The bathroom thudded shut. Lesson one, don’t mention Grazia, Kathy reflected unhappily. Even after eight years there was unfinished business there. But grilling him like a silly jealous schoolgirl had scarcely been the subtle route to take. She wished she had kept quiet. She wished she hadn’t spoiled that lovely precious moment of closeness with prying questions. And over and over again she kept on seeing that hard, closed look on his face.
Ten minutes later, Sergio emerged, black hair slicked back, a towel wrapped round his lean hips. ‘Come here, amata mia.’
Kathy dealt him an aggrieved look while simultaneously admiring his incredible physique. ‘No, I’m sulking,’ she confessed from the depths of the four poster.
‘Wouldn’t you like to cool off in the pool?’
‘I can’t swim,’ she admitted stonily.
Sergio could not hide his surprise. ‘Okay. But you’ll be safe with me.’
Kathy wondered if there would be shallow steps at one end on which she could sit, because she was very warm and the prospect of cool water on her overheated body was extremely tempting. She hovered between a desire to make him suffer, hurt pride and acceptance.
‘I have champagne on ice waiting downstairs.’
‘I’m really not into all that vintage stuff,’ she told him huffily. ‘You’re never going to educate my palate.’
‘I also have your favourite Swiss chocolate.’
Sergio had saved the best and most seductive offer for last. Her taste buds salivated. As he had discovered one night at the hospital when she had been too afraid to leave Ella to eat, she simply adored chocolate. Her head flipped over, light green eyes arrowing across the room. ‘All right—but there is a ground rule. You are not allowed to touch me.’
‘Let’s see who surrenders first,’ Sergio murmured lazily.
Six weeks later, Sergio guided Kathy into a room at the palazzo. As instructed her eyes were tightly shut. He spun her round to heighten the tension.
‘Can I look yet?’ Kathy demanded.
‘Go ahead.’
Kathy blinked: he had taken her out of bright sunlight and it took a while for her eyes to adjust to the dimness. What she saw sitting on a table in front of her was a dolls’ house that appeared to be
the identical twin of the one she had owned in her childhood, but that she had believed she would never see again. Disconcerted, she simply stared, unable to fathom the coincidence, for she could not believe that it could actually be hers.
‘Say something,’ Sergio urged.
‘It can’t be mine…’ But she discovered that she was wrong. When she put out a hesitant hand and opened the front of the miniature house, she found all the little bits and pieces of furniture lined up in tidy ranks for inspection. She lifted the familiar little plastic doll with one leg and dressed in an overlarge knitted frock that her late adoptive mother had made for it.
‘It is yours,’ Sergio confirmed.
Her attention expanded to encompass the other things on the table-top. She set down the doll to study the collection of cat ornaments, one or two of which had had tails glued back on after getting broken in house moves. There was a bag of girlish keepsakes from her teen years and a little box of jewellery. Beside that sat a collection of photo albums and she leafed through them, suddenly frantic to reach the most important one and there they were—her adoptive parents’ photos intact and even spruced up from the faded pictures she recalled. Tears were running down her face without her even realising it.
‘Where did you get all this stuff from?’ she prompted chokily.
‘Your ex-boyfriend still had them—’
‘Gareth?’ she exclaimed.
‘Although his mother sent him to the dump with your possessions, he managed to hide this stuff in the attic. Hey…’ Sergio ran a knuckle lightly down her tear stained cheek. ‘I wanted to make you smile, not cry!’
‘I’m just overwhelmed!’ she sobbed, breaking down altogether. ‘You don’t know what this stuff m-means to me.’
Sergio eased her up against him and stroked a hand through her hair until she had calmed down again. ‘But I do. When my father changed his will and deprived me of most of what was to be my inheritance I lost everything below this roof but my clothes. Cecilia and Umberto liquidated the paintings, sculpture and furniture collected by my ancestors, as well as quite a few personal items that I wasn’t able to prove belonged to me.’
‘You can hardly compare my cat ornaments to a world-renowned art collection—’
‘But it was only when I listened to your story that I appreciated how fortunate I was to be in a position to trace and buy back so much of what I lost.’
‘If Gareth still had my things, why didn’t he answer the letter I sent him after I got out of prison?’