‘Of course. You can see as much of Santino as you wish,’ she said quietly. ‘I will never deny you your son, Matteo, and I hope you will see him very often, because he...he needs you. You’re his daddy.’
A lump rose in his throat as he moved away from the blaze of the fire.
‘I’d like to say goodnight to him now,’ he said and she nodded and made as if to follow him.
‘Alone,’ he gritted out.
But Matteo’s heart was heavy as he walked towards the nursery—as if a dark stone had lodged itself deep inside his chest. The night light made the room appear soft and rosy and Matteo stared down at the sleeping child. He remembered the first time he had seen him. When he had counted his fingers and toes like someone learning basic mathematics, and had felt nothing.
But not this time.
This time he could barely make out any detail of his sleeping son, his vision was so blurred. Too late, his heart had cracked open and left room for emotion to come flooding in, powerfully and painfully. And Santino stirred as Matteo’s tears fell like rain onto the delicate white shawl.
CHAPTER TWELVE
IT WAS RAINING by the time Keira got back from her walk and she had just let Charlie off his lead when she noticed the letter lying in the centre of the hall table, where Claudia must have left it. She pulled a face. Another one.
The envelope carried an Italian stamp and the airmail sticker seemed to wink at her. Quickly, she slid it into a drawer to lie on top of all the others, because she couldn’t quite bring herself to throw them away. Her reluctance to dispose of the growing pile of correspondence was just about equal to her reluctance to read them, because they were from Matteo—she recognised his handwriting. And why would she wish to read them and risk making the hole in her heart even bigger? Why was he even writing to her when she’d told him it was better if all correspondence took place between their respective solicitors? Why had he arrogantly elected to take no notice?
Because she was fighting like crazy not to go under. Not to give into the tears which pricked at her eyes at night when she lay in bed missing the warm embrace of her estranged husband. She was determined to pour all her energies into being there for Santino—into being the best mother she possibly could—and she couldn’t manage that if her heart stayed raw and aching from thinking about Matteo all the time.
She’d wondered whether his determination to keep in close contact with his son would have faded once she and Santino had left Umbria but to her surprise, it hadn’t. He’d already paid two visits and they’d only been back in England a little over a fortnight. On both those occasions she had absented herself from the house, leaving Claudia in charge of the baby—Claudia who had been happy to accompany her from Umbria when Keira had made the emotional return to her homeland.
She supposed people might think it a form of cowardice that she couldn’t bear the thought of confronting the man with whom she hadn’t even shared a wedding night. But that was too bad. It didn’t matter what anyone else thought, only what was right for her and her son. Sooner or later she hoped she’d be able to greet him with a genuine air of indifference but for now she didn’t trust herself not to burst into noisy howls of sorrow and to tell him how much she was missing him.
With the money he’d settled on her, she was renting a house. A house with a garden and a front door which wasn’t shared—the kind of house in Notting Hill where she used to drop off her prep-school charges when she was working at Luxury Limos. And she’d bought a dog, too. A scruffy little thing with a lopsided ear and the saddest eyes she’d ever seen. The staff at the rescue centre had told her he’d been badly beaten and was fearful and shy, but he had taken one look at Keira and hurled himself at her with a series of plaintive yelps. Charlie was the best thing to have happened to them since they’d returned to England and had reinforced her intention to give Santino a proper childhood. The kind she’d never had—with a dog and a mother who was always waiting for him when he got home from school.
Pulling off her rain-soaked coat, she went upstairs to the nursery where Claudia was just putting Santino down to sleep. The nursery nurse straightened up as Keira entered the room and she found herself wondering why Claudia’s cheeks were so pink. Walking over to the crib, Keira stared down into the sleepy eyes of her son, her heart turning over with love.
‘He looks happy,’ she murmured as she leaned over to plant a soft kiss on his silken cheek.
‘He should be!’ said Claudia. ‘After you took him out for such a long walk this morning.’
‘Good thing I did. At least we missed the rain,’ said Keira, with an idle glance out of the window as she drew the curtains.
There was a pause. ‘Would you mind if I went out earlier than planned?’ asked Claudia.
‘Of course I don’t mind.’ Keira smiled because she knew that Claudia had struck up a close friendship with a man she’d met at the Italian Embassy. ‘Hot date?’
Claudia smiled as she put her forefinger over her lips and Keira was so preoccupied with tidying up the nursery that she barely registered the nursery nurse leaving the room, though she did hear the distant bang of the front door. She turned the light out and was just about to make her way downstairs when her mobile phone began to ring and she pulled it from the pocket of her jeans, frowning when she saw Matteo’s name flashing up on the screen.
Fury began to bubble up inside her. She’d asked him not to write and he had ignored that. She’d asked him not to call her and he was ignoring that too! So why now, coming straight after yet another unwanted letter from him? She clicked the connection.
‘This had better be urgent,’ she said.
‘It is.’
She frowned as she registered a curious echo-like quality to his voice. ‘And?’
‘I need to see you.’
She needed to see him too, but no good would come of it. Wouldn’t it make her hunger for what she could never have and certainly didn’t need—a man who had lured a woman into marriage just because he wanted to inherit a house? ‘I thought we’d decided that wasn’t a good idea.’
