CHAPTER ELEVEN
WINTER SUN SHONE brilliantly through a gap in the heavy drapes right in Cara’s eyes, waking her. She turned her head. Pepe had gone.
On legs that felt weighted, she climbed out of bed and padded over to the window, pulling the drapes open.
The room smelt of a familiar scent that she recognised from four months earlier. Sex. Their sex.
Air. That was what she needed. And plenty of it.
Firstly wrapping herself in the kimono, she unlocked the French door and stepped out onto the small balcony overlooking a large park.
The cold air hit her and she accepted it into her lungs, willing the frigid particles to douse her shame.
It did nothing of the sort.
She knew she didn’t deserve to have her shame extinguished.
After everything she had been through and all the promises she had made her unborn child, she was no better than her mother.
Every time one of her father’s affairs had come to light, which was a regular occurrence, her mother would vow to leave. Every time she changed her mind, too hooked on the highs and lows of her marriage to care about anything as basic as self-respect. Certainly too hooked to care about the effect it was having on her only child.
Her mother had been an addict. Her husband had been her fix. Not even his litter of illegitimates had made any difference.
And now here Cara was, well over a decade after her parents’ marriage had finally done them all a favour and disintegrated, and she knew that unless she did something right now she would turn into an addict just as her mother had been.
Movement behind her caused her to turn.
Pepe stepped onto the balcony carrying two steaming mugs and wearing only a pair of faded jeans. There was something about seeing his feet bare that tugged at her in a manner that was entirely different from the effect his bare torso had on her.
‘Good morning, cucciola mia,’ he said with a lazy grin, handing her one of the mugs. Placing his own mug on the small table, he stood behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist, nuzzling into her neck.
‘Please, don’t,’ she murmured, shaking her head. ‘One accident with scalding tea is enough for anyone in a lifetime.’
He chuckled. ‘In that case, drink up and we can go back to bed.’
She took a deep breath, planning to confess that she didn’t want to go back to bed. Or, rather, that she did want to go back to bed with him. But she wanted it too much. That was the problem. She wanted it far too much.
Before she could speak he pressed a kiss into the small of her back then stood beside her at the balustrade.
‘I owe you an apology,’ he said, his light tone becoming serious. ‘I’d forgotten how shy you are around strangers. I shouldn’t have left you alone with anyone but me last night, not until I knew you were comfortable with them.’
Cara blinked in shock.
An apology was the last thing she’d expected to hear from Pepe’s mouth.
She took a sip of her tea, determinedly looking out to the park, at the distant people walking their dogs, some carrying the morning’s newspapers, life going on blithely regardless of her personal torment.
‘I also should have warned you that a few of my ex-lovers would be there, but to be honest I never gave it a thought,’ he continued. ‘It’s never been an issue. I should have taken into account that you are made from a different mould from them.’
The mention of his ex-lovers pierced like a lance into her skin. She forced herself to breathe, focusing on the park before her, allowing her attention to be captured by a young couple out for a bike ride, a toddler-sized child sitting in a special seat attached to the father’s bike.
Pepe would never be a father in the traditional sense. He was too...free. Meeting his friends and the casual, bohemian intimacy they all shared had only confirmed everything she already knew.
And she, Cara, was of a different mould.
It hurt to admit it, but he was right. She could never be like those women. The scars of her childhood ran too deep. She could never share the man she loved. Just thinking of Pepe sharing intimacies with another woman made her skin go clammy and nausea swell inside her, and she didn’t even love him.
Did she?
No, of course she didn’t. Pepe might be able to reduce her to a quivering pulse of sensation but that didn’t mean she was falling in actual love with him.
Did it?
‘I need to leave,’ she said, blurting the words out.
Whatever her feelings for him and whatever they meant, nothing could come of them.
Pepe stilled then cast an unreadable eye on her before getting his coffee. When he rejoined her at the balustrade he stood a good foot away from her.
‘I’m going to appeal to your better nature to do the right thing and give me some money now so I can return to Dublin and find a home to raise our child in.’
‘And if I don’t?’
‘Then I guess I’ll have no choice but to stay. I know I was going to leave last night but I was so...’ she almost said devastated ‘...upset that I wasn’t thinking straight. I guess my hormones were playing up too, making everything seem ten times worse than it really was.’
Her hormones had had nothing to do with it. The white-hot jealousy she had experienced at the party had been all her own. She would rather chop her own ears off than admit it.
She took a deep breath before continuing. ‘Even if I had been able to leave last night I would probably have come back like a dog with its tail between its legs. Nothing’s changed. I’m still skint. My return ticket from Sicily is worthless here, so I have no way to get home until my wages from the auction house get paid into my account. But, Pepe, I can’t stay here, especially not now.’
For the first time since joining Cara on the balcony, Pepe felt the chill of the air. He stared ahead at a young family who had been enjoying a bike ride. The parents had now dismounted and rested their bikes against a large tree, the father in the process of getting the toddler out of its seat.
Once he had dreamt of him and Luisa having such a family, had allowed his hopes and dreams to fill.
‘Why are you so keen to get away from me?’ he asked bitingly. ‘Did I not satisfy you enough last night?’
‘No, it was wonderful,’ she said wistfully.
‘Then what is the problem with staying here and sharing my bed?’
‘Because we both know it won’t be for ever. Chances are you’ll be sharing it with someone else long before our baby is born.’
Imagining someone else in his bed drew a blank. It had drawn a blank since Dublin.
