Matteo came closer and laid a gentle hand on the top of her shoulder and turned her to face him. His expression was etched in deep concern. ‘Cancer?’ His tone was hoarse with shock.
‘Lymphoma. Hodgkin’s. I was in and out of hospital for two years.’ Seriously, she had to learn to keep her mouth shut around him. Next, she’d be telling him all the gory details—how wretchedly ill she’d been with the chemo...how her sense of dignity had completely disappeared the moment she had gone to hospital and had never quite recovered. How guilty she felt about the break-up of her family and her sister’s slide into anorexia. How everything had been blown up by the bomb of her cancer.
His hand gently squeezed her shoulder. ‘You poor darling, but you’re better now, si?’
Emmie stretched her lips into a smile. ‘But of course. The chemo worked brilliantly... Well, eventually, that is.’ A little too brilliantly but, as low as her guard currently was, there was no way she was going to tell him that little nasty detail.
Matteo’s hand fell away from her shoulder as if he’d only just realised it was still lying there. ‘Cancer is hard enough to face as an adult but for a child...’ He shook his head as if in disbelief that life could be so cruel. ‘It’s unthinkable.’
‘I was seventeen, almost an adult.’ Emmie began walking along the garden path again, keen to avoid his gaze. ‘I won’t say it wasn’t hard. It was, but it’s in the past, and I rarely think about it now.’
And there was another big fat lie. She always thought about it. Every headache or painful twinge of a muscle sent her into a mad panic. Was the lymphoma back? Was she going to die of some other sort of cancer? Would she have to go through months and months of torturous treatment all over again? Would her family and friends fall apart around her all over again? The worries were like little gremlins that followed her wherever she went, reminding her she was on borrowed time and that, one day, her time might be up sooner rather than later.
* * *
They walked under an archway of the pendulous blooms of fragrant wisteria and Matteo pushed one section aside to let Emmie through. He was still reeling from her revelation about her illness. Cancer was such a frightening diagnosis for anyone to face, much less a teenager. He could only imagine how tough it must have been for her and her family. Facing one’s mortality at such a tender age would surely leave an indelible mark on one’s character? The more time he spent with Emmie, the more he was intrigued by her character.
‘My father refused chemo,’ Matteo said after a moment. ‘Although, to be fair, the survival rate for lung cancer is abysmally low compared to other cancers, even with chemo or surgery. It’s good that you came through with the all-clear. Your parents must have been so relieved.’
‘They were but not enough to call off the divorce,’ Emmie said with a sigh. ‘I sometimes wonder if I hadn’t got sick if they’d still be together.’
‘Sometimes challenges thrown at a couple shine a light on the cracks that were already there,’ Matteo said. ‘You shouldn’t blame yourself. It wasn’t your fault you got cancer. That was sheer bad luck.’
Emmie stopped by the next fragrant garden bed, snapped off a blue love-in-the-mist bloom and twirled the stem between her index finger and thumb. ‘I used to grow these in the garden I was telling you about.’ She walked a couple more paces and continued, ‘We had to sell and move closer to London when I got sick. I cried buckets when we left—not where my parents could see me, of course. But when I was alone.’ Her teeth sank into her lower lip and he wondered if she regretted being so open and honest with him.
Matteo was starting to realise there was a lot more to Emmie Woodcroft than he’d first thought. No wonder he found her so intriguing—there were depths and layers to her personality honed out of suffering at such a young age. She had stared down death as a teenager and won, but no doubt there had been a lot of suffering in the process.
And didn’t he know a little about suffering from a young age? Not anything as terrifying as cancer, of course, but the walk-out of his mother had been a life-defining moment. A moment he remembered so clearly, too clearly. Painfully clearly. If he allowed himself to dwell on it he could still picture her car disappearing into the distance...could still feel the empty ache of despair in his chest...the painful jab of rejection that had never quite gone away but still lay twisted and ugly, deep inside him like a wound, gnarled and ropey with scar tissue.
