Shadows of the Past

by Frances Housden

  Franc carried their bags as they followed her mother upstairs.

  Just as well. She didn’t feel fit for anything as she trailed behind, her head ringing with the news. What was worse, she hadn’t known it would affect her this way. Thoughts of selling the vineyard hadn’t troubled her before because she’d been sure it would always be there. Always be her home.

  “The rooms are at the far end of the hall,” said Mamma to Franc. “You’ll like the view, they look down over the patio.”

  Gradually, her feet slowed. Connecting rooms. How could her mother do this to her? It had to be because they were retiring. Nothing else could explain their eagerness to be rid of her.

  “Tell him how nice the view is, Maria.”

  “It’s very nice.”

  “Don’t sound so enthusiastic,” her mother chided as she opened the door on the right and flicked on the light. “’re in here, Franc.”

  He propped her bag against the door opposite his then shrugged through the narrow entrance to the room he’d been allotted.

  She wished now that she’d said something and ended up with the whole family annoyed with her instead of Franc, who probably wanted to ring her neck right about now. She measured the space between the two doors. The distance could have been longer, say, about half a mile. While her mother showed Franc where everything went, Maria carried her bag next door.

  The room was smaller than her one down the hall with its queen-size bed, but at least it was quite airy, and higher than the mosquito line, so the window could be left open at night. She smiled as she imagined her nieces and nephews sleeping top-and-tail in her bed. This she had to see.

  Her good mood lasted until she heard her mother showing Franc the bathroom. “It’s small, but it will give you more privacy from the children.”

  The door on Maria’s side of the bathroom was flung open and her mother entered. “Maria can show you where the towels are kept if you need more. Now,” she said, looking as if she’d just performed magic, “I’ll see you for supper in a few minutes. No need to unpack. Just wash up.”

  Maria turned her back on Franc, who was framed in the doorway, and walked over to gaze out the window. Her brothers and Kris were on the patio, watching Papa wave his arms around, pointing things out to the others. It didn’t matter that it was dark; they all knew the vineyard like the backs of their hands. The way she did.

  “No time for looking out the window,” Mamma told her. “Get ready for supper.”

  Franc leaned against her bedroom door as if that would bar it against Rosa. Maria hadn’t moved from the window. She glanced over her shoulder at him as though she wondered what he was doing there, in her room. Well, he’d soon set her straight. He wouldn’t be here a minute longer than he could help.

  He took a deep breath to center his thoughts and find some balance. Now he knew what they meant by culture shock. He was suffering from it.

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  Maria shrugged. “It’s no big deal.”

  “You should have told your mother we’d only just met. When I take a woman to bed, I prefer to do my own asking. I won’t be forced.”

  “No force intended, we have separate rooms.”

  “Connecting rooms.” He’d had enough. Maria was no help. “Look, I’ve no intention of stepping into Randy Searle’s shoes. So what do I have to do to get out of this place? Should I come down with a virus, or do I have to break a leg?”

  He felt as if he was coming down with a case of happy-families, a disease that came with a ton of mouths to feed and could only spell disaster for his ambitions. The chances of his taking Maria to his bed no longer seemed like a cure for what ailed him.

  Although he sensed he might just die a happy man, if he was going to go down, he’d be fighting all the wa

  Chap

  ter 4

  Franc raised an eyebrow, as Maria’s response was an indignant snort. “Ha! Try that and you’ll be here for a month, not just overnight. My mother would love it. She’d nurse you to within an inch of your life.”

  She lifted a hand to her mouth as her breath caught between a giggle and words. “Believe me, I’ve been there. I never want to be sick around Mamma again. So be warned, don’t even sneeze in her direction, or she’ll be looking out for an old remedy passed down from her great-great-grandmother.”

  Maria’s laughter was unexpected and infectious; he joined in. It was a relief to do something normal, ordinary. Then he remembered. “But what is she going to think when she eventually meets Randy?”

