sophie,’ he said curtly. ‘You ask too many questions.’ He stared at her lovely face and something cracked inside him. He did not want her here. He did not want her to look at him with gentle compassion in her eyes that made his gut ache.
‘Do you want to know the truth? I was no bloody hero. It was me who started the fire. It was my fault that the maid was trapped in the blaze and my fault that we both nearly burned to death.’
Sophie suddenly recalled a conversation she’d had with the cleaning lady, Betty.
‘Mr Nicolo had a wild streak when he was younger … there’s more to the story of the fire than the newspapers ever knew…. ’
She glanced at Nicolo and her heart turned over when she saw his tortured expression. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said shakily. ‘How could you have started the fire?’
He raked his hand through his dark hair that fell past his collar, and despite the tension, Sophie’s stomach muscles tightened with fierce sexual awareness. With his chiselled features and a hard gleam in his eyes he was the dangerous highwayman of her imagination, but she had glimpsed a softer side to him, a vulnerability that made her yearn to put her arms around his waist and lay her cheek against his chest.
‘I was drunk,’ he said abruptly.
‘Drunk? You were thirteen.’
‘I’d been drinking my father’s whisky.’ He exhaled heavily. ‘I’d let myself into his penthouse apartment with the intention of tipping his scotch down the sink. Childish, I know, but I was still a child. I was feeling very angry with my father about—’ his mouth tightened as he recalled how a few days earlier he had discovered his father in bed with a naked woman who Nicolo had recognised as one of the hotel chambermaids ‘—about something he had done,’ he muttered. ‘I wanted to annoy him.
‘Gene owned a collection of rare and expensive malt whiskies. I drank probably half a bottle, tipped the contents of the other bottles away and then tried smoking one of his cigars.’ He grimaced. ‘The damn thing tasted disgusting, and I remember I threw it in the bin before I nearly threw up.
‘Soon after that I must have fallen asleep due no doubt to the effec
ts of the alcohol. When I woke up the penthouse was engulfed in flames and I couldn’t get across the room to the door. That’s when I realised I was trapped.’
‘It must have been terrifying,’ Sophie murmured.
‘My only hope of escape was to climb down the drainpipe running down the outside wall of the hotel. I was six floors up, but it was worth a try.’ Nicolo shook his head. ‘To be honest I doubt I would have made it, but as I was climbing over the balcony rail I heard someone screaming from inside the penthouse. I went back into my father’s bedroom and found one of the hotel’s maids in the bathroom. I learned afterwards that she shouldn’t have been there, but she’d left her wedding ring in the bathroom when she had cleaned the penthouse earlier in the day, and she’d used her pass key to slip in and look for it. When I entered the penthouse, the maid hid because she thought she would be in trouble if I spotted her.’
‘So did you help the maid to climb down the drainpipe?’
‘No, she was too petrified to try. I couldn’t even persuade her to leave the bathroom. I kept telling her we had to get out, but she was in acute shock and wouldn’t move. We were both starting to choke because of the smoke and I knew we were going to die,’ Nicolo said roughly.
‘Then I had a brainwave. It was a long shot, but there was nothing else. I filled the bath with water and soaked a pile of towels which I draped over us before I dragged the maid through the blazing sitting room. The towels didn’t cover my left side, and that’s where I was burned the worst. I don’t know how we made it to the door. I just remember the smoke and flames and the deafening roar of the furniture burning.’
‘But you did make it,’ Sophie said softly. ‘If it hadn’t been for your bravery the maid would have died. Maybe you did accidentally cause the fire, but your actions afterwards were heroic. Don’t you see that?’
He laughed grimly. ‘In the media’s eyes I was a hero but that’s because they didn’t know the truth. Only my family knew what really happened. Naturally my father was furious. My brothers and sisters thought I had been stupid.’
Sometimes he wondered if his siblings would have been more sympathetic if he had told them he had proof their father had been unfaithful to their mother. But it had seemed a betrayal to speak of his mother’s humiliation. He had guessed that his mother had found out about his father’s infidelity, and that was why she had gone away. But Nicolo had been sure she would come back to the family and so he had never told anyone that he had seen Gene in bed with the chambermaid.
‘Lucilla was kind,’ he said gruffly. ‘She, more than anyone else, took care of me. I owe her for that. But as I got older even Lucilla couldn’t control me. I started drinking heavily to blank out the memories of what had happened. The media were fascinated by “the Chatsfield hero” as they labelled me. My private life became a running soap opera and there were plenty of women who were happy to take a starring role.’
His mouth curved cynically. ‘You’d be amazed at the number of women who were curious to see my scars and treated it as a sick game to have sex with a monster.’
‘Don’t!’ Sophie implored him, putting her hands over her ears to block out his bitter words. ‘You’re not a monster, and I can’t believe any of those women thought you were. Why do you think so badly of yourself? You made one mistake when you were a boy. Are you going to punish yourself for the rest of your life?’
‘Your compassion is a credit to you,’ Nicolo said in an oddly strained tone. ‘But perhaps you won’t feel the same way when I tell you what happened to the chambermaid. Her life was ruined. As a result of smoke inhalation she developed a serious respiratory condition as well as panic attacks that left her unable to work. She was also badly burned, mainly on her face, and she was terribly disfigured.
