‘You should have said—I will tell Roula to make up a room, that we have a guest…’
‘There is no need to make up a room for a guest. Emma is family,’ Zarios corrected him, and Emma noticed the slight swallow before he continued. ‘Or she will be soon.’
A smudge of a frown flickered over Rocco’s brow. ‘You two?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are together?’ Still Rocco frowned. ‘Since when?’
‘Since Eric’s birthday.’
‘But what about Miranda…’
‘That is why I ended it with Miranda, Pa…’
‘Why didn’t you say?’ Rocco’s voice was bemused. ‘Why did you let me think the filth in the papers was true?’
‘We wanted to be sure…’ Zarios took her hand and Emma realised he was as skilled a liar as he was a lover. ‘Pa, we know how big this is, and we had to be sure. With everything that has happened these past few weeks, as terrible as they have been, it has helped us to make up our minds. I have asked Emma to marry me, and happily she has agreed.’
He would lie at his own father’s grave, Emma thought, and then realised with a cold drench of horror that in effect she was doing the same: manipulating this wonderful man who, as Rocco’s eyes sought hers for clarification, perhaps trusted Emma more than he did his own son.
‘Is this true?’ Rocco asked. ‘You two really are engaged?’
She could feel Zarios’s hand tighten around hers, attempting to provoke a response, but all she could manage was the tiniest nod.
‘We are going to get a ring tomorrow…’Zarios filled in the long silence. ‘We wanted to tell you before the papers got hold of it.’
‘And you are happy?’ Rocco asked, still more stunned than pleased.
Even when Roula, the housekeeper, was duly summoned, when champagne was poured and toasts given, there was a forced joviality about it all—and not just from Emma.
Rocco, she realised, was clearly choosing to reserve judgement—he was wary with his words, thin with his sentiment—and for the first time Emma glimpsed what Zarios had meant when he had said that his relationship with his father wasn’t one she could understand. On the night his only son had announced his engagement, after a cursory glass of champagne and some rather strained small talk and stilted interaction between father and son, Rocco reminded Zarios of the time in Europe, and that he had an important call that needed to be made.
‘I shouldn’t be long.’ Zarios glanced at his watch, and then to Emma, and for the first time she saw just a flicker of nervousness in his eyes. No doubt he was worried at leaving her alone with his father.
‘Avetti is an important client…’ Rocco waved him away. ‘You will take as long as is necessary.’
Pensively, Rocco smiled over at Emma, once they were alone. ‘You must have mixed feelings at a time like this?’
‘I do.’ Emma nodded, able to look him in the eye now, because for that second in time she was telling the truth.
‘Come!’ He stood up and gestured to a large dresser, where Emma joined him. ‘I found this photo of your father and I just the other week, when I was going through some papers. You will not have seen it—I didn’t even know I had it.’
She smiled at the image of two grubby little boys sitting on a wall, their knees grazed and dirty. It hurt almost too much to look at the image of her father, so she focused instead on Rocco. As dark as Zarios, but with a cheeky grin, there was a lightness about him Emma could never imagine in his son.
She was right—there in the another photo was Zarios, at eight or nine years old, refusing to smile for his school photo, looking as serious and as accusing as he did now.
‘He hated boarding school.’ Rocco interrupted her thoughts. ‘I hated sending him. I thought I was doing the right thing by him at the time—it is a choice I regret.’
Hearing the wistful note in Rocco’s voice, seeing his kind, tired eyes, reminded her so much of her dad it made her brave enough for an observation. ‘You don’t seem pleased, Rocco, about the engagement?’
‘I am torn,’ Rocco admitted. ‘I love my son, but…’ He frowned, more to himself than to Emma. ‘Your parents meant the world to me. In some ways with them gone I feel more responsible towards you—almost as if you were a daughter. If I could forget for a moment that Zarios was my son, as much as I love him, I have to be honest—I am not sure he is what I would wish for my daughter…’
Which was hardly a glowing reference from a father, but it was said with more concern than malice. His eyes filled with tears as they came to rest on another photo. Emma followed his gaze, her throat tightening, because there, in contrast to the austere photo of his youth, was a very different Zarios.
