As Rico greeted other guests and Rinaldo and his wife drifted off, Mia chided Luca for his stern expression, talking in Italian then giving a brief translation for Emma.
‘Luca was close to Zia Maria, Rinaldo’s first wife,’ she explained to Emma, then looked over at Luca. ‘You cannot expect him to be on his own.’
‘He didn’t even wait a year,’ Luca retorted, his voice ice-cold on this warm day.
‘Luca—not here,’ Mia pleaded, then turned to Emma. ‘Come, let me introduce you to my sister.’
Emma lost Luca along the way, chatting to aunts, congratulating Daniela—really, she was doing well. Through her work she knew enough about Luca to answer the most difficult questions, though it would have been far easier if he was by her side.
They were starting to call relatives for more photos now and she found him behind the church, walking between the tombstones, standing and pausing, his shoulders rigid, almost as if he were at a funeral rather than a wedding.
‘You’re wanted for the photos,’ she said softly, her eyes following his gaze to the tombstone he was reading.
‘My grandmother,’ Luca explained.
‘She was so young,’ Emma said, reading the inscription. His grandmother had been little older than her mother when she’d died.
‘I don’t remember her really—a little perhaps.’ He shrugged as if it didn’t matter, but clearly from his grim expression it did. ‘And this is Zia Maria. I do remember her…’
Emma licked dry lips as she saw the young age of his aunt too. ‘Rinaldo’s first wife…’
‘She was a lovely woman.’ His voice was tender in memory, and pensive too.
‘I know what you meant about Rinaldo…’ He closed his eyes on her as if she couldn’t possibly know, but Emma did. ‘About not even waiting a year to remarry. I hated how many girlfriends my dad had. I know now that Mum had left him and everything, but he started dating so soon after…’
Now that she knew, it was as if her brain was finally allowing her to remember—patchy, hazy memories that she couldn’t really see but could feel—a woman who wasn’t her mother kissing her father, women’s things in the bathroom, the sound of female laughter drifting across the landing to her bedroom as she lay weeping into the pillow and wanting her mother.
‘They make me sick!’ He shook his head, then raked his hair back in a gesture of tense frustration. ‘Just leave it.’
And she had no choice but to do that, because now really wasn’t the time. ‘We should get back anyway.’ She turned to go, but he was still staring at his aunt’s grave and Emma guessed he must be painfully aware that in a matter of days or weeks he would be back here in the graveyard to bury his father. Only she didn’t understand what he was doing here today, when everyone was trying to be happy, reminding himself when he should be forgetting.
‘Luca…’
‘You go. I’ll be there soon.’
‘Luca, today is a wedding—your family are waiting for the photos. For now, surely you should try to forget?’ she said hesitantly.
‘I never forget.’ It was a bald statement and his eyes met hers for the first time since she had joined him in the cemetery, but there was none of the warmth that had been there that morning. In fact, there was no warmth at all. ‘Come—we have a job to do.’
And in that short sentence he both reminded and relegated her. This was just a weekend away to him, a deal that had been struck, a pact that had been reached— an act she had agreed to partake in. It was Emma who had forgotten that at times; Luca clearly always remembered it.
As they joined the rest of his family, as they stood side by side with her hand in his, never had it been harder for her to force a smile.
CHAPTER TEN
IT HAD been a long exhausting day and was a long exhausting evening—as weddings often are.
Rico made it through dinner and, as Mia watched on anxiously, he managed to dance with his daughter. After that, clearly unable to participate further, Rico took a back seat and it was for Luca to take up the baton.
There was nothing Emma could put her finger on as Luca took over the role of patriarch with ease. He chatted with everyone, sat with the men at a table for a while and she could see him laughing at jokes, raising his glass in a toast, joining in tapping spoons to demand that the newlyweds kiss—and when she came over, he was soundly slapped on the back for his choice in women.
‘The D’Amato name goes on,’ Uncle Rinaldo cheered, so clearly she would do! ‘Salute!’
There was just something…
Something that filled the air between them as they waved off the bride and groom.
As they put his parents into a car and then stayed to say farewell to the last of the guests.
Something as he let them into the darkened house. He climbed into the bed beside her and stared unseeingly into the darkness.
A shout from the house snapped Emma’s eyes open, her body instinctively moving to investigate, but he caught her wrist.
‘It is just Pa, calling for his pain medication.’
His fingers were loose, but there. That small contact became her sole focus, every nerve darting along its pathways to locate and gather where his fingers touched hers.
She listened to the sound of silence and thought how hard it must be, not just for Rico but for Mia with the exhausting, round-the-clock care she delivered. And Luca must be thinking it too, for she could feel him— the tense energy in the room, this state of hypervigilance this family must live with when dealing with someone so ill.
Had it been like this for him as a child too?
She had never known violence—oh, there had been arguments and, living with four men, yes, the occasional fight, but they had been storms that had blown over quickly. This was different. A thick tension had slowly built as they lay there together—yet he would have lain here alone as a child, and heard every creak, every bang, every word while wondering if…
‘Luca?’ She knew he was awake even if he was ignoring her. ‘How bad was it?’
‘Leave it, Emma.’
