Happy Mother's Day! (17 page)

As the heaving upper slopes of her creamy breasts were exposed his control snapped and he pulled her roughly into his arms.

‘Thank God!’ she breathed into his mouth as they slid down in the seat.

She had been so totally uninhibited about expressing her pleasure at his touch that Francesco had not suspected until the actual moment he slid into her body and heard her tiny cry of shock that she had still been a virgin.

He was both appalled and aroused by the knowledge that he was her first lover.

‘Relax, let me make this good for you,’ he begged huskily as she arched beneath him and slid her hands across his bare shoulders, clinging on as though she feared she would fall.

‘Oh, my God, you’re just incredible, Francesco!’

The hoarse cries of astonished pleasure he was hearing in his head mingled with the more high-pitched sounds of laughter that drifted in through the window. Sucking in a deep breath through flared nostrils, Francesco dragged his thoughts kicking and screaming back to the present.

It took several moments for him to get the hunger that still roared like a furnace in his veins under control.

He sighed and dragged a hand through his hair. Reaching inside the glove compartment, he pulled out Erin’s letter. He slowly tore it in half, then in half again before throwing it out the open window. The gesture was purely symbolic, but it made him feel better to watch the pieces scatter as a gust of wind caught them.

F
ORGETTING
about the phone call he had intended to answer, Francesco was about to turn the ignition when there was more laughter outside. And mingled with this laughter was a tearful cry that held an unmistakable note of fear.

Frowning, he turned his head at the same moment one of the youths moved and he saw the girl’s face; underneath the overdone make-up that caked her face she was very young. The terror he saw written clearly in the childish features radically changed the situation. This was not simply high spirits.

With a sigh he opened the door. The fact was he didn’t need any of this, but Francesco had not been brought up to turn a blind eye and ignore his duty and social responsibility.

The youths were too busy, and, if the beer cans discarded on the floor were any indicator, too drunk to register his presence until he was right upon them.

‘I think the lady would like to leave.’

As one they swung around to face him, their expressions uniformly smug and belligerent. The one who was obviously the self-appointed leader dug his thumbs into his belt and took a swaggering step towards Francesco who, rather than recoiling in horror as he was meant to, simply looked bored.

This reaction visibly troubled the glassy-eyed gang leader.

‘Who asked you?’

Francesco smiled. It was a smile that sent a cold shudder down the young boy’s spine.

‘Why don’t you boys just run along home, no harm done?’ Francesco suggested pleasantly.

The youth nearest raised a can to his mouth and drained it before mangling the tin in his hand and flinging it over his shoulder.
‘We’re
not running no place, mate!’ he announced loudly. ‘So why don’t you mind your own business?’

The pathetic bravado was wasted on Francesco, who was fast losing his patience. He lifted one hand, flicked the cuff of his jacket and glanced at the metal-banded watch that glittered against his olive-toned skin. He had places to be and his plan to reach there before lunch was beginning to seem optimistic.

‘That is, of course, your choice, but the young lady—’ he nodded towards the scared-looking teenager ‘—would like to go home. Is that not so?’

The young girl nodded and eagerly ran into the shelter offered by his outstretched arm. ‘You are all right?’ Francesco asked softly.

The girl who looked up at him as though he was her saviour nodded and wiped the tears from her cheeks, smearing mascara over her face in the process. Looking at her more closely, Francesco realised that beyond the vibrant hair she bore no resemblance whatsoever to his wife.

For a start the woman he had married would not have cringed in a corner while brainless thugs intimidated her. One corner of his mouth lifted into a wry half-smile as he contemplated her probable actions if she found herself in a similar situation.

His redhead would have stuck out her chin and ripped her attackers apart with her rapier-sharp tongue. And if that hadn’t
been sufficient she would have aimed some kicks at their most vulnerable areas, and most likely landed a few.

Neither would she have welcomed his well-meant intervention. No, she would have told him in no uncertain terms that she was more than capable of taking care of herself.

‘I think it’s time you went home,’ he suggested gently to the girl, who did not resent his interference.

