Louisa, a round dumpling of a woman with soft pillow breasts that many a tiny child had snuggled into, stood at the old stone sink and stared out the window, a dishcloth lying still in her hand against a cup.
She had the look on her face he’d seen too many times in his work, the grief for a loved one passing, Gianni thought with a rush of sympathy. The look he had seen so frequently in Samoa after the tsunami. Grief that stayed with him late in the night and never allowed his own demons to settle.
Emma crossed the room and rested one hand on the cup in case she startled Louisa into dropping it, and the other arm she slid around the little woman’s waist.
‘You okay?’ Emma’s voice was melodic, caring and made the twists in his belly ache harder. He watched her hug Louisa softly in sympathy and Louisa turned her lined face so she could rest her head against Emma’s shoulder for a moment.
He could almost taste the comfort the older woman gained. Who was this Emma Rose, compassionately maternal to a woman three times her age? He wondered what had happened in this young woman’s life to give her such wisdom beyond her years. It was better to think of this than his whimsy for a hug himself.
But the glimpses of Emma’s effect on him had been enough to warn him she was far too dangerous for hugging. Dangerous in a way he hadn’t been susceptible to for too many years. In ways he didn’t want to be susceptible to ever again.
‘I’ll be fine.’ Louisa sighed and Gianni saw the effort she made to smile. ‘I’m just thanking the Lord for the last five years, and the twenty years as his friend before that. He was a good man.’
Emma squeezed her shoulder one more time and then stepped away. ‘I know it. And he loved you dearly, as we all do. Is there something we can do for you?’ Gianni saw her glance back at him and even that brief acknowledgement was enough to make his belly tighten.
But this Emma was a woman from the other side of the world. A side of the world he was leaving tomorrow. He’d need to remember that.
‘Bless you both. No.’ The Yorkshire accent seemed broader as Louisa jollied herself back into efficiency. ‘I’ll come out and sit in the shade with you, though, and enjoy the company of Ned’s family and friends.’
‘Your family and friends,’ Emma corrected gently.
‘Aye, of course,’ she said, and sighed.
Together the three of them moved out to the lawn and Gianni walked on Louisa’s other side so that she was drawn into the group under the tree and settled in a comfortable chair.
Gianni watched as she was fussed over and one of the women handed her a baby to nurse. Instantly Louisa was diverted. He looked at Emma who unobtrusively nodded with satisfaction.
He liked it that she was pleased the older woman was comforted. The feel of these people made him think of the best times he’d had as a child. Times he and his brother had escaped to play with the happy-go-lucky village children where such a sense of support and warmth had been unburdened by the responsibility of being part of the most important family. Carefree. Like Emma made him feel. He needed to put distance between them. Even a little would help prevent his fingers from stroking her cheek because he could imagine the silk beneath his fingers too vividly. ‘Perhaps you’d like a glass of punch, Emma?’ Gianni indicated the cloth-covered table under the tree.
‘I’ll come with you.’ Emma glanced down at Louisa, who had buried her nose in the baby’s hair. ‘Louisa is settled.’
‘Well done,’ he said quietly as they walked away. ‘The innocence of children is precious and a comfort even in terrible times.’
‘That’s true,’ Emma said, looking up at him. ‘Is that what you see often in your work?’
He had no idea why he would talk of something he never mentioned. He shrugged and ladled a glass of punch, watched her take a sip and found himself talking to distract himself from her mouth. ‘I have seen many families suffer great losses but the safe delivery of one child can restart hope and life like nothing else.’
‘Angus said you began working with the rescue forces not long after he did.’
‘If not for Angus, I wouldn’t be here. Did he tell you he pulled me from an earthquake’s landslide? I’d been buried two days and all others had given up.’ Did he tell you I had been on a road to wasting my life before that?
She smiled gently, her eyes intent on his face. ‘Yes, but very briefly. Did you think he would tell me much?’
Gianni laughed, but without relief. ‘No. I suppose not. We do tend not to speak of what we see. And he spoke of his work even less than I do now.’
