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‘Are you close to them?’ He gazed at her, his silvery eyes searching her, looking for answers. ‘You must not see them very often, living here.’
‘I...’ How to answer that seemingly innocent question? ‘I see my father sometimes. He’s currently posted in Budapest, and we’ve met up occasionally.’
‘And your mother?’
Why was he asking her all these questions? She didn’t want to talk about her family, and certainly not her mother, yet in the darkened intimacy of the room, of the moment, she knew she would answer. ‘No, I’m not close to my mother. My parents divorced when I was twelve, and I didn’t see her much after that.’
‘That must have been hard.’
A small shrug was all she’d allow on that subject, but Larenzo nodded as if she’d said something important and revealing. ‘And siblings? Do you have any sisters or brothers?’
‘One sister, Meghan. She lives in New Jersey, does the whole stay-at-home-mom thing.’ The kind of life she’d deliberately chosen not to pursue or want. ‘We’re close. We Skype.’ She shook her head in confusion. ‘Why are you asking me all this, Larenzo?’
‘Because I never had a real family of my own, and I wondered.’ He turned, his back to her as he gazed at the fire. ‘I wondered how families are. How they’re meant to be.’
‘What happened to your family?’
‘I don’t know. My mother left me to fend for myself when I was young, maybe two or three. An orphanage took me in, run by a convent. Not the nicest place. I ran away when I was eleven. Spent the next few years on the street.’
He recited these facts dispassionately, without any self-pity at all, and somehow that made it all the more terrible. ‘That’s awful. I’m sorry.’ Emma would never have guessed such a past for this man, with his wealth and power and magnetism. ‘Was this in Palermo?’
‘Yes.’
‘Those are hard memories.’
‘Yes.’ He let out a long, low sigh. ‘But let’s not talk about that tonight.’
‘What do you want to talk about?’
‘Anything.’ He sat down on the sheepskin rug in front of the fire, and patted the floor next to him. Emma came to sit across from him, folding her legs underneath her, conscious of the strangeness of this situation: both of them in their pyjamas, the firelight casting pools of light over their skin, and yet of the ease of it too. It felt weirdly natural to sit there with Larenzo, in the dark, with the fire. Surreal and yet somehow right.
‘What do you want to do with your life, Emma?’ he asked as he tossed another log on the fire. ‘I assume you don’t want to be a housekeeper for ever.’
‘Would there be something wrong with that?’
He gave a faint, bemused smile. ‘No, there’s nothing wrong with that. But you are a beautiful, capable young woman, and I imagine you want to see more of the world than a remote Sicilian hilltop.’
‘I like to travel,’ she admitted. ‘I’ve moved around a lot already.’
‘As a diplomat’s kid.’
‘Yes, and since I finished school. Itchy feet, I suppose.’
‘What did you study at school?’
‘I did a photography course just for a year, and then I got a backpack and a rail pass and went to see the world.’ Determined to enjoy everything life had to offer, never to be tied down, never to be hurt.
‘Sounds fun.’ He turned to her, an eyebrow arched. ‘I think I’ve seen you with a camera round the place. Have you taken photos here?’
‘Yes...’
‘May I see them?’
She hesitated, because no one had ever seen her photographs. No one had ever asked. And showing them now to Larenzo felt even more intimate than when they’d held hands. She’d be showing him a part of her soul. ‘Okay,’ she finally said. ‘I’ll go get them.’ She hurried up to her bedroom, and then leafed through several folders of photos before selecting a few of her favourites. She brought them back to Larenzo, handing them to him silently.
He studied each one carefully, a slight frown puckering his forehead as Emma waited, nibbling her lip. She realised she wanted him to like them, to understand them, and she held her breath as she waited for his verdict.
‘They’re not holiday snaps,’ he said finally and she let out a little laugh.
‘No.’ She preferred to take candid shots of people, strangers and sometimes friends caught in an unexpected moment, held in thrall by an emotion, whether it was happiness or sorrow or something else.
