Happy Mother's Day! - By Sharon Kendrick Page 0,94
walk away.’ I just hope my knees heard that, she thought, afraid that they were going to fold under her any minute. ‘And I’m going to. I’m not going to Italy with you.’
He rose from the tumbled bed naked and breathtakingly magnificent to tower over her. ‘You loved me, but you don’t anymore, which is why you slept with me?’ He shook his head slowly. ‘Do you expect me to believe you mean a word of that? Or actually imagine I’m going to let you walk away with my child without a fight?’
She would have walked barefoot over hot coals before she let him see how much the warning scared her. ‘I hope you’re a good loser, Francesco.’
‘I wouldn’t know—I’ve not had any practice.’
And she believed him. ‘You mean you’re a bully.’
He watched one tear escape and slide down her cheek. ‘If you think tears will work …’
‘I’m not crying,’ she denied huskily.
Another tear joined the first and, with a muffled curse, he turned away.
Erin wiped her cheek and watched uncertainly as he pulled a robe from the open wardrobe and belted it loosely around his waist.
When he turned back to her there was no trace of gloating male triumph remaining in his face, but there was something else, another emotion that eluded analysis.
He reached out and dabbed a tear from her cheek with the pad of his thumb. ‘This is going to happen, Erin. Why don’t you stop fighting it?’
Into the palpitating pause that followed his words there was a tap on the door followed by a female voice.
‘Francesco?’
‘My God!’ Erin snapped, ‘It’s Valentina. She can’t find me here like this!’ she exclaimed, appalled at the idea. ‘Why not?’
‘Don’t ask stupid questions,’ Erin begged. ‘I’d be mortified!’ ‘“Mortified?”’ he echoed, a dark scowl forming on his lean features.
‘Will you stop talking and just do something? Make her go away! Or …’
Francesco looked at her, smiled and cleared his throat. ‘Come in, Valentina.’
Erin stared at him for a moment, transfixed in horror, before taking to her heels and fleeing to the bathroom. She stood there with her back against the wall, her heart hammering.
It was several moments before she had regained enough composure to actively eavesdrop on the low-voiced conversation going on in the other room and then it turned out to be mostly in Italian.
Just as she was about to give up on trying to figure out what they were saying she heard Francesco say in English ‘No, Erin doesn’t blame you at all.’
‘Well, I hope not. I really hope you two sort things out, Francesco. In my opinion Erin is the best thing that has ever happened to you. Just don’t rush things; give her time. You can’t just click your fingers and expect her to come running,’ she scolded.
Erin gave a mortified grimace at an image of the tumbled bedclothes in her mind. Click his fingers—he hadn’t even had to make that much effort!
‘Rafael would have liked her, don’t you think?’
Erin, picking up on the name she had never heard before, waited curiously to hear Francesco’s reply. It was a long time coming.
‘Rafe would have loved her.’
A few remarks in Italian followed. Erin listened with half an ear wondering about the odd note in Francesco’s voice.
She waited until she heard the door close behind Valentina before walking back into the room. Francesco was sitting on the bed.
‘Who is Rafe?’ she asked.
He gave a thin-lipped smile. ‘You heard that, then?’
‘It was hard not to.’
‘Rafe was my twin brother.’
She was totally stunned by the information. ‘You have a brother … a twin? Why didn’t you ever mention—?’
In a voice that was flat and totally expressionless he cut across her. ‘Had. Rafe died.’
Erin gulped and swallowed, her blue eyes softening with compassion as she went to sit beside him on the bed. ‘Oh, Francesco, I’m sorry. I had no idea.’
Though he didn’t respond directly, he picked his wallet up from the bedside table and, withdrawing a snapshot, handed it to her without comment.
The edges of the snapshot were creased and curled as though it had been fingered a lot, but the faces of the two young men in the photo were clear. Francesco was standing, his brother sitting. Francesco had his arm slung across the shoulders of his brother. They were both laughing.
‘You were identical twins!’
My God, it would be bad enough to lose a sibling, but she couldn’t even begin to imagine the horror of losing an identical twin.