‘Which comes at a cost as tragic memories accumulate,’ she said with great insight. She returned to the thing he wished she’d forgotten. ‘Two days buried would give a lot of time for thought.’
‘Hmm.’ A long time to regret things in the past. He’d almost come to peace with those memories but perhaps they were covered under the new ones he’d collected.
She tilted her head and he felt her concentration not as curiosity but like balm to his hurts. ‘I like to think good comes of everything. Even something that seems horrible at the time. What good came of that, Gianni?’
He was distracted by the way she said his name. Softly, rolling the vowels as if savouring the strangeness of them. He supposed his name was strange in this place of Jacks and Johns and Joes. But she was waiting and he needed to think of his answer.
Normally he would have ignored such a question, not that it had been asked before, but for this Emma, strangely he found he could answer honestly. ‘It was a long time ago but, yes, it changed my life and created a need to do something useful. Like Angus did. I had been given back my life and I would not waste it again.’
She smiled at him. ‘Had you been so useless before?’
He thought of the fast cars, the wild and thoughtless men and women he’d peopled his life with after Maria’s death, but that was in the past and another tragedy—though one without a good result. ‘I fear so.’ His voice lowered as the memories returned. Memories he had to banish every time he was confronted with a similar event. ‘Lying there, unable to move, barely able to breathe as I listened to those around me grow silent, made me swear that life was too precious to waste.’
He shook away the memories and forced himself to smile at her, ‘But enough of me. You say you are a midwife. Have you always wished that? Like your little Grace has told me she has?’
‘Some of the best people I know are midwives.’ She grinned at him. Daring him to dispute a fact he knew little about. He had not known any midwives well enough to judge but he knew he liked this one.
‘Like Montana and Mia and Misty.’ She gestured with her hand at the colourful throng of people she worked with at Lyrebird Lake. ‘Wise women and wonderful friends,’ she went on. ‘Like them, I consider my work a privilege.’
He understood that but it was rare for a person to say it. ‘As I do mine.’ He shrugged. ‘So now we can be happy we have worthwhile lives, though I fear I may be a trifle too focussed on the excuse not to lead a more facetted life.’ He grimaced in self-mockery. ‘And what do you do for yourself, Emma?’
She glanced around for her daughter. ‘I am also a mother.’
He smiled down at her perplexed frown. ‘A mother, yes, and a good one, I think. And for Emma—the woman?’
She narrowed her eyes at him and declined to answer, preferring to fire it back at him. ‘What do you do for the man, Gianni?’
Someone called out to her and she looked away. And then she smiled at him and was gone. He watched her go. Couldn’t not watch her. An intriguing and magnetic woman he hadn’t expected to meet. But his life would never change.
CHAPTER TWO
TWO hours later Emma found herself looking around for Gianni.
He would be gone tomorrow, which was as well because the fascination inside her seemed to revel in every brooding glance he sent her way. There was an escalating excitement in her stomach unlike anything she’d felt before, and as she checked on her daughter, she
realised that she missed seeing Gianni in her peripheral vision.
She needed to remember he’d go back to the drama and tension of emergency rescue with the international taskforce that Angus had retired from five years ago and she’d go back to her work.
But her mind wasn’t ready to relegate Gianni to a past experience. And she rearranged the knowledge she had in her brain and teased at it as if she could glean more.
So Angus had dragged the barely conscious Italian from the rubble and inspired him. Well, it had certainly sparked an unlikely friendship between the two men. And there was at least a ten-year gap in their ages.
Where had she been ten years ago when that had happened?
At school certainly. Not a teen mother yet. Her own mother still well and oblivious to the cloud that would destroy her life and cast a shadow over her family. But she wouldn’t go there.
When this Italian intruder was gone, Emma would go back to life in Lyrebird Lake as if he’d never been, which was a good thing.
