‘Maria. My parents.’
‘Why did they need you to be useful?’
Her eyes wouldn’t meet his.
‘Because—’ she stopped.
‘Because?’ he prompted. Quietly, insistently.
Her fingers pressed on the glass. He could see her fingers whiten where they gripped.
‘Because it was all I was good for. I wasn’t beautiful, like Maria, and she had all the brains, not me. She was all they needed—my parents.’
Her eyes had slid past him completely now. Staring ahead of her. Something was going wrong in her face; he could see it. She jerked the champagne glass to her lips and took a gulp. Then set it down, just as jerkily.
Then deliberately, almost angrily, her eyes snapped back to his.
‘When Maria was born I ceased to have a function. Apart from that of handmaid. That was all I was good for. Looking after Maria. Helping Maria. Making way for Maria. Maria, Maria, Maria! Everything revolved around Maria. Me, I was just the spare wheel—surplus to requirements. Not wanted on voyage. Existing on sufferance—justified only if I looked after Maria, and even then barely. I wanted to hate her. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t hate her. No one could hate her. Because there was nothing to hate. There really wasn’t. She really was a golden girl. Everyone loved her. No wonder my parents adored her. They adored her so much they forgave her everything. Even becoming a model. There was only one thing they didn’t forgive her for. Only one thing.’ She stilled, then spoke again.
‘Dying. That’s what they could not forgive her for.’
She bowed her head, as if bowing beneath a weight.
‘They couldn’t live without her. So they didn’t. They went into the garage, locked the doors, got into the car, and turned the engine on.’
For a moment there was silence. Complete silence. Rico felt cold ice through him.
‘Your parents killed themselves?’ His voice was hollow. This had not been in the dossier on Maria Mitchell.
‘Once they knew she would never recover. That she would be a vegetable—in a coma until….’
She halted. Her face was stark, even in the candlelight.
‘She was everything to them—their whole world. They had dedicated their lives to her. And she had gone. Left them. Left them to go modeling.’ She swallowed again. ‘Left them to go off with some man who had, so they thought, simply “got her into trouble”—and then she left them utterly. Left them all alone.’
Slowly, still with that cold draining through him, Rico spoke.
‘But they had her baby—and you.’
She looked at him. Her eyes had no expression in them.
‘The baby was a bastard—fatherless, an embarrassment, a disgrace. As for me, I was…an irrelevance. I didn’t count,’ she said. ‘I was—unnecessary—to them.’
His eyes darkened. He felt the anger rising in him like a cold tide.
Unnecessary. The word had a grim, familiar sound.
He was unnecessary too. Had been all his life. He was the spare—surplus to requirements. To be put on a shelf and left there, just in case of emergencies. But with no other purpose then simply to pass the time, fritter his life away until and in case he should ever be needed, cease to be unnecessary.
He felt the anger lash through him again. But this time it was at himself. For having accepted his parents’ verdict on him. Oh, he had resented the role he’d been born to, but he’d still accepted that that was all he was. The spare to Luca’s heir.
Well, that wasn’t true any longer.
Emotion swept through him. He looked at the woman sitting opposite him, who had been so horrifically unnecessary to her parents—but who was so necessary to the one human being to whom he, too, had proved necessary.
He reached across the table and took her hand. He spoke with a low intensity.
‘But you’re necessary now—necessary and…essential. You are Ben’s happiness, and I…I am his safety. And together—’ his hand tightened around hers, warm, and safe and protecting ‘—we’ll take care of him, and love him.’