‘You can tell me.’
‘I don’t want to.’
And it should have ended it. She expected him to turn away, except he didn’t. Instead, he turned on his side, towards her. ‘Emma, please…’ He didn’t finish what he was saying, or had he just said it? This begging for distraction.
He moved his body over hers, and then his lips were on hers, his kiss catching her by complete surprise. Luca’s mouth was seeking an urgent distraction; it was a frenetic, heated kiss that urged her body into instant response. They had made love over and over, Luca initiating her into the wonders of her body, the marvel of his, only this was nothing like the tender, slow lovemaking of previous times—this an enthralling new facet. Urgency crashed in like a stormy ocean slamming onto the beach, and her body flared in instant response to his potent maleness. He was kissing her, hot, demanding kisses that she reciprocated, her fingers at the back of his head pressing his face closer to hers. His thighs came down hard on hers, his arms swept under her, circling her, craving more contact— as too did she.
She opened her centre to him, parting her legs, yearning for that first thrust of him with the hunger of an addict. Only it didn’t bring relief, the feel of him driving inside her, his skin sliding over her, it just made her want more, energy building like a cyclone, swirling and obliterating and dragging her to its centre. He moved his arms from beneath her and there was the sensation of falling as her back hit the mattress and Luca leant in on his elbows. Over and over he kissed her, over and over he said her name into the air as he gulped it in, into her mouth as he licked her.
Her orgasms had, till now, been slowly coaxed from her, a learned thing, this gradual build-up as he taught her to let go, as he urged her on to lose her mind, herself, to new sensations. But this night in his bed she was swept into a maelstrom of sensation that was as desperate and urgent as Luca’s fierce need.
The shudder of him inside her was
met with sweet beats of her own—it wasn’t sex, it was devotion, the intensity of her orgasm startling her. Her hips moved frantically upwards to escape from the relentless throb of her body, but Luca was in instant pursuit, his last throes tipping her to a place there could be no coming back from, to true abandon, to utter trust.
They slept together—the third night in his bed, and this time they truly slept together, coiled around each other in a fierce embrace that didn’t abate with sleep.
Never did he just glance at his mother in the morning.
Never could he just accept that greeting and coffee without thought.
Always he checked.
And all these years later, still it happened—an instant check that, for Luca, was as natural as breathing.
A cardigan on a hot summer’s morning.
Or the unusual sight of her in full make-up at seven a.m.
Or worse, an empty kitchen and the explanation of a migraine as to why she couldn’t get up.
His dark eyes automatically scanned for clues or confirmation, yearning for that same rush of momentary relief he had sometimes felt as a child, that all was well—for today at least. That surely his father was too old, too sick, too frail to hurt her…Ah, but he had a savage tongue too—and words, if they were savage enough, could sometimes hurt as much as a blow.
‘How was he last night?’ Luca asked in his native language, watching his mother stiffen.
‘It went wonderfully,’ she replied evasively.
‘I meant how were things when you got home? How was Pa?’
‘Tired,’ Mia said briefly. ‘Where is Emma?’
‘Still asleep.’ Climbing out of that bed, feeling her stir, he had hushed her and kissed her back to sleep and then stood and watched her sleeping. Young, innocent, trusting—how could he do it to her? How could he take her by the hand and lead her to hell? He felt as if his home was built on a sewer—he could almost smell the filth beneath the very foundations as he sat at the table and his mother embroidered the lies.
‘He did so well to dance with Daniela…Leo is coming this morning and his nurse Rosa. I am a bit worried, because he coughed all night—it was a very long day for him.’
‘For you too,’ Luca pointed out, and then added, ‘I heard him shout in the night.’
‘He just shouts, Luca, nothing else…’ Mia closed her eyes. ‘He is old and weak and tired…’
‘Yet still he treats you poorly.’
‘Words don’t hurt me, Luca,’ Mia said. ‘Please just leave things alone—it is good that you came.’
The coffee tasted like acid in his mouth—her words rendering him hopeless.
Again.
For everything he had a solution, an answer. His logical, analytical brain could take the most complex problem and unravel it to the base solution. Yet nothing—not logic, not reason, not power, not brawn, not wealth—could solve this.
Nothing!
‘Leave him.’ He stood up, stared into her eyes and even as he pleaded again, he knew it was futile, as futile now as it always had been.
‘You know I cannot!’
‘You can…’ His usually strong voice cracked, and he saw his mother flinch—both of them realising that he was near to tears. It had been so long since he had even been close to crying that the sting in his eyes, the swell in his throat caught even Luca by surprise. The pain, the fear, the helplessness, the never-ending grief he had lived with as a child was still there—right there and ready to return at any given moment—the anguish waiting to floor him. ‘Leave, Ma.’
‘He is dying, Luca. How can I leave a dying man? What would people think?’
‘What does it matter?’ Luca burst out.
‘It matters!’ Mia sobbed. ‘And he matters too. He is sick, he is scared…’
‘He wasn’t always sick! He can be moved to hospital.’
‘Luca. Please. I beg you to stop this.’
She didn’t want his help—she simply didn’t want it, yet he could not accept that.
