‘She’s hilarious. When Dante told her she was going to be a grandmother the first thing she said was that she didn’t want to be known as Nonna.’
‘What will she be called?’ Another two clasps were hooked in quick succession.
Aislin cackled wickedly. ‘Nonna!’
‘Is she here yet?’ ‘Here’ being the magnificent luxury hotel nestled on a cliff overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea that Dante had hired the entirety of for the weekend.
‘She’s going straight to the cathedral with Giuseppe.’ Giuseppe was Dante’s latest stepfather, Immacolata’s sixth husband. ‘Now stop whittling.’
Before Orla could make a cutting retort, there was a knock on the door. A moment later a member of the hotel’s staff walked into the suite carrying a huge bouquet of flowers in a vase.
‘Compliments of the owner,’ he said in careful English.
‘How lovely.’ Aislin clapped her hands in delight. ‘Please, put them on the windowsill and, please, thank Mr Valente for me.’
Valente?
For no reason she could imagine, the hairs on the nape of Orla’s neck lifted and her gaze flew to the door that concealed her napping child.
When they were alone again, Aislin met Orla’s eyes again in the reflection of the mirror. ‘Have you met the owner of the hotel yet?’
Now the hairs on her arms lifted too.
‘Should I have?’ she asked nonchalantly, even as she ground her bare feet into the soft, thick carpet and ice raced up her spine.
Orla had arrived the day before but Finn had been exhausted from the journey, so they’d dined in the suite together rather than join the other early arrivals for the evening meal. By the time Aislin had joined them, both she and Finn had been fast asleep. Her sister had crawled into the bed with her, just as she’d done throughout their childhood. It had been a bittersweet moment for Orla, waking to find her sister asleep beside her. Her baby sister would never share her bed again.
Aislin shrugged but there was a shrewdness in the reflecting stare that sent the ice already in Orla’s spine spreading through her limbs. ‘Tonino’s one of Dante’s ushers—they’re old friends. Their fathers were friends too.’
Orla’s fingers tightened reflexively. Her chest tightened. The room began to swim around her...
‘Ouch!’
Aislin’s squeal pulled her sharply back into focus and Orla suddenly became aware that her nails were digging into her sister’s back. She whipped her hand away...and pulled the clasp she’d had hold of away with it.
* * *
Tonino Valente stood by the huge entrance doors and waited for the last guests to file into the baroque cathedral.
The groom, Dante, was at the altar mopping his brow with a handkerchief.
He could laugh to see his old friend acting like this, but propriety forced him to bite his cheeks and smother it.
Who would have thought Dante Moncada, the biggest player of them all, would be standing at the altar sweating with nerves as he awaited his bride? Out of their gang, which decades before had ridden round Palermo on scooters desperately trying to look cool and impress the girls, Dante had always been the one who’d vowed never to settle down. Tonino had been the only one to assume he would one day marry and yet here he was, the last bachelor of their gang left on the shelf.
He’d almost married once. He’d even gone as far as to book this same cathedral before fate had stepped in in the form of an Irish temptress and turned his life inside out with one locking of eyes.
Strangely, Dante was himself marrying an Irishwoman. Tonino had only met her the once, fleetingly, a stunning redhead who had transformed his old friend into a smitten lovesick fool.
What was it with Irishwomen, he ruminated, that they could turn a Sicilian man’s head so completely?
His own Irishwoman... Well, that had been an extremely short romance. But intense. Incredibly intense. And then she’d left without saying goodbye. Not a word. Just packed her bags and left. When he’d called, he’d found himself unable to get through—she’d blocked his number.
Her cruelty in the manner she’d ended things had been breathtaking.
He could hardly believe that four years on he still thought about her.
A commotion outside the entrance had him striding outside to help a young couple struggling to manoeuvre a wheelchair-cum-pushchair that had a small child in it up the cathedral steps.
‘You’re with the bride?’ he asked in Sicilian then repeated in English once they were inside and out of the late-afternoon heat. The ushers had all been warned the bride’s nephew had mobility issues. A special place at the front of the cathedral had been set aside for him so he could have an unrestricted view of the ceremony. An usher would be required to wait with the child until the bridal party arrived and his mother, the chief bridesmaid, could take over. Tonino guessed the job had become his.
‘We are,’ the young woman confirmed proudly, her Irish accent strong. ‘I’m Aislin’s cousin Carmel, and this is my husband Danny. This young man here is Finn.’
‘He’s Aislin’s nephew?’ he clarified, just in case there was another wheelchair-bound small boy coming.
‘Yes. Aislin and the others left the hotel right behind us so will be here any minute.’
Figuring he should introduce himself so as not to scare the child, he got down on his haunches and looked at him.
Dressed in a miniature suit that matched the groom’s, the boy couldn’t be much older than a toddler. He had a shock of thick black hair and equally dark eyes...
There was something about his eyes that made the words Tonino was about to say stick in his throat.
After a drawn-out beat, he conjured a smile. ‘Hello, Finn. I’m Tonino. I’m going to take you to the front of the cathedral to wait for your mummy.’
