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He laughed. ‘When I get to fifty I will stop working and enjoy what I have built for myself.’
She smiled. The soft hue of the patio lights lent her face an extra glow that only enhanced her natural beauty. If Stefano didn’t know of the poison that lay behind the beautiful façade, he would be entranced.
‘I can live with retiring in Italy.’
He made his lips curve. ‘You’ve said that before but I think you will find it hard not to have your sister on the doorstep.’
Her smile faded into a grimace, pain flashing in her eyes. ‘I think so too. I want to stay angry with her but it’s too hard. She’s my sister and whatever’s happened between us I still love her.’ She blew a puff of air out and shook her head. ‘I need to speak to her.’
‘You’ll be able to soon. She’s only away for a month. You two will sort it out, you always do.’ As close as the two sisters were, they often argued. Some days Anna would hear her phone ring, see Melissa’s name on it and say, ‘I’m not in the mood to talk to her,’ with a scowl. Other times they were quite capable of spending two hours on the phone, their conversations only coming to a close when one of their phone batteries ran out.
It came to him that when he went ahead with his plan to humiliate her at the awards ceremony she wouldn’t have her sister to turn to.
Before his conscience could start nagging at him about this, he opened the bottle of wine he’d placed on the table and poured himself a healthy glass.
Anna stared from him to her own glass and the jug of iced water he’d put beside it, her nose wrinkling.
With equal
parts amusement and irritation, he watched her pour herself some wine.
‘You shouldn’t be drinking.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘One glass isn’t going to kill me.’
‘You have to be the worst-behaved patient.’
‘You’ve lived with me for a year. That shouldn’t be news to you.’ She took a chunk of focaccia and dipped it in the pinzimonio before popping it into her mouth whole and devouring it with relish.
It was the first time she’d eaten anything with enthusiasm since her injury.
Suddenly he remembered all the meals they’d shared together and her love of good food. Anna had an appetite that belied her petite figure. This wasn’t the first sharing platter they’d had between them, and when she picked up a tooth pick to swipe the largest bite of Parmigiano Reggiano before he could take it, the boulder that had been lodged in his throat settled in his chest.
‘I’ve never known you to be ill before,’ he said.
‘Melissa says it’s like caring for an adolescent toddler.’
He laughed at the mental image this provoked.
‘I haven’t taken a painkiller all day,’ she pointed out. ‘And speaking of sisters, you never did tell me how yours found you. Her name’s Christina?’
‘Sì. Christina. She reached out to me when our father died.’
‘So your father was alive all this time?’
He nodded with a grimace. ‘All those years I thought he was dead he was living in Naples, not even a two-hour drive away. I even had his name wrong—I always believed he was called Marco but it was Mario.’
‘How awful.’ Her hazel eyes were dark with the same empathy he’d seen in them earlier. ‘He was so near to you all that time? Didn’t he want to see you?’
‘He wasn’t allowed.’ There was little point in evading the subject. Anna had that look about her that meant she would chip away until she had all the answers she desired. It was what made her so good at her job: that refusal to leave any stone unturned. ‘My nonno paid him to leave Lazio before I was born. He blamed him for my mother’s addiction. My father took the money and ran, then he grew up and got himself straight, got a job and a place to live. He tried to get in touch with my mother and learned she had died. Nonno didn’t trust him and told him to stay away from me. Rightly or wrongly, he agreed. He didn’t trust himself any more than Nonno did but he did stay clean, met another woman and had a child with her—Christina. His wife encouraged him to get in touch with me directly but by then Nonno had died and I’d been kicked out by the rest of my family and living on the streets. He couldn’t find me.’
‘But he looked?’
‘He looked, sì, but at that time I often used different names and I never gave my real age. He was searching for someone that didn’t exist.’
‘What about when you started to make a success of yourself?’ she asked with wide eyes. ‘Did he not realise it was you, his son?’
‘He knew,’ Stefano confirmed grimly. ‘But he thought I wouldn’t want to see him; that I would think he only wanted to claim me as his son to get some of my fortune.’
