The Italian's Christmas Miracle

‘Appalled. I pity her, but I can’t get on with her. She keeps trying to give my housekeeper instructions that contradict mine. Ah, well, she’ll ease up after a while.’

‘Will she? Are you sure?’

He shot her a sharp look. ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘I mean the way she tried to stop you going upstairs to kiss Tina goodnight. Tina needs you, and Elena wanted to keep you away. Are you sure she isn’t trying to make a takeover bid?’

‘You mean—?’

‘Might she not try to take her away from you—for good?’

He stared. ‘Surely not? Even Elena wouldn’t—’ He broke off, evidently shocked. ‘My God!’

‘Maybe I’m being overly suspicious,’ Alysa said. ‘But during supper I noticed several times, when you spoke to Tina, Elena rushed to answer on her behalf. But Tina doesn’t need anyone to speak for her. She’s a very bright little girl.’

‘Yes, she is, isn’t she?’ he said, gratified. ‘I noticed Elena’s interruptions too, but I guess I didn’t read enough into them.’ He grimaced. ‘Now I think of it, Elena keeps telling me that a child needs a woman’s care. It just seemed a general remark, but maybe…’

He threw himself into a chair, frowning.

‘You saw it and I didn’t. Thank you.’

‘Don’t let her take Tina away from you.’

‘Not in a million years. But it’s hard for me to fight her when she’s so subtle. I manage well enough with everyone else, but with her the words won’t come. I’m so conscious that she’s Tina’s grandmother—plus the fact that she’s never liked me.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m not good enough,’ he said wryly. ‘Her family have some vaguely aristocratic connections, and she always wanted Carlotta to marry a title. My father owned a builder’s yard—a very prosperous one, but he was definitely a working man. So was I. So am I, still.’

‘But your name—di Luca—isn’t that aristocratic?’

‘Not a bit. It just means “son of Luca”. It was started by my great-grandfather, who seems to have thought it would take him up in the world. It didn’t, of course. They say his neighbours roared with laughter. What took us up in the world was my father working night and day to build the business into a success, until he ended in an early grave.

‘I took over and built it up even more, until it was making money fast, but in Elena’s eyes I was still a jumped-up nobody, aspiring to a woman who was socially far above him.’

‘It sounds pure nineteenth-century.’

‘True. It comes from another age, but so does Elena. She actually found a man with a title and tried to get Carlotta to marry him. When that didn’t work, she told me that Carlotta was engaged to the other man. I didn’t believe her and told her so. She was furious.’

‘So you really had to fight for Carlotta?’

‘There was never any doubt about the outcome. As soon as I saw her, I knew she was mine.’

‘Was’, not ‘would be’, Alysa noted.

‘How did you meet?’ she asked.

‘In a courtroom. She’d just qualified as a lawyer and it was her first case. I was a witness, and when she questioned me I kept “misunderstanding” the questions, so that I could keep her there as long as possible. Afterwards I waited for her outside. She was expecting me. We both knew.’

‘Love at first sight?’

‘Yes. It knocked me sideways. She was beautiful, funny, glowing—everything I wanted but hadn’t known that I wanted. There had been women before, but they meant nothing beside her. I knew that at once. She knew as well. So when Elena opposed us it just drove us into an elopement.’

‘Good for you!’

‘Elena has never really forgiven me. It was actually Carlotta’s idea, but she won’t believe that. She never really understood her own daughter—how adventurous Carlotta was, how determined to do things her own way—’

He stopped. He’d gone suddenly pale.

‘How did you manage the elopement?’ Alysa asked, to break the silence.

‘I’d bought a little villa in the mountains. We escaped there, married in the local church and spent two weeks without seeing another soul. Then we went home and told Elena we were married.’

‘Hadn’t she suspected anything?’

‘She’d thought Carlotta was on a legal course. To stop her getting suspicious, Carlotta called her every night, using her mobile phone, and talked for a long time.’

So Carlotta had been clever at deception, Alysa thought. She hadn’t only been able to think up a lie, she’d been able to elaborate it night after night, a feat which had taken some concentration. The first hints had been there years ago. In his happiness Drago hadn’t understood. She wondered if he understood now.

He’d turned his back on her to stare out of the window into the darkness.

Images were beginning to flicker through Alysa’s brain. She could see the honeymooners, gloriously isolated in their mountain retreat. There was Drago as he must have been then: younger, shining with love, missing all the danger signals.

Suddenly he turned back and made a swift movement to his desk, unlocking one of the drawers and hauling out a large book, which he thrust almost violently towards her. Then he resumed his stance at the window.

It was a photo album, filled with large coloured pictures, showing a wedding at a tiny church. There was the young bride and groom, emerging from the porch hand in hand, laughing with joy because they had secured their happiness for ever.

Carlotta was dazzling. Alysa could easily believe that Drago had fallen for her in the first moment. And James? Had he too been lost in the first moment?

She closed the book and clasped it to her, arms crossed, rocking back and forth, trying to quell the storm within. She’d coped with this—defeated it, survived it. There was no way she would let it beat her now.

She felt Drago’s hands on her shoulders.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said heavily. ‘I shouldn’t have done that.’

‘Why not?’ she said, raising her head. ‘I’m over it all now.’

‘You don’t get over it,’ he said softly. She turned away, but he shook her gently. ‘Look at me.’

Reluctantly she did so, and he brushed his fingertips over her cheeks.

‘It was thoughtless of me to show you this and make you cry.’

‘I’m not crying,’ she said firmly. ‘I never cry.’

‘You say that as if you were proud of it.’

‘Why not? I’m getting on with my life, not living in the past. It’s different for you because you have Tina, and the home you shared with your wife. You can’t escape the past, but I can. And I have.’