He was rewarded with a wide smile that displayed a row of tiny white teeth.
Straightening, Tonino took the handles of what was clearly a specially made wheelchair and pushed the child down the wide aisle to his designated space. Finn immediately spotted Dante at the altar and flung his arms out as if reaching for him.
Dante grinned and hurried over to crouch on his haunches before him just as Tonino had done. Finn’s skinny arms wrapped around his uncle’s neck. ‘Carry,’ Finn demanded in a strong Irish accent.
‘Soon,’ Dante promised. ‘I need to marry Aunty Aislin first.’
‘Then carry?’
‘You bet. Now be a good boy and wait for your mummy. Tonino will look after you until she gets here.’ Dante kissed his nephew’s cheek and ruffled his hair then made his way back to his place at the altar.
Tonino was used to small children. His brother had two, his sister had just given birth to her third. Mobility issues aside, there was nothing about this child that should capture his attention and yet... There was something about him...something familiar. Something that made his skin prickle and his heart pound.
‘How old are you, Finn?’ he asked through a throat that had run dry.
The little brow creased before he held three fingers up.
‘You’re three?’ he clarified sceptically. The boy was tiny.
A nod.
‘You’re almost a man.’
The tiny white teeth flashed at him again.
An audible change amongst the congregation caught their attention. The little boy craned to look around him. ‘Mummy!’
The bridal party had arrived.
The beautiful bride made her way down the aisle arm in arm with her proud father, identical beams on their faces. Behind them, holding the long train of the bride’s dress, were two adorable little girls walking either side of a slender brunette in a long, ancient-Greek-style dusky rose bridesmaid dress. Her face was turned to the child on her left and so hidden from Tonino’s sight.
‘Mummy!’ Finn called
out again, this time loud enough for the whole congregation to hear.
The pounding in Tonino’s chest ramped up in speed.
And then he caught full view of the brunette’s face and his heart stopped beating altogether.
* * *
Orla held on to the train of Aislin’s dress as if it were life support. She could do nothing to stop her legs trembling.
Tonino Valente. The name she’d spent three years desperately trying to remember. Aislin had uttered his name and in that instant a light had switched on in Orla’s brain. If she hadn’t ripped the tiny clasp from Aislin’s dress she might very well have fainted, but the panic over ruining the hundred-thousand-euro dress had been equal to the shock of recognition at Tonino’s name.
The flurry of activity that had followed, the hunt for the designer, who’d eventually been found in the hotel bar and who’d given Orla more evil eyes during the fixing of the clasp than she’d previously received in her lifetime, the arrival of Sabine’s daughters—Orla’s fellow bridesmaids—and the arrival of Aislin’s father... Suddenly the suite had been crammed with people and she’d been forced to get a grip of herself.
This was the biggest day of her sister’s life. Aislin had put her life on hold for three years for Orla and Finn. Orla would never have been able to bear the scars that marked her body inside and out without her sister’s steadfast support. More than support. Aislin had raised Finn for the first eighteen months of his life, been the first to realise he wasn’t developing as he should, the one there every single day of Orla’s rehabilitation.
And now it was Orla’s turn to support her sister; her protector, her best friend, her guardian angel made flesh. This was Aislin’s day.
Sick dread continued its steady drum as they moved closer to the altar and she had to use all her concentration to keep the train of Aislin’s dress stretched out and keep control of the little bridesmaids by her side, both of whom were merrily waving at the packed congregation as if they were royalty. She hardly dared look away from them in case she found the dark brown stare that had haunted her dreams.
Could it really be him?
It had been almost four years. All they’d shared was one night. Or was it two? Or three? Or more? She wished she could remember but her memory had as many holes in it as a lump of Swiss cheese. Many of the holes had closed with time and the lost memories had returned but everything to do with Tonino and her time in Sicily remained blurry snapshots. She knew they’d met at the hotel she’d checked into during her fruitless attempt to meet her father, but that had been her only concrete remembrance...apart from his face. She remembered that handsome face vividly. Every time she’d pictured it, she’d had to suck in a breath of air to counteract the lance of pain that had accompanied it and blink away tears she’d had no clue from whence they had come.
‘Mummy!’
Her son’s voice broke through the fog of fear in her head.
Stretching her cheeks into a smile, she finally had a clear view past her sister to the spot at the left of the altar where she’d been promised she and Finn would sit.
The smile froze, half formed.
A tall, dark, utterly gorgeous man sat beside Finn. His black stare was fixed directly on her.
Her stomach plummeted. Thick heat pulsed and swirled through her head, dizzying her.
She had no recollection of Aislin’s father handing the bride to the groom, no recollection of the two small bridesmaids leaving her side, no recollection of her feet taking her to her son. All she remembered from taking those steps was the blazing heat that suffused her entire body and the feeling that she could fall into a dead faint from the shock.
The man watching over her son until she could take her place beside him was Tonino. Finn’s father.
CHAPTER TWO
THE WEDDING CEREMONY passed Tonino by. He rose and sat when directed, joined in with the hymns, recited the prayers at the appropriate times but it was all noise. He could not switch his attention away from Orla. Or her child.
