English Rose for the Sicilian Doc

by Annie Claydon

  ‘Sit down.’

  ‘Don’t you want to hold him?’

  ‘Keep your fingers in the water and sit down.’ Her words sounded pretty much like an order, but that was okay, because she wasn’t taking any argument.

  ‘Sì, capo.’ Matteo grinned, holding William steady as he sank down onto the stool.

  She knelt down, looking carefully at the sting on his leg. It was inflamed and looked painful, but there was little swelling and there were no more stingers embedded in it. ‘How long are we supposed to be doing the hot water for?’

  ‘Thirty or forty minutes.’

  ‘Right. Well, I’ll fetch a bowl from the kitchen in a minute.’ Rose turned the bath tap on, holding a flannel under the hot water and squeezing it out. Then she laid it over the sting on Matteo’s leg. ‘How’s that?’

  He nodded. ‘Better. Thanks.’

  ‘Good.’ She leaned over, wrapping her arms around both of them and kissing William.

  ‘Are you kissing me better, Mummy?’ William hadn’t seen the kiss that she’d placed on Matteo’s lips.

  Matteo shot her a smile, that lazy, come-to-bed look in his eyes. ‘Yeah. Mummy’s kissing it better.’

  * * *

  He’d applied cream to William’s leg and then a light dressing to stop him from scratching the sting, then allowed Rose to do the same with the weal on his own leg. That hadn’t been strictly necessary, but he’d seemed to want her to do it.

  ‘I should take him home.’ William was drowsy now, snuggling on her lap.

  ‘I’d rather you both stayed here. If he has any kind of secondary reaction, I can be there straight away.’

  ‘Is that likely? A secondary reaction?’

  He shook his head slowly. ‘Not really.’

  It was what they both wanted, though. No father could have done more for William than Matteo had just done and Rose wanted him close. ‘I’ll call Elena. Let her know not to expect us home tonight.’

  ‘Thanks. That would put my mind at rest.’

  Somehow it seemed that it didn’t. Matteo had seemed restless and distracted all evening, and when he went upstairs to check that William was still sleeping peacefully, Rose followed him.

  ‘He’s okay. Don’t worry.’ She reached for Matteo’s arm and felt it stiffen.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Rose.’ He wiped his hand across his face. ‘So sorry.’

  She pulled him out of the room, leaving the door ajar, and hustled him back downstairs. ‘What are you sorry for, Matteo? Being there for William when he needed you?’

  Rose had wondered whether that was what Matteo was brooding over. That this evening had made the truth far too clear to him, and that he could no longer pretend that he wasn’t getting attached to William. But he shook his head.

  ‘I shouldn’t have let him walk ahead of us like that. I should have been watching him.’

  ‘That’s my job, isn’t it?’

  ‘I live here. I know the dangers from jellyfish.’

  ‘So do I. And so does William, I’ve made sure he does.’ Rose sat down on the long sofa, hoping he might come and sit beside her. ‘If anyone was to blame it was me. I’m the one who was able to see the wretched thing.’

  He turned away, hands in pockets, looking out at the sea through the long windows. There was something else, and if he wouldn’t come to her then she’d go to him. She walked over to stand beside him, laying her hand on his back.

  ‘Look, Matteo...’

  He turned, agony in his eyes. ‘I promised you that he wouldn’t come to any harm.’

  That was the crux of it. Not the jellyfish, or the fact that William had walked ahead of them on the beach. Matteo blamed himself for hurting Angela’s children, so he was blaming himself for this. There wasn’t much logic to it but, then, guilt generally wasn’t all that logical.

  ‘Listen.’ He opened his mouth to say something and she laid her finger over his lips. ‘Just be quiet and listen, will you? You made a choice this evening. You chose to take the tentacle off his leg, knowing full well it would sting your fingers. And then you chose to look after William before you bothered about yourself. Think about those choices.’

  He shrugged. ‘They weren’t actually thought-out choices.’

