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He felt a pain he hadn’t felt in a long time. A hot, unwelcome pain which excluded everything else. It stabbed at his heart like a rusty knife and he wished he’d told her to mind her own business, but now he was on a roll and somehow he couldn’t stop—pain or no pain. ‘My father was completely humiliated by her desertion and determined to wipe away all traces of her. Something he found surprisingly easy to accomplish.’ He looked into her bright eyes and then he said it. He’d never admitted it before. Never told anyone. Not the therapist he’d half-heartedly consulted when he’d been living in New York, not any of his friends, nor the women who’d shared his bed in the intervening years and tried to dig away to get at the truth. No one. Not until now. He swallowed as the bitterness rose up inside him like a dark tide. ‘I never even saw a photo of her. He destroyed them all. My mother is a stranger to me. I don’t even know what she looks like.’
She didn’t gasp or utter some meaningless platitude. She just sat there and nodded—as if she was absorbing everything he’d told her. ‘But...didn’t you ever think about tracking her down and hearing her side of the story?’
He stared at her. ‘Why would I want to find a woman who left me behind?’
‘Oh, Alek. Because she’s your mum, that’s why.’ She got up and walked across the sun-dappled balcony until she’d reached him. And then she put her arms tightly around his back and held him, as if she never wanted to let him go.
He felt her fingers wrapping themselves around him—like one of those speeded-up documentaries of a fast-growing vine which covered everything in seconds. He tried to move away. He didn’t need her softness or her sympathy. He didn’t need a thing from her. He had learnt to live with pain and abandonment and to normalise them. He had pushed his memories into a place of restricted access and had slammed the door on them...what right did she have to make him open the door and stare at all those dark spectres? Did she get some kind of kick out of making him confront stuff that was dead and buried?
He wanted to push her away, but her soft body was melting against his. Her fingers were burying themselves in his hair and suddenly he was kissing her like a man who had finally lost control. Losing himself in a kiss as sweet as honey and being sucked into a sensation which was making him feel...
He jerked away from her, his heart pounding. He didn’t want to feel anything. She’d stirred up stuff which was better left alone and she needed to learn that he was not prepared to tolerate such an intrusion. She’d done it once, but it would not happen again. With an effort, he steadied his breath.
‘I don’t really want to provide some sort of erotic floor show for the surrounding apartments,’ he said, his voice cold as he walked over to the table and poured himself a glass of juice. ‘So why don’t you sit down and eat your breakfast, before we start sightseeing? You wanted to travel, didn’t you, Ellie? Better not waste this golden opportunity.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IT WAS NOT a successful honeymoon.
Yes, Lucca was completely gorgeous, and, with her brand-new sun hat crammed down over her hair, Ellie accompanied Alek to every iconic destination the beautiful city had to offer. She saw the tower with the trees growing from the top and drank cappuccino in the famous oval piazza. They visited so many churches that she lost count, and ate their meals in leafy squares and hidden courtyards. There were marble statues in beautiful gardens, where roses grew beside lemon trees. And when the sun became too fierce there were shady streets to walk down, with the rich smell of leather purses and handbags wafting out from the tiny shops which lined them.
But a new froideur had settled over Alek. It didn’t seem to matter that her first instincts on meeting him had been correct—and that on some level they were kindred spirits. They’d both known pretty awful childhoods but had just chosen to deal with them in different ways. And yes, she’d managed at last to extract the truth about his past. She now knew him better...but at what price? It hadn’t made them closer, or brought them together in some magical kind of way.
It was as if the confidences she’d forced him to share had ruptured the tentative truce which had existed between them. As if he’d closed right down and shut her out—only this time she sensed there was no going back. No chink of light coming from behind the steely door he had retreated behind. The anger had gone and in its place was a consideration and cool courtesy which made him seem even further away. He spoke to her as if he were her doctor. Was she too hot? Too tired? A little hungry, perhaps? And she would assure him that she felt absolutely fine, because what was the alternative?