The child who looked the image of his own childhood photographs.
His eyes flew from mother to child, child to mother, his gaze unable to settle any more than his ragged heartbeats could.
The pounding in his head was too strong for coherent thoughts. He couldn’t breathe properly. He’d only been capable of snatching drags of air into his lungs since he’d seen Orla’s face.
He’d risen from the seat he’d been saving for her and they’d stepped around each other, eyes locked, like two moons orbiting an invisible sun. For the first time in his thirty-four years he’d been struck speechless.
Her green eyes had been wide. Frightened. Her face had been white.
That was the last time their gazes connected.
Not once throughout the ceremony did Orla look at him. While his stare remained resolutely upon her and her child, her attention, when not taken by her son, stayed on the bride and groom.
Gradually, anger and incredulity rose inside him and pushed out the shock. Coherent thinking returned. His wits sharpened.
He began to see more clearly too. And what he saw proved that, despite having had a child, Orla hadn’t changed at all.
She was still beautiful. Slender and elegant. The long, thick dark hair he’d last seen spread over his pillow when he’d kissed her goodbye was coiled into a chic knot on the nape of her neck. The elfin features he’d once thought belonged on the pages of a fairy-tale book had been expertly made-up, smoky eye shadow emphasising the stunning large green eyes he’d once gazed into while buried deep inside her. The long-sleeved dress she wore was far less revealing than usual bridesmaid dresses, the dusky pink silk wrapping around her body to kiss her gentle curves but displaying minimal flesh.
Her beauty had captivated him from the first look.
That first look had been pure chance. A member of his public relations team had found a litany of complaints about one of his Palermo hotels online. Tonino had rearranged his itinerary and headed straight there. The Palermo hotel in question had been part of his uncle’s struggling chain until Tonino had stepped in to save it and save his uncle’s reputation from the shame of bankruptcy. Where Tonino specialised in converting old castles, monasteries, chateaux and the like into luxury spa and golf resorts for the wealthy, his uncle’s hotel chain had been aimed firmly at holidaymakers on a budget.
Tonino had been raised in a wealthy family but his core group of childhood friends had come from diverse economic backgrounds. Gio, the friend Dante had chosen as his best man, came from an exceptionally poor background. In their school days, holidays for Gio’s family had been the result of months of overtime, scrimping and saving. The cost of their holiday had been pocket change compared to the sums spent by visitors to Tonino’s own hotels but in comparison had cost them far more and had meant a hell of a lot more as a result. He always thought of Gio when inspecting his lower-ranked hotels. Why should guests be forced to accept shoddy service, cold food and an unclean swimming pool just because they were poor? It was this exact same argument he’d had with his hotel manager right before he’d fired him. He’d left the meeting room, furious at the fired manager and furious with himself for allowing the situation to get this far. A solitary woman had been waiting at the unattended reception desk.
That woman had been Orla.
His reaction to her had been like a knockout punch to his guts. He’d never had such an immediate reaction to a woman before and it had been the final clarion call needed to know he couldn’t marry Sophia. That reaction had been the unwitting trigger for the rift that still existed between Tonino and his parents. That knockout initial reaction had changed the course of his life.
* * *
Orla was thankful for the bossy photographer. He clearly saw himself as an artiste and spent ages framing each shot in the cathedral’s picturesque grounds. This allowed her to hide in plain sight with he
r family, safe amid their huge numbers. That she had barely spoken to any of them in the last three years was neither here nor there. She felt no animosity towards them. They simply picked up where they’d left off, catching up on their lives in snatches of conversation.
Snatches of conversation were all she could manage. Everything inside her had become so tight it was a struggle to get any words out.
One of the small bridesmaids had taken a shine to Finn and stuck to his side, gabbling away to him in her own language. Finn didn’t have much in the way of a vocabulary but the rapture on his face only proved that language was inconsequential.
Too scared to look at Tonino, Orla kept her gaze far from him but still felt the heat of his stare upon her. It had been hard enough feeling it every second of the wedding ceremony but outside, his solid form a good head taller than most of the other guests, she felt his attention like a malevolent spectre haunting her. She sensed his loathing, which only added to the cold needles digging into her skin.
What had she done to provoke such animosity?
Deep in her bones she knew the moment opportunity presented itself, he would pounce. She had to be ready for it. She had to remember.
Frustration at her Swiss cheese memory made her want to scream.
She’d been waiting for her baby to be born before telling the father. That was something she knew only because Aislin had told her so. Aislin had been unable to tell her the father’s name or Orla’s reasons for waiting until after the birth to tell him because Orla had never disclosed it to her.
Why was that? Orla never kept secrets from her sister so why would she have kept something of such importance to herself?
There were so many things she’d spent three years trying to understand about her own thoughts and actions during the pregnancy, desperately trying to remember, even undergoing hypnosis to unlock the crucial hidden memories.
The most crucial memory of all, the identity of Finn’s father, had now been unlocked but there was still a heap of others to bring to light.
Her Sicilian Baby Revelation Page 2
