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'She also refused to allow me to share in Ilaria's upbring¬ing when I was in a position to offer her a more settled home life. And she was a very liberal guardian. She spoilt Ilaria rotten. When my sister turned into a difficult teenager, Emilia saw her behaviour as rank ingratitude. Being a sub¬stitute mother had become a burden. She demanded that I take responsibility for Ilaria and within the same month she moved to New York.'
'Oh, dear...' Darcy grimaced.
'Ilaria was devastated by that rejection and she furiously resented me. We had some troubled times,' Luca conceded with a rueful shrug. 'She's twenty now, but I have little contact with her. As soon as she reached eighteen, she de¬manded an apartment of her own.'
'I'm sorry.' Seeing his dissatisfaction with this detached state of affairs, Darcy rested her hand on his sleeve in a sympathetic gesture. 'I always think the worst wounds are inflicted within the family circle. We're all much more vul¬nerable where our own flesh and blood is concerned.'
'You're thinking of your father?'
'It's hard not to. I spent my whole life wanting to be somebody in his eyes, struggling to win his respect,' Darcy admitted gruffly.
'Everyone's like that with parents.'
Tensing as she noticed his attention dropping to the hand still curved to his arm, she hurriedly removed it, thinking then with pain that the kind of physical closeness which he was at ease with in bed seemed a complete no-no out of bed.
'But I was reaching for something I could never have. I don't think my father ever looked at me without resenting the fact that I wasn't the son he wanted...but all that made me do was try harder,' she confided ruefully.
Luca reached for her hand and curled lean fingers tautly round hers. 'Was that why you took the Adorata?' he de¬manded in a roughened undertone, shrewd dark eyes drawn to her startled face. 'Darcy impressively riding to the rescue of the family fortunes with a pretend lucky find?'
Caught unprepared, Darcy lost every scrap of colour in her cheeks, her green eyes darkening with hurt at that ab¬surd suspicion. Once again she had forgotten what lay be¬tween them, and with too great a candour she had exposed herself to attack.
'You must've lied to your father. He may have been domineering and aggressive, but he had the reputation of being an honest, upright man. Did you tell him that you had found it in some dusty antique shop where you had bought it for a song?' Luca pressed with remorseless per¬sistence.
A door opened off the ball. Both Darcy and Luca whipped round. A slim, stunning girl with shoulder-length dark hair and a sullen expression subjected them to a stony appraisal.
'I have no intention of wasting an entire evening waiting for you to show up at your own dinner table, Luca,' Ilaria said with brittle sarcasm. 'Just why did you bother to invite me?'
'I hoped that you might want to meet Darcy. I'm sorry that we've kept you waiting,' Luca murmured levelly.
Ilaria vented a thin laugh. 'Why didn't you give me the opportunity to meet her before you got married?'
'I left several messages on your answering machine. You never call back,' Luca countered calmly.
The combination of aggression and hurt emanating from Ilaria was powerful. But then her big brother had married a total stranger. In those circumstances, her hostility was natural, Darcy conceded. Tugging free of Luca, she walked over to his sister, a rueful look of appeal in her eyes. 'You have every right to be furious. And I don't know how to explain why—'
'We got married in a hurry,' Luca slotted in with finality as he thrust open the door of the dining room. Atmospheric pools of candlelight illuminated the beautifully set table awaiting them. 'There's not much else to say.'
'I can't imagine you doing anything in a hurry without good reason, Luca,' Ilaria gibed. 'Have you got her preg¬nant?'
Darcy froze, and then forced herself down into the seat Luca had spun out for her occupation. While Luca shot a low-pitched sentence of icy Italian at his sister, Darcy drowned in guilty pink colour and glanced at neither com¬batant. The suggestion had been chosen to insult, but it was more apt than either of her companions could know.
However, she recognised the position Luca had put himself in, and she wanted to help minimise the damage to his already strained relationship with his sister.
'We had a quiet wedding because my father died re¬cently.' Darcy spoke up abruptly. 'I have to admit that we were rather impulsive—'
'Impulsive? Luca?' Ilaria derided, unimpressed. 'Who do you think you're kidding? He never makes a single move that he hasn't planned down to the last detail!'
'In this case, he did,' Darcy persisted quietly. 'But it was selfish of us to just rush off and get married without letting our families share in the event.'
'Your family wasn't there either?" The younger woman looked astonished, but was visibly soothed by the admis¬sion. 'So where did you meet...and when?'