Ah. There he was. She found him talking to Angus and as if he’d felt her gaze he looked up. For a moment their eyes held and then Angus said something else and Gianni looked away. Hurriedly she walked on and berated herself for being drawn to him. But what could a girl do when she found herself so aware of a man?
Since their first conversation, whenever she’d moved to another group to talk, shortly afterwards he too would arrive to join the circle and always that thrum of awareness rumbled between them. He’d seemed no more than a few steps away from her all afternoon, despite the fact he barely spoke to her. She sifted through everything Angus had told her as she waited for him to come to her again. Strange how she knew he would.
‘So you’ll be gone tomorrow,’ she said without preamble when he appeared to stand beside her.
‘That is true.’
A tennis ball from the cricket game rolled to her feet like a faceless yellow bird and she picked it up and tossed it back to the bowler, glad of the distraction while she bolstered up her courage. ‘It’s a shame you can’t stay a while and see more of the area around Lyrebird Lake.’
His glance swept over her. ‘If I had known it would be so beautiful here I would not have made plans.’ He smiled. ‘Would you have shown me around, Emma?’
She could have found a little time. If he was that attracted to the place, why leave so quickly? ‘Perhaps. And your plans can’t be changed?’
He gestured fatalistically with his hands and she had to smile at the pure Mediterranean gesture. ‘I go to see my brother. It is arranged. We haven’t spoken in years. It is time.’
More snippets of the man. ‘Did you fall out? Is he married?’
‘Such questions.’ But he smiled as he said it. ‘He too has lost his wife now, so the reason for our disagreement is past.’ That sounded even more intriguing and just a little tough on the poor wife, but she hesitated to persist. She was glad she hadn’t offended him with her inquisitiveness.
But everything about him spoke of a different culture, a different life experience, and sometimes she despaired of ever experiencing a world away from Lyrebird Lake. She’d begun to think that she’d pinned her lack of experience of the world onto Gianni’s multiculturalism and that was what was drawing her to him. It was as good a reason as any.
Maybe it was the fact that he was going that gave her permission to try and peer into that other world. She couldn’t ever remember being so fascinated by a man as this Gianni. ‘Tell me what it was like, growing up in Italy. Tell me about your parents.’
She suddenly realised how bold that sounded. ‘I’m not normally nosy. But you intrigue me.’ She frowned at herself and shook her head again. ‘Please don’t answer if you prefer not to.’
He smiled sardonically and raised his impossibly black eyebrows. ‘And if I don’t, will you walk away?’
She almost said maybe, and then corrected herself. She had never been a coquette. Why lie? She smiled. ‘Of course not.’ He was too compelling.
He shrugged his impossibly broad shoulders as if to say he couldn’t imagine why she would be interested but he would humour her. ‘Then I will tell you a little. My parents were both doctors but died in a boating accident when I was a teenager. I was held above the water, unconscious, by my brother until help came.’
‘That must have been heartbreaking for two teenage boys.’
He nodded. ‘If I had not hit my head, perhaps we could have saved them both, but that is all in the past.’ The bleakness was back in his eyes and she’d wished she could retract her question about his parents. Not all of those memories were in the past. She resisted the urge to touch his shoulder in sympathy.
But he went on, almost as if he too was aware time was running out for both of them. ‘Leon, older by two years than I, runs the Bonmarito Private Hospitals in Rome. In our family it is our custom for the sons to attend medical school and then marry the wife chosen by the family.’
She couldn’t imagine being married to a man she barely knew, especially one as blatantly masculine as this man, but bizarrely she had no problem picturing the scenario.
‘So you and Leon did that? Yours was an arranged marriage?’ When he nodded she shook her head. What must his wife have thought as he’d approached the marriage bed? Or had she been glad he had been young and handsome? ‘Si. And no prospect of divorce if it didn’t work in the beginning.’ He watched her shock with a flicker of sardonic amusement. Even at her expense, she was glad to see him lighten his mood a little. ‘The statistics for good marriages in my country are similar to yours,’ he said.
‘And was your marriage a happy one?’