She did not require a second bidding. Casting him one last look of supreme gratitude, she fled.

‘I don’t think so,’ Francesco said, turning his body to block the youth who had moved to pursue her.

‘But she liked me.’

Francesco smiled. ‘Did you not know? It is a lady’s privilege to change her mind, and a gentleman always remembers that.’

Folding his long, lean length into the driver’s seat, Francesco dismissed the incident from his mind almost immediately, or most of it anyway. But the hair kept triggering memories he fought to keep in check for the rest of the journey.

Valentina tracked her guest down to the small sitting room. The south-facing room was her own favourite in the big rambling house that had become her home when she had left her native Tuscany to marry her English husband five years earlier.

She glanced at her watch before hitching her infant son a little more securely onto her hip. Her expression was reluctant as she reached for the door handle.

Half an hour earlier her husband had revealed the details of his master plan. She had seen the flaws immediately.

‘What if she doesn’t
want
to be in the library at eleventhirty?’ she asked. ‘What if Francesco is late? What am I meant to do then?’

‘You’ll think of something, and if Francesco says he is going to be here at a certain time he will be.’

Valentina could not deny his last point. People who meant
exactly
what they said were rare, but her cousin was one of them.

‘You know, Sam, I think you’re enjoying this cloak-anddagger stuff far too much!’

She, on the other hand, was having serious misgivings. When she expressed her doubts about being part of what amounted to a conspiracy, Sam dismissed her concerns.

‘Conspiracy? This isn’t a
conspiracy,
Val.’

‘Well, what would you call it? We invited Erin to a party that doesn’t exist, when we’re actually going to lock her in a room with her estranged ex!’

‘There will be no
locking
involved. I’ve just made sure that they can have the house to themselves for a few hours.’

‘Erin will probably never speak to me again,’ Valentina predicted gloomily.

‘We’re just helping two people get back together,’ Sam soothed. ‘Look at it this way—does Erin
look
happy?’

‘Couldn’t he just pick up a telephone like anyone else?’

‘Once the lawyers get involved things get complicated.’

‘Maybe, but
why
does he want to see her?’

‘Well, obviously he wants to try again. He wants reconciliation. What other reason could there be?’

Valentina did not even attempt to explain about the complexities of Latin male, macho pride to her English husband. As much as she loved Francesco, she was not blind to his faults; her cousin was capable of being utterly ruthless.

Of course, it might be as simple as Sam suggested; he might just want to salvage his marriage. The problem was, where Francesco was concerned things were rarely simple!

‘Look, I really don’t see what the problem is. Francesco has asked for our help. When did he ever do that?’ ‘Never,’ she admitted.

Her charismatic cousin was just about the most self-sufficient individual she had ever encountered. He was the type of person that people instinctively turned to in times of crisis. A cloud passed over her face as her thoughts turned to the tragedy that had recently devastated the Romanelli family.

Rafe, Francesco’s twin brother, had taken his own life.

She was ashamed to admit, but she had been so caught up in her own grief that she had spared very little thought to how Francesco, who had remained a tower of strength throughout, must be feeling.

Then on the day of funeral she had walked into a room and found him alone. At the sound of his name Francesco had lifted his head … the bleak despair she had seen in his eyes during that brief unguarded moment would stay with her for ever.

The family had considered it a good thing when he had thrown himself into his work with even more energy than usual, but she hadn’t been so sure.

So when after weeks of being pretty elusive Francesco had telephoned out of the blue and announced he was getting married Valentina had been delighted for him.

A secret ceremony in a tiny chapel with only herself and Sam to witness the event had seemed the height of romance until she’d realised the couple had only met five days earlier!

That had really set the alarm bells ringing!

It was hard not to conclude, given the timing, that his totally out-of-character whirlwind marriage had been some sort of backlash to his twin brother’s death.

She hadn’t really been surprised when the marriage had folded after a month.

‘I for one,’ Sam added, ‘would do a hell of a lot more than tell a few white lies for him. He believed in me when nobody else did, or have you forgotten how much we owe him? We’d have lost this house … the stud, everything!’

