Miranda had spent most of her life trying to please her mother, living up to the unreachable standards of her beautiful, talented and extroverted mother. This was one way to get the relationship with her mother she had yearned for. If she met with her father’s love child it would undo everything she had worked so hard to achieve.
Besides, Kat Winwood hadn’t expressed any desire to meet her half-siblings. She was apparently doing her level best to avoid all contact with the Ravensdales.
Long may it continue, Miranda thought.
* * *
Leandro had just finished talking on the phone to an estate agent when Miranda came into the study. ‘I think I’ve got a buyer for the villa,’ he said, putting his phone down on the desk. ‘Hey, what’s wrong?’
She came and perched on the edge of the walnut desk, kicking one of her slim ankles back and forth, her mouth pushed forward in a pout. ‘Jaz thinks I should meet Katherine Winwood. She thinks I should make the first move.’
He took her nearest hand and stroked the back of it with his thumb. ‘I think that would be a really good thing to do,’ he said.
‘But what about Mum?’ she said, frowning. ‘She’ll think I’m betraying her if I become best buddies with her husband’s love child. God, this is such a mess. Why can’t I have normal parents?’
‘Your mother will have to deal with it,’ Leandro said. ‘None of this is Kat’s fault, remember.’
Miranda let out a long breath. ‘I know, but I hate how Dad wants everything to be smoothed over as if he didn’t do anything wrong. He doesn’t just want his cake and eat it too, he wants to decorate it and hand out pieces to everyone as well.’
‘People do wrong stuff all the time,’ Leandro said. ‘There comes a time when you have to forgive them for it and move on. For everyone’s sake.’
She brought her gaze back to his. ‘Is that what you’re doing? Forgiving yourself as well as your father?’
Am I? Leandro thought. Was it time to accept some things were outside his control and always had been? He hadn’t been able to protect his sister. He hadn’t been able to save his parents’ marriage. He hadn’t been able to protect his father from self-destructing. He hadn’t come home in time to say goodbye to his father, but he was here now, surrounded by the things his father had treasured. Being here in the place where his father had spent so many lonely years had given Leandro a greater sense of who his father was. Vittorio Allegretti hadn’t planned to live alone. He hadn’t planned to drink himself into an early grave. He had once been a young man full of enthusiasm for life, and then life had thrown him things that had made him stumble and fall and he simply hadn’t been able to get back up again. ‘Maybe a little,’ Leandro said.
A little silence passed.
Miranda looked down at their joined hands. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I kind of told Jaz we’re seeing each other...’
Leandro frowned. ‘Kind of?’
She met his gaze, her cheeks a faint shade of pink. ‘It’s impossible to keep anything a secret from Jaz. She knows me too well. She put two and two together and...well... I confessed we’re having a thing.’
Is that what we’re having? he thought. A thing? Why did it feel much more than that? It didn’t feel like any other relationship he’d had in the past. It felt closer. More meaningful. More intimate. He felt like a different person when he was with her. He felt like a whole person, not someone who had compartmentalised himself into tidy little boxes that didn’t intersect.
Why did it make him feel empty inside at the thought of bringing their ‘thing’ to an end?
‘I don’t like calling it a fling,’ Miranda continued. ‘And given what my father did I absolutely loathe the word affair. It sounds so...so tawdry.’
Leandro didn’t like the words either. He didn’t like using the word ‘affair’ or ‘fling’ to describe what he was experiencing with Miranda. As far as he was concerned, there was nothing tawdry or illicit about his involvement with her. He had always had a relationship with her—a friendship that was distant but polite. He had always cared about her because she was a sweet girl who was a part of the family he adored. Even her parents—for all their foibles—were very dear to him. Miranda’s brothers were his best mates. He didn’t want his involvement with her to jeopardise the long-standing mateship he valued so much.
But defining what he had with her now was complicated. The more time he spent with her, the more he wanted. Her gentle and compassionate nature was soothing to be around. But she deserved to have all the things girls her age wanted. He couldn’t commit to that sort of relationship. It wouldn’t be fair to her to allow her to think he could. He had been honest with her. Allowing their involvement to go on when they returned to England would be offering her false hope. Postponing the inevitable. It would make it harder to let go if he held on too long.