  ‘You could have done something else and you didn’t. That’s a choice, whether you thought about it or not.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  She puffed out an exasperated breath. If he wouldn’t face it then she’d lay it out for him, plain and simple. Rose knew enough about guilt not to want to see Matteo burdened like this.

  ‘I’m saying that the man I saw tonight didn’t stop to think, you made choices that saved my son from any more hurt, and you looked after him and comforted him. I’m sorry that Angela’s children were hurt, no child deserves that and I really wish it had been different. But seeing you with William, I just don’t believe that you didn’t do the best you could for them.’

  Rose stopped to catch her breath. When she looked up at Matteo he was smiling.

  ‘I love your fire.’

  ‘Stop it. Stop trying to change the subject. This isn’t about me.’

  Suddenly he hugged her tight. It was not so much an embrace, more two souls clinging to each other for comfort.

  ‘I could tell you the same thing, Rose. That the woman I know isn’t the one responsible for William not having a father.’

  ‘I can’t think about that, Matteo. I don’t know how to.’

  ‘And I don’t know how to start thinking about what you said. But I did hear you.’

  That was all she could ask of him. However many times Matteo showed her that he was different from Alec, Rose still couldn’t bring herself to believe that she could be any different.

  She reached up, winding her arms around his neck. ‘So now that we’ve both said what’s on our minds, will you hold me tonight? I just want to be with you.’

  It was gratifying that he hesitated, but she knew what he’d choose in the end. Matteo was just too honourable to break a promise, and simply talking about guilt didn’t wash it all away.

  ‘It’s not that I don’t want to...’

  ‘I know. I’ll sleep in the spare bedroom with William.’

  ‘You’ll call me if you’re at all worried about him.’

  ‘Of course.’

  As she lay down next to her son, curling her arms around him, Rose knew that nothing had really changed. She and Matteo had known that their relationship would have to adapt or die. And now that they’d tasted what it would be like to be a family together, they’d both drawn back from it, locked inside their own fears of failure. The best that she could hope for now was that it would adapt into the kind of friendship that they could both keep, because if it didn’t, it really would die.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THEY WERE LIKE a steam train, careening towards a brick wall. Lots of smoke and noise, which gave the impression that nothing could stop them, but ultimately the brick wall was still there. And much as he didn’t want to, Matteo had to think about it.

  He’d always known that Rose would be leaving for London, and that she was planning to be back again at some point but didn’t know when. They’d carefully avoided discussing the details, but it went without saying that their reunion would be both tender and spiced with the passion of having been apart. And just as temporary as Rose’s current stay in Sicily.

  But now that she was almost packed, and leaving had become a reality, he couldn’t just pretend it wasn’t going to happen. He didn’t want a reunion. He didn’t want a parting. Matteo still didn’t quite believe what Rose had said to him that night after William had been stung, but he was a desperate man and willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

  He took her up to the hot spring,
and they swam together. The long, sensual foreplay of sun and water on naked skin, which they’d made last for hours before now, this time seemed a little rushed. It was all beginning to lose its magic.

  ‘I will miss you, Matteo.’ It was exactly what he wanted her to say. And she said it again that evening, as they ate together on the patio, lanterns swinging in the breeze from the sea.

  ‘I’ll miss you too.’ He took a mouthful of wine, savouring the taste while the alcohol did its job and silenced some of the voices in the back of his head that said this was insanity. ‘Rose, you know that we don’t have to do this.’

  Her fork clattered onto her plate. ‘But I have to go home.’

  They’d planned it all out. And it seemed that this plan was etched in stone.

  ‘I know you do.’ He took another sip of wine. ‘But that’s not what I’m saying.’

  She looked as if she had something stuck in her throat, and Matteo wondered whether he was going to have to get up and clap her firmly on the back. A sip of her wine seemed to do the trick, though.

  ‘What exactly are you saying, Matteo?’

