Sam made a face at him then extended a hand to Gabriela. “Suit yourself. We’ll be back in a little bit.”
Outside, the air was biting cold and the snow deep and powdery. They set off for the Rookery, but walked around the back of the old building to what had once been the kitchen garden.
Almost immediately they sank knee deep into a chilly white mound. Gabby gasped even as Samantha did.
“It’s freezing,” Gabriela said breathlessly.
“Look,” Sam said, pointing to the edge of the roof where melting snow had frozen into long spinning strands of ice. “Isn’t that the most gorgeous icicle? Looks like a waterfall.”
“Like in Switzerland,” Gabby agreed, as they tramped further on, slow quiet steps that required lots of concentration on Gabby’s part.
Sam glanced down at the top of Gabby’s head. “You remember that trip?”
Gabby’s fingers tightened. “We went for a ride in a carriage and had bread in melted cheese for supper.”
Gabby wasn’t even three yet then. “That was two years ago.”
Gabby’s hazel eyes narrowed. “It was fun.”
Sam’s chest squeezed with emotion. “It was fun,” she agreed softly. The visit to Bern had been the first—and last—trip Sam had taken with Gabby and Johann. Johann had said he had business in the city and while he attended meetings, Sam and Gabby played tourist, taking a horse-drawn carriage through the city and then stopping later on the way back at a chalet-style restaurant where they sat outside beneath a heat lamp and dunked chunks of crusty bread in a golden cheese fondue.
They were huffing a little as they reached the back garden where dormant rosebushes looked like snow-flecked sculptures.
Sam brushed snow off one of the benches and she and Gabby sat. Almost immediately Sam could feel the chill from the bench seep through her pants.
“Has he come to take me back with him?” Gabby asked, touching Sam’s sleeve.
Sam covered Gabby’s mitten with her gloved hand. For a moment she couldn’t bring herself to speak, not trusting her voice.
“I heard him,” Gabby added. “That first night he was here when you thought I was sleeping.”
Sam tried to sound severe. “You shouldn’t eavesdrop. Because the problem with eavesdropping,” she added more gently, “is that you don’t always hear the whole conversation and you miss the meaning of what is being said.”
“So he’s not going to take me home?”
Sam lifted Gabby’s mitten hand, pressed a kiss to her fuzzy palm. “Not without me, he isn’t.”
Cristiano stood at the kitchen window watching Samantha and Gabriela make their way back to the cottage. They made a picture, he thought, teeth scraping as he bit back the hot emotion rushing through him.
Fair, pink-cheeked Samantha, her long loose spiral curls dusted with snow, bent down to hear whatever it was Gabriela was saying, and Sam looked exactly the way he imagined a snow angel would look. And Gabriela, with her long dark hair escaping her cap in wisps, black tendrils clinging to her cheeks that were rosy from the cold, looked so vibrantly alive that it made Cristiano’s heart hurt.
Gabby should always look so healthy and happy.
He’d do everything in his power to ensure her health and happiness.
As he watched, Sam impulsively wrapped her arm around Gabby’s shoulders, giving her an affectionate squeeze and he smiled reluctantly. Sam and Gabby looked nothing alike and yet they suited each other perfectly. And Sam, even though she’d been employed as Gabby’s nanny, was more mother than any mother he’d ever seen.
He left the doorway, went to the fireplace in the living room, held his hands over the heat.
It was difficult being here with them when they were together. They had such a long history together and even though he was Gabby’s family, he felt like the outsider.
He was the outsider. And that hurt.
The front door opened and voices and light filled the cottage. Cristiano blinked at the brightness of the light and yet welcomed the warmth they brought to the cottage. Sam and Gabriela literally lit up a room.
“Cristiano,” Gabby called from the doorway, still wheezing from laughing and running in the snow. “Come play with us.”
Play in the snow? Cristiano grimaced. Maybe as a child he’d loved to ski, but since his accident, he avoided snow and ice. “How about a card game instead?” he suggested.
Gabby appeared in the living room, cheeks red, light hazel eyes fringed by long black lashes. She clapped her gloved hands sending little snow flurries across the room. “But it’s beautiful outside!”
“And cold.”
“Pssh,” she said dismissively, waving one gloved hand in his direction. “You’re not that old. Come out and play. It’ll be fun. It’s snow.”
He wasn’t that old.
Bene, grazie, he thought. Great, thanks. And yet he was amused. Women chased him. He was never short of female company, most adored his wealth, his looks, his celebrity status, and yet here he was, sequestered with two who seemed impervious to his charms.
And then as Cristiano looked down into Gabby’s little face, her dark eyes so much like his, his heart ached. “I don’t play in snow very well,” he said gruffly.
“That’s okay. All you have to do is try your best.”
What a minx. She was certainly her father’s daughter. “Is that all?” he drawled, mocking her.
“Yes.” She reached for his hand, tugged on it, leading him toward the door. “Do you need your coat? It’s chilly out.”
It was as if she’d taken his heart in her small fingers, instead of his big calloused hand. He bit down on the inside of his cheek to hide the intense emotions filling him. He’d spent his life wanting family, craving a traditional family, but it had never been his to have. His father wasn’t the sort to settle down. His father wasn’t the sort to want anything but speed. Risk. Danger. Cristiano had it in his blood, too, but not to the extent his father did.
And Gabriela…
Cristiano shook his head, amazed by her bright eyes, quick mind, unflinching nature. He knew he’d never actually send her to boarding school, especially not after the miserable experiences he’d had. But Samantha didn’t have to know that. Let Sam think he was a brute. Let her think the worst. He didn’t need her approval, and he didn’t need her to like him. He just needed Gabriela to come home.
Sam blew on her fingers as Gabby led Cristiano out of the house by the hand. He, like Sam, didn’t have warm winter clothes, and she supposed she could have dug through the closets and bureau drawers at the Rookery to find heavier coats and caps and gloves, but it seemed wrong. The Rookery had been shut up so long, closed after Charles died, it felt more like a shrine to Charles than a place orphan children had once lived.
But Cristiano, even gloveless, tackled the snowman with Gabby, helping pack big snowballs and then stack the balls to form the snowman’s body. Together they hunted up sticks for arms and ransacked the kitchen for a carrot for the nose, but sadly all the carrots were used in the shepherd’s pie, but they finished with stones for the eyes and mouth and then Gabby’s cap and scarf.
Sam was just about to warm milk for hot cocoa when Cristiano and Gabby returned. They were laughing, shivering and discussing the merits of their snowman they’d named most originally, Mr. White.
“Let’s get out of your wet clothes,” Sam said, taking Gabby’s cold, damp hand in hers. “I think you’ll need a warm bath, too. You’re