‘You do realise that Ella is by birth entitled to some of that money, don’t you?’ Rachel said. ‘She’s got Sabbatini blood in her veins. And, according to what I read in the papers about Luca’s older brother’s marriage breaking up without an heir, Ella is so far the only grandchild.’
Bronte pressed her lips together. She hadn’t thought of it quite like that. She hadn’t thought about Ella’s rights and entitlements as a Sabbatini heir. What if some time in the future her daughter resented her for not allowing her to get to know her father and his family?
‘Look, Bronte,’ Rachel went on. ‘I know Luca hurt you and you don’t trust him not to hurt you again, but you can’t keep his own flesh and blood a secret from him for ever. For all you know, he might be surprisingly good about it. After all, he was the one who cut you from his life. You did your best to contact him so if anyone’s to blame for him not being a part of Ella’s first year and a bit, it’s him.’
Bronte’s shoulders sagged. ‘I know I have to tell him some time. It’s just finding the right time to do it.’
‘There’s probably never going to be a perfect time to drop that sort of news into the conversation,’ Rachel said. ‘But it’s better he hears it from you rather than from someone else or, worse, stumbles across the truth himself. Photos are not the same as seeing someone face to face. As soon as Luca walked in here yesterday I realised who he was. That’s why I kept my mouth shut. Ella might favour you primarily, but no one could ever question she wasn’t his daughter. Once he sees her in the flesh, he’s going to see it for himself.’
Bronte tried to put her fears aside as she got on with her day but it was impossible to ignore the prospect of the evening ahead. She got home early enough to feed Ella her dinner and bathe her and have some play time before putting her to bed. Ella was a little grizzly and out of sorts and kept gnawing on her fingers, which made Bronte feel uneasy about leaving her.
‘I think she might be teething again,’ Bronte’s mother said as she came into the granny flat to babysit. ‘She was a bit grumpy yesterday too.’
Bronte placed her hand on her daughter’s forehead, frowning as she felt its clammy heat. ‘I’d better check her temperature. She feels hot.’
Tina produced the rapid test ear thermometer and handed it to Bronte. The reading was normal but still Bronte felt in two minds about leaving her daughter in such an unsettled state. ‘Maybe I should ring Luca and cancel,’ she said. ‘He gave me his contact details. Or I could just leave a message with the concierge at the hotel.’
Tina plucked the whining child from Bronte’s arms and cuddled her close. ‘Get it over with, love,’ she said. ‘Have dinner with him and then say goodbye and leave it at that. He’ll soon get the message you’re not interested. I know Rachel thinks you should tell him about Ella but I think you’d be better to let this particular sleeping dog lie.’
Bronte knew why her mother was so adamant about keeping Ella’s paternity a secret from Luca. Tina was frightened her little granddaughter would be taken to live far away in another country. Apart from Bronte and Ella, Tina had very little in her life. A single mother herself from a young age, all she had was her work at a machinery parts factory, which could hardly be called a fulfilling career. Bronte and now little Ella were the entire focus of her life. She had never dated, rarely socialised and had few hobbies. Rachel had warned Bronte many times that her mother was living her life vicariously through Bronte but it had been too hard for Bronte to do anything about it. She had needed her mother, just as much if not more than her mother needed her.
‘If she doesn’t settle, promise you’ll ring me,’ Bronte said as she rummaged through her wardrobe for something to wear.
‘She’ll be fine,’ Tina assured her. ‘I’ll nurse her for a while until she drops off.’ She looked down at the infant in her arms and continued wistfully, ‘I love watching her sleep. It reminds me of when you were a baby. It was just you and me in those days. I don’t know what I would have done if anything had happened to you. You were my whole world.’
Bronte smiled and leant down to kiss her mother and her little daughter. ‘I won’t be late,’ she said softly. ‘And thanks, Mum, for everything.’
Tina smiled back but Bronte could see there was a tinge of worry in her eyes as she watched her leave.
Luca straightened his tie and shook down his shirt cuffs, freeing them of his dinner jacket. He had had meetings all day and his head was buzzing with all the things he had to do over the next month. This trip to Melbourne was proving to be one of the best decisions of his career in the family corporation. He had begun the negotiation for plans for a boutique hotel development in the city as well as two more commercial property investments: a large office block in the CBD and a parking lot with the potential for expansion.
And then there was Bronte. He had found it hard to sleep last night once she had left. He still couldn’t believe he had let her leave. He had been so close to pulling her back towards his bed and solving the issues over the past by doing what they had always done best. The trouble was he wanted her to come to him willingly. Seduction was easy; working on a relationship was harder. He didn’t want to end up like his brother Giorgio with a bitter estrangement from his wife and very likely a costly and acrimonious divorce pending. Luca wanted to get it right this time. He wanted to start again, put the past aside and work on his future—the future he hadn’t been sure he would have. Life for him now was about living. Taking each day as a blessing and moving forward with renewed purpose. Bronte was his stumbling block to moving on. He had to know if he had a chance to make things right with her. To see if what they’d had was still there.
The issue of her child was something he found challenging but it wasn’t the child’s fault and he knew he would learn to love her as his own once he spent some time with her. His family might not see it quite that way but he would deal with them if and when the time came. The pressure for the acquisition of a Sabbatini heir had already caused the breakdown of his brother’s marriage. Giorgio and Maya, in spite of several gruelling IVF attempts, had failed to produce the grandchild and great-grandchild his mother and rapidly ageing grandfather longed for.
There was a tentative knock at the door and Luca gave his hair one last finger-comb before he went to answer it. He had wanted to pick Bronte up but she had insisted on meeting him here. The restaurant was only a short walk along the Southbank complex so he had agreed, knowing that pressuring her too much would only bring her back up. It wasn’t his intention to antagonise her. His intention was to get her back into his life and into his bed as quickly as possible, to reawaken the feelings he hoped she still had for him. It was a gamble but he couldn’t rest until he knew for sure. He saw the way her eyes flared when they met his, and the way she sent the tip of her tongue out over her lips as if anticipating his next kiss. He felt the tension in the air, the way the invisible current of energy drew them together, as it had always done in the past. She might have slept with another man since, but he felt sure she still wanted him.
He opened the door and she was standing there in a cocktail dress of an intriguing shade of blue. The colour made the dark blue of her eyes look like fathomless lakes. She smelt divine: a mixture of orange blossom and ginger this time, spicy and fragrant and intensely alluring. Her straight dark brown hair was loose about her shoulders, glossy as silk, held back from her face with a slim black headband. Teamed with the cocktail dress, it gave her a child-woman look that was amazingly sexy. She was wearing heels but she still had to crane her neck to meet his eyes. Her mouth was soft and shiny with lipgloss, but in those first few moments he noticed how her teeth nibbled at the inside of her mouth, as if she was nervous.
‘Bronte,’ he said, leading her into the suite. ‘How do you manage to always look so beautiful and elegant?’
She