by Julia James
She sat numb, her face drained of colour. Remorselessly he went on.
‘It’s an expensive journey, from the UK to Australia. And you were raised in a council flat, weren’t you? So there wasn’t any spare money around. Certainly not enough to fund not only getting to Australia but the lavish lifestyle you enjoyed there. Because you lived it up royally there, didn’t you, Celeste? First-class hotels and resorts, travelling right across the continent, from Perth to the Great Barrier Reef. It must have cost thousands. Thousands upon thousands! Especially,’ he finished, ‘when there were two of you to pay for...’
Her hands were clenched on her bag, her knuckles white. She knew what was coming next—knew he must have discovered everything, since he had found out so much already.
He spoke gently. Quietly. And so, so carefully.
‘I’ve seen her death certificate, Celeste. My researchers in Australia obtained an official copy and sent it to me. I’ve brought it with me.’ He reached inside his jacket, took out a folded document, unfolded it slowly.
‘I don’t want to see it!’ Her voice was high-pitched.
‘And I have your father’s, too,’ he said, his eyes never leaving hers. But they were gentle now, like his voice. ‘They were both signed at the same registrar’s office in New South Wales—fifteen years apart.’
He paused again.
‘You told me about your father, Celeste. You told me that he’d drowned in a rough sea. But you did not say that he drowned while he was rescuing another surfer who had got into difficulties. I’ve seen the newspaper clippings from when it happened—he was given a posthumous award. There’s a photo of your mother receiving it on his behalf. You’re holding her hand—you were two years old.’
‘I’ve seen it!’ she cried, her voice anguished. ‘I’ve seen it so many times. My mother treasured it! And I can’t bear to see it again! She cried every time she looked at it. Every time! She loved him so much!’
She felt her hand being taken. Loosened from her clenched grip on her bag.
‘Loved him so much,’ echoed Rafael, in that same gentle voice that was a torment to hear, ‘that she wanted to go back to Australia to die in the same place he had.’
His eyes went to the death certificate for Celeste’s mother. Forty-two years old. No age to die. His eyes shadowed. But then cancer found its victims at every stage of their lives. His eyes lifted to Celeste. There were tears in her eyes now.
Gently he squeezed her hand, and she could feel his warmth, his strength running into her. Giving her the strength to speak at last.
After so many years.
‘She was diagnosed when she was already terminal,’ she said. ‘Ovarian cancer is like that—the silent killer, it’s called, because its symptoms are so hard to spot. Especially if, like Mum, you ignore them.’ She swallowed. ‘It’s the reason I have routine ultrasound scans every year—to spot it early if it starts in me, too. Mum made me promise—she dreaded the same thing happening to me as had to her.’
Her voice was low and halting, but she went on. Forcing herself to speak. To relive the fear and the anguish and the grief and the loss. ‘She left Australia straight after my father’s funeral. She couldn’t bear to be there any more, without him. But after she was diagnosed, and knew she could not survive, she wanted to go back—to die in the place he’d loved so much that had killed him in the end. And she wanted to do what they’d done for their honeymoon—backpack all around Australia, seeing everything, thinking they had all the time in the world to live together for all the years to come. But all they got was a bare three years.’
‘So you took her back there, didn’t you?’ said Rafael quietly. ‘You took her back and went with her all around the country, retracing the journey she’d taken with your father. And then you went to the surf spot he loved so much, when she got weaker and weaker, and she died there. And you buried her next to him. And they lie there together, Celeste—side by side, at the sea’s edge.’
She was weeping now, the tears running silently down her cheeks. He brushed them with his fingers and her face buckled more.
‘It was to pay for all of that that you did what you did. That you became a summer bride.’
She was silent. She could not speak.
‘You said...’ He spoke carefully, for this was very, very important. ‘You said that you did it because you wanted money fast. But what you did not say was why.’
She looked at him. ‘What difference does it make?’ she said, and her eyes had that deadened expression in them now. ‘You asked if I regretted doing it—and I don’t. I made the decision I needed to make, and I would do the same again. And I have no remorse, or regret—not a single shred! If I could have done it differently, I would have. But this was the only way.’
He dropped her hand. Got to his feet in a jerking movement. Stared down at her.
‘What difference does it make?’ he echoed. ‘How can you even think that, let alone believe it?’ His eyes flashed. ‘It makes all the difference in the world!’
‘No, it doesn’t!’ Her own eyes flashed now, with hatred—hatred for herself and what she had done, for what she would do again without the slightest hesitation or remorse or regret. ‘I still did it! I still sold myself for sex! A summer bride. I was driven out to some villa at the edge of the city and I went through a travesty of a ceremony, in a language I didn’t understand and didn’t need to, because all that was required of me was that I did what I had been paid to do—paid to do!’
She took a ragged, ravaging breath.