  “There is no Randy—in that way.” She shook her head and released a sigh before carrying on. “My mother was worried about me being left on the shelf. She and her sisters married very young, but she forgets things change, a woman doesn’t have to get married these days, not even to have a family.”

  She looked up at him from under the veil of her lashes. Her lips quirked and he had the darnedest urge to reach out and touch the mole beside it that seemed to say, “Kiss me quick.”

  “My mother was making noises—loud noises—about me going to Italy to meet some nice Italian boys.” She shuddered. “And though I know she would never force me, the thought of Mamma’s relatives lining them up for inspection was enough to send me running for the hills or composing an excuse. Sooo, to keep Mamma happy, I made someone up. It just so happens that his description fits you to a tee.”

  He’d thought this convoluted situation bizarre, but it was getting worse. “I gather that would make me your ideal man?”

  “On the outside, but it takes more than good looks to make an ideal man.”

  It wasn’t an insult as such, but his reaction must have shown, because she laughed, and it was enough for now to see Maria’s eyes shed the dull flat look they’d held since her parents had made the announcement downstairs. “Yeah, he’d need to be able to commit, and my background lets me down there, but you still haven’t explained about Randy.”

  “I just needed to see him, and your receptionist let slip where you were holding the party, so I visited the restaurant, looking for him.”

  An oblique answer that left him no wiser than when he’d arrived at Falcon’s Rise and been catapulted out of his comfort zone. He grasped her shoulders as the truth dawned, and he gasped, “You mean you gate-crashed? The party?”

  “If you remembered, I wanted to leave and you insisted I stay, but I never said Randy was my date. Besides, how could Mamma mistake you for him, you’re nothing alike.”

  “I thought she’d forgotten his name or something. Grandma Glamuzina used to do it all the time with my brothers and me. Whoevhe was looking at took the—” He broke off as one of the kids peeped in the door. “The blame.”

  “Supper time,” the boy gurgled, as if it was a great joke that Maria had a man in her room that seemed about to kiss her. He was still laughing as he ran down the hall, but the noise he made bouncing down the stairs muffled everything else.

  “Which one was that?” He’d be damned if he could tell them apart no matter that Maria had told him all their names.

  “Ricky. He’ll have gone to share with the others. At that age they’re easily pleased.”

  “C’mon,” he said, making good on Ricky’s speculation by planting a fast hard kiss on her lips. “The rest of the explanations can wait until after supper, I’m starving.”

  Maria looked dazed for a second, but as he grasped her hand to pull her with him, she recovered her wits. “Well, I sincerely hope you like Italian food or you’ll stay hungry.”

  He turned, trapping her against him in the doorway as he ducked his head, releasing a ravenous growl as he nibbled on her earlobe. “I thought you’d have guessed by now, I’m hungry for anything Italian.” And to prove it he kissed her again, drowning in the sweetness of her, lifting his head only when the sound of childish laughter reminded him they had an audience. One that stifled his impulse to carry Maria to the bed and finish what they’d started in the doorway.

  As alw
ays, his nearness had a startling effect on Maria’s senses. She leaned against the doorjamb, her heart throbbing to a rhythm she was only beginning to learn. Fist clenched against her breasts as if that would soothe it, she called, “Shoo!” to the children hogging the top of the stairs, then turned back to Franc.

  Without conscious thought, she brought her free hand up to lie on his chest, his large body seeming to surround hers again. Her fingers rasped against the knit of his shirt. Every breath he took, stilled and held, as she felt his heat seep into her palm, through his black polo shirt.

  One big palm pressed her closer, the other cupped her cheek as her gaze mingled with his. It felt so right, the closeness, the touching, breathing the same air. The connection she felt with Franc burned fiercely, making her mouth turn dry. Moistening her lips with her tongue was no help.

