A Wedding At The Italian's Demand

The older man responded to the dry question with a shrug and a sour look.

Ivo did not pursue it. He wasn’t that bothered about the red lines Salvatore had gleefully crossed. The fact was that, guilt aside, and with a determination to make up for rejecting his brother, there was a part of him that could identify with his motivation.

It was not something he felt the need to apologise for. Ivo possessed an Italian’s pride in his culture and language, a pride he knew his brother had shared, and thinking of Bruno’s son missing out on this part of his heritage drew a dizzying number of intersecting red lines in his head. Ivo’s loyalty to his name was unquestioning, it went cell deep, which was why his brother’s defection had hurt so much. Bruno had rejected everything they had been brought up to respect.

But he had not rejected him; Bruno had come back for him.

The regret and guilt that he would never now have a chance to thank his brother were so powerful he could taste the metallic tang like blood on his tongue. He focused instead on the wrongness that the child that shared his DNA was out there somewhere, knowing nothing of his history.

He had a debt to repay to his brother, and he would. Giving his nephew the sort of upbringing he and Bruno had not had would be his atonement.

His grandfather seemed fully recovered, delivering an irritated scowl. ‘We need leverage, but she’s done nothing.’

‘By that I presume you mean she has no skeletons?’

‘There is the suggestion of an affair with some footballer, but he wasn’t married at the time.’

‘So what do you expect me to do, kidnap the child?’

‘Yes,’ would have been less shocking than the reply he received.

‘I expect you to marry the woman, and bring the child home here. The lawyers say that will give you legal rights. It should make it simple to gain custody after the divorce.’

Ivo’s moment of gobsmacked incredulity found release in laughter. When was the last time he’d laughed in his grandfather’s presence? he wondered as he listened to the sound...rusty, as though he was out of practice. For some reason he could hear the sound of his brother’s laughter in his head, too. When Bruno had left he had taken the laughter with him.

‘Have you finished?’ Salvatore asked, when the room fell silent.

There had been a time when the icy disdain had tied his stomach in knots of tension but that time was long gone. ‘You appear to have given this some thought.’

‘You trying to tell me you couldn’t make her fall in love if you wanted to?’

‘Thanks for the vote of confidence,’ Ivo said drily as he got to his feet to place both hands on the desk before leaning forward and saying slowly, ‘I don’t want to.’

He had reached the door when his grandfather’s words reached him.

‘I’m dying and I want you to bring my great-grandson here. Do you really want your brother’s son to be brought up by a stranger, never hearing his own language? Never having the advantages that being a Greco brings? Are you that selfish?’

Ivo turned slowly, his dark eyes sweeping his grandfather’s lined face. Yes, he did look old. ‘Is that true?’

‘You think I’d lie about such a thing?’

‘Yes,’ Ivo responded without hesitation.

The old man laughed and looked quite pleased, clearly taking the comment as a compliment. ‘I would like to retain a little dignity in what is a very undignified process. I have no intention of boring you with the unpleasant details, but I am dying, and I want to see the boy. Will you do that for me?’

Ivo’s chest lifted as he released the breath held in his chest. ‘I make no promises,’ he said, while making a promise to himself—there was no way in the world he would hand over a baby to Salvatore, but he would bring this child home and he would protect him from the full force of Salvatore’s frequently toxic influence, just as Bruno had protected him.

His grandfather smiled. ‘I knew you wouldn’t let me down, Bruno.’

CHAPTER TWO (#u39df7cc8-4b94-588e-9791-749da3215482)

FLORA TIPTOED STEALTHILY down the stairs, wincing as the board beneath her feet creaked. She froze, balanced on one foot, only releasing the breath held in her chest in a sigh of shuddering relief when there was no sound of baby sobs from upstairs.

Her mum said her grandson was teething, but then she also said that Jamie was an easy baby.

After the past few weeks Flora was of the opinion that easy babies were fictional creatures much like elves, or unicorns, only they slept less.

Flora could vaguely remember what sleep was. She had begun to feel increasingly nostalgic for a time when her idea of a bad night was tossing and turning for half an hour before she drifted off.

Now she could sleep standing up; she had slept standing up!

Sami had made it look so easy. Flora’s blue eyes filled with unshed tears and she blinked hard as she choked out her sister’s name in a forlorn whisper. She was so focused on the image in her head of her smiling sister and the physical pain of loss that it took her a few moments to register the cold.

