by Miranda Lee
When she’d woken in the morning he was gone.
Mid-morning that Monday, a huge arrangement of red roses had arrived, with a card attached saying, ‘Next weekend can’t come quickly enough. Jake.’
The flowers were still alive and utterly gorgeous, sitting on the sideboard in place of the still absent photos. She didn’t dare put any of them back up yet. In fact, since last Sunday, she’d locked Alex’s bedroom door, and hidden anything else that might give the game away if Jake ever showed up here again. After his phone call last night, Angelina wouldn’t be at all surprised at his driving up tonight. He’d been so excited after winning that case.
And missing her terribly, he’d said.
Angelina sighed. He wasn’t the only one.
Jake sat down on his favourite seat in Hyde Park, placed the banana smoothie on the grass at his feet, then proceeded to unwrap his king-sized roll. This was the first time he’d had the opportunity to eat lunch in the park this week. Not because of the weather. Sydney had continued to be dry and warm. Circumstance had been the guilty party.
Monday, he’d been too wrecked to eat lunch. He’d had to call on every reserve of strength he had to deliver his closing address in court that morning, the weekend finally catching up with him. After the jury had retired to consider their verdict, he’d gone home and just collapsed into bed. Tuesday, he’d been far too agitated to eat. The jury had still been out. Wednesday, he’d been much too elated. At eleven that morning, the jury had found for the plaintiff to the tune of fourteen million dollars.
Now it was Thursday and the bedlam of the last couple of days was hopefully behind him. If another television station showed at his office, wanting another damned interview, he was going to go bush, preferably to the Hunter Valley.
Jake loved being a litigator. Loved having victories over the bad guys. Attention from the media, however, was not one of his loves. He hated having cameras and microphones shoved in his face. Of course, the law firm he worked for didn’t mind one bit. But that kind of publicity was not Jake’s bag, even if it did result in his being offered a partnership.
Strangely, Jake wasn’t sure if he wanted to become a partner in Keats, Marsden and Johnson. Neither did he fancy being pushed into taking on the inevitable rush of perhaps not-so-worthy clients who thought they could make a mint out of suing their bosses over supposedly adverse working conditions. He’d only won this case because his client had a genuine complaint. Copycat cases rarely had the same integrity, or sympathy.
Jake munched into his salmon and salad roll—man, it tasted good—and wondered if now was the right time for him to make a move, start up a practice of his own. He’d be free then to take on only the clients he really wanted to represent. He wouldn’t be influenced by money, which a big law firm invariably was. Of course, this would mean forgoing his six-figure salary plus bonuses, not to mention his generous expense account. It would also mean a lot of work. Starting up your own business involved a lot of red tape.
On the plus side, he would be his own boss. And the temporary loss of salary wouldn’t be any great hardship. He still had a small fortune in cash left over from Edward’s legacy.
Maybe he’d run the idea by Angelina tonight. She was a businesswoman. She would know what was involved. See what she thought.
Aah, Angelina…
Already, he was looking forward to talking to her tonight. Their nightly chat was the highlight of his day, something to look forward to after work. He would ring her a lot more than that, but Angelina had forbidden him to call during the day, claiming she’d never get anything done if he did that.
Possibly true. Once they were on the phone together, they sometimes talked for hours.
Of course, he had broken the rules and called her as soon as the verdict came in on the Wednesday. But that was a special occasion and he hadn’t kept her on the line for long.
The salad and salmon roll duly disposed of, Jake picked up his banana smoothie and started to sip.
How soon, he wondered, could he tell her he loved her and wanted to marry her?
Not too soon, Jake suspected.
A couple of times last weekend, she’d fallen silent on him. Suspiciously silent. You could almost hear the wheels turning away in her brain. Yet she’d been unforthcoming when he’d asked her what was wrong.
In a way, she was secretive. She rarely opened up to him about herself in any depth. And she never talked about her feelings for him.