‘Where was your country home?’ Matteo asked.
‘In Devon. We had a bit of acreage there, not a lot, but it was wonderful not being too close to neighbours.’ She gave him a sideways glance and added, ‘I’m sorry if I’m boring you.’ She gave a self-deprecating laugh, her cheeks going a delicate shade of pink. ‘I’m supposed to be getting to know you, not you me. It must be the heady scent of the flowers and the fresh air bewitching me. Tell me to shut up.’
Matteo smiled. ‘I like hearing about you.’
She stopped walking to look up at him. ‘But I’ve told you heaps more about myself than you’ve told me. Tell me something about yourself that no one else knows.’
There were many things Matteo had not told anyone about himself, and he was doing everything in his power to make it stay that way. Not that Emmie Woodcroft made it easy, though. She had a beguiling nature that had a potent effect on his resolve. But he considered his back story irrelevant to the task at hand. He needed her to find him a suitable wife and the sooner she got on with it, the better. Playing twenty questions was not his thing at all.
He glanced at his watch in a pointed manner. ‘We’ll have to save this conversation for another time. Can you find your way back to the villa from here? I have to see one of my staff about something before dinner.’
‘Sure, but I’m going to ask you again over dinner, so don’t think you’re getting off so easily.’
Matteo forced a smile. ‘You’re a determined little thing, aren’t you?’
Her eyes twinkled like the sunlight dancing on the water-lily pond behind her. ‘It’s how I succeed at my job. And you do want me to succeed, don’t you?’
‘But of course.’ Matteo was paying her a small fortune to do as he requested. It was a pity her methods included digging for emotions he had long ago buried.
But he was going to damn well keep them that way.
* * *
Emmie was enjoying the early-evening summer sunshine too much to go back to the villa straight away. The air was fragrant with flowers and the scent of freshly mown grass and the light breeze had taken the harsh sting out of the sun’s heat. She wandered along the crushed limestone path, past the water feature, stopping every now and again to smell yet another heady bloom of the exquisite roses. Blooms as big as saucers, petals as soft as velvet, the mix of fragrances so intense it was intoxicating to her senses.
Or maybe that had more to do with being with Matteo Vitale...
Emmie knew she had to stop thinking about him in that way—the way that would only lead to disappointment, if not heartbreak. She might sense his attraction to her, and she was in no doubt of her attraction to him, but it couldn’t go anywhere. How could it? She couldn’t provide him with the thing he most needed—an heir. But she could hopefully provide him with a wife from her list of clients, for that was what he was paying her to do.
The kicker was, what woman in her right mind would marry him when he had no intention of falling in love with her? Love was what her clients were seeking, not a marriage of convenience, even if it was to one of the most handsome and wealthiest men Emmie had ever encountered. Of course, it was true that occasionally marriages of conveniences worked out well for some couples, mutual love developing over time, and the relationship strengthening and growing into one of joy and long-term happiness.
Some distance from the path, Emmie noticed a small rivulet that fed into the river running through the estate. A family of wood ducks waddled near the ban
ks and, dying for a better glimpse of the cute little fluffy ducklings, Emmie walked towards it through a wilder section of the garden.
The family of ducks had by now slipped into the water and was swimming away, but then Emmie noticed a chest-high hedge in the distance close to a thickly wooded area. The hedge enclosed a squared-off area that appeared to be some sort of private garden with a large shady tree in the centre. She had to step across the rivulet to get to it, which was not all that easy to do. There was no bridge, and the stones that were there were slippery with moss, but somehow, she managed it without falling in. When she got closer, she found a rustic wrought-iron gate set in the hedge. She turned the handle and pushed the gate open and stepped into the cool shady enclosure.
And then she saw the white head stones over two graves.
The leaves rustled above her head like the breath of a ghost and a shiver tiptoed over Emmie’s scalp, and then all the way down her spine. There was an adult grave and a smaller one...so small it could only be that of a child. Her heart gave a painful spasm... A very small child—a baby. A tiny baby. There were fresh flowers in the brass vases and a teddy bear encased in a glass box on the baby’s grave.
