Ava,
I’m so sorry, sorrier than you will ever know. I made such a mess of my life and now I’ve messed up yours as well. I’m sorry I couldn’t face visiting you in that place or even seeing you here in hospital—should the authorities have agreed to let you out to visit me. But I couldn’t face you. The damage has been done and it’s too late for me to do anything about it. I wanted to keep my marriage together—I always put that first and it couldn’t have survived what I did at the last. I do love you but even now I’m too scared to tell you the truth—it would make you hate me.
Eyes wet with tears of regret and disappointment for she had had high hopes of what she might find in the letter, Ava pushed the notepaper into Vito’s hand. ‘It doesn’t make any sense at all. I don’t know what’s she’s talking about,’ she declared in frustration. ‘Gina said Mum was confused and she must have been to dictate that for Bella to write.’
Frowning down at the incomprehensible letter, Vito replaced it in the envelope. ‘Obviously your mother felt very guilty about the way she treated you.’
‘Did she think I’d hate her when I found out that I wasn’t her husband’s child?’ Her brow furrowed, Ava shook her head, conceding that she would never know for sure what her mother had meant by her words. ‘What else could she have meant?’
Vito rested a soothing hand against the slender rigidity of her spine. ‘There’s no point getting upset about it now, bella mia. If your sisters are equally bewildered, there’s no way of answering your questions.’
He was always so blasted practical and grounded, Ava reflected ruefully. He didn’t suffer from emotional highs or lows or a highly coloured imagination. Reluctant to reveal that she was unable to take such a realistic view of the situation when the woman concerned had been dead for almost eighteen months, Ava said nothing.
His mobile phone rang and he dug it out with an apologetic glance in her direction. That was an improvement, Ava conceded. In the space of little more than a week, Vito had gone from answering constant calls and forgetting her existence while he talked at length to keeping the calls brief and treating them like the interruptions they were. She focused on his bold bronzed profile as he moved restively round the room, another frown drawing his straight black brows together. For once the caller was doing most of the talking, for his responses were brief.
Ava was staring out of the window at the white world of snow-covered trees and lawn stretching into the distance when he finished the call.
‘I’m afraid I have to go out,’ Vito murmured flatly.
‘I’m going to take Harvey for a long walk,’ Ava asserted, keen to demonstrate her independence and her lack of need for his presence. It was a downright lie, of course, but it helped to sustain her pride.
CHAPTER TEN
BOXES of decorations littered the big hall. Ava was using a stepladder to dress the tree and cursing the fact that her carefully laid plans were running behind schedule. It had taken most of the day to have the tree felled, brought to the castle and safely erected in the most suitable spot. A towering specimen of uniform graceful shape, the tree looked magnificent, but she had had to search the attics for two hours before she finally tracked down the lights.
Her generous mouth took on an unhappy tilt. After the tragedy of the last Christmas celebrated at the castle three years earlier, all the festive decorations had been bundled away without the usual care and attention and some items had emerged broken while others appeared to have been mislaid. It saddened her to recall that the last time she had dressed a tree Olly had been by her side and in full perfectionist mode as he argued about where every decoration went, adjusted branches and insisted on tweaking everything to obtain the best possible effect. In truth, Olly had adored the festive season as much as Vito loathed it.
To be fair, though, what happy memories could Vito possibly have of Christmas? When he was a boy, his mother had walked out on his father and him shortly before Christmas and his father had refused to celebrate the season in the years that followed. Olly’s demise at the same time of year could only have set the seal on Vito’s aversion to seasonal tinsel. Ava did not want to be insensitive towards his feelings.