  “Don’t worry about me, hon. I won’t do anything to spoil your Christmas.” She felt rather than heard his reassurances. His voice scraped across her nerve endings like dry pumice stone. “I don’t enjoy seeing people hurt.”

  “This will be our last Christmas in this house. We were all brought up here. There’s a tree in the garden where we all carved our initials one summer.”

  He pulled her back into the doorway. “You’ll have to show me sometime.”

  He gently caressed her cheek with his thumb. She wanted to close her eyes and wallow in the feelings his touch wrought in her body. But the newness of them, the brand-new sensation of letting another human being, and male at that, closer than ever before, made her want to see his reactions, as well.

  Her eyebrows flicked up at the outside edge, dark and softly gleaming, like a tui’s wings as it took flight. And the way she trembled, Franc wondered if the same thing, flight, was on her mind.

  “I wish there was some way I could imagine what it was like, all this closeness, but my family—we couldn’t wait to leave home.” He hadn’t said it deliberately to play on her emotions. Hadn’t touched her to set her lips quivering. The lipstick hadn’t been invented that could imitate the soft rose pink of Maria’s mouth. And nothing under the sun could stop him from taking her face in both hands and running his thumb over the silklike surface, reviving the memory of its texture under his mouth.

  That first kiss? Had it only been last night?

  “You must have missed a lot, growing up. I wish you’d known us then. We’d have dragged you into the fold.”

  He thought about all the warmth he’d noticed downstairs and shook his head, knowing it would never have happened. Was never going to happen.

  “You’re a much nicer person than I am, hon,” he murmured against the swell of her mouth. Like the champagne they’d just drunk, her taste flowered on his lips, tingled on his tongue as she opened to its pressure, and lingered on his palate. There was no doubt about it. Maria was a gold-medal winner and far too good for a man like himself.

  Franc’s mood darkened on a twist of pain. For himself, for Maria. Especially Maria. She deserved better than him, but now he’d had a taste of her, he’d never let her go—not before he’d drunk his fill.

  He sealed his compliment with another kiss. Her head bumped against his shoulder as he lifted his mouth from hers. His breathing grated past his larynx as he sought to control the hard ache in his groin. He’d been in this condition almost permanently since he’d met her. One touch and his hormones roared in agony, without a sign of relief in sight.

  “We can’t keep letting our emotions take control.”

  Typical Maria, always making him smile. “Hon, if I didn’t have mine under control, you’d be on that bed right now. The only thing stopping me is knowing it’s your parents’ house and any moment some kid is going to come flying through the door.”

  “Well, it’s a good thing one of us has control, because I’m feeling the strain. I confess I’m very attracted to you, Franc.”

  There—she’d said it.

  “And I’m not exactly the kind of guy your mother wants you to need. Not the type who expects a relationship to end up with a husband, a home and a family. That’s not my lifestyle. But that doesn’t matter now. We should be thinking of a way for me to leave before I do something you’re gonna regret.”

  “I’ve been thinking, am thinking. One thing I do know, Mamma won’t want you to go off on your own. Not right on Christmas.”

  As she paused for thought, he walked away from her toward the window. Good. She needed the break as much as he did, needed her hoto stop jumping, and they’d never do that while he stood close to her. He wanted a solution.

  All she had to do was come up with one that sounded mature, sensible—and worked out exactly the way she wanted. Because she’d discovered she didn’t want him to leave.

  “Look at us—”

  He came back to her. “I’m looking. I’m looking,” he said, but his eyes said much more. “I don’t know if we’re seeing the same thing.”

  “We’re two mature adults. It’s not as if we’re in the same room. Lock your door.” She bunched her fists at her waist and cocked her head to look up at him. She looked a long, long way up. His height had never been more obvious as when he stood alongside her father and brothers.

  His grin curved higher one side than the other and reminded her again of one of her favorite movie stars. “You think that all the problems are on my side.”

  “No, you’ve got that wrong.”