In the past, he hadn’t been able to stop women telling him their feelings, especially how much they loved him. Angelina never went near the subject of love. She said flattering things about his lovemaking but that wasn’t the same.
Already addicted to having sex with him, she’d said last Sunday.
Jake frowned. He didn’t like the idea that she might be only coming back to see him this weekend for more of the same. There was no doubting she liked sex. After his initially thinking she was pretty inexperienced in bed, she’d turned into a veritable tiger.
Once his mind took that tack, the worry started up that she hadn’t been totally truthful over what she was up to this coming Saturday. To put aside a whole day to tell any man she was breaking up with him seemed excessively kind.
Maybe she’s not going to break up with him at all, a dark voice whispered in his head. Maybe she’s going to spend the whole day at Alex’s place, in Alex’s bed. And then come on to his bed for the rest of the weekend.
The idea revolted him. But it was possible, wasn’t it? She had a very high sex drive. But was she capable of that level of deception?
He wouldn’t have thought so. Still, his buying that huge diamond engagement ring yesterday afternoon now struck him as being ridiculously premature. Amazing the things a man in love would do! Fools did rush in, as the saying went.
The buzzing on Jake’s cellphone had him sitting up abruptly, his banana smoothie slurping back and forth in its cardboard carton. Setting the drink down, he fished his phone out of his trouser pocket, clicked it on and swept it up to his ear.
‘Yes?’
‘Sally here, Jake. Sorry to bother you, but if you’ve finished your lunch perhaps you should get back here. You have a visitor.’
‘A visitor. What kind of visitor?’
‘A young man. Name of Alex.’
Alex! Jake didn’t have any colleagues or acquaintances named Alex, so presumably this had to be the Alex.
Jake frowned over Sally calling him young. Of course, Sally thought anyone under forty was young, but it sounded as though Angelina’s Alex was what was commonly called a ‘younger’ man.
Jake tried to ignore the instant stab of jealousy and focus on what the fool was doing, showing up at his office.
All he could think of was that Angelina had changed her mind and broken up with Alex over the phone, plus told him the identity of the guy she’d thrown him over for.
Jake groaned. As much as he was happy to find that his paranoid thoughts about Angelina two-timing him were just that…paranoid, the last thing he wanted was a confrontation with a furious ex boyfriend.
‘I gather you know who I’m talking about,’ Sally said.
‘Possibly. Does my visitor have a second name?’
‘Mastroianni,’ Sally supplied.
‘Mastroianni!’ he repeated, totally taken aback.
And then the penny dropped. Alex was some kind of relative. Angelina had said he was half-Italian. Maybe that was what she’d meant about her relationship with him being complicated. If he was a cousin or something, she would have to explain things more fully. She couldn’t just dump the guy without giving him a reason.
‘I think you should get back here, Jake. This is something you have to attend to personally, by the look of things.’
‘OK,’ Jake said with a sigh. ‘Tell him I’ll be there shortly.’
The offices of Keats, Marsden and Johnson were spacious and classy, occupying half of the tenth floor of the building Jake had pointed out to Angelin
a the previous Sunday. Their main reception area was set directly opposite the lift well, behind a solid glass wall and two equally solid glass doors. Sally reigned over the reception desk and the waiting room, and had done so for many years. Although not unattractive for her age—she had turned fifty last month— Sally was the exception to the rule that highly visible Sydney receptionists should be curvy blondes with seductive smiles.
Jake, for one, enjoyed the wonderfully pragmatic and no-nonsense atmosphere Sally brought to the firm. Actually, Sally was one of the reasons he just might stay. He’d miss her if he left.
‘Well?’ he said as he strode in. ‘Where is he and what am I in for?’
Sally glanced up, her no-nonsense grey eyes sweeping over him from top to toe in a critical survey, as though she were meeting him for the first time. Jake found himself automatically straightening his tie and wondering if his fly was undone.
‘A shock, I would think,’ she said drily. ‘I put him in your office to wait for you.’
Jake ground to a halt beside her desk. ‘What did you do that for? And what kind of a shock? Don’t tell me he’s a big bruiser.’
