Happy Mother's Day!

  When he turned back to her there was no trace of gloating male triumph remaining in his face, but there was something else, another emotion that eluded analysis.

  He reached out and dabbed a tear from her cheek with the pad of his thumb. ‘This is going to happen, Erin. Why don’t you stop fighting it?’

  Into the palpitating pause that followed his words there was a tap on the door followed by a female voice.

  ‘Francesco?’

  ‘My God!’ Erin snapped, ‘It’s Valentina. She can’t find me here like this!’ she exclaimed, appalled at the idea. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Don’t ask stupid questions,’ Erin begged. ‘I’d be mortified!’ ‘“Mortified?”’ he echoed, a dark scowl forming on his lean features.

  ‘Will you stop talking and just do something? Make her go away! Or …’

  Francesco looked at her, smiled and cleared his throat. ‘Come in, Valentina.’

  Erin stared at him for a moment, transfixed in horror, before taking to her heels and fleeing to the bathroom. She stood there with her back against the wall, her heart hammering.

  It was several moments before she had regained enough composure to actively eavesdrop on the low-voiced conversation going on in the other room and then it turned out to be mostly in Italian.

  Just as she was about to give up on trying to figure out what they were saying she heard Francesco say in English ‘No, Erin doesn’t blame you at all.’

  ‘Well, I hope not. I really hope you two sort things out, Francesco. In my opinion Erin is the best thing that has ever happened to you. Just don’t rush things; give her time. You can’t just click your fingers and expect her to come running,’ she scolded.

  Erin gave a mortified grimace at an image of the tumbled bedclothes in her mind. Click his fingers—he hadn’t even had to make that much effort!

  ‘Rafael would have liked her, don’t you think?’

  Erin, picking up on the name she had never heard before, waited curiously to hear Francesco’s reply. It was a long time coming.

  ‘Rafe would have loved her.’

  A few remarks in Italian followed. Erin listened with half an ear wondering about the odd note in Francesco’s voice.

  She waited until she heard the door close behind Valentina before walking back into the room. Francesco was sitting on the bed.

  ‘Who is Rafe?’ she asked.

  He gave a thin-lipped smile. ‘You heard that, then?’

  ‘It was hard not to.’

  ‘Rafe was my twin brother.’

  She was totally stunned by the information. ‘You have a brother … a twin? Why didn’t you ever mention—?’

  In a voice that was flat and totally expressionless he cut across her. ‘Had. Rafe died.’

  Erin gulped and swallowed, her blue eyes softening with compassion as she went to sit beside him on the bed. ‘Oh, Francesco, I’m sorry. I had no idea.’

  Though he didn’t respond directly, he picked his wallet up from the bedside table and, withdrawing a snapshot, handed it to her without comment.

  The edges of the snapshot were creased and curled as though it had been fingered a lot, but the faces of the two young men in the photo were clear. Francesco was standing, his brother sitting. Francesco had his arm slung across the shoulders of his brother. They were both laughing.

  ‘You were identical twins!’

  My God, it would be bad enough to lose a sibling, but she couldn’t even begin to imagine the horror of losing an identical twin.

  ‘Almost nobody could tell us apart.’

  Erin was surprised to hear him say this. To her mind the differences between the two men were obvious. Francesco’s mouth was wider and firmer and his chin more squarely resolute. His brother’s features were probably more regular, and to her seemed softer and less aggressively masculine.

  ‘I’m sorry, I had no idea …’

  When Francesco turned his head and looked at her the emptiness in his eyes frightened her. Her heart aching with empathy, she reached across and laid her hand over his.

  ‘We looked alike, but that was on the surface. We weren’t really alike at all.’ He took the photo from her fingers and looked at it. ‘Rafe was the imaginative, sensitive one. I’ll show you some of his paintings some time if you like. He was very talented.’

  ‘He was an artist?’

  ‘He did a lot of things; he was … restless. I think our parents thought that marriage would make him settle down.’ ‘He was married?’

