Luke looked as stunned as Amy felt and the chill of the night had increased dramatically. How long had they been standing, locked in each other’s arms?
With a final, faintly shocked glance at each other, they continued walking. Silently.
Was Luke trying to absorb the startling effect of that kiss, as she was? She couldn’t resist a tiny glance up at his face. If he hadn’t believed in magic before, surely he was at least giving it some head room right now?
It was only a short distance from the tree beneath which they’d been kissing to the house on Sullivan Avenue, but if Luke had been as unaware as Amy of his feet actually touching the ground, he was giving no sign of it. When he eventually spoke, it was to express disbelief certainly, but the tone suggested anything but pleasure.
‘Unbelievable!’ The word was outraged.
The tension in the tall body beside Amy gave out vibrations that she responded to automatically. It was a rather similar sinking sensation to the one she’d experienced the other night, when she’d known she’d just touched a sterile object and brought a critical medical procedure to a screaming halt.
‘What’s wrong—?’ Amy had to stop herself adding his name. It felt like it would be natural to call him Luke, but she couldn’t, could she? And she could hardly call him Mr Harrington now. Not after he’d just kissed her so thoroughly!
Amy was following his line of vision even as the confused thoughts were jumbling in her mind. She could see his car. A gorgeous, low-slung, sporty model in an unusual shade of smoky blue.
Very low slung.
‘Oh, no!’ Amy breathed. Both the tyres she could see were as flat as pancakes.
Two brisk strides took Luke to the other side of his vehicle.
‘Four flat tyres! This is deliberate vandalism,’ he pronounced. His gaze snapped in two directions as he scanned the rest of the street. ‘And mine seems to have been the only vehicle targeted.’ He glared at Amy. ‘I wonder why?’
‘It does stand out,’ she ventured. ‘It’s the only convertible and the colour is unusual.’
Luke said nothing and Amy squirmed inwardly. Oh, Robert, she thought in dismay. This was so not the way to express antagonism.
‘Let’s go inside, shall we?’ Luke suggested dryly. ‘I need to call a cab.’
He should have been as mad as hell about what had been done to his car.
Curiously, he actually experienced a flash of something that felt like gratitude for an excuse to follow Amy back into that house.
To stay close to her for just a little longer.
Luke was feeling slightly dizzy again. The way he had when Margaret had told him the house was full of children and Italian women. As though the very foundations of his world were being rocked.
And so they were.
It might have started when he’d recognised how attractive Amy was but the Richter scale had increased exponentially with that kiss.
Luke was feeling things right now that he had absolutely no experience with.
Intense, dangerous things.
They led to a place he’d never ventured into because he’d learned long ago that, if you were self-disciplined enough, you could keep yourself safe from that dangerous place.
Safe from nasty things. Boarding school had cemented that lesson. And he’d already known that things that were too nice were also to be avoided. The hedonistic pleasures that were the stuff of irrational desires and behaviour. The benefits of a lifestyle that kept you safe from those places had been breathed in with the very air of his childhood.
Could he distract himself now?
Possibly.
Did he want to make any effort to do so?
No. Not just yet, anyway.
How could he, after that kiss? He was bewitched by a combination of the bizarre events that had unfolded since he’d left work for the day. It would wear off. Daylight would dispel the feeling of unreality. Even electric light might help.
Amy pulled off her woolly hat when they were inside the kitchen again. Wisps of dark hair escaped the plait and curled around her race, still picking up the inadequate light from the single bulb enough to gleam. Then she poked up the inside of the range, adding more fuel, and the fire tinged her face with a rosy glow.
Extra light wasn’t helping. Luke’s fingers were coming back to life now, stinging and burning at their tips. His lips had a similar tingling going on but he knew that wasn’t from the recent, subzero environment. They were remembering that extraordinary kiss.
Wanting more.