‘He’s not small,’ she said, her grey eyes now gleaming rather mischievously. ‘But then, neither are you.’
Jake wasn’t sure if he was getting the subtle meaning behind this interchange.
‘Looking for a fight, is he?’
‘I wouldn’t think so. More likely some answers to some questions.’
‘Do you know something here that I don’t know?’
Her finely plucked eyebrows lifted in feigned innocence. ‘Know? No, I don’t know anything. But I am a highly observant person, and a darned good guesser.’
‘Sally, remind me to have you fired when I get to be partner.’
‘Aah, so you’ve changed your mind about going out on your own, have you?’
He just stared at her. The woman had to be a witch in disguise. He had never discussed that idea with anyone in this firm.
‘How did…? No, no, I am not going to ask.’
‘Like I said,’ she threw after him as he strode off down the corridor towards his office, ‘I’m a darned good guesser.’
Jake hesitated at his door, irritating himself when he started checking his clothes again, as if he was going in for a bloody interview. Comforted that he looked his best in one of his newest business suits—the charcoal-grey mohair-blend—Jake still slicked his unslickably short hair back from his face before reaching for the knob.
‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ he ground out as he opened the door and walked in.
The only other occupant of Jake’s office immediately spun round from where he’d been standing at the corner window.
He was tall, though not as tall as Jake, or as solidly built. He was very good-looking, with strong facial features and an elegantly athletic frame. His long-lashed blue eyes reminded Jake of someone, but Jake couldn’t remember who. His hair, which was dark and thick, was cut very short. Short was the fashion at the moment.
The only thing wrong with Jake’s visitor was that he was dressed in a school uniform.
A shock, Sally had said.
She’d been right there.
This couldn’t be the Alex Angelina had talked about. As sexy as Angelina was, he couldn’t see her in the role of conscienceless cradle-snatcher. This boy could not be a day over seventeen. Eighteen, at a pinch.
Then who was he? Her ex-lover’s younger brother? His son, maybe? Alex Mastroianni junior? If so, what was he doing here? And why was he staring at him as if he’d seen a bloody ghost or something?
Certainly, he wasn’t in the mood for this!
‘You wanted to see me?’ he said abruptly, and continued round behind his desk, which sat adjacent to the window. ‘Sit down,’ he said with a gesture towards the two upright chairs that faced his desk. Then sat down himself.
The boy just stood there, staring.
Jake sighed.
‘I gather your name is Alex Mastroianni,’ he said. ‘I’m Jake Winters.’
‘Yes, I know,’ the boy said, finding his voice at last. ‘I saw you on the news last night. Twice. First on Channel Nine. Then later on Channel Two.’
‘Aah yes, the news. We haven’t met before, have we?’ he asked, his mind teasing him again with that vague sense of recognition.
‘No. Never,’ the boy said.
‘So what can I do for you, Mr Mastroianni?’
Jake decided to play this straight, as though the teenager before him was a potential client, and his name just a weird coincidence, which it very well might be. Life was sometimes stranger than fiction.
‘Are you in need of a lawyer?’
The boy smiled. And again, reminded him of someone.
‘Please call me Alex,’ he said with a cool assurance that surprised Jake. Having found his tongue, he seemed to have found a degree of confidence as well.
‘Very well. Alex. Please, do sit down. You’re making me nervous, standing over there.’
The boy laughed. ‘Not as nervous as I am.’
But he did sit down.
‘You don’t look nervous,’ Jake said.
‘Yeah, well, trust me, I am.’
‘You don’t have to be nervous with me. You can tell me anything. There is such a thing as client-lawyer privilege. I can’t divulge anything you tell me. Like a priest.’
The boy just sat there a while longer, looking at him a bit like Sally had looked at him earlier, as though he was trying to see something in his face, or perhaps in his eyes. Was he wondering if he could be trusted?
Jake decided not to press. He didn’t have any appointments for a while. He had the time to be patient, and, quite frankly, he was curious. Very curious.
