Page 18 of Innocent's Wedding Day with the Italian

From the corner of her eye she saw him take a drink of his red wine, heard him follow the silent swallow with a deep breath. ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘I didn’t.’

‘I need you to explain what you meant by saying she didn’t want you to marry me and not the other way around.’

‘My mother does not like many people in this world but, as I said, she likes you. If she could have chosen a daughter-in-law, it would have been you.’

She didn’t know how to respond to that. Should she be flattered that a jewellery thief considered her the ideal daughter-in-law?

‘She took to you for many of the same reasons I did,’ he explained quietly. ‘You are genuine. A good person. You wear your heart on your sleeve and speak your mind, which is very refreshing when you are used to being surrounded by calculators.’

Rebecca dipped her spoon back into her bowl. ‘Calculators?’

‘That is what we call those who want us only for what they can get and calculate every word they say in our company. An in joke I think you call it.’

She swirled the spoon slowly through the thickening sauce. ‘That must make you a calculator too, seeing as you calculated every word you ever said to me.’

‘I suppose it must,’ he agreed. ‘But not the words you think. Not once I learned there was no calculation at all in your nature and I—’

He broke himself away from saying what Rebecca instinctively knew would have been more forbidden words about feelings.

‘Why would she sabotage our wedding though? It doesn’t matter if she liked me or not—you’re her son.’

‘It was revenge for forcing her to dissolve her business.’

She whipped her head towards him before she could stop herself.

His gaze was already locked on her. Fingers tightly gripped the stem of his wine glass. His handsome features were like granite and when he opened his mouth, his voice had the same stony quality. ‘Five years ago I threatened to report her to the authorities. I had enough circumstantial evidence of the robberies she’d masterminded to make them investigate her.’

She blinked her shock at this unexpected twist.

Incredibly, his features hardened even further. ‘Someone needed to stop her and that someone was me.’

It took a moment to unfreeze her vocal cords. ‘Would you have done it?’

No hesitation. ‘Without a doubt.’

‘Shopped your own mother to the police?’ she asked, disbelieving.

‘Reb...’ His eyes closed briefly, lips tightening. ‘Miss Foley... My relationship with my mother is complicated.’

‘It seemed perfectly normal from what I saw of it.’ Well, relatively normal. Enzo and Silvana’s world was so different to Rebecca’s that it was impossible to judge their relationship by her own experiences. When Rebecca had returned home for weekends and holidays in her university years, her father had always collected her in the ancient family hatchback. For Enzo and Silvana, it was normal to visit each other via helicopter if traffic was particularly bad. Not that they drove themselves in any traffic, each having drivers on rotas to chauffeur them wherever they wanted to go. Then there was the nature of the visits. When back home, Rebecca and her parents had mucked in together with the cooking and cleaning as they’d always done. Enzo and Silvana each employed a fleet of domestic staff to prepare their meals and wipe away any dust before it dared land on their highly polished surfaces. There was also a heap of formality between Enzo and his mother as opposed to the affection and gentle teasing Rebecca and her parents had enjoyed, but in the formal settings of their respective homes, it had seemed natural.

‘Appearances can be deceiving,’ he said.

You’re the expert in that.The words jumped to the tip of Rebecca’s tongue but she pressed her lips together to stop the dig from escaping. It was the blaze from Enzo’s eyes that did it. Fire and ice.

‘Let me explain something to you.’ Every word was delivered with bite. ‘My mother never wanted to marry or have children. I was not planned. I was an accident. She handed me to my father when I was born because she did not want me.’

It wasn’t just Rebecca’s throat that froze at this. Every cell in her body turned to ice.

Not once in all their many talks had Enzo confided this to her. Not a hint of it.

‘For the first six years of my life, my mother was nothing but an occasional visitor to our home. I barely knew her.’

‘Then... How...?’ She closed her mouth, unable to articulate a single one of the dozen questions swarming in her head.

‘She did not want me or want to love me but, as she has told me many times since, she had no choice in the matter. She never wanted to have any involvement in my life but her love for me was stronger than her selfishness, and let me tell you, she hated it. To her, love stifles freedom. When my father died that love compelled her to claim me and take me in.’ He let out a grunt and added, ‘The day after my father’s funeral, she collected me and that was it. The world I knew was gone and I had to live with this woman who was almost a stranger to me.’

Her heart throbbed, lungs aching for breath.

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