The bleakness swept back into his eyes. ‘By the time she died I had fallen in love with my wife. Yes.’
Ouch. Conversation stopper. What was she doing asking such personal questions? And at a funeral? Weren’t they all depressed enough?
The last golden rays of the sun began to dust the trees across the lake and it was time for the party to break up. Time for her to say goodbye to this tragically enigmatic Italian and get on with her own life.
‘Thank you for your company, Gianni. I’ve enjoyed talking to you. I hope I haven’t annoyed you with my silly questions.’ She smiled at him but didn’t offer her hand. Pure self-preservation on her part. ‘Have a safe trip home.’
She looked across to the activity. ‘I must help clear up. Louisa is going to Angus and Mia’s house for tonight.’ Emma could see Misty and Montana gathering glasses and plates from benches.
Gianni nodded and inclined his head as he watched her walk away. Such things he’d not spoken of for years. His words escaping from his mouth like suddenly released prisoners. It was a wonder she hadn’t run away from him, not walked. He shook his head and glanced around, looking for Angus. Angus waved at the bench he wanted to move and Gianni strode across, glad to have something physical he could do.
They brought the last of the chairs inside as Montana touched Emma’s shoulder for attention. He couldn’t help but overhear.
‘Emma. I know it’s a favour, but I wondered if Grace could sleep over with Dawn tonight…’ Montana pointed out of the kitchen window to the veranda. ‘She’s really missing Ned. I think a little friend might help just for tonight.’
Angus had told him Montana had been the first midwife to board in Ned and Louisa’s home and Dawn had been a baby then.
He watched Emma glance out the kitchen window at the two earnest young heads together on the swing.
She nodded and he heard her say, ‘That’s fine. We were having an early night anyway. I’m taking her up to see Mum tomorrow afternoon.’ Then he had the next piece of furniture to move and the rest of the conversation was lost.
In her peripheral vision Emma saw Gianni and Angus move outside to search for more chairs and suddenly it was easier to concentrate. Montana nodded her thanks. ‘How is your mother?’
Emma thought of waving hands and erratic attempts to walk. ‘She didn’t seem as sad last week, but her m
oods swing pretty wildly. I just wish I could keep her at home but she’s even too much in the care she’s in sometimes. I don’t know what I’ll do if she has to leave the centre in Brisbane. And Dad misses the lake.’
Montana hugged her. ‘There’s no easy answer and we’ll be here for you if you need to talk.’
‘I know.’ Emma shook off the melancholy of worry that she worked so hard to hide and returned to the practical. ‘What time do you want me to pick up Grace in the morning?’
‘It’s Saturday. Sleep in. We’ll go shopping early and I’ll drop her home before lunch, if that’s okay.’
Emma nodded as Louisa came back into the kitchen with her overnight bag and suddenly everyone was ready to leave.
Home wasn’t far and Emma declined the offer of a lift in Montana’s bus-like vehicle. The evening was cool and it would be good to clear her head in the twilight breeze. To have space to mull over the day on the silent walk home.
The sudden loud snap of a breaking twig pierced her reverie and her head flew up. Then she heard the unmistakable scrape of a shoe on gravel behind her just before a tall shadow loomed over her.
Emma’s heart flipped like those silver fish did every afternoon in the lake and her hand came up to her throat as if to hold back a squeak. Up until now the idea of being nervous of the encroaching darkness had never crossed her mind. This was Lyrebird Lake and the safest place she knew. But at that moment her heart galloped crazily as she tried to pierce the gloom to see the person’s identity.
‘Who is looking after you?’ Gianni spoke quietly, but there was a tinge of outrage in his voice.
She peered through the dimness and confirmed it was his face. ‘Gianni!’ Her shoulders dropped as she breathed heavily out in an exasperated sigh. ‘Around here we don’t sneak up and scare people. As long as no one does what you just did, I don’t need looking after.’ She sighed again as her pulse rate settled. She tapped her chest as if to reassure her heart all was well. ‘You frightened the life out of me.’ She started to walk again.
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