Very cold, cold she hadn’t noticed upstairs, but then walking several miles up and down the cheerily furnished nursery wearing a groove in the carpet while jiggling the cranky baby and humming an irritating jingle advertising a deodorant—not a very appropriate lullaby but she couldn’t get the darned thing out of her head—was one way to keep warm.

She shivered, and gathered the thick cardigan she had put on over her sweater tightly around her. Nepotism aside, she was proud of her very first project as a qualified architect. The conversion of the derelict stone steading her sister and brother-in-law had decided to convert into their home and business, a restaurant with rooms, had won her a mention, though no glittering prize, in a prestigious competition.

Heating and insulation had been a priority in the brief and normally it was warm and cosy, not to mention wildly ecologically efficient with its state-of-the-art heating system, triple glazing that muffled the sound of the storm outside, and a roof of solar panels, but tonight the cold draughts seemed to have discovered ways inside.

She didn’t realise there was more involved than the storm raging outside and some uninsulated nooks and crannies until she brushed past one of the tall modernist column radiators and, instead of feeling comforting heat, her fingers made contact with metal that was stone cold.

She groaned and tried not to think of the missed boiler service she had deemed a reasonable economy, because everything seemed to be working fine and anyway it was state-of-the-art, didn’t that mean something?

Easy with the clarity of hindsight to recognise a classic case of false economy.

She allowed herself a self-pitying sniff or three before squaring her slender shoulders. Right, Flora, beat yourself up tomorrow and call the heating guy—right now stop whining and make the best of it.

She considered her immediate options. Retreating to the small private living room, an oak-framed extension with incredible views over the water to the mainland, wasn’t one because she’d not got around to lighting the wood burner in there earlier and, with the underfloor heating off and a wall of glass, it would be even colder than in here.

So maybe the best move was make a hot-water bottle, put the spare heaters in the nursery and climb into bed. It might only be eight-thirty but her body clock was so out of sync thanks to chronic sleep deprivation that it didn’t really matter—yes, that was definitely a plan.

So, first things first, the heater in the nursery then make herself a hot-water bottle. Her thick wool socks made no sound on the stone floor of the reception-area-cum-lounge and informal bar space while there was a perceptible increase in the volume of the storm raging outside.

Her shiver this time was for anyone unlucky enough not to have several feet of solid stone between them and the elements. Continuing to switch off lights as she went—at least they still had electricity—she fished her mobile from the pocket of her snug-fitting jeans. With a sigh she slid it back—there hadn’t been a signal since lunchtime and a couple of hours later the landline had gone too. It wasn’t being cut off that was worrying Flora, it was her inability to contact her mother.

Under normal circumstances she wouldn’t have been concerned about her parent; under normal circumstances her mother would be here helping to run the place and look after baby Jamie, while continuing to run her own pottery business. Multitasking was Grace Henderson’s middle name and Flora wished she had a fraction of her resourceful parent’s energy.

But these weren’t normal circumstances. Her fiercely independent mother was operating on crutches with her leg in plaster and grieving deeply for her firstborn. Flora took comfort for the fact that, although the croft was remote, her mum had several good friends who lived close enough to be called neighbours who would no doubt have checked in on her.

Flora gnawed gently on her full lower lip as she weighed the option of putting more peat on the already smoking open fire before she went to bed. It was a matter of freeze or choke. She was trying to recall where the spare portable heaters she would need to put in the baby’s room were stored, when there was a loud bang on the front door she had bolted after Fergus had left, there being not much point the chef staying when all the diners had cancelled.

Feeling ashamed that her first thought was a selfish, please don’t wake the baby, she rushed across the room, reading desperation into the loud urgent-sounding thuds. She fumbled with the door bolt, urgency making her fingers clumsy as the banging continued.

‘Hold on, hold on, nearly...’ As the door opened the wind blowing in off the sea loch that lapped the shore on the opposite side of the narrow road hit Flora with a full icy blast.

The physical force snatched the breath from her lips and made her stagger backwards, her arms flailing as she struggled to keep her balance. She barely heard the sound of the heavy oak door hitting the wall above the combined roar of the wind and the sound of invisible crashing waves feet away from the door.

It was to this wild soundtrack and out of the heavy swirling mist that the stranger entered.