by Penny Jordan
A moan of horror escaped his mother’s lips…a sound of such pain that Luca started with concern. She had always been silent, even when being beaten, but she was moaning in pain now, a pain he didn’t understand, her eyes frantic and urgent and loaded with tears when they met her son’s. ‘To accept and face the truth that Leo is your real father…’
It was as if the sun had gone out. Everything suddenly went dark, as if the bed had been pulled from under him, as if the floor had just given way. Every rock, every foundation collapsed beneath him, yet he never moved, never moved a muscle, his mother’s voice seeming distorted from a distance as his mind frantically tried to process the words.
‘I thought you knew,’ Mia pleaded. ‘Leo thought that you knew, that you had finally guessed…’
As he looked back on their conversation with the knowledge the other man held, Luca closed his eyes. And as he did so, he felt the guilt, the shame, the fear truly unravel at last, and when he opened his eyes it was to a world that was brighter, safer. His only regret was that it was a world without Emma.
‘Devo sapere,’ Luca said. ‘Tell me.’ There was a flash of anger then. ‘Did he know, did Leo know how he was treating you?’
‘Never!’ Mia sobbed. ‘Only you, my son, only you know my pain. I was always promised for your father—our two families were friends. I knew I would marry him, but I did not like to think about it—sixteen seemed a long way off. Always I liked Leo—he was so clever, we all knew he was destined for better and sometimes, when he came home in the holidays, I felt his eyes on me. One time we kissed…’ She sighed and then visibly shook herself and continued her story.
‘I worked in the baker’s, my marriage was two weeks away. The village was celebrating because Leo had passed his exams and was going to study medicine in Roma; he would return a doctor. I was sad. My wedding was soon and your father had slapped me, he had pushed me, he had made me do things that shamed me…’
‘He is not my father,’ Luca corrected her, and how good those words felt!
‘Rico had hurt me.’ Mia nodded in acknowledgment. ‘We closed early one day and I was walking home and I met Leo. He was leaving the next day and he said he was sorry he would not be at my wedding…then he admitted he was not sorry. That it would hurt to see me marry another. We went to the river and I nearly told him…’
‘Why didn’t you?’ Luca asked.
‘How?’ Mia asked. ‘Leo was a good man, even as a teenager he was a good man, a man who cared for me. He would not have gone away to get his medical degree.’
‘He could have taken you with him.’
‘His family would have been shamed and would not have paid for his education. After all, I was another man’s bride-to-be, and this town would have never forgiven that. How, in one conversation, could I change his life when neither really knew how the other was feeling?
‘We kissed, and you were made that day, Luca. It was the best day of my life, and every night I fall asleep with that memory… Yes, in hindsight I should have told him, but we were young, and I loved him and wanted him to do well, to be happy. I would have brought him so much pain…’
‘Did my fa—?’ Luca stopped himself. ‘Did Rico know I was not his son?’
‘He never said, and sometimes I wondered if he had guessed, if that was why he was so angry with you, with me, but really he was angry with me and treated me badly before I was ever unfaithful to him.’
‘And Leo?’ Luca swallowed. ‘When did you tell him?’
‘I didn’t for a long time. He was a man when he returned, and I was married with two children. He was married later too. I was friends with his wife.’ The pain of her secret silenced her for a moment. ‘He ended up being friends with Rico as well. No one knew the man Rico was in private. It was one time, Luca, and a long time ago, not much to ruin so many lives. When Carmella, his wife, died, Leo came over one night. He was chatting to your father and going through albums, talking of his wife, and there was a photo of you there when you got your degree. I remember him looking up at me, his eyes asking me, and I looked away, red and blushing—and from that moment he knew. He must have seen something of himself as a young man in that photo of you.’
‘Have you talked to him about it?’ Luca asked.
‘I spoke with him a few months ago, yet we could not properly talk. He was treating Rico, his friend, but we knew we would talk one day soon.’