‘And to ensure I was docile and submissive I was given something to drink every night—something like roofies, I suppose. It turned everything into a kind of fog and I was so, so grateful. Because it blurred everything...everything that was going on...everything that was done to me...’
Her voice changed, he could hear it, and her gaze now followed the long, dark tunnel leading back into her past.
‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘I had to wait. In a courtyard, on a terrace or a rooftop. I don’t remember too well.’ Her face furrowed. ‘I just remember that it was cold, and I was given some kind of wrap. And I used to look up and see stars. Stars that were very far away. I liked that. I liked that they were so far away...so far away from everything that I was doing...’
She stopped, and yet again her voice changed, becoming a kind of harsh whisper.
‘I wanted to be part of the heavens. I wanted to be taken up there—away from everything down here on the earth, away from everything that was happening to me. I wanted to be amongst the stars—as far away as they were. Because I could not bear what was happening.’
She swallowed. ‘Except it was happening...and I had to let it happen...or else my mother would die without seeing again the one place in the world where she had been happy, without getting to the one place in the world where she wanted to die—’
She stopped again, and this time she did not continue.
Rafael reached his hands down to her, taking both of hers so that her handbag fell to the floor, unregarded. He drew her up, still holding her hands.
‘I want you to understand something,’ he said. ‘Something that is very, very important for you to understand.’ He spoke carefully, because what he said now was the most important thing he would say in all his life. ‘We are judged, Celeste, not only by our acts, but by our reasons for those acts. It is the deed and the intent for that deed. Do you understand me? Do you understand?’
His voice was shaking with the immensity of what he had to get across, what he had to make her comprehend, even though she was looking at him with a deadened blankness in her eyes that was like a knife in his body.
‘It is because you did what you did not for yourself but for your dying mother that it is entirely and totally different! You forced yourself to do something that repelled you so much it traumatise
d you for years! It shut you in a prison of celibacy, cut you off from all normal relationships! That isn’t the reaction of someone who has no regrets because they don’t consider they did anything they didn’t want to do!’
He took a ragged breath, clasped his hands around the cusps of her shoulders. ‘To think that you stood here and compared yourself to Madeline! Insisted you were exactly the same! God Almighty—if you had only told me that night what you’ve told me now—what I had to find out for myself once my imbecilic brain had finally worked out what the hell was going on in your head! What had gone on in your life. Because if you had...’
His voice changed. Now it had a timbre in it that found its way into her nerveless body as she stood like a limp rag, scarcely able to keep standing without his hold on her.
‘If you had, then I would have done what I will do now, my most precious Celeste,’ he said.
And now his eyes were changing, too. The blaze of anger in them—anger at her silence, at his own unforgivable stupidity and blindness—was gone now, and in its place was not a fire, but a glow...a glow as warm as the palms of his hands curved over her shoulders.
‘I would have begged your forgiveness for not trusting you, not trusting everything I knew about you, not trusting everything we had together. I would have begged you, implored you, to come back to me.’
His eyes poured down into hers, reaching to her heart.
‘I would have begged you, implored you,’ he said softly, ‘to love me as I love you, as I always will love you, for your heart alone.’
He kissed her softly and cherishingly.
She looked up at him, not daring to believe. ‘I saw the revulsion in your eyes.’ Her voice was low, and shaken. ‘I saw it when you told me about Madeline. When I told you about myself.’
He looked down at her. ‘Do you see it now?’ he asked. ‘Do you see anything but love, Celeste?’ He shook his head. ‘You will never see it. Never see anything but love for all our days. What you did,’ he said, ‘took courage I doubt many could find, and I have for you, my most precious Celeste, only the deepest respect. I told you once, when I was condemning Madeline, that I would never condemn any woman who was driven into prostitution by desperation. Do you think you were different? Do you think you did it for any other reason than to give to your mother her dying wish?’ His gaze poured into hers. ‘What you did, you did as an act of love,’ he said.
He did not wait for her to answer. Waited only to see the darkness in her eyes finally start to clear. Letting back in the light of life. Of love.
Then, and only then, did he sweep her into his arms and hold her close, so very close, against his heart. Where he would keep her for ever.
She was weeping now, he could tell. Her thin body shuddered as he wrapped her against him. He let her weep, holding her safe in his arms. And when she was done and she lifted her head, her cheeks stained with tears, her eyes clinging to his just as her body clung to his, he looked down at her.
‘Shall we go now?’ he said, his voice still soft, still cherishing. ‘Shall we go together, as we shall be from now on—where we belong, with each other?’
He smoothed her hair, kissed her again, then loosed his arms and simply took her hand. He bent to pick up her handbag and gave it to her. Then he walked with her to the door and picked up her suitcase.
She looked at him, her heart beating...soaring... Soaring like a bird towards the heavens... Leaving the past behind—for ever, this time...