A smiling, happy little boy, three, maybe four years old, running along the beach carrying a plastic windmill.
And there he was again, grinning and laughing, wrapped in his mother’s arms, with a smiling Rocco looking proudly on.
A different Zarios and a different Rocco, too.
‘You would never have met Bella.’ Rocco picked up the photo and gazed at it fondly, then handed it to Emma. ‘Our marriage broke up before you were even born.’
‘She’s beautiful.’
‘She was…’ Rocco smiled. ‘She was also way too young to be married. She was just sixteen. Things were different in those days. The marriage was arranged by my grandparents—Bella was from my village back home. She came to Australia speaking no English.’
‘As you did.’
‘I was younger. I picked up the language more easily—and I had friends like your father to help me. Bella was just lost. I tried to make things easier on her, but she never settled. Now, when I look back, I think she must have been depressed after Zarios was born. But in those days we didn’t really understand or talk about such things. I tried to make it work. We went back to Italy, but still she was unhappy.’
‘So Zarios went to boarding school…?’
‘And I came back here.’ He nodded at the question in her voice. ‘Here was the only place I could make the money to pay the fees and support my family, too…the lucky country!’ He shook his head sadly. ‘It didn’t feel like it. I went back to Italy as often as I could, opened a business there, but here was where the money was being made. Of course I hoped his mother might be around more for him…’
It was unfathomable to Emma. She thought of her own happy childhood, of her parents who, even with their faults, would have moved heaven and earth for her, and wondered, just as her parents had over the years, how Bella could have excluded herself so totally from her son’s life.
‘More than anything I want Zarios to be happy. Always the hurt is there—always with Zarios anger. I want my son to find the love that has been missing for most of his life. You do love my son, Emma?’
Rocco’s question was direct, his eyes so searching that she shouldn’t be able to answer it. But, looking down to the photo she held in her hands, Emma knew she wanted to see Zarios happy, too. Wanted back what they had found that morning. Wanted the man she knew was there beneath the pomp and scorn. Wanted the merry dark eyes that danced in this photograph, that she was sure she had glimpsed that wonderful morning, to dance for her again.
There was no doubt she was indebted to him, and not just financially—he had saved her life when she’d nearly drowned, had held her hand when she’d identified her parents, had sat and offered quiet support that first long, lonely night.
Tears coursed down her cheeks, but not for the reason Rocco thought. Emma realised as she nodded, as she told Rocco what he wanted to hear, that she was actually speaking the truth.
She loved him.
She hated him, but somehow had loved him over the years—had loved him that one wonderful morning together—and despite all that had been said, all that was, all that could never be, still somehow she loved him.
‘Then you will both be okay—love is what will see you through,’ Rocco said wisely. ‘Love is what was missing in my marriage. Not,’ he added sadly, ‘on my side. For my son to have asked for your hand in marriage, he must love you, too.’
Oh, she wished that this were true, that Zarios did love her, did want to rescue her from the hell of these past weeks.
Wished that it were that simple.
‘You’re quiet,’ Zarios noted when finally they were alone and could let down the charade as the bedroom door closed behind them.
‘I’m tired.’ Emma sat at the dressing table and wearily attempted to remove her make-up while Zarios unashamedly undressed behind her. Tired was an understatement. She had been running on adrenaline since her meeting with Zarios, had been sitting on tenterhooks all evening as her head throbbed with a low-grade headache, and her mind was too tired to even attempt to make sense of what she had agreed to. ‘Actually, I’ve got a headache.’
‘Isn’t it a bit early in our relationship to be making such excuses?’ It was said so tongue in cheek and with such irony that as she caught his glance in the mirror Emma couldn’t help but smile. But it faded. ‘What will your dad say when he finds out?’