And Santo Ferrara wanted his son.
She sat on the bed, watching her son fall asleep, her love for him so huge that it filled every part of her. The strength of that bond made it all too easy for her to imagine Santo’s feelings. Deep inside her, the guilt that she worked so hard to suppress awoke.
She’d never been comfortable with her decision. It had haunted her in the dark hours of the night when there were no distractions to occupy her mind. It wasn’t that she regretted the choice she’d made. She didn’t. But she’d learned that the right decision could feel completely wrong. And then there were the dreams. Dreams that distorted reality. Twisted the impossible into the possible. Dreams of a life that didn’t exist.
Blocking out images of black, silky lashes and a hard, sensual mouth, Fia stayed until Luca was safely asleep and then returned to the kitchen to clear up. Because she’d sent the staff home she had to do it herself, but the mindless work helped calm the panicky knot in her stomach. She poured her anxiety into each swipe of her cloth until every surface in the kitchen shone, until sweat pricked her brow, until she was too bone-tired to feel anything except the physical ache of hard labour. And then she grabbed a cold beer from the fridge and took it to the small wooden jetty that butted out from the restaurant.
Fishing boats bobbed quietly in the darkness, waiting to be taken out onto the water.
Usually this was a time to be calm, but tonight her nightly ritual failed to produce the desired effect.
Fia kicked off her shoes and sat on the jetty, feet dangling in the cool water, her gaze sliding to the lights of the Ferrara Beach Club on the opposite side of the bay. Eighty per cent of her customers tonight had come from the hotel. She had reservations for plenty more, booked months ahead. Twisting off the cap, she lifted the bottle to her lips, realising that by being good at what she did, she’d inadvertently drawn the eye of the enemy.
Her success had brought her out from under the radar. Instead of being irrelevant to the all-powerful Ferraras, she’d made herself significant. This was all her fault, she thought miserably. In pursuing her goal of providing for her family, protecting her son, she’d inadvertently exposed him.
‘Fiammetta!’
Her grandfather’s bark made her jump and she sprang to her feet and walked back towards the stone house that had been in the family for six generations, a feeling of sick dread in her stomach. ‘Come stai?’ She kept her voice light. ‘You’re up late, Nonno. How are you feeling?’
‘I’m as well as a man can be when he sees his granddaughter working herself to the bone.’ He scowled down at the bottle in her hand. ‘A man doesn’t like to see a woman drinking beer.’
‘Then it’s a good job I don’t have a man I need to worry about.’ She teased him lightly, relieved that he had the energy to spar with her. This was their relationship. This was Baracchi love. She told herself that just because he didn’t express it didn’t mean he didn’t feel it. On some days she actually believed that. ‘What are you doing up? You should be asleep in bed.’
‘Luca was crying.’
‘He had a dream. He just wanted a cuddle.’
‘You should leave him to cry.’ Her grandfather gave a grunt of disapproval. ‘He’ll never grow up to be a man the way you coddle him.’
‘He’s going to be a fine man. The best.’
‘The boy is spoiled. Every time I see him, someone is hugging him or kissing him.’
‘You can’t give a child too much love.’
‘Did I fuss over my son the way you fuss over yours?’
No, and look at how that turned out. ‘I think you should go to bed, Nonno.’
‘Can I cook for a few people? That’s what you said to me—’ he winced as he walked stiffly towards the waterfront ‘—and before I know it my home is full of strangers and you are serving good Sicilian food on fancy plates and lighting candles for people who wouldn’t know the difference between fresh food and fast food.’
‘People travel a long way to taste my cooking. I’m running a successful business.’
‘You shouldn’t be running a business.’ Her grandfather settled himself in his favourite chair at the water’s edge. The chair he’d sat on when she was a child.
‘I’m building a life for myself and a future for my child.’ A life that was now overturned. A future that was threatened. Suddenly she didn’t trust herself not to betray what she was feeling. ‘I’ll fetch you a drink. Grappa?’
She had to tell her grandfather about Santo, but first she had to work out how. How did you tell someone that the father of his precious great-grandchild was a man he hated above all others?
Fia walked back to the kitchen and grabbed the bottle and a glass. It was a long time since he’d mentioned the Ferraras. And that was because of her, of course. Concerned for Luca, she’d insisted that if he couldn’t speak the name positively then he wasn’t to speak the name at all.
At first she was just grateful that he’d taken her threat seriously, but now she was wondering whether it meant he’d actually softened over time.
Please. Please let him have softened—
Fia put the glass on the table in front of her grandfather and poured. ‘So what’s wrong?’
‘You mean apart from the fact that you are here every night slaving in that kitchen while someone else looks after your child?’
‘It’s good for Luca to be with other people. Gina loves him.’ She didn’t have the family she wanted for her son, so she’d created it. Her son was never going to be lonely in the way she’d been lonely. He had people he could turn to. People who would hug him when life threw rocks.
‘Love.’ Her grandfather grunted with contempt. ‘You are turning him into a girl. That’s what happens when there is no father to teach a boy to be a man.’
It was the perfect opening for her to tell him what she needed to tell him. But Fia couldn’t push the words past her dry throat. She needed time. Time to discover what Santo intended to do. ‘Luca has male influences in his life.’
‘If you’re talking about that boy you employ in the restaurant, there’s more testosterone in my finger than he has in his whole body. Luca needs a real man around.’
‘You and I have very different ideas about what makes a real man.’
His bony shoulders slumped and the lines on his forehead were deep. In the past month he appeared to have aged a decade. ‘This isn’t what I wanted for you.’
‘Life doesn’t always turn out the way we plan it, Nonno. When life gives you olives, you make olive oil.’
‘But you don’t make olive oil!’ He waved a hand in frustration. ‘You send our olives to our neighbours and they make our oil.’
‘Which I use in my restaurant. The restaurant that everyone in Sicily is talking about. I was in the paper last week.’ But somehow the buzz that she’d got from that fleeting moment of success had gone. Recent events had diminished it to nothing. ‘The week before I was mentioned in an important travel blog. The article was called “Sicilian Secrets”. I’m doing well. I’m good at my work.’
‘Work is what a woman does before she finds a husband.’
Fia put the bottle down on the table. ‘Don’t say that. Soon, Luca will be old enough to understand you and I don’t want him growing up with that opinion.’
‘Men ask you out! But do you say yes? No, you don’t. Dark, blond, tall, short—it’s always “no”. You shut everyone out and you