  ‘I’m saying that I don’t want us to end here. Or like this. I’m not going to make love to you, knowing it may be the last time. I can’t.’

  She’d gone as white as a sheet. That pale, beautiful skin that never seemed touched by the sun. ‘But... I’ll be back.’

  ‘I know that. And we’ll start all over again and then we’ll finish all over again. I don’t want that.’

  ‘We said no strings, Matteo. You can’t change the rules on me now.’

  She’d broken the rules just as much as he had. She’d made love to him as if she’d meant it. She had meant it, but Rose wouldn’t face it. ‘They’re our rules and we can change them.’

  ‘But...do you even have a plan?’

  ‘No, Rose. I don’t need a plan for everything I do...’

  Suddenly she was on her feet, turning away from him, walking away from him. And Matteo couldn’t bear it.

  ‘Don’t do that.’ He sprang to his feet, his chair falling backwards with a clatter. Marched over to where she was standing, leaning on the balustrade, looking out to sea. ‘Don’t walk away from me.’

  ‘What do you expect, Matteo?’ She turned to face him, fire in her eyes—that passion that never failed to heat his blood to boiling point. ‘What happens if it doesn’t work? If I mess up, or you mess up, or even if we both mess up. You already know what happens when a relationship breaks up and there are kids involved.’

  He was losing her. ‘Yes, I know. And I’m willing to face that risk, because I want something more.’ One last challenge. One that she surely couldn’t fail to meet. ‘Are you just too frightened to even try?’

  For a moment he thought she was going to kiss him. It was the way they’d learned to do things, to say what was on their minds and then finish it with a kiss. She was so close that he could feel her breath on his cheek.

  ‘Yes. I’m too frightened to try. And you should be too.’

  He felt in his pocket, curling his fingers around the ring, the one that he had thought he’d give her tonight as a sign that he was serious about this. He could do this. Go down on one knee in front of her and calm all her fears.

  It wouldn’t calm his fears, though. The shapeless dread that she was right, and that this really wasn’t meant to be. He took his hand back out of his pocket, leaving the ring where it was.

  She was looking up at him, obviously trying to determine what he was thinking. Suddenly, she broke away from him, picked up her bag and headed for the front door.

  ‘I won’t watch you go, Rose.’ It was an impossible dilemma. He could trust himself enough to make her stay but he couldn’t let her go either.

  ‘Then turn your back.’ She turned, jutted her chin at him stubbornly.

  ‘Don’t be crazy...’ He spread his arms in disbelief. She was bluffing. She had to be bluffing.

  ‘I’m not being crazy. You think this is easy for me? I loved every moment that we were together...’ She stopped suddenly, tears spilling from her eyes.

  ‘Turn your back!’ It was an order this time. ‘You think I can look into your face and do this?’

  The quiver of her mouth, the way she seemed to need this, made him turn. ‘Rose, please...’

  He heard her twist the catch on the door, and his heart broke. It was a terrible, tearing feeling, as if some fatal flaw line had just cracked it in two, leaving him unable to breathe and certain that nothing was ever going to be the same again.

  Matteo waited, standing stock still, long after he heard the door close behind her. As if not looking round could somehow unmake what had just happened. It wouldn’t be real until he turned and saw that Rose was gone.

  Walking back out onto the patio, without looking behind him, he picked up his glass and filled it. Tonight, just for once, the wine wasn’t about the taste or about how well it went with the food, it was about dulling the pain a little. He walked down the stone steps and onto the beach, sitting down in the sand. Feeling in his pocket, he brought out the ring, the diamond glistening in the moonlight.

  The only thing that stopped him from throwing it into the sea was that it was a family heirloom. His grandfather had given it to him, telling him that one day he’d give it to the right girl.

  ‘Wrong day. Wrong girl.’ He didn’t even know why he’d taken the ring out of its box and put it into his pocket now. It had been an impulse, formed from not wanting to part and hoping that somehow things would just work out.