Emmie moved closer to the head stones and knelt on the soft grass to read the inscriptions.
Abriana Maria Vitale,
wife of Matteo Andrea Vitale,
loving mother of Gabriel Giorgio Vitale
The rest of the words were in Italian, but Emmie could see from the dates that Abriana had died eight years ago at the age of twenty-five. And the baby...she swallowed a thick lump in her throat...the baby had died on the day it was born, presumably at the same time as his mother.
Emmie sat back on her heels in shock, her heart contracting as though it was in a vice. Her fingers and toes went numb as if the blood had left her extremities to pump to her vital organs. Matteo had been married? He’d tragically lost his wife and baby and yet hadn’t told her? Why not? It was the most important information about him and yet he had kept it from her.
A cold shiver coursed down her spine and her stomach churned with anguish. Such a terrible, heart-wrenching tragedy to go through and yet it explained so much about his personality. The harsh landscape of his face, his perpetual frown, the lines of pain etched into his skin, the shadows in his eyes, his set mouth that so rarely smiled, as if he had forgotten how to... No wonder he was furious about his father’s will—Matteo was still grieving the loss of his young wife and child. No wonder he baulked at the idea of marrying. He wasn’t ready to move on with his life but the will left him no choice.
But why were his wife and child buried here and not at the local cemetery Emmie had driven past on her way to the estate? There were no other graves, so this was not a family plot with the rest of Matteo’s ancestors. His father had died recently and there was no sign of his grave here. Just these two lonely graves hidden in a secluded green area of the estate.
There was the snap of a twig behind Emmie and she jumped in alarm and scrambled to her feet to see Matteo only a few feet away, his expression hard to read, given the angle of light, for his face was entirely in shadow.
‘So, you’ve found them.’ His tone gave her no clue as to how he felt about her stumbling across his wife and child’s graves. It was flat, toneless, empty.
Emmie brushed her breeze-teased hair back off her face. ‘Matteo... I don’t understand. Why didn’t you tell me you were married and had a child?’
He moved closer to the graves and stood looking down at them with his hands shoved into the pockets of his chinos. ‘I don’t like talking about that period of my life.’
‘I can only imagine how terribly painful it must be, but surely you see—’
‘You can’t possibly understand,’ he said, turning to look at her with a savage frown. ‘So don’t insult me by pretending you do.’
‘I understand grief is a very personal thing,’ Emmie said. ‘That it’s painful, and a process that can takes years if not a lifetime to work through. Losing someone you love is one of the most devastating things that can—’
‘But that’s the point.’ Matteo’s voice hardened. ‘I didn’t love Abriana, not the way she deserved to be loved. Not the way she wanted to be loved.’
Emmie looked at him in shock, her mind whirling. Then why had he married her? She glanced back at the tiny grave next to his wife’s and bit her lip, joining the dots herself. ‘It was because of the baby? Your marriage, I mean? Because of Gabriel?’
He flinched as if the very sound of that tiny baby’s name was an arrow to his heart. ‘We had dated on and off for a month or two. She told me she was on the pill and, even though we always used condoms, she somehow got pregnant.’ He scraped a hand through his hair. ‘I understood and respected her wish to keep the baby. But I wanted my child to grow up with my name, so I offered to marry her.’
‘But neither of you were happy.’ Emmie didn’t state it as a question for she could see there was no point. The answer was in the ravaged lines of Matteo’s face, a road map of pain and grief and guilt.
‘No, not for one moment.’ He turned back to look at the graves of his wife and child, his shoulders hunched forward, tension visible in the muscles of his back and shoulders.
Emmie came up beside him and placed a gentle hand on the small of his back. He gave a light shudder, like a stallion shivering a fly off its hide. ‘I’m so very sorry...’ she whispered.
There was a long silence broken only by the tinkling of water nearby and the gentle rustling of the leaves above of the large tree casting its sheltering shade.
