‘Dio. Already?’
‘Si.’
‘Okay. Dinner in an hour?’ He named a restaurant near his own apartment. ‘Is Emmeline joining us?’
Pietro’s spine ached with rejection but he shook his head. ‘Not tonight. She has...something on.’
Rafe was silent for a moment. ‘You’ve always been a bad liar. I’ll meet you soon.’
He disconnected the call before Pietro could refute the claim. Then he flicked his cell phone from one hand to the other and finally loaded up a blank message.
I have a meeting to attend. I’ll be late. I’m sorry.
He grimaced as he sent it. Rafe was right; Pietro was a God-awful liar.
He saw the little dots appear that showed she was typing a message, but they went away again almost instantly, without any message appearing. He frowned, waited a few more moments and then put his phone back into his pocket.
Rafe was waiting at the restaurant when Pietro appeared.
‘So?’he asked, nodding towards the martini that was sitting at the empty place on the table. ‘What’s going on?’
Pietro took the seat and threw back half the drink in one go. ‘I need your complete discretion,’ he said quietly, his tone showing the seriousness of his mood. ‘This is a...a private matter.’
‘Of course.’ Rafe was clearly resisting the urge to joke about feeling like an extra from a bad World War Two resistance movie. He must sense it was not the time.
‘Col’s sick.’
‘Col? Col Bovington?’
‘Yes. Who else?’ Pietro hissed.
‘What do you mean, sick?’
‘He has cancer; it’s terminal.’ He paused, in deference to the memories he knew would be besieging Rafe of the cancer that had taken their own father. ‘He has months to live. Perhaps only weeks.’
‘Poor Emmeline. She must be beside herself. I know how close they are.’
‘Yes.’ Pietro nodded angrily, his jaw clenched as he reached for his drink and twisted it in his hand. ‘The thing is, she doesn’t know.’
‘She doesn’t know?’ Rafe repeated with disbelief, his dark eyes latching on to his brother’s. ‘What the hell do you mean?’
‘Col wanted it that way,’ Pietro responded with a defensive lift of his shoulders. ‘And when I agreed to keep it from her I didn’t... I hardly knew her,’ he finished lamely. ‘I didn’t think it would be any hardship not to tell her the truth. I didn’t care about her at all.’
‘And now?’ Rafe pushed.
The newness of what he was feeling was something Pietro wasn’t willing to ruin by discussing it, though. He kept his answer vague.
‘I know her well enough to know that she’d want the truth. She wouldn’t want Col going through this alone. She’d want to be with him at the end.’
‘Perhaps.’ Rafe nodded. ‘But Col is obviously seeking to protect her from the grief of watching a much-loved parent die...’
‘We’ve been through that. But aren’t you glad we got a chance to say goodbye to our father? To honour him? To ease his suffering?’
‘We aren’t Emmeline. If Col is right—and you must assume he knows his own daughter—then you’d be hurting her for no reason. And Col would never forgive you.’
‘No. I gave him my word.’ Pietro’s response was stony. Cold. His heart was iced over by the thought of how that promise was betraying Emmeline. ‘Until he frees me from that obligation I must keep it.’
‘It sounds to me as though you’ve made your decision,’ Rafe murmured gently. ‘So what do we need to discuss?’
Pietro glowered. What he needed was for someone to absolve him of guilt, to tell him he was making the right decision. But no one could do that—and very possibly he wasn’t.
‘Niente.’
* * *
Emmeline turned the page of her book, having no idea what she’d just read. In truth, she’d covered several chapters, but she couldn’t have recounted a single incident that had taken place.
Where was he?
And who was he with?
Her heart twisted in her chest as she thought of her husband with someone else. What assurance did she have that he wasn’t still seeing Bianca, or any number of his past lovers?
Doubts filled her, making her feel nauseous and exhausted.
She should have gone to bed; it was late. But waiting for him to come home had become an obsession. She didn’t want to fall asleep—to have him return at some point in the middle of the night and for her body to respond to his when he might well have been...
God. Was he sleeping with someone else?
A car’s engine throbbed outside the door, low and rumbling, and her tummy flopped as her eyes looked to the clock. It was just after midnight.