A Taste Of Italy. Fiona McArthur

      He wiped the excess paint off the paintbrush and balanced it carefully across the top of the open paint tin before he stood. ‘How are you? How’s Jack? What’s happened was huge. Bigger than anything we’ve had to cope with before.’ He came closer. ‘You okay, honey?’

      She watched one large drip of red paint slide down the end of the brush and fall onto the grass like a drop of blood. A spectre of foreboding. But she didn’t have premonitions—that was Misty’s way. She shivered. She was here for a reason. ‘I’ll be fine when Leon’s gone and Jack’s safe.’ As if to convince herself?

      Her father’s dark brows, so like her own, raised in question. He slid an arm around her shoulders and drew her to sit beside him on the circular iron stool that ringed the trunk of the biggest gum.

      ‘You think the two go together, do you? Leon and trouble?’

      ‘Of course.’ So quickly she could say that but still there was that tiny seed of doubt planted last night, an illogical but still possible seed that maybe the trouble had come from her.

      She wasn’t sure how to broach a subject every-one in her family had left alone for more than eight years.

      ‘Do you remember when you came for me that last time at Grandma’s?’

      Ben’s black brows rose in surprise. ‘Of course.’

      ‘Did you ever learn much about Jack’s father?’

      Ben’s arm slid away and he straightened and gazed across the lake. ‘Yes. A little.’

      She wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d said, ‘No—nothing,’ so the other answer made her curious. She couldn’t read his face. ‘What could you know? I didn’t tell you much.’

      Still he didn’t look at her. ‘I found out what I needed to. To be sure you were safe when I took you away. To be sure Jack was safe.’

      She really didn’t want to hear those words. To be sure Jack was safe. Her stomach plummeted as she watched his profile. ‘I think Vincente was involved with the mob on a small scale.’

      Ben winced. ‘I believe he was. I spoke to his mother and he was betrothed to a woman in Italy so he was never going to marry you.’

      ‘Do you think there is any reason they’d want Jack now?’ She’d said it. Out loud because she needed her father to deny, say it was nonsense, because she couldn’t say it to Leon, whom she needed to tell.

      Ben looked away again and didn’t meet her eyes. Her stomach sank and she didn’t want to think about the ramifications of that. He hesitated but then he said, ‘Can’t think of one.’

      Tammy sighed with relief. ‘Of course not.’