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‘Sometimes.’ Claudia paused, taken aback that he remembered her tendency to live on simple uncooked food that took virtually no preparation. ‘There never seems to be much point cooking for one.’
As soon as the words were out of her mouth she regretted it. It was silly to draw attention to the fact that she was on her own—Marco did not need to know that. And, now that she had agreed to get married, she soon wouldn’t be on her own. But in her heart she knew she’d be more alone than ever.
‘I may not cook much, but I do still enjoy baking. I took a cake into work for a colleague’s birthday last week,’ she rushed out, hoping to move the conversation on.
‘One of your grandmother’s recipes?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’ She drew her brows together without realising what she was doing and frowned at him. Did he remember everything about her?
For some reason it bothered her. There were very few people who knew that her most treasured possession was her grandmother’s handwritten recipe book. It was an ancient thing, with fragile curling grease-stained pages. But within its brown covers were wonderful recipes that represented more to Claudia that she could ever explain.
The lemon drizzle cake her grandma had made for Sunday tea when Claudia and her father, Hector, had escaped from Francesca for the afternoon. The large chocolate cake with expensive ingredients that meant it had only been made for birthdays. The cherry cake that Grandma said was Claudia’s mother’s favourite when she was a little girl. And Mother’s Christmas Cake—which was Grandma’s mother’s recipe—Claudia’s great-grandmother.
She’d never met her great grandmother and she’d lost her own mother when she was very young. But somehow that recipe book made her feel close to them. When she made those recipes she as if like she was making a connection to the past—as if she hadn’t really lost them for ever.
‘I’ll get us a refill,’ Marco said, reaching forward to take the empty wineglass from Claudia’s hand. ‘And I’ll warm up some mince pies for dessert.’
Claudia leant back on the sofa, thinking how wonderful it was to be waited on. For such a dynamic, successful man, Marco was really very skilled in the kitchen and was not too proud to get down to work preparing food.
One of the reasons Claudia never cooked was that she didn’t really know how to make even the most basic of meals. Her grandmother had taught her to bake cakes, but her stepmother, Francesca, had no interest in cooking and didn’t see it as a useful skill. As far as she was concerned, you employed a chef or always ate out.
She heard a muted clang as Marco closed the oven door and for some reason Claudia found herself thinking about the many times his sister, Bianca, had sung his praises. There was no doubt that Marco had taken his role as his sister’s guardian very seriously, even to the point of preparing meals for her himself.
She looked over her shoulder and saw him coming back into the room with two refilled wineglasses in his hands.
‘Bianca often told me how wonderfully you took care of her after the death of both your parents,’ Claudia said. ‘Is that when you learnt to cook?’
A nasty jolt jarred through Marco at Claudia’s comment.
She had no business talking about Bianca as if they were friends—not after the things she’d done. Also, hearing her mention his mother—the De Luca family’s shameful betrayer—was unacceptable.
‘My mother is not dead,’ Marco said shortly, holding the fierce rush of anger that powered through him in check. ‘I don’t know where she is now, and I do not care to know. She betrayed our family and abandoned Bianca, her only daughter, when she was still a child.’
‘I’m so sorry.’ Claudia looked genuinely upset and confused as she pushed her hair back from her face with a shaky movement of her hand. Her eyes were wide with concern. ‘What happened?’
‘I looked after my sister, of course,’ Marco said, staring down at her coldly.
He knew that wasn’t the answer she was looking for, but there was no way he was going to discuss how Primo Vasile had seduced his mother, tempting her into her treachery against his father.
Although treachery was something that Claudia could understand—just like his mother, she had committed the same crime. But he wasn’t ready to accuse her of that now.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know,’ Claudia said quietly. ‘About your mother, I mean. I always got the impression she had died at the same time as your father.’
‘As far as I am concerned, she did,’ Marco said flatly.
Claudia looked at his stony face in silence. It must have been awful for Bianca to
lose her mother like that—worse, in many ways, than if she had actually died. No wonder they never talked about her.
‘Thank goodness, for Bianca’s sake, that she had such a devoted brother to look after her,’ Claudia said.
For a long moment Marco was silent, staring into the crackling fire with dark eyes. She began to think that she’d made him really angry by bringing up a sore subject from his past. But then he seemed to shake off his black mood and turned back to her again.
‘I never learnt to cook—it always seemed instinctive,’ he said, finally sitting down on the sofa beside her.
‘Well, I guess I don’t have the right instincts,’ she said wryly, pleased that he was talking to her again. ‘Everything I try to cook comes out tough and overdone, or raw on the inside and burnt on the outside.’
‘You can bake cakes,’ Marco said. ‘But I think photography is where your true instincts lie. I’d love to see the photos you took this afternoon.’
