He squeezed her fingers and turned to look at her. ‘No.’ His brows came together and he blotted one of her tears with the pad of his thumb. ‘She would not want you to cry, cara.’
Alice blinked a couple of times and forced a smile to her lips. Their newfound truce was doing strange things to her emotions. Emotions she normally had under the strictest control.
‘Sorry. I’m not normally so emotional. I hardly knew her...except I can’t help thinking how different this place is without her.’ She swiped at her face with the back of her hand. ‘I wish I’d written to her. How hard would it have been to send a Christmas card? I just wish I’d let her know I’d never forgotten her, you know?’
He tucked her hand in under his arm. ‘You’re here now, which is what she wanted.’
Alice still couldn’t understand why Volante had left her a joint share in this villa and with such strange conditions attached. Not only was the villa—even a half-share—worth millions, it was where Cristiano had spent his childhood and adolescence after his family were killed. Surely if anyone deserved the villa it was him? But he had given no indication of being upset about not inheriting it fully. His focus had always been on the shares he stood to lose control of if he didn’t fulfil the terms of the will. Even if it meant marrying the woman who had rejected him seven years ago.
‘If you’d inherited the villa completely what would you have done with it?’ she asked.
He gave a one-shoulder shrug. ‘Made it into a hotel.’
‘Really? You wouldn’t have wanted it as a private retreat?’
He gave her a wry look. ‘It’s a bit big for one person.’
‘Yes, but you might not always be on your own,’ Alice said, torturing herself with the thought of who he might spend the rest of his life with. ‘You might want to have a family one day. You can become a father at any age so—’
&nbs
p; ‘It’s a good location for a hotel,’ he said as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘The gardens too are perfect for weddings and other functions.’
Alice kept her gaze trained on his. ‘But doesn’t this place mean more to you than that? Don’t you have memories you—?’
‘What is a house without the people you love inside it?’ he said, with a flash of irritation in his gaze. ‘It’s nothing, that’s what it is. It’s just bricks and mortar. An empty shell where every room reminds you of someone you’ve loved and lost.’
Alice swallowed, watching in silence as he tore off a couple of dustsheets and dropped them to the floor in puddles of white like collapsed sails. She pictured him as a young boy going back to his family’s villa after the accident, her heart cramping at the thought of what it had been like for him to walk into that sad vacuum of a place that had once been full of love and laughter.
‘I’m so sorry...’ Her voice came out little more than a cracked whisper of sound.
He raked a hand through his hair and let out a long rough sigh. ‘No, I’m the one who’s sorry. I shouldn’t have spoken so harshly to you. Forgive me.’
Alice closed the distance between them and slipped her arms around his waist, looking up at his grimly set features. ‘It’s fine. This is really painful for you.’
After a moment his expression softened a fraction as if her presence calmed him. He gave her a twist of a smile, his hand brushing an imaginary hair away from her face.
‘I should have been back here weeks ago. I just couldn’t seem to do it. I didn’t want to face this place without her in it. It reminded me too much of the trip home after my parents and brother were killed.’
Alice moved her arms from around his waist and took his hands in hers, gently stroking their strong backs with her thumbs. ‘I can’t imagine how that must have been for you.’
He looked down at their joined hands for a moment before returning his gaze to hers. ‘My grandparents tried to spare me the trauma of going back home but I insisted. It was weird...surreal, really. Everything at home looked the same but it was different. It was like the villa was holding its breath or something.’
His gaze got a faraway look and shifted from hers.
‘It was like my life had been jammed on pause. I stood there thinking if only I could turn back the clock. Maybe if I hadn’t been sick they wouldn’t have had to make the detour to my grandparents’ place, then they wouldn’t have been on that road at that particular time.’
Alice clutched at his hands. ‘You mustn’t blame yourself. You were a child. Kids get sick all the time. You can’t possibly blame yourself for someone else’s stupidity. It was that drunk driver’s fault, not yours, that your family were killed.’
Cristiano’s fingers shifted against hers, his eyes still shadowed.
‘I was cautious about expressing my grief because it only made it harder on my grandparents. If I showed how devastated I was then they would have that to deal with along with everything else. They were so strong but it can’t have been easy bringing up a child at their stage of life. They’d stepped back from the hotel business to enjoy a quieter life, but of course all that changed. My grandfather had to run things until I was of an age to take over.’
He slipped his hands out of hers and walked over to one of the windows that overlooked the lake.
Alice wanted to follow him but sensed he was gathering himself. She couldn’t recall a time when he had spoken with such depth about his loss. He had never seemed to want to talk about it before. Why hadn’t she taken the time to encourage him to unburden himself? She had been so immature back then she hadn’t seen how the loss of his family was why he over-controlled everything. She had been mulish and opinionated instead of compassionate and understanding. If only she had been less focussed on her own opinions she might have realised how tragic his life had been and how it had coloured everything he did.
Her background had its issues, certainly, but nothing compared to what he’d been through. She looked at his tall frame standing there and pictured the child he had once been. Trying to be strong for his grandparents. Containing his grief to protect them. Hadn’t she done the same with her mother? Tried to be strong, becoming the adult instead of the child in order to help her mother through every broken relationship. Ignoring her own needs until she could barely recognise them when they cropped up. ‘Oh, Cristiano...’