‘Sit down,’ Amy invited. ‘You must be totally frozen. I’ll make some hot chocolate.’ She put the kettle onto the stove and then moved to pick up another object as she walked towards Luke. ‘Here’s the phone. Why don’t you call for a taxi while I just check on the children?’
She was back within a couple of minutes. ‘They’re all sound asleep,’ she reported. ‘Zoe’s crashed in my bed so I’ll use Uncle Vanni’s room for the rest of the night.’ She busied herself making a hot drink, spooning chocolate powder into mugs, wrapping a cloth around the handle of the kettle before pouring the boiling water and then opening a refrigerator to extract a carton of milk.
Ordinary movements but Luke found himself watching as though she was performing a magic show.
‘Will the taxi be very long?’ she asked.
‘I haven’t called them yet.’
She almost spilt the mugs of hot chocolate as she carried them to the table. She set them down carefully but the wobble in her voice gave away her nervous reaction.
‘How come?’
‘I want to talk to you.’
Amy sat down. She put her hands around her mug as though she needed the comfort of its warmth. She hung her head, pretending to inhale the rich aroma.
‘The house,’ she said finally.
Luke couldn’t resist the opportunity. ‘Amongst other things.’
Sure enough, her face lifted and he got a clear view of her eyes. The connection he was looking for caught instantly and, for a moment, Luke just went with it—torn between amazement and being appalled at the power he could sense.
Another dimension was there. Just waiting for him to step into it and to take that first step. All he needed to do was make physical contact. He could reach out and cover one of Amy’s hands with his. Or stand up and pull her into his arms. Feel the…
‘O-other things?’ Amy’s voice had a strangled quality.
With enormous difficulty, Luke broke the pull of the eye contact and stifled the first response that came to mind. The desire to talk about that kiss. About whether it had had the same kind of effect on her as it had done on him. About whether she would be interested in…Hell, he couldn’t go there, could he?
Not with the obstacle of the intentions with which he had come to this house. He needed to ground himself. To remember why his life had intersected with Amy’s in the first place.
‘Tell me about your Uncle Vanni,’ he commanded.
That should do it. He could listen to an account of his father’s life. A happy life, no doubt, that had never included his own son. Involuntarily, Luke’s gaze slid sideways—to where the flap of his coat hung around the back of the chair. To the pocket hiding that stolen article.
‘Poor Uncle Vanni,’ Amy said softly. ‘He never recovered from losing the love of his life. Both of them, in fact.’ Her gaze was accusing.
Luke could feel the hairs prickling on his neck again—the way they had when he’d seen that photograph. He was staring at a can of worms here and Amy had her hand on the lid, so to speak. Did he really want her to open it?
‘What do you mean?’ he asked, his voice harsh. ‘Women?’
Amy shook her head. ‘There was only ever one woman for Uncle Vanni. The other love of his life was his son. You.’
Luke couldn’t meet her gaze. He didn’t believe it. He couldn’t afford to. It was doing more than rocking the foundations of his world. This had the potential to rip deep, dangerous crevasses in t
hose foundations.
‘Tell me,’ he commanded gruffly. ‘The story as you heard it.’
‘OK.’ Amy took a deep breath. ‘Uncle Vanni fell madly in love with Caroline. He was working in a vineyard at the time, in northern Italy, and Caroline had been sent to this posh finishing school nearby. She was only eighteen and she had to go home but then she discovered she was pregnant and all hell broke loose.’
Luke found himself nodding slowly. He could imagine how that news would have gone down. His grandmother would have considered her daughter’s life ruined.
‘Caroline ran away,’ Amy continued. ‘Back to Italy. She married Uncle Vanni and they had a gorgeous baby and they were blissfully happy, even though they didn’t have much money.’
They had certainly looked blissfully happy in that photograph.
‘So what happened?’
‘There was a dreadful accident. Their car was really old and the brakes failed on a mountain road. They were all badly injured. Caroline died just a few hours later and Uncle Vanni was evacuated to a big hospital in Milan. He was in Intensive Care for weeks and in the hospital for nearly six months. It was two years before he could work again and he had trouble with his back and feet for the rest of his life. Lived in slippers did Uncle Vanni.’