  “Like I didn’t know the feeling was mutual?”

  He slid his hands inside her arms and pulled her close as if he didn’t want her to run away, so there was nothing she could do but slip her arms around his neck. At the moment, running away didn’t figure high on her things-to-do-next list. It was running to him that made the situation hazardous. Yet, the more she thought of it, the better it sounded. She wanted to know him better. A good idea since she’d decided this was the man she would give her virginity to.

  “Look, hon, all I’ve ever wanted in my life is to pit myself against all its caprices and win. I have a chance to do that, to become a partner in Stanhope Electronics if my work pans out. And I won’t let anything or anyone swerve me off that path.”

  He tilted her chin toward him as if she would read in his eyes that he meant what he said. “But I have been forced to take a break. I have roughly twelve days left. If you like, we could spend them together, but that’s all I’m offering, so don’t think of holding out for more.”

  Franc was ideal. A fling was all he was after—not under her mother’s roof, of course, but that was only for a couple of days—she knew she could never have forever…but at her age it was about time she had today.

  Her lips quirked, and her eyes flirted, trying to dissolve his frown. “How does this sound? I promise not to take advantage of you, Girl Scout’s honor.”

  “Hell, you’ve already discovered how to get around me. All right, if you think that will work. Just one more thing, were you really a Girl Scout?”

  Supper, the crowded table, the crisscross of conversations that the family easily kept pace with, a blend of herbs and spices tantalizing her nose as the food passed from hand to hand—all of it meant Christmas to Maria.

  The children had gone off to bed without protest, and now her parents were reminiscing, except this year the stories seemed more poignant. Franc appeared to be coping. It wasn’t that the members of her family were impolite, but as she’d explained, they were all naturally gregarious and had so much to say since her parents’ bombshell.

  No doubt it felt like an alien world to him.

  Maria was conscious of him sitting next to her, the warmth of his leg close to hers and the touch of his hand as he’d passed one of the many dishes.

  The awareness between them had intensified into a hungry ache in the pit of her stomach that food couldn’t assuage.

  They’d built a wall between them on a promise, but the foundation supporting the wall was pretty shaky. Her nerves prickled as she tuned in to him. Of all of them at the table he was the quietest, lau
ghing when necessary and answering questions, but not truly giving of himself.

  “Have some biscotti with your coffee, Maria.” Her mother pushed the plate in her direction.

  “Honestly, Mamma, I couldn’t eat another bite. Maybe Franc…” She flashed a quick glance at him. His crooked grin put her off her stride and she almost forgot what she’d been saying. He was so darn handsome she’d rather eat him than a piece of cake.

  Darn and double darn. How would she sleep tonight knowing she could leave her room and be with him in a heartbeat? “Would you like some, Franc?” she asked, shifting the focus on to him.

  “No more for me.”

  She slid the plate across to her mother. “Looks like you’ll have to sell them to someone else. No takers over here.” Her good humor died when she caught a snatch of Michel’s conversation.

  “We’ll need to get a surveyor in. I know someone…I’ll give him a call.”

  She couldn’t control the urge to rail at him. It burst out of nowhere. The words tumbled out as she leaned across the table toward her brother. “You talk so easily of dividing up the property, as if it was only a piece of land and not our home.”

  Her brother’s eyebrows rose as he gawped at her. “What’s with you? You don’t even live here anymore.”

  “Yes I do, but my work is in Auckland. I could be here—”

  “Enough!” Her mother had the last word. “Take no notice, Franc. Siblings, they argue about the littlest things and then bang, it is over. Why don’t you take Franc for a look at the vines tomorrow,” she said, her eye on Maria, and changed the subject neatly.

  Michel had to have the last word. “You always stick up for her, Mamma. She’s not a baby now.”

  For the first time, Franc saw a flash of real annoyance in Rosa’s eyes. “I think you’ve forgotten something, Michel. Wait till you and Sarah have a daughter.”