Cinderella In The Sicilian's World

Lina pushed her dessert plate away. Okay, so he didn’t want to talk about Sicily—but they had to talk about something, didn’t they? Otherwise every time she ran across him she was going to feel increasingly agitated.

Focus on something other than the curve of his lips and the carved contours of his face, she told herself fiercely. Ask him something easy.

‘Where are your parents?’ she asked suddenly.

Almost imperceptibly, his knuckles tightened. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘It’s a normal question. Nobody in the village knew anything about them. Apparently your godfather never talked about them, even when he was well. I was just thinking how proud they must have been of your success.’

Salvatore stilled. Funny how a guileless statement like that had the power to tug you back towards a darkness and a past he tried to keep out of bounds. ‘My parents never got to see it,’ he said coolly. ‘They were dead by then. They died a long time ago. Long enough for everyone to have forgotten about them.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said quietly. ‘What happened to them?’

There was a pause and Salvatore felt a flicker of irritation. Didn’t she realise from his tone that he didn’t want to talk about it? That over the years he had built a high wall around his emotions? An impenetrable barrier, which discouraged investigation into his past—a concept easily accepted by a culture which was keen to live in the moment. But Lina Vitale was looking at him with such genuine compassion shining from her eyes that Salvatore felt some of his usual resolve melt away.

Was it because she was Sicilian and they were speaking quietly together in dialect that he found himself wanting to break the most fundamental of his self-imposed rules and talk to her on a level he never usually engaged in with other people? Or because she looked so damned lovely that he needed to distract himself from giving in to what he most wanted to do—which was to carry her off to his bedroom and ravish her over and over again, until she was shuddering out his name and biting her little white teeth into his bare skin?

And he wasn’t going to do that any more. He’d demonstrated quite enough powerlessness around her. He needed to claw back some of the control which had so disturbingly left him on the plane today.

But she was still looking at him and something about her soft gaze was making him want to spill it all out. And why not? It wasn’t as if he cared about what had happened in the past, was it? Not any more. He had schooled himself to ensure he didn’t really care much about anything, or anyone. A brief explanation might provide a welcome diversion from the rise and fall of her breath, which was making her luscious breasts move provocatively beneath her dress. And mightn’t talking about it prove to himself once and for all that the past no longer had the power to hurt him?

He swallowed the last of his wine and put the glass down. ‘My father was a fisherman, though not a particularly effective one,’ he began, arching her a questioning look. ‘You know what they say about fisherman’s luck?’

She shook her head. ‘Not really.’

‘Getting wet and catching no fish,’ he explained, with a rare flash of black humour which made her smile. ‘As a consequence we had very little. We were among the poorest in one of the poorest villages on the island. The bottom of the heap, if you like. And it made my mother...discontented.’

She didn’t say anything. If she had, he might have clammed up. But as her silence washed over him with purifying calm, he found himself continuing.

‘A life of poverty wasn’t what she had signed up for. She was a beautiful woman who had always attracted the attention of men and that made my father jealous. Jealousy is an ugly trait,’ he added, his mouth twisting. ‘I could hear him shouting at her at night-time, when I was trying to sleep. He used to accuse her of flirting. Of wearing clothes which were too tight and lipstick which was too red. Sometimes their rows were so loud they used to wake up the neighbours and all the local dogs would start to bark. And she used to taunt him back. She told him he couldn’t even provide for his family. She said he wasn’t a real man.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘Living with them was like watching a never-ending boxing match, with each one circling the other, waiting to make the killer blow. Like having a bomb ticking away in the corner of the room, just waiting to go off.’ It hadn’t felt like life, it had felt like existence—a claustrophobic prison from which he’d been unable to escape and which had soured his appetite for close relationships in the years which had followed.

‘Go on,’ she said, in a voice so soft it was barely audible.

He drew in a deep breath, surprised by the ease with which he was saying it, as if someone had sweetened a mouthful of poison and made it almost palatable. ‘One day, when my father was out on his boat, a travelling salesman came by the house—a slick stranger who seduced her with the promise of silk stockings and a better life. By the time I got home from school she had already packed her things and was getting ready to drive away in his fancy car.’

He was lost in the past now; he could feel it sucking him back into a great gaping vortex of darkness. His mother had crouched down and told him she would send for him just as soon as she was settled but something inside him had known she was lying. He would never forget the kiss-shaped mark of lipstick she’d left behind on his cheek, which he had scrubbed afterwards until his skin was red raw. Or the way the salesman had looked right through him, as if he were invisible—a tedious little obstacle which had been put in their path. His father had erupted with a heartbreak which had made the young Salvatore flinch with shame. Crying big savage sobs, he had thrown himself down on his knees in front of his straying wife, his shoulders shaking as he’d begged her not to go.

But she had. She and the salesman had driven away in a cloud of dust. And Salvatore had been left with his father’s grovelling display in front of the small crowd who had gathered there. Just as he’d been left with his own sense of confusion and outrage. In that moment he had recognised the humiliation that women could heap upon men, and how a man could let his obsession for a woman make him lose his mind. He had never forgotten either of those lessons. And he had been right about his mother’s lie, because she had never sent for him, despite the promise she had made. ‘My mother and her lover were killed in a car crash the following year,’ he added grimly. ‘And soon after that, my father was lost at sea.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘They called it an accident, but I never considered it one, for he lost the will to live after her desertion.’

‘Oh, Salvatore.’ Her voice trembled and he could hear the soft note of tenderness in her voice. ‘That’s...that’s awful.’

He shook his head and held up his palm. ‘Platitudes are not necessary, Lina,’ he said, hardening his heart to the way she was looking at him, as if she wanted to cradle him in her arms and take away all those bitter memories. And that was why he didn’t ever talk about it, he reminded himself grimly. He would not be seen as a victim. As someone to be saved, or pitie

d, or rescued. Because he’d managed to mastermind his own rescue and he’d done it all himself. ‘I didn’t tell you because I wanted your sympathy.’

There was a flicker of a pause. ‘Then why did you tell me?’

‘Maybe I just wanted to make it clear what has made me the man I am. To make you understand that I mean it when I say I don’t want any long-term emotional commitment. Perhaps now you can understand why.’

‘Because you don’t trust women?’

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘Because I know my own limitations. I just don’t have the capacity to care, Lina—or the willingness to do so. I’ve always been that way and that’s the way I like it.’

He saw the clouding of her eyes just as his phone began to vibrate on the table and he snatched it up, glad of the interruption. He listened intently for a few moments before terminating the call and rising to his feet, his heart twisting with something inexplicable as he looked down into her big, dark eyes. ‘I need to deal with this call and then I’m going to turn in for the night,’ he said abruptly. ‘But stay as long as you like and ring for anything you need. Shirley can get you coffee—’

‘No. I mean, thank you, but no.’ With a fluid movement she rose from the table. ‘I’m tired too and I’d like to turn in.’ She hesitated. ‘I don’t suppose you’d show me the way? This place is so big I’m terrified of getting lost.’

The last thing he wanted was to escort her back in the seductive light of the moon. To imagine the bed which lay within the little cottage and think how good it would feel to sink down on it with her in his arms and to lose himself in her sweetness. The spiralling tension which had tightened his groin into an exquisite ache made him want to refuse her innocent request, but wouldn’t that imply that he couldn’t trust himself around her?