  But there was no going back now. He knew that Rose didn’t want to leave, and he’d begged her to stay, but she’d left all the same. And maybe she’d had the courage to do the right thing, because for the life of him Matteo couldn’t think of a way to jump over that impossible hurdle of moving from an agreement not to commit straight into an agreement to commit everything.

  He drank a mouthful of wine, staring out across the dark sea. A shooting star arched across the sky and Matteo repeated the words of the old rhyme in a whisper that was drowned out by the crash of the waves. ‘“Stella, mia bella Stella, desidero che...”’ Star, my pretty Star, I wish...

  But tonight wasn’t La Notte di San Lorenzo, and there was no guarantee that anyone who wished on a shooting star would be granted their heart’s desire.

  Only he had been granted exactly what he’d wanted. He’d wanted yet another fleeting affair, believing that Rose would be like all the rest. Next time he would be a lot more careful what he wished for.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  ‘MUM?’ WILLIAM HAD the tone of voice that announced a question.

  ‘Yes, sweetie?’

  ‘When are we going to Sicily?’

  It was the question that Rose dreaded. ‘I don’t know, William. I have work to do here in London at the moment.’

  ‘But how am I going to play football?’

  ‘You can play with the others at kindergarten, can’t you?’

  ‘They’re no good at it.’ William put one finger to his brow, as if he’d just had a brainwave. He hadn’t quite mastered the art of working his way round to what he wanted to say yet, and pretending he’d just thought of it. ‘I’d quite like to play football with Matteo.’

  ‘Yes, I know. But he’s in Sicily and...’ Even after six weeks, her eyes still pricked with tears whenever she had to say it to William. ‘He’s in Sicily and we live in London.’

  ‘He could come to London.’

  ‘But they need him at the hospital, sweetie. All the people who are sick and he makes better.’

  ‘What about the weekend?’

  ‘It’s too far to come.’ Rose tried to inject a note of finality into her voice.

  ‘I like Sicily...’ William dragged on her hand, kicking his feet on the paving ston
es. ‘I like Matteo.’

  ‘Yes, so do I.’ Rose fixed her eyes on her own front door, two hundred yards down the street, and settled her heavy bag on her shoulder. It had been a long week. A long six weeks. All she wanted to do was to get home, give William his tea, and not have to answer any more questions.

  ‘Did you kiss him?’

  ‘What?’ Rose’s mental picture of the evening ahead had just progressed as far as curling up with William to read a bedtime story, and she was suddenly propelled out of that cosy warmth and into altogether more dangerous territory.

  ‘Kiss him. You know.’ William pressed his lips together tight, and then touched his hand to his mouth.

  ‘No. Not like that.’ It wasn’t entirely a lie. That wasn’t anything like the way that Matteo had kissed her.

  William heaved a sigh. ‘If you didn’t kiss him, then we’re not going back.’

  Perhaps it was better to let it go at that. If William’s logic made sense of it all, then that was more than she could do.

  She knew that Matteo had meant what he’d said, and that was what made it all so impossible. They would have to change both their lives irrevocably in order to stay together, and if she messed up this time, where would that leave them? It would hurt both Matteo and William, and that wasn’t something that she was prepared to do.

  ‘Tell you what, let’s go somewhere tomorrow?’

  William brightened immediately. ‘Where?’

  ‘Where would you like to go? There’s the park, or we could go to the petting zoo. Or we could go to the cinema and then go for burgers.’ Rose tried to think of all of William’s favourite places.

  ‘The...zoo.’ William let go of her hand and ran ahead of her, climbing on the front gate and letting it swing.

  If only it were that simple to stop herself from thinking about Matteo. The way he touched her, the way he made her laugh, or let her shout whatever she happened to be feeling out loud if she wanted to, and let the breeze catch it and blow it away. The way he’d started out as a lover, turned into the best friend that she’d ever had, and now into the deepest heartbreak that she could ever have imagined.