‘No, Keira...you decided.’
Still that curious echo. Keira frowned. Shouldn’t she just agree to see him once and get it over with? Steel her heart against her own foolish desires and listen to what he had to say? ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘We’ll put an appointment in the diary.’
‘Now,’ he bit out.
‘What do you mean...now?’
‘I want to see you now,’ he growled.
‘Matteo, you’re in Italy and I’m in England and unless you’ve discovered the secret of teleportation, that’s not going to happen.’
‘I’m downstairs.’
She froze. ‘What did you say?’
‘I’m downstairs.’ The echo began to get louder. ‘Coming up.’
Her heart slamming against her ribcage, Keira rushed from the nursery to see Matteo with his mobile phone held against his ear, making his way up the stairs towards her. His face was more serious than she’d ever seen it as he cut the connection and slid the phone into the pocket of his jeans.
‘Hi,’ he said, the casual greeting failing to hide the tension and the pain which were written across his ravaged features.
She wanted to do several things all at once. To drum her fists against his powerful chest, over and over again. And she wanted to pull his darkly handsome face to hers and kiss him until there was no breath left in her body.
‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded.
‘I need to speak to you.’
‘Did you have to go about it so dramatically? You scared me half to death!’ She looked at him suspiciously. ‘You don’t have a key, do you?’
‘I don’t,’ he agreed.
‘So how did you get in?’
‘Claudia let me in before she left.’
‘Claudia let you in?’ she repeated furiously. ‘Why would she do something like that?’
‘Because I asked her to.’
‘A
nd what you say goes, I suppose, because you’re the one with the money,’ she said contemptuously.
‘No.’ He sucked in a ragged breath. ‘I’m the one with the broken heart.’
It was such an unbelievable thing for him to say that Keira assumed she’d misheard him, and she was too busy deciding that they needed to move out of Santino’s earshot in case they woke him to pay very much attention to her husband’s words. ‘You’d better come with me,’ she said.
Matteo followed the denim-covered sway of her bottom as they went downstairs, watching her long black ponytail swinging against her back with every determined stride she took. Her body language wasn’t looking promising and neither was her attitude. But what had he expected—that she would squeal with delight when she saw him again? Welcome him into the embrace he had so missed—as if that whole great betrayal had never happened? His throat thickened. He had tried playing it slow and playing by her rules but he’d realised she would be prepared to push him away for ever if he let her.
And he couldn’t afford to let her.
They reached a beautiful, high-ceilinged sitting room dominated by a tall Christmas tree, which glittered in front of one of the tall windows. Fragrant and green, it was covered with lights and tiny stars and on the top stood an angel with gossamer-fine wings. A heap of presents with ribbons and bows stood at the base of the giant conifer and Matteo thought it looked so homely. And yet he wasn’t connected to any of it, was he? He was still the outsider. The motherless boy who had never really felt part of Christmas.
So what are you going to do about it, Valenti? he asked himself as she turned to face him and they stood looking at one another like two combatants.
‘You wanted to talk,’ she said, without preamble. ‘So talk. Why did you sneak into my house like this?’
‘You’ve been ignoring my letters.’
She nodded and the glossy black ponytail danced around her shoulders. ‘I told you I wanted to keep all written communication between our respective solicitors.’
‘You really think that my lawyer wants to hear that I love you?’ he demanded, his breath a low hiss.
Her lips opened and he thought she might be about to gasp, before she closed them again firmly, like an oyster shell clamping tightly shut.
‘And that I miss you more than I ever thought possible?’ he continued heatedly. ‘Or that my life feels empty without you?’
‘Don’t waste my time with your lies, Matteo.’
‘They aren’t lies,’ he said unevenly. ‘They’re the truth.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘I didn’t think you would.’ He sucked in a deep breath. ‘Which is why I wrote you the letters.’
‘The letters,’ she repeated blankly.
‘I know you got them, because I asked Claudia. What did you do with them, Keira—did you throw them away? Set light to them and watch them go up in flames?’
She shook her head. ‘No. I didn’t do that. I have them all.’
‘Then, I wonder, could you possibly fetch them?’
Was it the word ‘fetch’ which brought Charlie bounding into the room, his tail wagging furiously and his once sad eyes bright and curious as he looked up at the strange man? Keira glared as she saw Matteo crouch down and offer his hand to the little dog, furious yet somehow unsurprised when the terrier edged cautiously towards him. The shock of seeing Matteo again had shaken her and weakened her defences, making her realise that she was still fundamentally shaky around him—and so she nodded her agreement to his bizarre request. At least leaving the room and his disturbing presence would give her the chance to compose herself and to quieten the fierce hammering of her heart.
Slowly she walked into the hallway to retrieve the pile of envelopes from the drawer and went back into the sitting room, holding them gingerly between her fingers, like an unexploded bomb. By now Charlie’s tail was thrashing wildly, and as Matteo straightened up from stroking him the puppy gave a little whine of protest and she wondered how he had so quickly managed to charm the shy little dog. But the terrier had been discovered wriggling in a sack by the side of the road, she remembered, the only survivor among all his dead brothers and sisters. Charlie had also grown up without a mother, she thought—and a lump lodged in her throat.
