The seconds ticked by. No one moved. Not Sara. Not the baby. Not father or son or strange woman or even the air in the room, it seemed, in those few fraught moments.
Then the small head lifted, still frowning, still cross as she fixed her mother with a condemning look. ‘Not like airplanes,’ she said.
Sara’s legs went from beneath her. No warning. It was as if the sound of the child’s voice acted like a spring on all the control she had been exerting on herself and she simply-uncoiled, release flowing through her as if liquid were replacing bone.
Alfredo saw it happen but even as he let out a warning gasp, one gnarled hand lifting instinctively towards mother and child, Nicolas was there, bursting out of his statue-like posture to dart behind her so that her slender body melted against his own instead of falling to the floor, his arms snaking around both mother and child in support while the tension in his face reached crisis proportions.
The baby lifted her frowning eyes from her mother’s pale face and for the first time in her life fixed them on the rigid contours of her father’s.
Luminous blue met with harshly frowning gold. And while Sara fought a battle with her shattered control another communication took place—one which brought a muffled choke from Alfredo and set his son’s teeth gritting behind his tightly clamped lips.
For this child was undoubtedly Sara. Sara’s soft golden hair. Sara’s soft mouth. Sara’s pale, delicate skin. Sara’s huge, beautiful blue eyes.
No hint of Sicilian. Not even a hint of the dark-haired Englishman Sara had betrayed him with. The child looked like an angel when she should have been wearing the stamp of the devil.
His instinct was to snap right away from both of them. But although Sara was still holding the child it was his arms that were taking the child’s weight, his body that was keeping the mother upright.
‘Take the child—quickly!’ he raked out in an effort to release some of the violent emotion rushing through him right now.
But his feelings must have shown in his face, because the child’s mouth quivered, her eyes growing even bigger as they filled with frightened tears.
Then, ‘More bad man!’ she cried, reacting to both his hard expression and the rough words which must have reminded her of her kidnap. ‘Stay with Mama!’ Her arms clutched tightly at Sara’s neck. ‘No more bad man, Mama,’ she sobbed. ‘Grandpa said!’
Grandpa?
Sara’s eyes flicked open. Nicolas tensed up behind her. ‘What the hell …?’ he muttered.
‘She needed reassurance,’ Alfredo defended himself. ‘I gave it in the only way I could think of!’
Liar! Sara’s eyes accused him, and on a burst of anger that flooded the strength right back into her limbs she pushed herself free of Nicolas’s supporting arms, trembling for an entirely different reason now as her hand spread protectively over her baby’s head and she flashed both Santino men a condemning look.
‘You vile people,’ she whispered tightly, then turned and walked away—out through the open window and onto the terrace where the clean fresh air did not hold the taint of Santino.
‘Sara!’ Nicolas’s voice, harsh with command, brought her to a shuddering halt halfway across the terrace towards the steps. ‘Where the hell do you think you are going?’ he muttered, catching hold of her arm.
‘Let go of me,’ she whispered, seething with a bitter enmity she was finding it difficult to keep under wraps.
‘Don’t be foolish!’ he snapped.
‘But you saw him, Nicolas!’ she choked, turning wretched eyes on him. ‘He did it! He set all of this up for some selfish reason of his own! And—’
‘Be silent!’ he barked. ‘I have warned you before not to repeat accusations like that!’ He wasn’t seeing, she realised in despair—he would never see his father for what he really was.
His hard tone brought Lia’s head out of her mother’s throat, huge blue eyes homing in on his angry face, and the Cupid’s-bow mouth wobbled a second time, the first cry leaving her on a frightened wail. ‘Bad man again!’
‘Nicolas!’ A reprimand for his impatience came from an unexpected source. ‘You are frightening the bambina!’ Alfredo’s voice, coming from the open doorway, carried above Lia’s growing wails while Sara stood quivering with fury at the very idea that her child—any child—should have experience of what was bad in a human being!
‘My father is right,’ Nicolas conceded tautly. ‘We are upsetting the child.’ His hand tightened on Sara’s arm. ‘Come back inside,’ he urged, taking care not to let his eyes clash with the wide, wary ones of the little girl. ‘We are all overwrought. Come back inside …’
His hand urged her forward; reluctantly she went, aware that at this moment she really had no choice. They were right—both men were right and their manner was upsetting Lia. The poor baby had been through enough; she did not need her mother’s hostile attitude confusing her further. But as she reached Alfredo, sitting tensely in his chair in the open doorway, she paused, her hard gaze telling him that she knew what he had done, no matter that his son refused to see it.
The hunter’s gold eyes flickered then shifted from her to the baby where they softened into a gentle smile, a long-fingered hand reaching out to catch and squeeze a plump baby hand. The little girl responded immediately to the smile, offering one of her own.
‘Grandpa,’ she said, and once again rocked the precarious control Sara was clinging to.
It was said so affectionately.
It affected Nicolas too, his fingers tightening on Sara’s arm as he urged her forward. ‘You’re a fool, Nicolas,’ she said thickly. ‘You always have been where he is concerned.’
He ignored that, jaw clenching in grim dismissal of the remark. ‘Sit down,’ he commanded, almost pushing her into a nearby chair, then he clicked his fingers to bring an anxious-looking woman hurrying across the room. ‘This is Fabia,’ he said.
Keeping her eyes away from a stiff-faced Nicolas, Sara glanced at the woman, who smiled nervously and nodded her dark head in acknowledgement. She was not much older than Sara herself, but with the luxuriant black hair of a Sicilian and beautiful brown eyes.
‘Fabia is here to attend to your needs,’ he continued in that same cool voice. ‘And she will begin by collecting your luggage …’ With a nod at the other woman he sent her scurrying on her way. Then his attention was back on Sara. ‘I suggest you take the next few minutes to compose yourself and reassure the child.’ Lia had taken refuge by burying her face in her mother’s throat again. ‘Father …?’ Without giving Sara a chance to reply, he turned with that same cool, authoritative voice to Alfredo who was still sitting in the open window. ‘We need to talk.’
With that he walked off, with a surprisingly obedient Alfredo in tow, propelling himself by the use of the electronic controls of his wheelchair.
Silence prevailed. Lia lifted her face from its warm hiding place. ‘Bad man gone?’ she asked warily.
Sara leaned into the soft-cushioned back of the chair and gently cradled the baby to her. ‘He isn’t a bad man, Lia,’ she murmured quietly. ‘Just a …’ Confused one, was what she’d been about to say—which puzzled her because Nicolas had never been confused about anything in his whole life!
Life was black and white to him; confusion came in those little grey areas in between, which he did not acknowledge. Which was why their marriage had been such a difficult one, because Alfredo, knowing his son, had carefully clouded everything to do with Sara grey, causing