‘I know … I know … and I’d do anything for him
normally,
but we’re
lying
to Erin. How’s she going to feel when she realises we’ve been tricking her?’

In the end they’d come to a compromise: she would not spill the beans to Erin, but if the other girl asked her a direct question she wouldn’t lie.

E
RIN,
who was curled up on the sofa, put the book she was reading to one side and rose to her feet when Valentina walked in.

‘Who were you talking to?’ Valentina asked, looking around the empty room.

‘The heroine,’ Erin explained, indicating the book that lay open. ‘She is so
good
it makes me nauseous.’

‘Then why are you reading the book?’

‘I’m hoping she’ll wake up and realise that the hero she’s been waiting for doesn’t exist.’ The problem with heroiclooking men was it was a massive disappointment when you discovered they were just as incapable of knowing the meaning of fidelity as any other man.

‘That makes you a terrible cynic.’

‘That makes me an optimist,’ Erin retorted, running a hand through her hair before tightening the knot in the orange scarf that secured it in a loose ponytail at her nape. The vibrant colour clashed gloriously with the equally vibrant shade of her copper-red curls. ‘She might not be as stupid as she seems.’

Her glance drifted to the plump baby gurgling contentedly in his mother’s arms. Valentina made motherhood look so
easy … just watching her made Erin feel inadequate. Were good mothers born or could you learn? she wondered.

Erin hoped, for the sake of her unborn baby, that the latter was true!

‘So, being an optimist, do you think people can change?’

Erin tore her eyes from the golden-skinned baby and caught Valentina watching her with an expression that made her wonder uneasily if she didn’t suspect something. It wasn’t the first time she had received that impression.

For a moment Erin was tempted to tell her; she ached to have someone to confide in, someone to tell her that the doubts and fears that kept her awake nights were normal.

But then sanity intervened.

Francesco was Valentina’s cousin and to ask her to keep the information from him would put her in an awful position. Valentina would no doubt consider that Francesco had a right to know and Erin could not disagree, she knew she had to tell Francesco about the baby.

She had actually been on the point of putting pen to paper to do just that earlier that week, not having mentioned it in her earlier letter, when she had picked up the phone and without warning heard his voice.

But when the moment had presented itself, she hadn’t told him; she hadn’t said anything.

She hadn’t been able to—the protective defences she had struggled to construct had disintegrated and so had she! Her eyes had still been puffy and red the next day from the orgy of weeping just hearing his voice had triggered.

It would be so much simpler if her conscience would allow her to delay telling him until after the divorce. Because once he did know Erin knew that realistically there would be no question of a smooth, uncontested divorce.

It just wasn’t going to happen.

Not given Francesco’s inflexible and unforgiving attitude when it came to the subject of fathers who tried to evade their responsibilities.

Francesco held the view that absentee fathers came slightly lower on the evolutionary scale than lice! And while he had once expressed some admiration for single mothers who brought up children and juggled careers, he had added the rider that it was inevitable the child would suffer.

The moment he knew about the baby Erin
knew
that he would use all his considerable powers of persuasion to make her give up the idea of a divorce completely.

But even if he had turned up on his knees begging her to come back, a scenario slightly less likely than snow in the desert, Erin would not have considered trying again, especially only for the sake of their unborn child.

It wasn’t as if it would work out any better the second time around. Nothing had changed. Essentially they were the same people, the same totally incompatible people. If they got back together she would only end up having to walk away a second time.

And that was something she had to avoid at all costs. Leaving the first time had hurt more than anything in her life and the thought of feeling pain like that again …
Oh, my God, I just can’t go through that again!
she thought, gulping as she bent to pick up the stuffed toy Gianni had thrown on the floor.

‘No, I don’t think people can change,’ she said, putting the toy back in the baby’s plump hand.

In order to change you had to admit you were in the wrong—something that her estranged husband had refused point-blank to do. As her thoughts lingered on the subject of Francesco her soft features grew bleak.

It wasn’t difficult to work out what she had seen in him. He had had more raw sexual magnetism in his little finger than a normal man had in his entire body.