‘Here,’ she croaked, holding the letters towards him.
‘Don’t you want to open them?’ he said.
She shook her head. ‘Not really.’
‘Then maybe I’d better tell you what’s in them,’ he said, his eyes not leaving her face as he took them from her. ‘They are all love letters. With the exception of one.’
He saw her eyes widen before dark lashes came shuttering down to cloak their sapphire hue with suspicion.
‘What’s that? A hate letter?’ she quipped.
‘I’m serious, Keira.’
‘And so am I. Anyone can write down words on a piece of paper and not mean them.’
‘Then how about I summarise them for you out loud?’
‘No.’
But that one word was so whispered that he barely heard it and Matteo had no intention of heeding it anyway. ‘Four words, actually,’ he husked. ‘I love you, Keira. So how about I say it again, just so there can be no misunderstanding? I love you, Keira, and I’ve been a fool. Uno scemo! I should have been honest with you from the start, but...’ He inhaled deeply through his nostrils and then expelled the air on a shuddered breath. ‘Keeping things locked away inside was the way I operated. The only way I knew. But believe me when I tell you that by the time I asked you to marry me, I wasn’t thinking about the house any more. My mind was full of you. It still is. I can’t stop thinking about you and I don’t want to. So I’m asking you to give me another chance, Keira. To give us another chance. You, me and Santino. That’s all.’
She didn’t say anything for a moment and when she spoke she started shaking her head, as if what he was demanding of her was impossible.
‘That’s all?’ she breathed. ‘After everything that’s happened? You don’t know what you’re asking, Matteo.’
‘Oh, but I do,’ he demurred. ‘I’m asking you to be my wife for real. With nothing but total honesty between us from now on, because I want that. I want that more than anything.’ His voice lowered. ‘But I realise it can only work if you love me too. Once, in a shadowed hallway after we had taken our wedding vows, you whispered to me that you did, but you may not have meant it.’
Keira clamped her lips together to try to contain the stupid tremble of emotion. Of course she had meant it. Every single word. The question was whether he did, too. Was it possible that he really loved her, or was this simply a means to an end—the manipulative declaration of a man determined to get his rightful heir back into his life? Or maybe just pride refusing to let a woman walk away from him.
Yet something was stubbornly refusing to allow her to accept the bleaker version of his reasons for coming here today. Was it the anguish she could see in his black eyes—so profound that even she, in her insecurity, didn’t believe she was imagining it? She flicked the tip of her tongue over her mouth, wondering if it was too late for them, until she realised what the reality of that would mean. Matteo gone from her life and free to make another with someone else, while she would never be able to forget him.
And she wasn’t going to allow that to happen. Because how could she ignore the burning inside her heart and the bright spark of hope which was beginning to flood through her veins?
‘I’ve tried not to love you,’ she admitted slowly. ‘But it doesn’t work. I think about you nearly all the time and I miss you. I love you, Matteo, and I will be your wife, but on one condition.’
His body grew very still. ‘Anything,’ he said. ‘Name it.’
She had been about to ask him never knowingly to hurt her, but she realised that was all part of the package. That hurt and pain were the price you paid for love and you just had to pray they didn’t rear their bitter heads too often in a lifetime. She k
new also that if they wanted to go forward, then they had to leave the bitterness of the past behind. So instead of demanding the impossible, she touched her fingertips to his face, tracing them slowly down over his cheek until they came to rest on his beautiful lips.
‘That you make love to me,’ she said, her voice softened by tears of joy. ‘And convince me this really is happening.’
His voice was unsteady. ‘You mean, right now?’
She swallowed and nodded, rapidly wiping underneath her eyes with a bent finger. ‘This very second,’ she gulped.
Framing her face within the palms of his hands, he looked at her for one long moment before he spoke. ‘To the woman who has given me everything, because without you I am nothing. Ti amo, mia sposa. My beautiful, beautiful wife,’ he husked, and crushed his lips down hard on hers.
EPILOGUE
OUTSIDE THE WINDOW big white flakes floated down from the sky, adding to the dazzling carpet which had already covered the vast sweep of lawn. Keira gazed at it and gave a dreamy sigh. It was unusual for snow to settle in this part of Umbria and she thought she’d never seen anything quite so magical, or so beautiful. She smiled. Well, except maybe one other time...
Looking up from where she was crouched beside the Christmas tree where she’d just placed a couple of presents, she saw Matteo walk into the room—with snowflakes melting against his dark hair. He’d been outside, putting the finishing touches to a snowman, which would be the first thing Santino saw when he looked out of his window tomorrow morning. Their son’s first real Christmas, Keira thought, because last year he’d been too young to realise what was going on and she...
Well, if she was being honest, she could hardly remember last Christmas herself. She and Matteo had been busy discovering each other all over again—and finding out that things were different from how they’d been before. They couldn’t have been anything but different once the constraints of the past were lifted and they’d given themselves the freedom to say exactly what was on their minds. Or in their hearts.
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