‘He is a bastard, and he has always been a bastard,’ Luca tried again. ‘That he is dying does not change that fact.’
‘He’s my husband.’
Those three little words that had condemned her to a lifetime of pain and suffering.
The shame of leaving, the scandal attached to such an action had silenced her and in turn had silenced Luca too.
It hadn’t always silenced him.
He had spat in his father’s face many times as a child—and he still bore the scars to prove it.
He had tried to intervene when he was twelve years old, and had been beaten to within an inch of his life for his trouble.
And always Mia had sobbed—always she had pleaded that he ignore what his father was doing, that he was making things worse.
So he had waited.
Waited for his moment, waited till he was taller, fitter, stronger—and then one night, when the inevitable had happened, an eighteen-year-old boy in the body of a man had intervened.
Eighteen years of tension and frustration, combined with a generous dash of testosterone, had exploded, and he had beaten and bullied his father that night as mercilessly as his father had beaten and bullied his mother over the years—sure this would end it, sure that finally it was over.
Yet the next morning, his knuckles bruised and bleeding, his top lip swollen, his left eye closed, his cheek a savage mess, something inside Luca had crumbled and died when his mother had walked into the kitchen—bruises that hadn’t been there last night on her face, her arms a pitiful mass of red and blue. But worse than that had been the accusing look in her eyes as she’d faced her son, telling him that he had made things even worse, that his interference hadn’t helped. And then she had said the words that would stay with Luca for ever.
‘Siete no migliore del vostro padre.’
‘You are no better than your father,’ Mia had told him as Luca had sat appalled at what he had done and sick with what she said next. ‘It is as I always feared—you are just like him.’
‘Don’t make things worse, Luca,’ his mother said now, and her words dragged him straight through the coals of hell from the past to the even more hellish, hopeless present. ‘There is nothing you can do. Having Emma here has made things better.’ Mia gave a tired smile. ‘He is proud that perhaps his name will continue, and that has appeased him for a while.’ Her eyes anxiously scanned Luca’s face. ‘She is a wonderful girl— I am pleased. It helps in other ways too…’ Mia admitted. ‘Seeing that you are finally happy. But please look after her, Luca, and don’t let your past…’ Her voice strangled off into silence, and Luca shut his eyes. ‘Soon, one day, there are things I must tell you—about your past, your history…’ she finally managed to add.
But he knew them all already, had worked it out long ago.
Vigilance and tombstones had taught him the unenviable truth.
And now, on this morning, discovering that his mother thought he might be capable of the violence of his father, that his mother, who loved him, worried for the woman who was starting to—That the most innocent of them all slept upstairs in his bed, was, for Luca, an added torment.
‘There are things you need to know, things we have to face,’ Mia said.
Not if Luca could avoid them.
Rinaldo’s words rang in his ears. ‘The D’Amato name goes on. Salute!’
Not if Luca could help it.
The last D’Amato—he was it. He had sworn that on his Aunt Maria’s grave, that night when he’d been eighteen. He had sworn that the D’Amato line ended with him.
If he could keep his heart closed, never fall in love, then he could never cause pain to anyone else.
It really was that simple.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EMMA dressed in khaki shorts and a white halter-neck top and sandals and applied some light make-up, but gave up on her hair—if she brushed out the serum and lacquer, it would end up all fluffy, so instead she ran her fingers through it and tied
it in a low ponytail, then tentatively made her way down to the kitchen.
‘Good morning.’ Luca stood and kissed her, but didn’t meet her eyes. Instead, he introduced her to a rather formidable man who was sitting at the table. ‘This is Leo, Dr Calista—he was called out yesterday to an emergency, so he could not make the wedding. And this is Rosa, the nurse.’
Rosa was at the kitchen bench, measuring out medication, and gave Emma a brief smile, then turned her attention back to her work. Dr Leo Calista was more formal than the people she had met so far. Instead of kissing her on the cheeks, as everyone else had, he stood as she entered and shook Emma’s hand. He was also familiar to her and Emma frowned as she tried to place him.
‘I was in the UK for a conference recently!’ He smiled at her confusion. ‘I dropped in to see Luca to update him on his father…’
‘No, that’s not how I know you.’ Emma frowned, sure that she would remember.
‘We have spoken on the phone.’
And that must be it. ‘It’s nice to meet you.’
‘You too. And as a near local now! It is good to see Luca bring a friend here; you are welcome.’
‘Thank you,’ she replied, a little bewildered.
‘Gradite unirli per la prima colazione?’ Mia offered, inviting the doctor to join the family for breakfast, but Dr Calista declined, instead asking if he might see Rico.
‘He seems nice,’ Emma observed as the trio made their way out of the kitchen.
‘He’s a good doctor. He is from the village, he studied medicine in Roma, then returned, but always he keeps up to date. He has been good to my family,’ Luca explained. ‘His care has meant my father can be looked after at home.’
‘That must mean a lot.’
‘It does to my mother, but I think that my father should be in hospital—now that the wedding is over. I spoke with Leo before…’
‘What did he say?’ Emma asked.
‘That it is not my choice. That my father wants to die at home and my mother wants to nurse him.’
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