Page 54 of Innocent in the Sicilian’s Palazzo

‘A neighbour came and found me...called the... I hated my father then for what he’d done, for leaving us, and later I found out why and discovered there was someone else who was to blame.’

‘I hope that person rots in hell,’ she declared fiercely.

‘My mother does not believe in revenge—she believes in love.’

Love was feeling another person’s pain as if it were your own, it was wanting... Her thoughts froze. This was love; what she was feeling was love. She’d fallen in love with the real man, not the man the world saw, but the man she could feel shaking, the man who had protected her from a sense of honour that he would have denied.

‘I should not be dumping my rubbish on you!’ he suddenly said, rearing up in the bed, the anger in his voice aimed at himself.

‘That’s what...friends are for,’ she said, glad that in the dark he couldn’t see her brushing the tears from her cheeks. She couldn’t have love, she’d take what she could get, but her heart was his whether he wanted it or not. She had no choice.

Her heart ached for him.

Her heart ached for herself.

She loved him.

She pretended to be asleep when he slipped from her bed in the early hours.

This morning as they sat across the breakfast table the awkwardness in him was obvious. What was also obvious was that he was regretting revealing the part of himself he had last night.

‘Please don’t shut me out,’ she said quietly.

‘I need a therapist. I will visit one. I need a woman in my bed. I will take one.’ The brutal words were intended to hurt but he got little pleasure from the pain in her eyes.

‘Fine,’ she said, thinning her lips to hide the tremor and folding her napkin with careful precision. ‘I’ll go to work.’

She did but halfway through the morning she took off her white gloves and headed for the door. He was trying to push her away, but she didn’t have to let him.

Without really knowing why, she made for the swimming pool, and he was there, eating up length after length with a metronomic precision that she found riveting.

She knew that he was aware of her presence, but he didn’t immediately stop; she was prepared to wait.

Finally, when he levered himself out of the pool and stood there, the water streaming off his sleekly muscled, powerful body, the sight of him almost broke her resolve. He really was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen in her life.

‘I want to talk to you.’

‘We are talking,’ he said as he began to scrub at his dark hair with a towel.

‘This is business. We need a business setting.’

He stopped rubbing his hair and let the towel hang loose around his neck as he moved forward. She would have mirrored the move only a step backwards would have put her in the water, so instead she stuck out her chin and stood her ground.

‘What business?’

‘I need... Iwantto go and see my grandpa. According to the clinic, things have cooled down.’

He arched a sardonic brow. ‘You are asking my permission?’

Her jaw clenched. He really could be an arrogant bastard when he wanted to be. ‘No, I am damn wellnotasking your permission. I am asking if you want me to come back.’

He looked as shocked as she’d ever seen him; his eyes slid from hers in a very telling way. ‘It’s complicated.’

‘It’s not that complicated,’ she said.

He laughed without humour. ‘You have no idea how complicated this is.’

He moved away as if to dive back in and she felt her temper flare. ‘You know, Soren, while you’re swimming up and down you might like to reflect that you’re not the only person who has suffered some trauma. Your dad left you because he was ill—mental illness is as much an illness as any physical ailment. My mum left me because she thought I was boring—that’s not such a nice thing for a little girl to know.

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