‘But my baby does not,’ she managed to parry. ‘She is the innocent one in all of this. Punish the mother and you will punish the child. Can you be that callous? That thirsty for revenge?’
‘I am not after revenge,’ he denied. ‘It is a simple case of logistics which decides it for us. This house is easier to guard against a repeat of what you have just been through. Therefore this is where you will live from now on. Comprende?’
Oh, she ‘comprended’ all right. The lord and master had spoken. End of discussion.
‘But I don’t have to eat with you,’ she countered, throwing herself back onto the sofa with a defiance about her that warned him she was not going to surrender this point to him as well! ‘I would rather starve first.’
‘And that is being childish,’ he derided.
Too true, she agreed. But there was no way she was going to sit at the same table as Alfredo Santino! No way.
‘I’m tired,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to dress up and play happy dinner hour with you and your father—can’t you even allow me that one concession?’
He sighed, allowing some of his anger to escape with the sound. Then surprisingly he gave in. ‘I need to speak to Fabia before I leave you,’ he said. ‘Then I will have something sent down to you.’
With that, he walked off towards the bedroom, leaving Sara feeling annoyingly, frustratingly let down.
Though she didn’t know why.
Or refused to look at why.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SARA was squatting by the cultivated border of one of the many white-painted terrace walls, carefully coaxing bougainvillea strands around a wire support that she had just constructed, secure in the knowledge that she could hear Lia’s happy voice drifting up to her from where she played on the beach with Fabia, when an electric whirring sound behind her warned her of Alfredo’s approach.
She didn’t turn, did not so much as reveal she was aware of his presence. But her inner sigh was heavy. In the six days since she had arrived here, she had carefully avoided any contact at all with Alfredo. He came to see Lia each lunchtime, guiding his chair into the suite and staying long enough to share lunch with the baby, and Sara made herself distinctly scarce before he was due to arrive.
It was necessary for them to stay here, Nicolas had said. But necessary to whom? To this man in the wheelchair coming steadily towards her along the terrace? Of course it was.
It certainly wasn’t what Nicolas wanted, she thought bleakly, because she hadn’t even seen him since the first night she’d arrived here.
He had had his talk with Fabia, their two voices conversing in the quick Sicilian dialect Sara had never quite been able to keep up with even before her Italian had become rusty through lack of use.
When he’d come out of the bedroom again, he hadn’t even bothered to wish her goodnight, but had just left.
She hadn’t seen him since. The next morning she’d awoken to Fabia arriving with a manservant in tow carrying some heavy suitcases. They’d contained all her personal belongings. Nicolas must have had them flown in overnight from London. A further statement that this was to be a permanent situation. Fabia had also brought a message from Nicholas informing her that he’d had to fly back to New York.
He had been gone for almost a week now, and she refused point-blank to admit—even to herself—that she missed him.
The wheelchair stopped a couple of feet away. Sara felt his eyes on her, sensed him urging her to turn and acknowledge him. When she did not, it was he who broke the tense silence between them.
‘The garden has missed your special touch,’ he said.
‘I have nothing to say to you, Alfredo,’ she told him without pausing in what she was doing. ‘You are a mean, nasty, selfish old man who doesn’t deserve my attention. Or the attention of my daughter, come to that.’
Instead of taking exception to her outright attack on him, she was surprised to hear him give a soft chuckle. ‘I would say that constituted saying a lot,’ he remarked ruefully.
It made her turn, more out of suspicion than because she had been taken by surprise by his amiable tone. She was quite sure Alfredo could chuckle as pleasantly as that while thrusting a knife between her shoulderblades!
Still, this first real look at him without her being blinded by the horror of seeing her daughter clasped to his chest was a shock.
Dressed in a cream short-sleeved shirt open at the throat and a pair of brown trousers, he was still a remarkably daunting person—remarkable because he had been so drastically diminished in the purely physical sense.
Never anywhere near as tall as his son, he had once made up for his lack of inches with width. Wide shoulders, wide chest, wide hips, short, immovable trunks for legs—all of it solid-packed and tough. But now the width had gone, the muscle waste so dramatic that it had left behind it a mere shadow of what once had been, replacing it with a frailty so obvious that Sara began to understand why Nicolas was so angrily protective of what pathetic amount was left.
The sun was shining down on his silvered head—the hair was not thinning, she noted. At least he had been saved that emasculation. But his skin, though tanned, was sallow and loose, wrinkling his arms and his throat. And there was a lack of strength in the way he sat hunched in his wheelchair, as if the mere act of sitting in it was an effort in itself.
‘Goodness me.’ She sat back on her heels, too stunned to hold back the next comment. ‘You look terrible.’
His answering wry smile was more a fatalistic rueful grimace. ‘I hate it,’ he admitted, and slapped a thin hand on the wheelchair arm. ‘Hate this too.’
I just bet you do, she thought with a moment’s soft pity for this man who used to be a giant despite his lack of inches.
Then he was sending her a look that had all hint of compassion draining right out of her. For this man was still dangerous, physically incapacitated or not. Those two bright hunter’s gold eyes were burning pinpoints of astuteness and guile, warning her that the sharp brain behind them still functioned at its old breakneck pace.
‘You, I see, are more beautiful than ever,’ he remarked. ‘The child is hewn in your image. Your hair, your face, your inherently sweet and gentle nature.’
‘I was a coward, Alfredo,’ Sara countered, ignoring the attempted compliment. ‘My daughter is not.’
Something she had discovered via listening painfully as Lia had over the last few days let little things slip which suggested that the child had not made it easy for her kidnappers.
‘It will be my son’s genes which give her courage.’ He nodded proudly. ‘Or maybe even my own.’
‘God help her,’ Sara responded, amazed that he wasn’t even going to pretend he did not know exactly who Lia’s father was. ‘If she has much of you in her, Alfredo, then she will need God’s help.’ She fixed him with a hard and cold look. ‘Have you any idea how much you frightened her having her snatched like that?’
‘Me?’ At last he decided to use his striking ability to fake innocence, actually managing to look shocked by the accusation. ‘I did not snatch the bambina!’ he denied. ‘I would not wish to frighten a hair on her beautiful head!’
‘Liar.’ Blue eyes suddenly hot with anger, she stood up and went to lean over him. ‘I saw your expression when you held my baby in your arms! You were glowing with triumph! With everything alive in you, you were staking ownership! Possessive and territorial! I saw it, Alfredo. I saw it!’
It made him gasp, the very fact that she could spit at him like that utterly astounding him. ‘You grow brave in the face of a shrivelled old man in a wheelchair,’ he murmured feebly.