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Zia skipped forward. She was unconcerned by that greet¬ing. She had grown up with a grandfather who bawled the length of the room at everybody, and volume bothered her not at all. She extended a foot with a carefully pointed toe for Luca's inspection. 'See...pretty,' she told Luca chirpily.
'Accidenti...' Luca began, reluctantly tearing his atten¬tion from Darcy to focus with a frown on the tiny child in front of him.
'If you want peace, admire her frilly socks.'
'I beg your pardon?' Luca breathed grittily.
'Zia...' Darcy urged, holding out her hand.
But her daughter was stubborn. Her bottom lip jutted out. She wasn't used to being ignored. In fact, Darcy reflected, if Zia had a fault, it was a pronounced dislike of being ignored.
'Has you dot pretty socks?' Zia demanded somewhat ag¬gressively of Luca.
'No, I haven't!' Luca ground out in fierce exasperation.
There was no mistaking that tone of rejection. Zia's eyes grew huge and then flooded with tears. A noisy sob burst from her instantaneously.
Darcy swept up her daughter to comfort her. 'You really are a cruel swine,' she condemned feverishly. 'She's only a baby... and if you think I'm travelling to Italy with some¬one who treats my child like that, you're insane!'
Discovering that even the loyal Benito, who had come to an uneasy halt some feet away, was regarding him in shocked surprise, Luca felt his blunt cheekbones drench with dark colour. He strode back into the house in Darcy's furious wake.
'I'm sorry...I'm not used to young children,' he admitted stiltedly.
'That's no excuse—'
'Bad man!' Zia sobbed accusingly from the security of her mother's arms.
'Never mind, darling.' Darcy smoothed her daughter's tumbled curls.
'You could try contradicting her—'
'She'd know I was lying.'
But, mollified by the apology and the certain awareness that Luca had just enjoyed an uncomfortable learning ex¬perience, Darcy went back outside and climbed into the helicopter.
'Is she asleep?' Luca skimmed a deeply cautious glance into the sleeping compartment of his private jet to survey the slight immobile bump on the built-in divan, his voice a positive whisper in which prayer and hope were blatant and unashamed.
Darcy tiptoed out into the main cabin, her face grey with fatigue. In all her life she had never endured a more night¬mare journey.
Zia had been sick all the way to London in the helicopter. The long wait in the VIP lounge until the jet could get another take-off slot had done nothing to improve the spirits of a distressed, over-tired and still nauseous little girl. Zia had whinged, cried, thrown hysterical tantrums on the car¬pet beneath Luca's utterly stricken and appalled gaze, and generally conducted herself like the toddler from hell.
'She's never behaved like that before,' Darcy muttered wearily for about the twentieth time.
By now impervious to such statements, Luca sank down with a shell-shocked aspect into a comfortable seat. Then he sat forward abruptly, an aghast set to his lean, dark fea¬tures. 'Will she wake up again when we land?'
'Heaven knows...' Darcy was afraid to make any more optimistic forecasts, but maternal protectiveness prompted her to speak up in further defence of her daughter. 'Zia's not used to being sick. She likes a secure routine, her own familiar things around her,' she explained. 'Everything's been strange to her, and then when she was hungry and we could only offer her foreign food—'
'That was definitely the last straw,' Luca recalled with a shudder. 'I can still hear those screams. Per meravig-lia...what a temper she has! And so stubborn, so demand¬ing! I had no idea that one small child could be that dis¬ruptive. As for the embarrassment she caused me—'
'All right...all right!' Darcy groaned in interruption as she collapsed down into the seat opposite.
'Let me tell you, it is no trivial matter to have to trail a child screaming that I am a bad man through a crowded airport!' Luca slammed back at her in wrathful recollection. 'And whose fault was that? Who allowed that phrase to implant in the poor child's head? What I have suffered this evening would have taxed the compassion of a saint!'
Darcy closed her aching eyes. A policeman, clearly alerted by a concerned member of the public, had inter¬vened to request that Luca identify himself. Then a man with a camera and a nasty raucous laugh had taken a photo of them.
The flash of the powerful camera had scared Zia. Darcy had been shaken, it not having previously occurred to her that Luca might be a target for such intrusive press atten¬tion. Bereft even of the slight protection that might have been offered by Benito, who had left the Folly in the lim¬ousine, Luca had seethed in controlled silence. A saint he was not, but he had made a sustained effort to assist her in comforting and calming Zia.
Luca released his breath in a stark hiss. 'However, the original fault was of my own making. When I demanded an immediate departure from your home, I took no account of the needs of so young a child. It was too late in the day to embark on such a journey.'