  Francesco, his expression darkening, nodded. ‘He was, but it was not a success. Rafe spent four years trying to cling to her, desperately trying to change himself into the sort of man she wanted him to be.’

  It had destroyed him.

  It was obvious from the tension in Francesco’s manner that he didn’t enjoy speaking about his brother. Erin hesitated before gently asking, ‘How did he die?’

  ‘He killed himself.’

  A short static silence followed his abrupt and shocking words. A tiny gasp escaped Erin’s parted lips. ‘He took an overdose.’

  She lifted a hand to her mouth and her blue eyes filled with tears of sympathy.

  ‘When I found him he looked as if he was sleeping. He looked so peaceful,’ Francesco recalled.

  Erin’s eyes widened with horror. Not only had his twin killed himself, Francesco had found the body! She ached to comfort him, but what, she wondered, could you say that didn’t sound like a pathetic platitude?

  ‘He came to see me, you know, earlier that week asking for my advice.’

  That in itself had not been unusual. His twin had always turned up when he’d had a problem; admittedly sometimes Francesco had had trouble recognising the things Rafe had lost sleep over as problems. And if he was brutally honest with himself the dramatic spin his brother had put on relatively trivial incidents had frequently annoyed him.

  It seemed to him that Rafe had lurched from one drama to another. Rafe didn’t meet a beautiful woman, he met a goddess!

  Francesco had never met a goddess and he had definitely never felt the desire to place a woman on a pedestal. When Rafe had only half-jokingly accused him of having no soul he had not disagreed.

  ‘You want to know what I told him? What I told my suicidal brother?’ Erin shook her head and felt totally inadequate in the face of the anguish that was written in every line of his face. ‘I said, “Pull yourself together, Rafe.” I told him that people don’t die of broken hearts, but it turned out they do.’

  The official verdict, of course, had been different.

  It had emerged at the inquest that Rafe had recently been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and had convinced his doctors he had been taking his medication for the condition. His family, Francesco included, had known nothing about his disorder and this, they had concluded, had been the main factor that had led to his tragic suicide.

  But Francesco knew different; he could have changed things. He should have changed things.

  Horror-stricken, Erin could only sit and listen as the words spilled from him. She had the impression he had forgotten she was even there; it made her wonder how long he’d had these feelings locked inside.

  ‘My brother needed me and all I could come up with was worthless platitudes.’ His voice shook with self-loathing. ‘He loved that woman more than life itself and I said, “Don’t sit there moping. Be tough—go and get her.” So he did and she told him that she loved someone else and he killed himself.’

  As he closed his eyes Francesco’s head fell forward. She watched his shoulders heave. ‘You stupid idiot, Rafe! Dio, what a waste. What a total bloody waste!’ he raged.

  Unable to bear his pain any longer, Erin got to her knees on the bed and came up behind him, pressing her body up against the curve of his spine and, resting her head against his neck, linked her hands across his chest.

  It was little enough but the physical contact seemed to help him regain some degree of control over his emotions because the shudders that racked his
body gradually stopped.

  As he straightened up Erin loosed her grip and leaned back on her heels, her grave blue eyes trained on his face as he swept the blue-black hair back from his brow.

  ‘I can’t even begin to imagine what it must feel like …’ she said softly.

  ‘You really want to know?’ he yelled, turning his seething anger on her. ‘Will that satisfy your grubby, prurient curiosity? You’re just like all the others, pretending sympathy while enjoying the misfortunes of another!’

  Erin flinched at the bile in his tone but did not try and defend herself or protest this very black view of human nature.

  ‘If you want to tell me, Francesco.’

  She realised he had never stopped blaming himself for his brother’s death.

  ‘I wake up every morning and there’s a dark empty space inside me … a black hole.’ He pressed a hand to his chest and turned eyes that were filled with bitter self-reproach to Erin. ‘It hurts knowing that I will never see him again, never hear his voice again, and the worst part is I could have stopped it. I should have known.’ He swallowed, the muscles in his brown throat working as he closed his eyes.