‘For many years after the fire I did not know what had happened to her. I was so wrapped up in myself that I did not even spare her a thought. But then I met her again—and the true horror of what I had done, the misery I had caused her, became apparent.’
He moved to stand by the window, watching the shadows lengthen as dusk fell. Nicolo did not know why he was telling Sophie details that he had never shared with anyone else, but as he spilled the poison that had festered inside him for so long he felt a sense of relief.
‘One evening about eight years ago, the maid turned up at Chatsfield House. There was a party going on, and as usual I’d had too much to drink. When the butler told me a woman called Marissa Bisek wanted to see me I did not know who she was. After the fire I hadn’t even bothered to find out her name.’
He sensed Sophie had come to stand next to him, but he did not look at her as he continued. ‘I barely recognised Marissa. She looked as though she had aged thirty years, and one side of her face was scarred and misshapen. She told me that her husband had left her because he could not accept the way she looked, and because she was unable to work she was struggling to bring up her children on her own with very little money.’
He shook his head. ‘For years she had read about my wild exploits in the newspapers. Nicolo Chatsfield—the playboy hero,’ he mocked himself. ‘And the worst thing was that Marissa believed I was a hero. She had no idea that I had started the fire, and I had ruined her life. I hadn’t thought about her until she came to see me that night to beg for a little money to ease her dire financial situation.’
Nicolo glanced at Sophie, his eyes blazing with raw emotion. ‘I was some hero, huh?’
‘Yes, you were,’ she said fiercely. ‘If it hadn’t been for your bravery Marissa’s children would not have grown up with their mother. Maybe Marissa’s life was affected by the fire, but I’m sure she was grateful to you for saving her, and I’m sure she values her life all the more because she came close to losing it.’
Sophie could tell that Nicolo was puzzled by her passionate outburst. She had been left with long-term effects from cancer, but her life had been spared and for that she was utterly thankful.
‘What happened to Marissa after she came to see you?’
‘I took care of her and her children and arranged for the income I received from a family trust fund to be paid to Marissa instead of to me.’ Nicolo exhaled heavily. ‘I knew my life had to change. I despised the champagne-swilling womaniser I had become, and I hated the hero label that I did not deserve.’
Nicolo hesitated, wondering whether to tell Sophie about the charity that he had established. No one knew the identity of the mysterious benefactor who donated millions of pounds to the burns support foundation, and he preferred it that way.
‘I took a long hard look at myself, and I did not like what I saw. I don’t mean my scars,’ he said as Sophie opened her mouth to speak. ‘I didn’t like the man inside here.’ He touched his chest. ‘I also realised that, having transferred the money to Marissa, I needed to work. Setting up my own hedge fund company seemed like a logical career decision.’
‘And you quickly made a fortune,’ Sophie commented. She understood that after all he had been through, Nicolo found it easier to live as a recluse and focus on the unemotional world of financial trading rather than interact with people. Yet she wondered if making all that money made him happy. She knew that he was still tormented by his past, and her heart ached for him.
Impulsively she took hold of his injured hand and ran her fingers gently over the ridges of scarred skin. Her emotions felt ragged and a lump formed in her throat.
‘I wish you could forgive yourself,’ she whispered.
Nicolo stiffened as he felt a tiny bead of moisture drop onto his scarred skin. He slid his other hand beneath Sophie’s chin and tilted her head up.
‘Tears, Sophie? Do you think they will heal my scars?’
She shook her head. ‘Not your visible scars. And only you can heal the scars inside you. Nicolo—life is so precious,’ she said urgently. ‘I understand that better than most people.’
‘You?’ He gave a harsh laugh. ‘I appreciate your sympathy, Sophie, but how can you possible understand what
it feels like to be in a situation where you believe you are going to die?’
‘I understand because it happened to me too,’ she said fiercely. ‘I don’t mean that I was trapped in a fire, but I do know what it’s like to face death.’
He frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
Sophie took a deep breath. ‘I had cancer when I was sixteen. I nearly died.’
Nicolo felt as if he had been kicked in the gut. Ordinarily he was quick to grasp facts. It was crucial for a financial trader to be able to think on his feet. But he was stunned by Sophie’s revelation. She was so bright and brimming with life, it was impossible to imagine that she had once been ravaged by a life-threatening illness.
‘What kind of cancer?’ he asked roughly.
‘Bone cancer—osteosarcoma is its proper name.’ She sighed. ‘It started when I developed a lump on my knee. I played a lot of tennis and thought I’d picked up an injury, but the lump got bigger, and when I went back to sixth form at school to start my A-levels I felt tired all the time and I couldn’t shake off a cold. Eventually Mum insisted that I should see a doctor. She thought I might be lacking vitamins or there was some other simple explanation. A blood test revealed that I had an abnormal blood count and I was sent to the hospital for further tests.
‘Within days the doctors discovered that the lump on my knee was an aggressive tumour and that the cancer had already spread to my pelvis. That was the beginning of months of chemo. At one point it looked as though I might have to have my leg amputated, which was pretty grim.’ Sophie tried to keep her tone light and was unaware of the tremor in her voice as she spoke of the darkest days of her illness.
Watching the emotions flit across her features, Nicolo felt an overwhelming desire to pull her into his arms and hold her close, but she was speaking again, and he sensed she felt a need to talk about what had happened to her.
Billionaire's Secret Page 10