Erin could forgive herself for the physical attraction, but what she couldn’t forgive herself for was seeing emotional depth in his brooding silences and strength in his reticence.

It seemed laughably pathetic now, but she had really thought she had found her soul mate, the one man in the world that she was meant to be with. She had seen what she wanted, when in reality there had been nothing to see.

He had been shallow, selfish and cruel.

How had she ever imagined that their marriage could work?

She was confident that walking out and turning her back on him and a lifestyle to which she had been patently unsuited had been the right thing to do. She had no doubts at all … if only she could forget that look of bleak devastation she had seen in his dark eyes …

‘But sometimes …’ Valentina’s voice interrupted her thoughts.

Erin shook her head. ‘My mum believed my dad could change for thirty years.’

It was the first reference that Erin had made to her parents’ marriage. On the one occasion Valentina had met Erin’s mother, she had been far less restrained when it came to disclosing the gory details of her husband’s numerous infidelities! Much to her daughter’s obvious discomfiture.

‘When you were growing up … did you know what was going on?’ Valentina asked curiously.

Erin shrugged, her expression tight as she admitted, ‘The entire village knew what was going on.’

Valentina gave a grimace of sympathy. She herself had found it difficult to warm to Clare Foyle. She couldn’t rid
herself of the uncharitable conviction that the older woman rather enjoyed her status as tragic, dumped wife.

What Erin still struggled to understand was that, after all these years and numerous affairs, all her father had to do was look sheepish and contrite and his wife would welcome him with open arms no matter how many times he humiliated her.

Erin knew better than to challenge her father or attempt to make her mother see he would ever change. The only thing her previous interventions had never done was make her mother accuse her of not wanting to see her happy.

She gave a philosophical mental shrug. She had long ago accepted that where her father was concerned her mother could not think rationally.

And who was she to criticize? Hadn’t she almost gone down the same road herself?

‘They’re planning a trip to France to tour the winemaking regions.’

‘My cousin married an Australian winemaker …’ Valentina stopped and gave a self-conscious grimace. ‘But then you’d know that. Sorry, I didn’t mean to …’

‘No need to be sorry,’ Erin said, pretending a pragmatism she was a million miles away from achieving. ‘And actually there are entire chunks of Francesco’s life which are a total mystery to me.’

‘Well, I don’t suppose that is so surprising—you actually didn’t know one another very long. That isn’t a criticism,’ she added quickly. ‘Sam said he knew he was going to marry me five minutes after we met!’

‘But I’m assuming that you waited a little longer than five days before you got married.’

Most sane people did, she reflected, still unable three months after the event to explain the reckless way she had jumped into
marriage with a man whom she hardly knew. A man who she had already discovered had lied more than once to her.

But then there had not been a whole lot of sanity involved in her steamy relationship with Francesco Romanelli!

‘This entire divorce thing is going to be a total nightmare. I wish we could just do it without involving a lawyer. I really don’t care about the money … I just want to put it all behind me, but Mum says …’ Erin shrugged and bit her lip. ‘She never really took to Francesco,’ she admitted.

Valentina suspected that Clare Foyle would never take to any man who took away the daughter she used as an emotional prop, but she maintained a tactful silence.

The baby in her arms began to cry. ‘Gianni is a bit cranky today.’

Erin ran a tentative finger down the baby’s soft cheek, swallowing past the emotional lump in her throat. ‘He’s a lovely baby,’ she observed huskily. ‘You’re very lucky.’

Valentina nodded. ‘I know,’ she admitted. ‘So shall we go find Sam? I think he’s in the library.’

‘Library?’

‘Yes, he’s dying to take you on a tour of the stud,’ she said, taking Erin’s arm and steering her towards the door.

‘That would be interesting,’ Erin admitted, puzzled by her hostess’s urgency. ‘But I wouldn’t want to be an imposition. Couldn’t I give you a hand?’

Valentina looked blank.
‘A hand?’

‘Well, aren’t the other guests arriving this morning?’

‘Everyone who’s coming should be here by eleven-thirty, but everything’s under control.’

