Rafaello's Mistress

Her own fantasy that he might be making an approach to persuade her back to him burned into her soul like acid. By no stretch of the imagination could he believe that such a proposition would qualify as ‘distressing’.

‘Nothing you could tell me would distress me, and if you don’t want a drink I’m not hanging around here to chat.’ Employing that scornful assurance in an effort to conceal her own pitiful sense of disappointment, Glory began to turn away again.

‘Santo cielo!’ Rafaello gritted in a driven undertone and he thrust back his chair to rise to his full commanding height. ‘Your father is ill…’

Glory jerked into the stillness of complete shock and gaped at him.

‘I’m here to fly you home so that you can be with him,’ Rafaello explained, temper back under control again, his voice level and quiet.

Her skin had turned damp and chilled and her head was starting to swim. She blinked at him. ‘Ill with…what?’

‘He had a brain tumour,’ Rafaello admitted after a pronounced hesitation. ‘He…’

Horror engulfed Glory. A brain tumour? Dizziness swept over her and, as she lurched towards one of the seats with the belated intent of sitting down, everything blacked out and she fainted.

Surfacing with a muzzy head again, Glory discovered that she was lying on the narrow bed in her room on the floor above the café. Her employer’s wife was chattering excitably to Rafaello in Greek and nodding with approval as though impressed by his responses. Her dad was dead, Glory recalled with stricken recoil. That was the news that Rafaello had been trying to break gently to her, only obviously he had not wanted to make that announcement in a public place.

‘Did Dad just go like Mum did? Suddenly?’ Glory whispered sickly.

Rafaello wheeled round, his brow indented with a frown. ‘Your father’s not dead,’ he assured her immediately. ‘He’s had surgery, major surgery. He’s holding his own…just.’

Pale as parchment paper, Glory attempted to follow that explanation but her brain was slow to comprehend, for she was numb with shock. She had reacted to Rafaello’s arrival on a very personal level, only to discover that he had sought her out again for another reason entirely. She felt completely disorientated. ‘Dad’s…alive?’

‘Yes, but I’m afraid he hasn’t recovered consciousness as yet.’

‘I was talking to him on the phone only a few days ago,’ Glory protested as she pushed herself up on her elbows and sat up.

Rafaello sank down on the edge of the bed so that they were on a level. His brilliant dark eyes were very serious. ‘It happened very fast and with little apparent warning. Your father developed a severe headache and simply collapsed. Sam called an ambulance and he was rushed to the local hospital and from there to a larger facility where scanning equipment was available.’

‘But the medics operated, so there’s hope,’ Glory said, more for her own benefit than his. ‘That’s what I’ve got to concentrate on.’

‘I’ll wait downstairs.’ Rafaello slid upright again. ‘If you can pack quickly we can be in London by late evening.’

Glory was frantic with concern for her father but she appreciated the fact that Rafaello had not offered her empty reassurances. She knew that he was afraid that her parent might not survive the night.

‘Did you have business over here?’ Glory asked on the drive to the airport, belatedly wondering how he had become involved in the situation.

‘No. I came for you. Sam could only tell me that you were working somewhere in this town in a bar. I put my staff on the phones. Bar owners rarely register casual workers and only personal enquiries were likely to receive an honest response.’

‘I should have given Sam my address. I’m so sorry,’ Glory mumbled, appalled by the trouble and inconvenience he had been put to in his efforts to locate her. He had flown all the way out to the island purely for her benefit.

‘I flew out on spec, hoping that you would be traced by the time I arrived. Jon Lyons struck lucky when I was halfway here,’ Rafaello completed, tight-mouthed.

Gritty tears lashed the backs of Glory’s eyes. Willing them back, she thanked him again and fell silent. He had to be furious with her and she could not blame him. Grateful though she was that he had found her, she was recognising once again that unfortunate extra dimension to her relationship with him. He was her father’s employer and the Grazzinis had always prided themselves on being good to their employees. Sam was only sixteen and someone had had to take responsibility in the crisis. It cut her to the bone that the adult forced to take that no doubt unwelcome responsibility had been Rafaello.

She fell asleep during the flight. Rafaello wakened her about an hour before the jet landed and she went to freshen up. When she returned a meal awaited her, and although she had small appetite she did her best to eat in the hope that food would give her more energy. But never had Glory

felt more miserable. Even in the midst of fretting about her father, she was horribly conscious of the change in Rafaello’s attitude to her. While being concerned, polite and in every way supportive, he was also maintaining a detached and impersonal approach.

‘I can manage to get to the hospital on my own,’ Glory said tightly as soon as they arrived in London. ‘Thank you. You’ve been wonderful.’

‘I’m coming with you. Try to persuade Sam to take a break. He’s exhausted,’ Rafaello urged. ‘You’ll also find my housekeeper keeping a vigil by your father’s bed—’

‘Maud Belper?’ Glory glanced at him in surprise.

‘I understand that Archie asked her to marry him last week.’ Registering her astonishment at that information, Rafaello sighed. ‘I gather Sam didn’t keep you up to speed on what was happening on the homefront.’

He guessed right, but when Glory thought that development over it became less of a surprise to her. Her father and Maud Belper had known each other all their lives. If long-standing friendship had finally warmed into something more, she ought to be happy for them both. After all, her parent had been a widower for a long time, she reasoned, striving not to feel hurt and excluded at the news that her father had decided to remarry without even mentioning his plans to her. But then, why should he have done otherwise? For a long time she had lived only on the periphery of her father’s life.