Happy Mother's Day!

‘This entire divorce thing is going to be a total nightmare. I wish we could just do it without involving a lawyer. I really don’t care about the money … I just want to put it all behind me, but Mum says …’ Erin shrugged and bit her lip. ‘She never really took to Francesco,’ she admitted.

Valentina suspected that Clare Foyle would never take to any man who took away the daughter she used as an emotional prop, but she maintained a tactful silence.

The baby in her arms began to cry. ‘Gianni is a bit cranky today.’

Erin ran a tentative finger down the baby’s soft cheek, swallowing past the emotional lump in her throat. ‘He’s a lovely baby,’ she observed huskily. ‘You’re very lucky.’

Valentina nodded. ‘I know,’ she admitted. ‘So shall we go find Sam? I think he’s in the library.’

‘Library?’

‘Yes, he’s dying to take you on a tour of the stud,’ she said, taking Erin’s arm and steering her towards the door.

‘That would be interesting,’ Erin admitted, puzzled by her hostess’s urgency. ‘But I wouldn’t want to be an imposition. Couldn’t I give you a hand?’

Valentina looked blank. ‘A hand?’

‘Well, aren’t the other guests arriving this morning?’

‘Everyone who’s coming should be here by eleven-thirty, but everything’s under control.’

Her strained smile made Erin suspect that organising the weekend had been more fraught than Valentina had anticipated.

‘I’m sure everything will go smoothly,’ Erin said soothingly.

For some reason this comment drew a nervous laugh from her increasingly anxious-looking hostess.

Valentina paused, her hand on the door of the library. ‘I was wondering.’ she began.

‘You were wondering what?’

‘I was wondering if you’re really serious about this divorce thing … I know it’s none of my business.’ ‘I’m deadly serious.’

Valentina sighed. ‘Well, I think it’s sad. You and Francesco on your wedding day looked so … you looked so right together.’

Erin swallowed the lump in her throat. She remembered how it had felt right when his mouth had covered her own. How right it had felt when they had lain skin to skin touching … but sometimes, she reflected grimly, instincts were wrong. What felt right was anything but!

‘Sometimes things don’t work out,’ she said lamely; she could hardly bad-mouth Francesco to his cousin.

Actually she hadn’t bad-mouthed him to anyone, and bizarrely there had been more than one occasion when she had even found herself defending him in the face of her mother’s savage criticism. Well, whatever else he was, Francesco was the father of her unborn child.

‘Sam and I had some spectacular rows when we first married,’ Valentina revealed candidly. ‘Living with someone even when you love them can be difficult in the early days.’

‘Look, I appreciate what you’re saying,’ Erin said. ‘But you and Sam … well, it isn’t comparing like with like. Did Sam ever pretend to be someone he wasn’t? Did you have to learn by accident that the man you were marrying the next day was someone quite different?’

Valentina, looking confused, shook her head. ‘You didn’t know who Francesco was?’

‘Well, I didn’t know he was some filthy-rich banker with a family tree that can trace itself back to the year dot, and I’d be grateful if you tell that to anyone who suggests I married him for his money.’

‘Nobody thinks that!’ Valentina exclaimed, horrified by the suggestion.

‘I’ve no doubt they will,’ Erin retorted as her thoughts were dragged inexorably back to the moment when she had accidentally discovered the true identity of her future husband.

She had experienced no flicker of premonition as she had picked up a paper that had wafted onto the floor from the desk piled high with Francesco’s files.

The letterhead on the heavy vellum paper had pronounced it came from the Romanelli Bank.

She remembered being struck by the coincidence of Francesco doing business with a bank that had his own name. It had been a sudden concern, not suspicion, that had made her go back and study it. Why did banks write to people?