‘And have you?’
‘Soon,’ Mia said. ‘Still I have to break his heart by telling him all I have suffered, how you, his son, have suffered over the years.’
‘How do you know it will break his heart?’ he wanted to know.
‘Love does not just go away, Luca.’
‘I know.’ He stared out the window at the Mediterranean.
‘You can push it away, you can deny it, you can make excuses, give reasons, but once love has been born, once it has existed, it cannot simply cease to be.’
There were so many questions, so much more he wanted to know from his mother and from his real father, but he didn’t need those answers right now.
It was Emma he needed to see and regardless of whether or not it was too late he had to tell her, which meant there was someone he had to speak with first.
‘You cannot leave now,’ Mia pointed out as he packed his case. ‘There is mass tonight, one more duty, Luca—for familia…’
‘No, Ma.’ He kissed his mother’s cheek to show he was not angry. ‘My duty is to Emma—she is familia now.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
‘CAN I pay Dad’s account?’
‘Of course.’ The supervisor was unusually friendly as Emma came into the office, just a little bit flushed in the cheeks and, well, just a little nicer. ‘You’ve sold another painting.’
It was actually the supervisor who handed her an envelope with a cheque in it and there was a flurry in her stomach as Emma took it. That feel of her baby moving still caught her by surprise, and she smiled, not just at the kicks from her baby but that she had almost paid her debts—and all by her own hand.
All was well.
She chanted those words over and over to herself and out loud to her baby too at times.
All was well.
Her father’s house had finally sold and she’d found a little flat nearby. Thanks to an excellent reference from Luca, she’d landed a wonderful job for three days a week and once the baby arrived they were happy for her to work a couple of days a week from home, which gave her time to concentrate on her art.
She was getting there.
Not quite thriving, but not just surviving either.
She missed Luca—missed him in her days, in her nights, in her life, and she missed him for their baby too.
But there was nothing she could do about that, so she poured her grief into her artwork and scared herself sometimes with her own mind—painting dark, swirling stories of loss and grief and hope and life.
And she’d sold not one but three paintings!
She’d put one up in her father’s room at the nursing home, which a relative of another resident had liked, and things had taken off from there.
Oh, they hadn’t sold for vast sums, but they’d keep the baby in nappies and bottles, and Emma knew that they’d be okay.
All was well, she told her kicking stomach.
They really didn’t need Luca.
Want, however, was an entirely different matter.
She walked down the long corridor towards her father and wasn’t really looking forward to it. He’d noticed her swelling stomach these past couple of weeks and unfortunately a stroke and a touch of senility weren’t stopping him from asking awkward questions.
Emma pulled her coat around her and held a massive photo album over her stomach, hoping a few pictures from the past would be enough to distract him.
And then she saw him.
Saw six feet two with eyes of blue, sitting chatting on the bed and laughing with her dad, and she absolutely, completely didn�
�t know what to do.
‘Here’s my baby girl!’ Frank beamed as she made her way over.
She kissed her dad on the cheek and ignored Luca.
He watched as she put her father’s pyjamas away and sorted out his chocolate and put some money in a little dish for his newspaper—and he saw the swell of her stomach and the strain on her features, and finally, finally she faced him.
‘Could we have a word?’ Emma said. ‘Outside.’
They walked out to the nursing-home gardens, along the winding paths, and finally she spoke.
‘Don’t…’ Her voice was shaky. ‘Don’t you dare drag him into this! He’s old and he’s confused.’
‘He’s our child’s grandfather,’ Luca pointed out. ‘I’d say he’s already in this…and he knows, by the way.’
‘Knows what?’
‘That you’re pregnant,’ Luca said, and watched her cheeks burn. ‘Were you ever going to tell me?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said honestly.
‘You don’t know?’ he repeated incredulously.
So she turned to him and just said it, too tired, too confused and too angry for his mind games this time.