Luke pushed the image of those comfortable slippers from his mind. Then he cleared his throat.
‘And…and the baby?’
‘Caroline had her passport because they had been planning to cross the border at some point. They’d been married for three years or so by then but were going on their first real holiday. Anyway, the hospital and the police tracked down her family and her mother apparently arrived the next day. She arranged a medical escort and took both the baby and Caroline’s body back to England.’
‘And then?’ Luke had to clench his fists to stop himself touching that scar beside his left eyebrow.
‘It was months before Uncle Vanni was fit to travel but as soon as he could, he came to England to try and find his son.’ Amy raised her eyes to Luke’s and he could see the moisture shining in them. Could hear the catch in her voice that seemed to be attached by an invisible sting to his own heart. It tugged.
‘Do you know, even more than thirty years later, Uncle Vanni couldn’t talk about any of this without breaking down? He was in a really bad way when he got to this country. Broken in body and spirit. It took huge courage to go to Caroline’s home and face her mother and when he did, he was told that his son’s injuries had been too severe. Despite the best medical care the Harringtons could access, that little boy had died a week or so after they brought him back.’
Luke’s mouth opened. He snapped it shut again. What could he say? Amy was clearly telling the truth as she knew it. What good would it do to tell her that his grandmother valued honesty above everything?
‘He never went back to Italy. For a few years he just existed in London. He had a job as a school caretaker and he lived in a bedsit in some horrible high-rise. My mother found him when we came to live in London and he gradually became part of our family.’ Amy took a deep breath and then gave her head a tiny shake. ‘Anyway…My dad was a policeman and there was a job one night when these kids had to be taken into care. There was a big mix-up and Dad ended up bringing them home for the night. The youngest was a boy who was about three years old and he homed in on Uncle Vanni and climbed up on his knee. Looking back, I suspect that was the turning point but unfortunately things got worse before they got better.’
‘How so?’
‘My dad got killed on duty. Shot. I was nine. Mum was going to pack us all up and move back to Italy, but she’s never been very good at making decisions and then acting on them. She had to rely on Uncle Vanni and he finally started to come out of the depression he’d been struggling with for so long. And then he got the “great idea”.’
‘Which was?’
Amy stopped and took a sip of her drink and then continued. ‘He decided that if his own son was lost to him, rather than waste the rest of his life, he’d spend it looking after children that other people didn’t want. But he couldn’t do it by himself. He needed my mother as part of the family to get approval to be a foster-parent himself. He found this house and persuaded her to stay at least for a while and that’s where it all started. It’s been my life ever since.’
‘But your uncle’s dead now.’
‘My mother is just as passionate about these children as he was. When he was dying, she promised she would look after them as if they were her own. And they are, really. She loves them. We all love them.’
‘So why didn’t he do something about protecting them? Legally?’
‘You mean, the will? I have my own theory about that.’ Amy’s smile was poignant.
‘Which is?’
‘Uncle Vanni was a wonderful man. He’d do anything for anyone, but he wasn’t perfect by any means and he had a bad habit of convincing himself that he’d done things because he had intended to do them.’ Amy stuck her tongue into her cheek as she pondered and Luke felt an odd twist in his gut as he watched.
‘Like—he’d be given a chore like posting a letter or taking out the rubbish and he’d say he’d done it. And then, when he was asked if he’d done it, he’d sneak off and actually get it done before he got caught out. I was there once when he put his hand in his pocket and found a letter he’d forgotten to post and he winked at me, like it was our secret. The thing is, he was a hopeless liar. The real secret was that we all knew. Asking him if he’d done something was just a reminder but he would always say he’d done it because he didn’t like to let anyone down and he always intended to do it.’
‘So you think he intended to make a new will and didn’t get around to it.’
