AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Of course you loved her!’ declared his aunt passionately. ‘But there is love, and there is love. Sometimes I thought you seemed more like brother and sister.’ She regarded him thoughtfully. ‘And a man like you needs real love; passionate love.’
‘Oh, Zia Maria,’ he said in a tone which was half-mocking.
The look she threw him back was equally mocking. ‘You think that because I am of the older generation, that because I am old, I cannot understand passion?’
He shook his head, vigorously. ‘Never!’ he declared fervently. ‘Passion has no sell-by date.’
His aunt’s eyes narrowed, and then she nodded thoughtfully. ‘Sicilians are by nature and necessity the most secretive of people. Our culture and our history has always required our silence.’
‘But not you?’ queried Giovanni wryly. ‘You’re not like that?’
She laughed. ‘No, you are right—I am not like that! My mother used to despair of my loose tongue!’ She paused for a moment before she spoke. ‘I think that your Kate means a very great deal to you?’
For a moment he didn’t speak; he was not a man who unburdened his soul, nor one who bared his thoughts for others. And yet the weight of his guilt was an intolerably heavy one. He gave a heavy sigh.
‘I think that, whatever my feelings for Kate, it may be too late for us now.’
Aunt Maria frowned. ‘Too late? How can it be too late? Why is she here with you if it is, as you say, too late?’
A torrent of emotion seemed to well up like a tide inside him and his mouth twisted with pain.
‘Tell me, Giovanni,’ prompted his aunt softly. ‘Tell me.’
There was a long, painful pause. ‘She was having my baby!’ he burst out at last. ‘My baby, Zia Maria.’
Aunt Maria went very still. ‘Was?’ she questioned quietly.
He nodded. ‘I had only just found out. She told me, and I was…’ His words tailed off.
‘What were you, Giovanni?’ she prompted quietly.
‘I was so angry!’ he bit out. ‘Angry with her, and with myself—we had not planned a baby, you see!’
‘That is the way these things sometimes go.’ She smiled gently, but then her face grew serious. ‘What happened?’
Could he bring himself to tell his aunt? To confess to his sin? ‘I made love to her,’ he said, in a cold, empty kind of voice. ‘And within the hour she…she lost the baby.’
‘And you blame yourself—is that it?’
‘Jesu, Maria! Of course I blame myself!’ he exploded. ‘If I hadn’t done that then she would still be pregnant!’
Aunt Maria shook her head. ‘Oh, Giovanni, don’t be ridiculous!’ Her face was very candid as she laid a hand gently on his arm. ‘Giovanni, think about this logically. Do you imagine that once a woman is pregnant, she and her partner never make love again until the baby arrives?’
‘Of course not!’
‘Well, then…what happened happened, and no one is to blame. It could well be,’ she hesitated, ‘that she would have lost the baby anyway. It would have occurred whether you made love to her or not. Sex does not cause miscarriages.’
‘I’ve made her so unhappy!’ he declared hotly.
‘And yourself, by the look of you,’ observed his aunt. ‘The question you must ask yourself is whether you are going to let this ruin what you have between the two of you.’
And what did they have between them? He didn’t know. He had never got around to asking her. Or telling her. He had been locked into a part-time relationship which was full of passion, but low on commitment. He had imagined that things would continue in their sweet, blissful way—but nothing ever remained the same, he realised now. Especially feelings. His own had changed somewhere along the way, but had hers?
‘You must talk to her!’ declared his aunt urgently. ‘You must!’
‘I know I must,’ he echoed quietly.
The following morning he drove her into central Sicily, and Kate tried very hard to concentrate on the scenery and not the count-down happening inside her head as the hours before going home slowly ticked away. Tomorrow she would be on a flight back to England—her stay with Giovanni nothing but a bitter-sweet memory.