Her strained smile made Erin suspect that organising the weekend had been more fraught than Valentina had anticipated.

‘I’m sure everything will go smoothly,’ Erin said soothingly.

For some reason this comment drew a nervous laugh from her increasingly anxious-looking hostess.

Valentina paused, her hand on the door of the library. ‘I was wondering.’ she began.

‘You were wondering what?’

‘I was wondering if you’re really serious about this divorce thing … I know it’s none of my business.’ ‘I’m deadly serious.’

Valentina sighed. ‘Well, I think it’s sad. You and Francesco on your wedding day looked so … you looked so
right
together.’

Erin swallowed the lump in her throat. She remembered how it had
felt right
when his mouth had covered her own. How right it had felt when they had lain skin to skin touching … but sometimes, she reflected grimly, instincts were wrong. What felt right was anything but!

‘Sometimes things don’t work out,’ she said lamely; she could hardly bad-mouth Francesco to his cousin.

Actually she hadn’t bad-mouthed him to anyone, and bizarrely there had been more than one occasion when she had even found herself defending him in the face of her mother’s savage criticism. Well, whatever else he was, Francesco was the father of her unborn child.

‘Sam and I had some spectacular rows when we first married,’ Valentina revealed candidly. ‘Living with someone even when you love them can be difficult in the early days.’

‘Look, I appreciate what you’re saying,’ Erin said. ‘But you and Sam … well, it isn’t comparing like with like. Did Sam ever pretend to be someone he wasn’t? Did you have to learn by accident that the man you were marrying the next day was someone quite different?’

Valentina, looking confused, shook her head. ‘You didn’t know who Francesco was?’

‘Well, I didn’t know he was some filthy-rich banker with a family tree that can trace itself back to the year dot, and I’d be grateful if you tell that to anyone who suggests I married him for his money.’

‘Nobody thinks that!’ Valentina exclaimed, horrified by the suggestion.

‘I’ve no doubt they will,’ Erin retorted as her thoughts were dragged inexorably back to the moment when she had accidentally discovered the true identity of her future husband.

She had experienced no flicker of premonition as she had picked up a paper that had wafted onto the floor from the desk piled high with Francesco’s files.

The letterhead on the heavy vellum paper had pronounced it came from the Romanelli Bank.

She remembered being struck by the coincidence of Francesco doing business with a bank that had his own name. It had been a sudden concern, not suspicion, that had made her go back and study it. Why did banks write to people?

What if Francesco had financial problems? She had had to remonstrate with him on more than one occasion about his generosity.

Guiltily she had skimmed the typewritten letter. The convoluted wording and technical language it was couched in meant she hadn’t understood one word in five, but one thing she had understood was the signature at the bottom of the page.

She would have recognised that distinctive bold flourish anywhere.

What was Francesco’s name doing at the bottom of a letter from a bank?

She had suddenly remembered an incident that had not seemed important at the time. It had been the first time he had driven her up to his remote home two days earlier. On the way
she had pointed at the name plaque on a large automated gate and laughingly asked if that was where he lived.

‘Romanelli is a common name around here.’

Around the next bend she caught a fleeting glimpse of a vast honey-coloured stone building that resembled a fairytale castle.

‘The people who live there must be very rich,’ she commented.

‘They own the estate.’ ‘Is it large?’

‘Many thousands of acres.’

Of course, she forgot the rich people in their castle when he brought her to his home. Though only half the conversion was completed, Francesco’s home, which he explained he was converting with his own hands, totally enchanted her.

It was a perfect marriage of rustic and contemporary. All the materials, he proudly explained, were locally sourced, many reclaimed from other old buildings which had fallen into disrepair.

Francesco’s plans for the place were ambitious.

‘When it is finished there will be a glass corridor linking the two wings and that gable end will be glass.’

‘It’s beautiful, Francesco,’ she said, her imagination fired by the picture he drew.

‘It is perfectly habitable at the moment. Is it somewhere you could imagine living?’

‘I’ll never live anywhere half so beautiful.’