  Hand pressed to her mouth, Erin watched as he fought to regain control. She was shocked and horrified. How long, she wondered, had he been carrying around this guilt and pain?

  ‘It never even occurred to me that he was ill.’

  Certainly when Rafe had turned up at his place looking the personification of a tragic hero Francesco had been more irritated than alarmed. The state of his brother’s marriage, like his mood, had see-sawed violently between bliss and dark, brooding despair.

  ‘Why didn’t I see that his mood swings were getting worse?’

  ‘Why should you?’

  Francesco’s head came up; he gave her a guarded look. ‘Why?’

  ‘Yes, why?’ ‘I should have.’

  ‘We don’t analyse minutely the behaviour of the people close to us.’

  ‘Maybe Rafe didn’t want me to see, and who could blame him? It’s not as if I’d been wildly sympathetic before.’

  Erin flung up her hands in frustrated exasperation. Francesco seemed totally determined to blame himself for what had happened to his twin. ‘Did you tell him everything?’

  Francesco dismissed the question with an impatient gesture. ‘That’s not the same thing. If he hadn’t felt he had to hide his illness from me.’ teeth clenched, his features rigid, he ground his clenched fist into the bed frame ‘… if I had known I would have made sure he took his medication. If I’d thought before I doled out advice Rafe might still be alive.’

  ‘That’s a lot of ifs, Francesco. When bad things happen we look for a reason,’ she began, choosing her words with care. ‘It’s human nature, but sometimes,’ she said sadly, ‘there simply isn’t one to find. Bad things just happen; they happen to good people who don’t deserve it. You can’t blame yourself for what happened to your twin, Francesco. It isn’t your fault.’

  He gave a twisted smile. ‘That’s what the doctors said,’ he admitted. ‘They talked about chemical imbalances, but it wasn’t a chemical imbalance in his blood that killed Rafe; it was black despair.’ His voice shook with the depth of his feelings and raw emotion. ‘And I stood by and watched it happen.’

  Erin could not bear to hear any more of this. ‘That’s nonsense and you know it!’ she protested. ‘Do you really think your brother would want you to beat yourself up over this?’ she demanded.

  He looked startled by the question. ‘I never really.’

  ‘Thought about it like that? Well, that’s obvious, because if you had you’d have realised that he wouldn’t have any more than you would have wanted him to if the situation had been reversed.’

  ‘Rafe was always there for me. He always had time for me.’

  ‘This hair-shirt look really doesn’t suit you, Francesco. In fact all this self-flagellation is pretty self-indulgent.'Ashamed of yelling at him when she ought to have been soothing him, she added a guilty-sounding, ‘Sorry.’

  He schooled his laboured breathing to something that approached normality. ‘No, it is I who should be sorry.’ It might be his imagination but Francesco was conscious of feelingfor want of a better word—lighter than he had in a long time.

  ‘What for? I’m the one who scolded you.’

  ‘I needed scolding,’ he reflected, a shadow of a smile lifting the sombreness of his expression. ‘You’re right—I am wallowing in self-pity.’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘No?’ He arched a dark brow and shrugged, one corner of his sensual mouth lifting in a crooked smile that just tore at her sensitive heart. ‘Maybe you should have. Erin, the things I said.’ he began, his manner uncharacteristically awkward as he met her eyes. ‘I should not have shouted at you … The thing is it is difficult for me to speak of my feelings. Rafe used to say that my aura—he was very into that sort of stuff—must have so many “keep out” signs that it would take a very brave person to get close to me.’

  His dark eyes flickered across her face before his chin dropped to his chest. ‘Someone who goes where angels fear to tread,’ had been Rafe’s exact words.

  ‘Or a really stupid one,’ she muttered under her breath as she drew back the fingers that hovered just above his dark hair. Her heart ached to see him so vulnerable. ‘It must have been a terrible time for you and your family,’ she said huskily.