The night before, Vito had fallen into bed beside her late on and in silence. She did not know where he had been or what he had been doing and even after she made it clear that she was still awake he had not offered any explanation. For the first time as well he hadn’t touched her or reached for her in any way and she had felt ridiculously rejected. Her faith in her insuperable sex appeal had dive-bombed overnight. She had started wondering if there was more depth than she knew to his comment that being with her was ‘hard work’. She flinched at that disturbing recollection. That tabloid story combined with her distress over her mother’s baffling letter and the emotional mood engendered by her reunion with her sisters could not have helped to improve that impression. Vito was not accustomed to complex relationships with women. Perhaps he was getting fed up with all the problems she had brought into his life and forced him to share. He might even have reached the conclusion that he would be quite content to wave goodbye to her after the party. Last night, she thought painfully, she had felt as though he had withdrawn from her again, his reserve kicking back in when it was least welcome.
Her mobile phone rang and she pulled it out of her pocket.
‘It’s Vito. I can’t make it back for a couple of days so I’ll stay in my apartment. I should mention though that I’ve set up a meeting for you with some people for the day after tomorrow. Will you stay home in the morning?’
‘What people? Why? What’s going on?’ Ava prompted, striving to keep the sound of disappointment out of her response. He was a workaholic—she knew he was. He might have worked shorter hours the previous week to be with her but it would be unrealistic to expect that sexual heat and impatience to continue. And to start imagining that maybe another woman had caught his eye or that he wanted a break from the woman he had, perhaps unwisely, invited to stay in his home, was equally reasonable.
‘I’m bringing a couple of people I want you to meet,’ he advanced.
Her brow furrowed, surprise and curiosity assailing her. ‘Do I need to dress up?’
‘No. What you wear won’t matter,’ he said flatly.
Who is it? she was tempted to demand, but she restrained her tongue. Vito already sounded tired and tense and she didn’t want to remind him that she could be hard work in a relationship. Relationship, get you, she mused irritably as she dug her phone back into her pocket and selected a fine glass angel to hang on the tree with careful fingers. A casual affair was a relationship of sorts but not of t
he lasting, deep kind that led to commitment. She was with a guy who didn’t commit and didn’t lie about it either. A whole host of far more beautiful and sophisticated ladies had passed through his life before she came along and not one of them had lasted either. He was thirty-one with neither a marriage nor even a broken engagement under his belt and she was the very first woman to live at the castle with him. At that acknowledgement, her mouth quirked. And what was that concession really worth? She had had nowhere else to stay and it was more convenient for her to organise the party while she lived on the premises.
She checked the rooms set aside for the party. The estate joiner had done a fine job with the Santa grotto for the younger children and the nativity set with life-size figures, which she had hired to place in the opposite corner, added a nice touch about the true meaning of Christmas. The room next door was decorated with a dance theme for the teenagers and rejoiced in a portable floor that lit up. On the day there would be a DJ presiding. Across the hall lay the ballroom where the adult event would take place with a manned bar and music. The caterers had already placed seats and tables down one side and the local florist would soon be arriving to install the festive flower arrangements that Ava had selected.
She found it hard to get to sleep that night even with Harvey sleeping at the foot of the bed. Persuading the dog from his station waiting at the front door for Vito’s return had been a challenge. That she could have been tempted to join the dog in his vigil bothered her. It was never cool to be so keen on a man and it would not be long before she betrayed herself and he recognised the fact that she had fallen for him. Then he would feel uncomfortable around her and he wouldn’t be able to wait to get rid of her. She would leave after the party with dignity and no big departure scene, she told herself fiercely.
A couple of restless nights in succession ensured that Ava slept in the morning that Vito was bringing company back and she had to wash, dress and breakfast at speed. By the time she heard the helicopter flying in over the roof of the castle, she was pacing in the hall. With a woof of excitement and anticipation, Harvey stationed himself back by the entrance again and Ava suppressed a sigh at the sight.
Vito strode into the castle with three other men, a reality that took Ava aback and she hung back from greeting him. Even so her entire focus was on Vito as she drank in his darkly handsome features and the lithe power of his well-built body sheathed in a dark designer suit.
‘Miss Fitzgerald?’ A stocky man with a tired but familiar face was smiling at her and extending his hand. ‘It’s been a long time.’
Ava was stunned: he was the solicitor, Roger Barlow, who had represented her when she was on trial three years earlier.