frolic. “They’re cute. I guess I’m their new aunt. Or half aunt. Is that the right word?”
“I’ve no idea,” Sloane replied, turning her face in the other direction.
I decided to ignore Sloane’s frosty tone. “I’m going in for a swim. Have you explained the situation to them? Do they know who I am?”
With a touch of panic, Sloane inched upward on the chair. “No. I haven’t told them anything yet. I suppose I’m still getting over the shock of it myself.”
“You and me both.” I shaded my eyes in the bright sunshine. “Well, I’ll just go in for a quick dip. Don’t worry—I won’t say anything. It wouldn’t be my place to do that.”
I took a quick outdoor shower on the pool deck. Then Sloane watched me move to the deep end, where I paused to check the depth before I dived in. The water was wonderfully refreshing. I swam laps for a few minutes, then stopped for a break at the shallow end, where I floated on my back.
The children batted a small beach ball back and forth.
Closing my eyes, I listened to the sound of their laughter.
After a time, I climbed out of the pool and returned to the lounge chair for my towel. Sloane sat up and removed her sunglasses. “Thank you for not saying anything.”
I bent to dry my legs. “No problem. It’s a complicated situation, and we don’t know how it’s going to turn out. Things might work out in your favor, and I’ll just end up going home, and you’ll never see me again.”
Sloane watched me curiously. “You seem pretty relaxed about the whole thing.”
Squeezing the water out of my hair, I shrugged. “I wouldn’t exactly say I’m relaxed, but I came here with nothing, so if I leave with nothing, at least I will have had a pretty cool trip to Italy and met some nice people.”
“But the money . . . ,” Sloane said with disbelief.
I finished drying off and stretched out on the chair beside Sloane. “Honestly? I’m trying not to think about that too much. If I get too excited about the idea of being rich, it’ll be a hard row to hoe, for sure.”
“Now you know how Connor and I feel,” she replied.
I sat up and turned to look at her.
“We’ve been expecting this inheritance all our lives,” she continued. “There was no reason to ever doubt it.”
I regarded Sloane intently. “I’m sorry. I do get that, and I swear I didn’t do anything to tip the scales in my favor.”
The children splashed each other with gusto until Chloe began to cry and complain. “Mom! Tell him to stop!”
“She started it!” Evan replied.
Sloane sat forward. “Evan, stop splashing your sister!”
That ended the skirmish immediately, and the children swam to chase after the beach ball, which was floating away from them.
“I had dinner with Connor last night,” Sloane mentioned, surprising me with her desire to initiate a conversation. “He told me that your father’s in a wheelchair.”
“That’s a simple way of putting it,” I replied. “But yes. He’s a quadriplegic. If I’m not with him, we need home care, pretty much around the clock.”
Sloane adjusted the angle of her hat. “That must be difficult. You could use a financial windfall, no doubt.”
“A little extra money wouldn’t be unwelcome,” I replied. “We just bought a new van with a chair lift, and the loan payments are taking a serious bite out of our savings.”
Sloane kept her eyes fixed on her children in the pool. “Well, now. That makes me feel very self-absorbed.”
“Why?”
“Because all I can think about is the fact that I need money, too, and I don’t want you to have it because I want it, quite desperately at the moment.”
“Why is that?”
She exhaled heavily. “Because I’ve been thinking about asking my husband for a divorce, but if I do, I won’t get anything in the settlement, except maybe some child support.”
“But you did get money,” I reminded her, sitting forward slightly on the lounge chair. “A few million British pounds, if I remember correctly.”
Sloane waved away a butterfly. “I know that, and I feel like a spoiled brat for saying this, but it doesn’t feel like very much money when you’re used to a certain standard of living. I have two children to raise, and . . .” She paused. “Oh, don’t look at me like that. It might sound laughable to you, but I have no doubt you’ll understand what I mean soon enough.”
I chuckled. “I doubt that.