  ‘It was not good.’ He gave a twisted smile. ‘But at the time there were things to do … arrangements … no time to think. Later it was harder and my parents took it very badly.’

  And everyone expected Francesco to cope, Erin thought, looking at his broad shoulders and thinking of the problems people offloaded on them.

  ‘My mother especially.’ He lifted his head, dragging a hand through his tousled dark hair before revealing, ‘There was always a special bond between her and Rafe.’ Nothing in his expression or manner suggested he had in any way resented this special relationship. ‘She hasn’t been the same since.’

  ‘She still has you!’ The indignant protest died on Erin’s tongue when, without warning, he reached across and took her face between his hands.

  ‘You had me, too, cara, but you didn’t want me.’

  Didn’t want him? God, if only that were true. If she had ever fooled herself into believing she didn’t love him the last few minutes had destroyed that illusion. Seeing the depth of pain in his eyes had torn at her heart. She had felt his grief and loss as though it had been her own … and had felt helpless.

  If she could have she would have taken his pain on herself. And yet she was about to add to it by taking away his chance to be a full-time father.

  She just couldn’t do that to him; Francesco had lost enough without losing his child.

  ‘I alwayswanted you, Francesco.’ And I’ll always love you!

  Francesco’s eyes darkened and a muscle in his lean cheek clenched as he sucked in a deep breath. ‘Erin …’ His hands slid to her shoulders as he said something thick in his own language. As he bent his head towards hers Erin closed her eyes, her eyelashes fluttering like butterfly wings against her flushed cheeks.

  ‘Perhaps we could make a go of it?’

  Francesco’s hands fell away and his head came up with a jerk. His dark eyes raked her face with an intensity she found hard to endure. ‘You are agreeing to come back to Italy with me?’

  My God, is that what I’m doing? Do I really want to be pregnant in a foreign country loving a man who only wants me back because of the child I’m carrying?

  ‘I’m prepared to give it a go, for the sake of the baby.’ You are crazy, Erin. ‘But the secrets have to stop. And don’t say there were no secrets, because our marriage was based on a tissue of lies and omissions from day one. You never once mentioned your twin.’

  ‘I suppose it was a relief to be with someone who didn’t know about Rafe, to escape the interminable sympathy. The conversations that stopped when I walked into a room. Dea
th is one of the last taboo subjects in our society. It makes people uncomfortable to be around someone who is bereaved. They either gush or cross the street to avoid you.’

  ‘When did he … when did Rafe die?’ She could actually see how a man like Francesco, a man who was fiercely private and self-contained, might find well-wishers intrusive.

  ‘Six months ago.’

  ‘Six months!’ No wonder Francesco’s feelings were so raw. ‘That’s no time at all.’ she began, then stopped, the colour seeping from her face.

  That meant that when she had met Francesco his brother had only been dead for three months.

  Their meeting. The whirlwind romance, the reckless dash into marriage—all suddenly made a horrible kind of sense.

  The behaviour she had attributed to a man in love could equally be attributed to a man unwilling to confront his feelings.

  Some men in similar circumstances might have turned to drink or relied on prescription drugs.

  In Francesco’s case he had turned to her!

  It all made perfect horrible sense!

  Francesco, half out of his head with grief and unwilling to acknowledge his feelings of anger and guilt, had used anything to distract himself. She had been the ultimate distraction and he had used her to ease the pain he was going through. Not consciously—she did not believe he was capable of being that callous.

  Had he already begun to realise that he didn’t really love her the night of the ball? It would explain why he had not done more to stop her going. Sure, his pride had been hurt that it had been her who had walked away, but maybe deep down he had been secretly relieved? Until he had found out about the baby.

  ‘You’re cold,’ Francesco said as she shivered.

  She gave a forced smile and stood up, clutching the robe tight around her. ‘A little.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Fine. I think I’ll go change.’

  ‘You can keep the shirt.’

  My heart for your shirt. The exchange hardly seemed fair. Repressing the hysterical laugh that was lodged in her throat, she nodded tightly and left the room.