‘Where?’ she breathed.
Her eyes were wide—wide with hoping, with finally daring to believe. To believe everything he was telling her.
‘Into our future,’ he told her.
EPILOGUE
THE WARM BREEZE lifted the fine netting of her veil. Through its misted folds Celeste could see the brilliant sunlit cobalt-blue of the Pacific. Feel the warmth of the sunshine on her face as she gazed towards the gazebo at the end of the pathway. Its position was perfect, framed by white bougainvillaea, enclosed in a little private glade from the rest of the gardens, and with the vista of the ocean behind it.
But it was not the gazebo that held her gaze. It was the man waiting for her.
Rafael—her beloved Rafael! Who had freed her with his love—freed her to love him as he, as she knew from every loving glance he gave her, loved her.
Her heart constricted. How much she loved him! How very, very much! He was looking back to her now, his dark eyes smiling with all the love in them that she had in hers for him. The priest was waiting for her and she started to walk forward, as tall and graceful as a lily in her wedding gown. Soft Hawaiian music played from hidden speakers and the scent of exotic blooms wafted to her.
She reached Rafael’s side and stood beside him, her heart singing with happiness. They had eyes only for each other. When the service began she gave her responses clear and low, as his were clear and resonant. She could feel her heart swell.
Then, at last, as the priest raised his hand in blessing of them both, Rafael’s mouth dipped to hers.
‘Señora Sanguardo...’ he whispered to her.
‘For ever,’ she whispered back.
Then, hand in hand, they walked back with the priest to the wedding breakfast that awaited them. And to the rest of their life together.
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from A CLASH WITH CANNAVARO by Elizabeth Power.
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CHAPTER ONE
LAUREN RECOGNISED THE man as soon as he stepped out of the car, a shining silver monster of a thing that looked incongruous against the rustic outbuildings of the Cumbrian farmhouse and the verdant slopes of the fells above its wet slate roofline.
It was the man striding across the yard with his hair blowing like an untamed mane in the wind that her gaze was fixed on, however, as she finished securing the stable door for the night.
Tall, lean, in his early thirties, his expensive tailoring could do nothing to conceal a physique honed to prime strength and unquestionable fitness, or those shoulders which were wide enough to eclipse the moon. But he was a man she had never expected—or hoped—ever to see again, and she watched his approach now with a leap of something electric lighting her wary green gaze.
‘Hello, Lauren.’
If she was lost for words, then it was only because she was shocked to see him there on her Lakeland property. A property on which her late parents had blown all their savings to chase a dream of self-sufficiency—a dream that had never quite lived up to its promise and which was a world away from the glamorous capitals of Europe and the far-flung playgrounds of the mega-rich that the man before her inhabited.
‘Emiliano!’ She could have kicked herself for sounding so breathless and for wishing that she was wearing something other than her vest top and dungarees, or even that she had had a chance to comb her hair. After being out in the damp air, checking on the horses she stabled for the few paying customers who helped subsidise her meagre income from the local garden centre, she knew the flaming waves were falling untidily about her shoulders in a blaze of ungoverned fire. ‘What are you doing here?’
A definite wobble weakened the challenge in her voice. But then it wasn’t ever
y day that she found herself facing Emiliano Cannavaro, Italian shipping magnate and steel-hard billionaire. The man who had taken the already international freight and ferry line his grandfather had founded and turned it into a global giant, spearheaded by a fleet of luxury cruise liners. A man who had used his Continental charm and his chocolate-rich voice to lure her into his bed, only to discard her in the most degrading and humiliating way after the marriage of her sister, Vikki, to his younger brother, Angelo, two years ago.
‘We have to talk,’ he said.
She had forgotten how tall he was, and how, without the benefit of high heels, she only just reached his shoulder. What she hadn’t forgotten was how it made her stomach flip just to look up into his olive-skinned features—features that had been redeemed from being too handsome by that slight bump in his nose, and by the glaring virility in that clean-shaven, yet heavily shadowed angular jaw.
She cupped a hand over her eyes to shield them from the low evening sun. ‘What about?’ Her tone was accusatory as she did her best to ignore the effect his sudden appearance was having on her.
‘About Daniele.’
Eyes fringed by lashes only a shade darker than her hair regarded him suspiciously. ‘Danny?’ Her voice cracked as she felt the burn of his hard masculine scrutiny over the flushed, perfect heart shape of her face.
With unsettling thoroughness he was taking in her rebellious green eyes, small chin and slightly turned-up nose with its cluster of freckles that her mother used to say was a sprinkling of stardust, before his gaze dropped with unconcealed insolence to her mouth. It was a full mouth, usually marked by a natural curve, but at this moment was definitely hinting at mutiny as his eyes came to rest disconcertingly on hers again.