Matteo took a ragged breath and stepped back from the graves. ‘Abriana was a nice person. A decent person. She would have been a wonderful mother, but even that was taken away from her. She never even got to hold our child in her arms.’
‘What happened?’
‘A car crash. She was driving back from a pre-natal appointment and a car crossed into her path on a narrow bend. She made it to hospital but died a short time later. They delivered Gabriel but he...’ He swallowed and continued in a hollow voice, ‘He only lived for two hours. I didn’t get back from London until later that evening.’
Emmie blinked back the sting of tears and touched him on the arm. ‘Oh, Matteo, how tragic. How terribly sad and tragic.’
Matteo covered her hand with his and gave it a squeeze, his expression still grim. ‘I swore I would never marry again. I don’t consider myself cut out for marriage and all it entails. If I had been a better husband, then maybe Abriana would still be here, and Gabriel too.’ He removed his hand from hers and thrust it back in his trouser pocket. ‘But of course, my father had other ideas, and decided to force my hand.’
Emmie frowned. ‘So, that’s why he wrote the codicil on his will? To force you to marry again and produce an heir?’
‘Thoughtful of him, si?’ His sarcasm wasn’t wasted on her. She knew all about manipulative fathers. Her father had played a few manipulative games in his time and caused no end of stress in order to get his own way. But what if Matteo’s father had acted out of concern for Matteo? Wanting him to move on with his life instead of being stuck in a deep well of grief and regret? Perhaps his actions were motivated out of love and concern, not a desire to cause further pain.
‘You know, there could be another way of looking at your father’s motives,’ Emmie said. ‘He might have wanted you to forgive yourself for what happened with Abriana and Gabriel and to move on with your life.’
‘Forgive myself?’ Matteo’s frown was so deep it carved a deep trench between the dark flashing orbs of his eyes. ‘And how am I supposed to do that with them both lying there in the ground?’ He waved his hand at the graves. ‘I blame myself for everything. How can I not?’
Emmie rolled her lips together, her heart aching for the pain she could sense in every fibre of his being. ‘You told me it wasn’t my fault I got can
cer. It’s not your fault your wife and baby died. You weren’t driving the car and, besides, you said the other driver crossed to the wrong side of the road. It was their fault, if anyone’s.’
‘But I should have been driving that day,’ Matteo said through tightly set lips. ‘Abriana wanted me to attend that appointment with her but I chose to go to London instead. I had a court case I was working on for a client, but I could have waited one more day before flying back to London.’ He muttered a curse and added with a bitter edge to his voice, ‘So don’t tell me it’s not my fault.’ He swung away, walked back through the gate in the hedge and disappeared from sight.
Emmie let out a long sigh but didn’t follow him through the gate. She needed time to process what he had told her, to get her head around the tragedy that had shaped him into the man he was today. He was tortured by the grief and guilt of his wife’s and baby’s deaths, which was completely understandable. Some people never got over such a loss and carried it with them for the rest of their lives.
It seemed more and more obvious to her that Matteo Vitale’s father had changed his will to force his son to marry again and produce an heir to continue the family line, knowing that without such an impetus Matteo would be stuck in a prison of self-blame for ever. And, while Matteo was reluctant, he was prepared to fulfil the terms of his father’s will—some would say in rather a ruthless manner—in order to save the estate. The estate where his wife and child were buried in this sad little garden.
No wonder Matteo was so keen to keep the estate in his possession. The stakes were higher than Emmie had realised, and it all made sense now. How he had insisted she act with haste in finding him a suitable partner. She had thought him ruthless and a little unfeeling when he’d come into her office that first day, but now she understood his motivation and couldn’t help feeling sorry for the horrible dilemma he faced. She wished he had told her from the get-go, but a part of her understood why he hadn’t. He was a loner, a deeply private person who would not go public with his pain.
Harlequin Presents--July 2021--Box Set 1 of 2 Page 42