Amy nodded. ‘And nobody would have reminded him because anything to do with death was so upsetting for him. It would remind him of what he’d lost. Maybe that was the reason he couldn’t bring himself to actually go and do it. Or maybe he just kept putting it off, telling himself there was plenty of time.’
‘Only there wasn’t.’
‘No. It was so sudden. A massive stroke. They kept him on life support for a couple of days but then we had to let him go.’
Luke was silent. He was struggling with this. Clearly, Amy believed she was telling the truth. The story rang with the resonance of truth and he could sense that faded photograph hidden in his coat pocket. The evidence all around him supported Amy’s account. And ‘Uncle Vanni’ had been a hopeless liar, so he must have believed he was telling the truth.
But if it was true, it went against everything Luke had been brought up to believe was true, and it threatened to cut deeply into the respect he had for the woman who’d raised him.
Things that had been so black and white—like the values he’d based his life on—were being held up for inspection and, instead of the solid foundation he’d believed them to be, they were shaky.
Flawed?
Luke didn’t like that notion. It would mean that a part of himself was potentially just as flawed, and he wasn’t ready to accept that.
He got slowly to his feet. ‘I don’t think I’ll bother waiting for a taxi,’ he said. ‘I’ll walk.’
‘Is it far?’
Far enough to give him time to think, at least. Luke put his coat on. He picked up his scarf and gloves. ‘I won’t get cold this time.’
Amy went to the door with him. She seemed tired, which was hardly surprising given that it was after 3:00 a.m. now, but it was more than that. She was sad. Did she miss the father figure she’d had in her life?
At least she’d known him.
‘You need to rest,’ Luke told her.
They were close again. Too close. The temptation to kiss her again enveloped Luke with painful intensity.
‘I will,’ Amy said. ‘I’ll call Lizzie’s first, though, and see how Summer’s doing.’
‘I’ll check on her first thing. I’ll be back at work by 6:00 a.m.’
‘Maybe you s
hould just stay here. You’re not going to get much sleep after walking home.’
‘I might go back to Lizzie’s and use the on-call room.’ The temptation was strangling Luke. He couldn’t stay here and keep his hands off this woman.
But he had to pause, once more, as he stepped out into the night because the soft sound of Amy’s voice was arresting.
‘He did love you,’ she said quietly. ‘Luca.’
There it was again. That name. That pronunciation. Pulling him…somewhere.
Somewhere he couldn’t go because he had no idea how to get there.
And it was too disturbing.
‘Did you really have no idea?’ Amy asked.
‘No.’ Luke could hear the trace of bewilderment in his own voice. ‘No idea at all.’
CHAPTER SIX
‘CHRISTMAS shopping, was it?’
‘Sorry?’ Luke turned on the water and picked up the small brush to start scrubbing in. It was 6:30 a.m. and the question from his registrar was baffling.
‘That huge carton I saw you coming out of the lift with. You looked as if it was something you were planning to hide.’
‘Mmm.’ Maybe he’d looked as furtive as he’d felt. Luke hoped he hadn’t been observed earlier, down in the bowels of St Elizabeth’s Hospital, following the directions of that cooperative cleaner to where the recycling and large items of rubbish were collected. ‘Definitely Christmas stuff,’ he said in a tone that would discourage any further questions.
‘Great time of year, isn’t it?’ his registrar said cheerfully. ‘Rather fun, hiding stuff and surprising people.’
‘Mmm.’ Luke paid careful attention to scrubbing beneath his nails. His registrar should know he wasn’t one for idle chitchat right before surgery when his focus was on what lay ahead. He certainly didn’t want to start thinking about that early morning mission because then he would start thinking about Amy. Wondering how he could present that box of decorations currently sitting in a corner of his office. Imagining the sparkle of pleasure he might see in her face.
And if he started to think about that, his mind would latch back on to what had kept him largely awake for the few hours he’d spent in the single bed the on-call room boasted. Back to that kiss. The way he had felt holding Amy in his arms. That spiral of desire—or was it actually need?—had to be firmly damped.
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