‘You knew anyway,’ Emma accused. ‘You knew that morning you said you loved me, and you knew it when you chose to let me go.’ And it was agony when he nodded. ‘So don’t play the wounded party now—you chose not to be around, Luca. I bore you, remember?’
‘Never,’ Luca said, his face pale.
‘And I’m not very interesting in bed.’
‘That’s not true either,’ he said. How he hated hearing it, how he hated what he had done to her—and yet now he had to face it. ‘All I think about is you. All I want is you—if you will give me this chance,’ he vowed.
‘Why would I?’ She had loved him so much and he hadn’t wanted that love. She could almost forgive him for herself, but she wouldn’t be careless with her baby’s heart. ‘Why would I risk it again? We’ll do fine without you.’
And she would, he knew that she would, but how he wanted her to do better than fine—with him by her side.
‘I was scared I was like my father,’ he admitted.
‘Not good enough, Luca.’ She turned her face away. ‘I’m scared I’m like my mother—but deep down I know I’ll never walk away. You did.’
‘He beat her.’ Luca closed his eyes. ‘Badly, over and over.’
‘I know that,’ Emma pointed out. ‘And I know you never would do that to me or our baby, so why couldn’t you trust that?’
‘My grandfather, my uncle, they were the same too. Emma, I didn’t want to hurt you.’
‘But you did!’ She was trying not to cry, trying not to get upset, trying to stay calm for the baby, but it was hard. ‘Over and over you did. It doesn’t have to be a fist to hurt, Luca.’
Her words sliced his heart—bitter, bitter was his regret.
‘My grandmother slipped and fell.’ Luca’s voice was a hoarse whisper, voicing dark thoughts that had never been said. ‘That is what I was told, that was what I believed—I heard my mother sob one night that Rico was just like his father. “And look where my mother ended up” was Rico’s response.’
It wasn’t just his father, Emma started to see that now, and it wasn’t just the beating…
‘He killed her.’
‘Oh, Luca,’ Emma whispered.
‘And Rico’s brother, Rinaldo.’ His voice was hoarse, the filth of the past all spewing out now. ‘He beat Zia Maria too. Daniela remembers her as glamorous, always wearing make-up—only, of course, it was to cover the bruises.’
Emma closed her eyes, recalling the well made-up face of Rinaldo’s second bride.
‘Maria came to our door one night, scared and crying, yet my mother sent her away—and she was dead the next morning. Kicked by a horse, my father, the policeman, announced after he’d investigated.
‘I grew up with this secret—a secret so well hidden that not even the family doctor could see. My father was the trusted village policeman and yet in his home he did terrible things—his brothers and father too. And when I was younger, I promised I would never get so involved with a woman that I would marry her, give her children…’ It was so hard to explain and yet he persevered. ‘I thought there was this…inevitability, that the violence was in my blood, in my genes. That I had been passed not just the family name…’ His eyes searched the gorgeous mound of her stomach. ‘And I thought that I had passed it on too—and that the baby would have a better chance of a normal life with just you to look after it.’
‘You should have told me all this,’ Emma said.
‘When?’ Luca challenged. ‘I don’t come with a government warning. I made my choice to never get too involved with anyone, and then you came along and that simple resolution…’ He swallowed as he recalled just how hard it had been to keep it in and how scared he had been to let it out. ‘I was going to tell you. The day of the funeral, I knew somehow that I would do better, that I could not hurt you. For the first time I realised I had choices—and I also realised you had to make your choices too. It is not an easy family to marry into.’
‘Marry?’ Emma blinked. ‘You were thinking of asking me to marry you that day?’
‘And every day from the moment I met you—even if I didn’t want to admit it,’ Luca said truthfully.
‘So why didn’t you?’ she wanted to know.
‘I spoke with Leo.’
‘The doctor?’
Luca nodded. ‘I tried to tell him my concerns, I wanted him to reassure me, and instead he said that I could not hide from my genes. He offered me counselling. I thought he was talking about anger management…’
‘How dare he?’ It was Emma who needed anger management now. ‘How bloody archaic, how dare he imply that you’d be like that too?’
