From Florence With Love: Valtieri's Bride / Lorenzo's Reward / The Secret That Changed Everything. CATHERINE GEORGE
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his children. And they were waiting for him, had been waiting for him far too long, and guilt tugged at him again.
‘Ouch!’
‘You can’t walk on that ankle. Stay here.’
She stayed, wishing her flight bag was still with her instead of having been whisked away by his team. She could have done with changing out of the dress, but her comfy jeans and soft cotton top were in her bag, and she wanted to cry with frustration and disappointment and pain.
‘Here.’
He’d brought a wheelchair, and she eyed it doubtfully.
‘I don’t know if the dress will fit in it. Horrible thing! I’m going to burn it just as soon as I get it off.’
‘Good idea,’ he said drily, and they exchanged a smile.
He squashed it in around her, and wheeled her towards the exit. Then he stopped the chair by the door and looked down at her.
‘Do you really want to go to the hotel?’ he asked.
She tipped her head back to look at him, but it hurt, and she let her breath out in a gusty sigh. ‘I don’t have a choice. I need a bed for the night, and I can’t afford anywhere else.’
He moved so she could see him, crouching down beside her. ‘You do have a choice. You can’t fly for a few days, and you don’t want to stay in a strange hotel on your own for all that time. And anyway, you don’t have your bag, so why don’t you come back with me?’ he said, the guilt about his children growing now and the solution to both problems suddenly blindingly obvious.
‘I need to get home to see my children, they’ve been patient long enough, and you can clean up there and change into your own comfortable clothes and have something to eat and a good night’s sleep. Carlotta will look after you.’
Carlotta? Lydia scanned their earlier conversations and came up with the name. She was the woman who looked after his children, who’d worked for them for a hundred years, as he’d put it, and had delivered him.
Carlotta sounded good.
‘That’s such an imposition. Are you sure you don’t mind?’
‘I’m sure. It’s by far the easiest thing for me. The hotel’s the other way, and it would save me a lot of time I don’t really have, especially by the time I’ve dropped your bag over there. And you don’t honestly want to be there on your own for days, do you?’
Guilt swamped her, heaped on the disappointment and the worry about Jen, and she felt crushed under the weight of it all. She felt her spine sag, and shook her head. ‘I’m so sorry. I’ve wasted your entire day. If you hadn’t given me a lift …’
‘Don’t go there. What ifs are a waste of time. Yes or no?’
‘Yes, please,’ she said fervently. ‘That would be really kind.’
‘Don’t mention it. I feel it’s all my fault anyway.’
‘Rubbish. Of course it’s not your fault. You’ve done so much already, and I don’t think I’ve even thanked you.’
‘You have. You were doing that when you fell down the steps.’
‘Was I?’ She gave him a wry grin, and turned to look up at him as they arrived at the car, resting her hand on his arm lightly to reassure him. ‘It’s really not your fault, you know.’
‘I know. You missed your step. I know this. I still …’
He was still haunted, because of the head injury, images of Angelina crowding in on him. Angelina falling, Angelina with a headache, Angelina slumped over the kitchen table with one side of her face collapsed. Angelina linked up to a life support machine …
‘Massimo?’
‘I’m all right,’ he said gruffly, and pressing the remote, he opened the door for her and settled her in, then returned the wheelchair and slid into the driver’s seat beside her. ‘Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Good. Let’s go.’
She phoned Claire and told her what was happening, assured her she would be all right and promised to phone her the next day, then put the phone down in her lap and rested her head back.
Under normal circumstances, she thought numbly, she’d be wallowing in the luxury of his butter-soft leather, beautifully supportive car seats, or taking in the picture-postcard countryside of Tuscany as the car wove and swooped along the narrow winding roads.
As it was she gazed blankly at it all, knowing that she’d have to phone Jen, knowing she should have done it sooner, that her sister would be on tenterhooks, but she didn’t have the strength to crush her hopes and dreams.
‘Have you told your sister yet?’ he asked, as if he’d read her mind.
She shook her head. ‘No. I don’t know what to say. If I hadn’t fallen, we would have won. Easily. It was just so stupid, so clumsy.’
He sighed, his hand reaching out and closing over hers briefly, the warmth of it oddly comforting in a disturbing way. ‘I’m sorry. Not because I feel it was my fault, because I know it wasn’t, really, but because I know how it feels to let someone down, to have everyone’s hopes and dreams resting on your shoulders, to have to carry the responsibility for someone else’s happiness.’
She turned towards him, inhibited by the awful, scratchy dress that she couldn’t wait to get out of, and studied his profile.
Strong. Clean cut, although no longer clean-shaven, the dark stubble that shadowed his jaw making her hand itch to feel the texture of it against her palm. In the dusk of early evening his olive skin was darker, somehow exotic, and with a little shiver she realised she didn’t know him at all. He could be taking her anywhere.
She closed her eyes and told herself not to be ridiculous. He’d followed them to the hospital, got his brother in on the act, a brother she’d heard referred to as il professore, and now he was taking her to his family home, to his children, his parents, the woman who’d delivered him all those years ago. Forty years? Maybe. Maybe more, maybe less, but give or take.
Someone who’d stayed with the family for all that time, who surely wouldn’t still be there if they were nasty people?
‘What’s wrong?’
She shrugged, too honest to lie. ‘I was just thinking, I don’t know you. You could be anyone. After all, I was going in the plane with Nico, and you’ve pointed out in no uncertain terms that that wouldn’t have been a good idea, and I just don’t think I’m a very good judge of character.’
‘Are you saying you don’t trust me?’
She found herself smiling. ‘Curiously, I do, or I wouldn’t be here with you.’
He flashed her a look, and his mouth tipped into a wry grin. ‘Well, thanks.’
‘Sorry. It wasn’t meant to sound patronising. It’s just been a bit of a whirlwind today, and I’m not really firing on all cylinders.’
‘I’m sure you’re not. Don’t worry, you’re safe with me, I promise, and we’re nearly there. You can have a long lazy shower, or lie in the bath, or have a swim. Whatever you choose.’
‘So long as I can get out of this horrible dress, I’ll be happy.’
He laughed, the sound filling the car and making something deep inside her shift.
‘Good. Stand by to be happy very soon.’
He turned off the road onto a curving gravelled track lined by cypress trees, winding away towards what looked like a huge stone fortress. She sat up straighter. ‘What’s that building?’
‘The house.’
‘House?’ She