‘Don’t walk away from me, woman!’ he growled.
Oddly, it stopped her. Not the words themselves but the way he had said them. There was a bitter, biting frustration there—frustration with his physical disadvantage.
She turned back to glance at him just as his fist made furious contact with the wheelchair arm, his face a twisted map of angry helplessness.
‘I did not take the child!’ He scowled mutinously up at her. ‘If I had thought of it, I would have!’ he added bluntly. ‘But I did not!’ Then he sighed heavily because the burst of passionate anger had obviously drained his energy.
Sara saw him go a paler shade of sallow, his eyes lose the vibrant spark of life, and her bottom lip twitched in a spasm of unwanted feeling for this man who was her enemy. She didn’t know whether to believe him, or even if it really mattered that much now that the deed was done. But she could not afford to relax her guard around Alfredo, she reminded herself grimly. Past experience had taught her that lesson the hardest way anyone could learn a lesson in life.
But nor was it in her nature to be cruel to the afflicted, and Alfredo was certainly afflicted at the moment.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked stiffly.
‘Sì,’ he clipped back, but he was leaning heavily on his forearms, his silvered head lowered while he seemed to be concentrating on pacing his breathing.
A child’s laughter drifted up from the small beach below, tinkling around both of them and diverting their attention to the sight of Lia dressed in white cotton dungarees and a white cotton mob-cap pulled on over her hair, running as fast as her little legs could take her, away from Fabia who was chasing with a string of wet seaweed dangling from one hand.
Sara laughed too; she couldn’t help it. Leaning her thighs against the terrace wall, she folded her arms and watched the chase.
Suddenly the wheelchair was right beside her, Alfredo leaning forward as much as he could to follow what was going on.
‘Run, little one. Run!’ he encouraged gruffly, a thin hand making a fist which he used to urge the child further.
It was miraculous. In those few short seconds he had doubled in strength, in life, in sheer vitality. And the chase was lost to Sara as she took all of this in.
A tingling on the back of her neck—that sixth sense at work again, probably—made her turn and look up—up the white-walled terraces, to see Nicolas standing several levels above them, his dark face carved in a mask of pained observation.
Pain not for the child but for the father. Her heart squeezed in her breast. He too had seen the change in Alfredo—perhaps even heard the exchange which had preceded it.
His eyes flicked to her and turned cold—as cold as yellow ice. Yes, he had heard, she realised with a small shiver. Not all of it, but enough. He had warned her not to upset his father. Now retribution was due because she had.
‘Hah!’ said Alfredo, sitting back in his chair with a triumphant laugh. ‘Did you see that?’ He chuckled delightedly, unaware of the other exchange going on. ‘She escaped by ducking right between Fabia’s legs!’
Dragging her eyes from Nicolas’s, she glanced down at the beach where Fabia was now giving chase in the other direction. When she looked up again, Nicolas was gone.
‘Aye, aye, aye …’ Alfredo sighed envyingly. ‘To be able to go down there and join in the fun …’
‘Alfredo—’ Impulsively, Sara knelt down to his level. ‘Lia is your grandchild—’
‘I know this.’ He turned, eyes so incredibly softened by pride and joy that it caught at her throat.
‘You love her already.’
‘Sì,’ he confirmed. ‘We—how you English say?—bonded!’ he exclaimed. ‘From the moment she saw me, Sara! She came into my arms as if she had known them always! I love her,’ he sighed. ‘She loves me! It is wonderful!’
‘She is part of me too, Alfredo,’ Sara firmly reminded him.
‘It would be difficult to deny this when she is the image of you.’ He grinned.
‘She needs her mother.’
‘Of course!’ He looked almost shocked that she should feel the need to tell him that. ‘All children need their mother …’ he added, his attention drifting back to the beach where the game had now finished and Lia was busy with her bucket and spade while Fabia erected a beach umbrella over her to keep off the sun. ‘Nico was entirely devoted to his mama,’ he went on softly. ‘They would play together—on this same beach—just like that.’
‘Rosalia,’ Sara prompted softly.
‘Sì.’ The gold eyes darkened. ‘You named the child after Nico’s mamma. I thank you.’ He gave a small nod of his head. ‘It was—kind of you under the circumstances.’
‘She was a very special woman, so Nicholas once told me. She—’ Sara eyed him carefully. ‘She was devoted to both her husband and her son.’
‘Sì.’ Again the word held a wealth of tenderness. ‘As we were devoted to her,’ he added. ‘But she took very sick. Then she died. We both grieved for her badly—still do in some quiet moments, though it was a long time ago now.’
‘Would Rosalia be proud of you, Alfredo, for denying her son the right to love his own wife and child as she loved you both?’
There was a sudden stillness about him. Sara held her breath, waiting—waiting to see how he was going to respond to that blatant attempt to reach his conscience.
‘You presume too much,’ he said curtly then.
‘Do I?’ was all she answered, and stood up, deciding she had said enough for now. She had planted the seed; now it was up to him to decide whether to nurture it or just let it die. But if he did let it die then he would be shaming the memory of his beloved wife. Sara had made that point sink indelibly in. ‘Just remember that Lia is my child,’ she concluded. ‘Try any of your rotten tricks to take her from me and I shall fight you to hell and back.’
His golden eyes flicked sharply to her. ‘And how could I possibly do that?’ he asked, back to being the man she used to know—the one who could terrify her with a look like that.
But not any more, she informed herself bracingly. ‘You know exactly how you can do it,’ she countered. ‘I am one step ahead of you, Alfredo,’ she warned. ‘Force me to, and I will use my ace card.’
His eyes were studying her with a gleaming intelligence. ‘And what would that ace card be?’ he asked silkily.
She didn’t have one, but it wouldn’t hurt to let him think that she might have. ‘If you don’t already know then I’m not going to tell you.’
‘My son loves his papà,’ he added slyly.
By that Sara assumed he was wondering if she had some way of proving her innocence and Alfredo’s culpability to Nicolas.
‘Your son has a right to love his own daughter too,’ she responded, and turned away, preparing to leave him alone with that.
But his voice when it came to her made her skin crawl with dismay. ‘He has a new woman,’ he said. ‘Her name is Anastasia and she lives in Taormina. He visits her twice a week when he is here.’
Her eyes closed on the words. And she had a flashback to a week ago when she had lain in his arms and heard Nicolas himself confirm that statement. ‘Of course I have tried!’ he had spat at her. ‘Do you think I like feeling this way about you?’
Cancer. Alfredo was a cancer that lived on the weaknesses of others.
She walked away from him, feeling sick and shaken.
When