‘No.’ He hushed her. ‘Emma, I woke up this morning and I knew, no matter what he’d said, no matter what history dictates, that I would never, ever hurt you.’
‘I knew that already,’ she said, but she did understand because there was a part of her that had the same sort of fears—that she’d be a lousy mother, that she’d turn forty and some strange force would take over and she’d suddenly walk out on her family. Luca’s words had rung that bell of fear that she’d heard many times before—that there was a certain inevitability to it all. ‘I feel the same sometimes,’ she admitted, ‘that I won’t be a good mum…’
‘You’ll be a wonderful mum,’ he said with absolute conviction.
‘You’ll be a wonderful dad.’
‘If you’ll let me be,’ he murmured.
‘I could never stop that, and I know in the end I’d have told you,’ she admitted.
He ran a hand over her swollen stomach, rued the moments he’d already missed and promised himself that he’d miss not a moment more.
‘You’re nothing like your dad,’ Emma continued. ‘You’re like Pepper!’ How she made him smile! ‘Snapping and snarling, but you’d never bite. Luca…’ She said it with absolute conviction. ‘You’re nothing like him.’
‘Actually, I am nothing like him.’
‘I just said that.’
‘No…’ He blew out a breath, because in all that had happened he hadn’t even had time to really process the news, to even think about it, to explore it, so when he did that for the first time, he did it with her.
‘I’m nothing like Rico because Leo is my real father.’
‘Leo?’ Emma gasped. ‘The doctor, the one who said…?’ She had thought him familiar when they’d met, and now she knew why! That assuredness, that arrogance that Luca possessed had to have come from somewhere—and now she knew where!
‘That is what he was trying to say, about genes. He thought I had guessed, thought I was trying to tell him I knew. Guilt made my mother stay with Rico—and shame. Not just at what others might think but because of what she secretly knew—that she’d been unfaithful to my father even before she’d married him.’
Emma blinked
in amazement, trying to take it all in.
‘I love you.’ And it was a different way he said it this time. Not something he dragged from himself, not something he didn’t want to admit. Instead, he told her his truth. ‘People make mistakes. I have just sat and listened to your father’s regret about your mother and you—and I’ve heard my own mother’s regret and guilt too. People bury their shame and fears in the past but they don’t go away, they fester.’ He smiled. ‘Also, I have something else to tell you. Your father is not senile.’ Luca gazed down at her. ‘He told me that today. He knows you think he is, but his truth is that he remembers your mother now with love, and better still…’ He looked at her kind, clear eyes that had never been loved and vowed to make up for all past hurts. ‘Your father says he now has a second chance to love you.’
‘He said that?’ she choked.
‘Yes.’
‘He’s not confused from the stroke?’
‘No.’ Luca grinned, the old Luca, the funny Luca, the Luca who had first won her heart. ‘He’s just a bit uninhibited,’ Luca said, and then he was serious. ‘And so now must I be.’ He stared beyond her eyes and to her soul. ‘I love you, Emma. I always have and I always will. I sat on the sofa that first night we met, after I came in from Paris, and there was a part of me imagining watching that detective show with you.’
He watched a pink flush warm her cheeks.
‘When I left my flat for Tokyo that day, I imagined coming home to you.’
He watched as the colour spread to her little ears, saw the smile wobble on her lips, and so he told her some more.
‘When you held my hand on the plane, I imagined lying next to you every night for the rest of my life.’
She could feel it, the warm glow of his love warming her icy veins, chasing away all the hurt, the fear, the loneliness—bathing her in this deep, rosy warmth and wrapping her in soft, infinite understanding.
‘You can,’ Emma said, her eyes open, staring into the eyes of a man who had made it so very difficult for her to love him. ‘Every night for the rest of your life, you can lie beside me.’
