‘If I hadn’t found Rosie’s statue in the garden would you have told me about her?’ Miranda said into the little silence.
His fingers toyed with the stem of his glass. ‘I was planning to. Eventually.’
She watched as his frown pulled heavily at his brow. ‘Leandro... I really want to say how much I feel for you. For what you’re going through. For what you’ve been through. I feel I’m only just coming to understand you after knowing you for all these years.’
He gave her a ghost of a smile. It was not much more than a flicker across his lips but it warmed her heart, as if someone had shone a beam of light through a dark crack. ‘I was a little hard on you earlier,’ he said.
‘It’s okay,’ Miranda said. ‘I get it from my brothers and Jaz too. And my parents.’
‘It’s only because they love you,’ he said. ‘They want you to be happy.’
Miranda put her glass down, her fingers tracing the gentle slope on the circular base. ‘I know...but it wasn’t just Mark I loved. His family—his parents—are the loveliest people. They always made me feel so special. So included.’
‘Do you still see them?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is that wise?’
Miranda frowned as she met his unwavering gaze. ‘Why wouldn’t I visit them? They’re the family I wish I’d had.’
‘It might not be helping them to move on.’
‘What about your mother?’ she said, deftly changing the subject. ‘Does she want you to be happy?’
He gave a nonchalant shrug but his mouth had taken on that grim look she always associated with him. ‘On some level, maybe.’
‘Do you ever see her?’
‘Occasionally.’
‘When was the last time?’ Miranda asked.
He turned the base of his glass around with an exacting, precise movement like he was turning a combination lock on a safe. ‘I went down for one of my half-brother’s birthdays a couple of months ago.’
‘And?’
He looked at her again. ‘It was okay.’
Miranda cocked her head at him. ‘Just okay?’
He gave her a rueful grimace. ‘It was Cameron who invited me. I wouldn’t have gone if he hadn’t wanted me to be there. I didn’t stay long.’
Miranda wondered what sort of reception he’d got from his mother. Had she greeted him warmly or coldly? Had she tolerated him being there or embraced his presence? How did his mother’s husband treat him? Did he accept him as one of the family or make him feel like an outsider who could never belong? There were so many questions she wanted to ask. Things she wanted to know about him, but she didn’t want to bombard him. It would take time to peel back the layers to his personality. He was so deeply private and going too hard too soon would very likely cause him to clam up. ‘How old are your half-brothers?’
‘Cam is twenty-eight, Alistair twenty-seven and Hugh is twenty-six.’ He turned his glass another notch. ‘My mother would have had more children but it wasn’t to be.’
‘Three boys in quick succession...’ she murmured, thinking out loud.
‘But no girl, which was what she really wanted.’
Miranda saw the flash of pain pass over his features. ‘I’m not sure having any amount of children would make up for the one she lost. But in a way she lost two children, didn’t she?’
Leandro’s mouth tilted cynically. ‘Don’t feel sorry for me, ma petite,’ he said. ‘I’m a big boy.’
Hearing him switch to French from Italian endearments was enough to set her pulse racing all over again. His voice was so deep and mellifluous she could have listened to him read a boring financial report and still her heart would race. ‘It seems to me you’ve always had to be a big boy,’ Miranda said. ‘You’ve spent so much of your childhood and adolescence alone.’
‘I had your family to go to.’
‘Yes, but it wasn’t your family,’ she said. ‘You must have felt that keenly at times.’
He picked up his wine glass and examined the contents, as if it were a vintage wine he wanted to savour. But then he put it back down again. ‘I owe a lot to your family,’ he said. ‘In particular to your brothers. We had some good times down at Ravensdene. Some really great times.’
‘And yet you never once mentioned Rosie to them.’
‘I thought about it a couple of times... Many times, actually.’ He fingered the base of his glass again. ‘But in the end it was easier keeping that part of my life separate. Except, of course, when my father came to town.’