‘Do you remember a girl named Angelina Mastroianni?’ the boy asked after a minute or two of tension-making silence. ‘In case you’ve forgotten, you picked grapes at her father’s vineyard in the Hunter Valley sixteen years ago.’
Jake snapped forward in his chair, his hands reaching for the nearest object. A Biro. He gripped it tightly and prayed this kid wasn’t going to say something he didn’t want to hear.
‘I remember,’ he returned tautly as his fingers tightened. ‘So what is Angelina to you? A cousin? An aunt?’
Stupid question, that last one, Jake. Angelina doesn’t have any brothers or sisters so how could she be an aunt?
‘No,’ the boy denied. ‘Nothing like that.’
Nothing like that. Then what?
‘She’s my mother.’
The Biro snapped. Clean in two.
‘Your mother,’ Jake repeated in a numb voice.
‘Yes.’
‘That’s impossible! Angelina isn’t old enough to be your mother!’ He knew for a fact that sixteen years ago, she’d been a virgin. One and one did not make two here.
‘I look old for my age. I’m only fifteen. I don’t turn sixteen till the twenty-fourth of November this year.’
Jake’s mind reeled. Only fifteen. And his birthday was in late November. He quickly counted backwards and landed on late February as the date of his conception. If Jake had been reeling before, he now went into serious shock.
It wasn’t possible. He’d pulled out that night. Sort of. Well, maybe not in time. OK, so it was possible. But just as possible that Angelina had gone from him to some other guy. These things did happen once a girl had lost her virginity.
His gaze raked over the handsome boy sitting before him as he tried to work out all that Angelina had told him since they’d met up again. The lies.
No, not lies. But definitely verbal sleight of hand.
She’d deliberately kept Alex’s true identity secret from him, and the question was why? It wasn’t as though single mothers were uncommon these days. Even Italian ones.
‘And your father?’
Even as he croaked out the question, Jake saw the truth staring back at him. Those eyes. They were his. So was the chin. And the hairline. Even the ears.
> ‘Why, it’s you, of course, Mr Winters,’ the boy said with some bemusement in his voice, as though he was surprised Jake hadn’t realised already. ‘You’re my father.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
ANGELINA was behind the reception desk, booking in the Williams family, when Jake’s yellow Ferrari shot down the driveway and braked to an abrupt halt under the covered archway on the other side of Mr Williams’s sedate navy sedan.
Her heart began to thud.
So Jake had decided he couldn’t wait till the weekend, either!
‘Wow!’ Mr Williams exclaimed. ‘I’ve always wanted to cruise around Australia in a car like that.’
‘In your dreams, darling,’ his wife said. ‘Where would we put the kids for starters?’
‘With your mother, preferably,’ he quipped back.
Jake, Angelina noted, did not get out of the car and come inside. Instead, after glancing over his shoulder at the reception area—which was clearly visible through the mainly glass front wall—he just sat, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. Waiting, obviously, till she was alone.
A swirling sensation began to eddy in Angelina’s stomach. But she didn’t let her excitement show.
‘Here are the keys to your suite,’ she said with a smile as she handed them over. ‘If you follow the driveway round the back, you can park right outside your main door. The pool is heated and open till ten. The tennis court is available till the same time. Dinner starts at six in the restaurant. Did you see the restaurant as you drove in?’
‘Sure did. Looks fabulous,’ the wife gushed.
‘Breakfast is in the same place from six-thirty till nine-thirty,’ Angelina went on briskly. ‘We don’t cater for meals in the rooms here, I’m afraid. I’ve booked your free tour for tomorrow, starting at nine. Best to do it early in the summer before it gets too hot. Your guide will be waiting for you at five to nine at the cellar door, which is not far from the restaurant. Just follow the signs. I think that’s all I have to tell you but please, feel free to ring and ask if you have any problems at all.’
‘Oh, I’m sure we won’t,’ the wife beamed. ‘This is all just so lovely.’
