The return trip to the airport had been a nightmare. As they’d driven through the village on their way back to the airport those villagers who had been in the town square had turned away from the car, and some of the young men had even thrown stones at it. Her father had been furious with her, but it was the memory of the tears in her grandfather’s eyes that still hurt her the most.
She wasn’t eighteen any more, Louise reminded herself. She was nearly twenty-eight, and a highly qualified professional in her field, who had to deal daily with problems within relationships and emotionally driven people who’d had experiences that were far, far worse than her own. The problems of her past were not hers alone. Others had shared in their creation.
Her main responsibility now was doing what was best for Oliver. She might remain trapped in the present, yes, because of the events of the past, but she did not have to be trapped within her own pain. She had been foolish in creating her fantasy around Caesar, and she had paid for that folly and come through the trauma of it. Caesar, she suspected, because of his position and the deference accorded to him, would never experience the stripping-down of his personality to reveal to him its inherent flaws; he had never been humiliated, never been humbled, never been told that he was cruel—and that, in her professional opinion, was his loss. He had denied her and now he wanted to claim his son. The idea filled her with terror. She would never allow anyone, least of all Caesar, to hurt and humiliate Oliver the way she had been hurt.
She wished passionately that it wasn’t necessary for her to have to have Caesar’s permission for the interment of her grandparents’ ashes, but she wasn’t going to give up just because of the past. She was determined to repay the debt she owed them. And if Caesar’s price for that was Oliver’s DNA test …? Well, she would be ready to do battle for her son … and for her very soul.
HIS title and standing on the island opened many doors, Caesar acknowledged as the manager in charge of the children’s club at the hotel escorted him onto the tennis court where Oliver had just finished playing. Caesar had told him that he was thinking of enrolling his cousin’s sons for lessons when they arrived later in the week for their annual summer visit. It need not be a lie. His cousin had mentioned that it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep her teenage sons fully occupied.
Oliver, who was focused on his computer game, only looked up briefly when Caesar’s shadow fell across his screen.
Oliver’s colouring wasn’t only entirely Sicilian—olive-coloured skin, a mop of dark curls—it was also entirely Falconari, Caesar recognised as the boy’s eyes registered wary hesitation at the approach of a stranger.
In Caesar’s jacket pocket were the results of the DNA test, and they were beyond doubt. They showed absolutely clearly that Oliver was his son. Looking at him now, Caesar was caught off guard by the ferocity and surging intensity of the father-to-son connection he felt towards him. It was so strong that it was almost as though an actual cord somehow connected them. Immediately he wanted to go to Oliver and take hold of him, lay claim to him, mark him by his touch as his own.
The power and the unexpectedness of the personal nature of the emotions gripping him almost stopped him mid-stride. He’d already known what it would mean to him as the Duca di Falconari to know that Oliver was his son, but this feeling went far beyond that and was very personal.
Thankfully, though, he did have some experience of boys around Oliver’s age through his contact with his cousin’s sons, so he held back and merely remarked conversationally, ‘You played well.’
‘You were watching me?’
With those words the look Oliver was giving him and his wariness dropped away, to be replaced with a pleasure that underlined more clearly than anything else could have done the issues his great-grandfather had raised in his letter:
The boy needs his father in his life. Louise is a good mother—she loves him and protects him—but the unhappiness she experienced with her own father has cast a long shadow, and that shadow falls on Oliver as well. He needs the genuine love and presence in his life of his father. I can see the same craving in him that Louise herself suffered. You are his father. You have a duty to him that I believe your honour will oblige you to meet.
This isn’t about money. Louise has a good job, and I know she would refuse to take any kind of financial help from you.
From what he had seen so far of Louise, Caesar doubted that she would be willing to take anything from him.
He had been relieved, or so he had told himself, when he had returned from Rome to find her gone—even if his twenty-two-year-old’s pride was still stinging from being accosted by the village headman. Especially as, when he’d initially heard the brief knock on his bedroom door, he’d thought it was Louise returning to him. Knowing that he had felt a leap of joy added to the weight of his guilt and his confusion about his inability to control his reaction to Louise, and had been enough to make him feel obliged to listen whilst the headman warned him that he had seen Louise leaving the castello. He’d guessed what had happened and told him that if Caesar wanted to prove he was fit to wear his ancestors’ noble shoes, that he was aware of his duty to his people, then he could have nothing more to do with Louise.
‘That just isn’t possible,’ Caesar had told him. ‘Her family are staying here. They are part of our extended community. It is expected that I make them welcome.’
And Louise? He had wanted to make her welcome too—in his bed. And in his heart …? How torn he had been between the raging desire that she had released and his awareness of the customs of his people. But his desire for Louise was something he had to control and deny, he had warned himself. Just as he had controlled and denied any public display of the shock and grief he had felt at the loss of his parents. It was not seemly for a Falconari to allow himself to be controlled by his emotions, so he’d absented himself until his fear that his ability to control his emotions had been breached for ever had gone.
Was it seemly for a Falconari to take the coward’s way out? What was the point of asking himself these questions? There was no point—just as there was no point in allowing himself to remember the emotional agony he had felt in Rome, the sleepless nights, his desire to find Louise … Another example of her ability to breach his self-control—just like the letter he had eventually sent her, asking for forgiveness. A letter to which she had never replied. Not even though by then she must have known she was carrying his child.
He looked down into Oliver’s eyes. Exactly the same colour and shape as his own. His heart pounded uncontrollably.
‘How are you liking Sicily?’ he asked.
‘It’s much better than home ‘cos it’s warm. I hate the cold. My great-grandparents were Sicilian. My mum’s brought their ashes here to get them buried.’
Caesar nodded his head.
Another boy was coming towards them, swinging a racquet and accompanied by a man who Caesar guessed must be his father.
‘Hi, Oliver.’ The man smiled. ‘I see you’ve got your dad with you now.’
Caesar waited for Oliver to deny their relationship, but instead, almost instinctively, he moved closer to him, so that Caesar could put his hand on Oliver’s shoulder in much the same way the other man was doing with his son.
Oliver’s bones beneath his tee shirt felt thin and young, vulnerable and very precious. So this was how it felt to have a child … a son …
And that was how Louise saw them as she came to collect Oliver, her pace quickening along with the anxious, angry too-fast beat of her heart, until both were racing as she almost ran up behind Oliver, reaching out to wrench him out of Caesar’s hold.
They turned towards her at the same time, father and son, the truth stamped so indelibly on both sets of features that the shock