‘Someone has to when my grandmother isn’t around,’ she murmured, and Roberto shot his son a sidelong look before shooing her away. ‘There’s no need to call a taxi.’ She stood back, head cocked, making sure everything was up to her inspection with Roberto’s outfit. ‘I’ve brought my car.’
‘You’re going to drive us?’ Alessandro let them pass and slammed the door behind them.
‘Don’t tell me you don’t feel comfortable with a woman behind the wheel,’ she said with saccharine sweetness. ‘Because if that’s the case, then you’re a dinosaur.’
‘Girl speaks her mind!’ Roberto chortled smugly. ‘Something you’ll have to get used to, my boy!’ He absently patted her hand as they trundled towards the side of the house.
‘You intend to take us out in that?’ Squatting directly under one of the security lights that surrounded the house was an ageing Morris Minor. ‘I thought those cars were extinct,’ he murmured. ‘Along with the dinosaurs you mentioned.’
‘It’s very reliable,’ Laura told him tartly.
‘Except for last winter,’ Roberto pointed out, and for the duration of the drive they launched into an extended anecdote about the unpredictability of her car, which, Alessandro assumed, he was supposed to find uproariously hilarious. He wondered why his father didn’t just buy her something more reliable and then grimaced because had he done that, Alessandro knew that he would have been the first to point out that his father was being ripped off.
He had intended to bring up the matter of the move but, over a surprisingly good meal, he found every effort thwarted.
They had in-jokes. They talked about people in the village. They spent way too long discussing some orchids someone or other had done something or other with, only desisting when Alessandro was forced to butt in and shut down that particular topic or risk falling asleep. He heard his father laugh. Twice. The sound was so unusual that he wondered whether his ears had been playing up but, no, at the end of an hour and a half he could see for himself that the life he had envisioned his father having might have been slightly off target.
And he had known nothing about it.
‘So how long will you be staying?’ Laura asked politely, when, engine still running, they were back at the manor house.
‘This has been the most uncomfortable journey of my life,’ Alessandro informed her as he levered his big body out of the back seat. ‘Why is your engine still running? I take it you’re coming in.’
‘I hadn’t intended to.’
‘Girl’s got to be on her way!’ Roberto announced.
‘In that case,’ Alessandro countered, ‘we can have some time to discuss your move.’
‘Not tonight, my boy. This old man needs his beauty sleep!’
‘I’ll come in for a couple of minutes.’
Roberto, on his way to the front door, paused to look at the two of them, eyes narrowed. ‘Can’t think Edith will want you gallivanting all over the country at this time of the night!’
Laura laughed as she joined them to walk to the front door. Roberto’s bushy brows were drawn together in a frown. ‘Hardly gallivanting all over the country,’ she soothed. ‘My grandmother worries too much.’
‘With good cause,’ Roberto muttered, rapping his walking stick on the front door impatiently as Alessandro jangled a bunch of keys, hunting out the right one. ‘After all those shenanigans in London!’
‘Here we go!’ Laura trilled, hoping to drown out that utterly, utterly inappropriate remark and mentally vowing to warn her grandmother about any more confidences while Alessandro was on the scene, earwigging. ‘Back home and I must say the meal was delicious!’
Much as she didn’t want to spend time in Alessandro’s company, she knew that she would have to, at least for half an hour or so. First, she wanted to find out how long he intended staying in Scotland, because having a car delivered was not a good sign. Second, she was desperate to know whether he was rethinking his silly decision to try to browbeat Roberto into moving down to London.
She had seen the way Roberto had deflected all attempts to manoeuvre the conversation to the move and she knew that whatever relationship the two had, it would crash and burn completely if Alessandro kept hammering away at his father, trying to force a move that wasn’t wanted.