Until he and Cara were able to work through this strange desire that burned between them, he had the most sickening feeling he would never be able to move on.
‘And what about you?’ he asked more harshly than he would have liked. Something akin to panic was nibbling at his chest. ‘How do I know you’ll take care of yourself? How do I know you’ll do what’s right and what’s best for the life inside you?’
He heard her take a sharp inhalation, but when she finally spoke her tone was a lot softer than he had been prepared for. ‘What happened, Pepe? What happened to turn you into such a cynic that you believe me capable of harming our defenceless child?’
‘Because it’s happened to me before.’
He could feel Cara’s eyes on him, could feel her shock. He kept his own eyes firmly fixed on the family in the distance. He had no idea where the parents had produced a ball from, but they were playing a game of what looked to be catch with their small toddler.
‘I’ve not always been a cynic. I once believed in love and marriage. I was going to marry my childhood sweetheart.’ He wasn’t aware of the pained sneer that crossed his face. ‘Once, just once, we failed to use contraception and Luisa fell pregnant. I was eighteen and she was seventeen.’
He could feel Cara’s eyes still resting on him, took a small crumb of comfort that she didn’t immediately start peppering him with questions.
His throat felt constricted. This was something he had never discussed before, not with Luca, not with anyone. But he owed Cara the truth, because somewhere, hidden deep inside him, was the knowledge that it was his baby she carried, a truth he dared not utter in case, by saying the words, it brought the whole thing crashing down.
‘I was delighted at the prospect of becoming a father. I was...’ He shook his head at the memory. ‘At the time, my head was all over the place. My father had just died from a heart attack and I didn’t know how to handle it. But then Luisa told me she was pregnant and suddenly there was proof that life did have meaning and that miracles did occur. Luisa and I had spoken of marriage many times and, to me, it made sense to just bring the whole thing forward. I wanted our child to be born a Mastrangelo with parents who shared the same name.’
Trying to collect his thoughts, he finished his now cold and tasteless coffee and finally allowed himself to look at Cara.
She stood with her back to the balustrade, her arms folded across her chest, staring at him.
His heart expanded to see the paleness of her cheeks and the undeniable apprehension ringing in her green eyes.
‘I thought Luisa was happy too but as the weeks passed she became more and more withdrawn, refusing to let me tell my family or her family about the baby until the time was right. And then, the morning after the first scan, the day she had agreed we could tell the world of our joy, she confessed that she’d had a one-night stand. She’d slept with someone else while I’d visited Luca at his university for a weekend.’ Now he didn’t bother hiding his bitterness. ‘She and her lover had forgotten to use contraception. She was so terrified I would find out she engineered things so that days later we too got so carried away we forgot to use contraception. That way, if she fell pregnant, she could pass the child off as mine.’
A low whistle escaped from Cara’s lips. There was no apprehension in her eyes now. Only compassion. Which somehow made him feel worse.
‘The only reason she confessed was because she couldn’t live with the guilt.’
‘What did you do?’ Cara breathed.
He laughed cynically and shook his head. ‘I said I didn’t care. I told her it didn’t matter. I told her I loved her enough that I would raise the child as my own even if there was doubt that it was mine. But that was a lie—it wasn’t her I loved enough to do that for, it was my unborn child. Because that baby was mine. I had already committed my heart to it. I had pictured the boy or girl it would be, the teenager he or she would grow into. I had pictured walking my daughter down the aisle and I had imagined my grown son asking me to be his best man.’
Long-buried unspoken memories threatened to choke him but Pepe forced himself to finish his sordid story. ‘At first she agreed. Then, a couple of weeks later, when she was fifteen weeks pregnant, she went away for a weekend to visit an aunt. That too was a lie. She had in fact gone to the UK for an abortion. Her lover—who, it transpired, she was still seeing—had given her the money to pay for it all.’
Silence hung between them, the air thick and heavy.
‘Dear God,’ Cara whispered. ‘I am so sorry.’
‘Sorry for what?’ he snarled, his attempts to keep a leash on his emotions snapping. ‘That I was deceived? That I was stupid enough to want to be cuckolded and by Francesco Calvetti of all people...’
‘He was her lover?’
‘You know him?’
She shook her head and curled her lip in distaste. ‘I know of him.’
Of course she did. Luca, his brother, had gone into business with the bastard, an association that had recently ended. Grace, his sister-in-law, despised the man. ‘When we were kids our parents used to force us to play together. He and my brother were once good friends.’
Cara placed a tentative hand on his arm. He guessed it was supposed to be a comforting gesture, but at that moment comfort was the last thing he needed. He felt too unhinged for that. Spilling his guts for the very first time was not the catharsis people claimed.
He especially didn’t want comfort from her, the woman who made him feel more unhinged than he had felt in fifteen years.
Enfolding her hand, he raised it to his cheek and placed it on his scar. ‘Luisa gave me this scar. I was so angry at what she’d done, I called her every nasty, vindictive and demeaning name I could think of. In return she slashed me with a knife from her mother’s kitchen. I’ve kept the scar as a reminder never to trust.’
Cara’s eyes were huge and filled with something that looked suspiciously like tears.
He dropped her hand. ‘So now you know it all. I hope you can now understand why I do not trust people and why I cannot give you the money you want, not until after our baby is born. It’s not personal towards you. Please believe that.’
* * *
Cara dressed mechanically in a blue skirt, black roll-neck jumper and a pair of thick black tights, and tied her hair back into a loose ponytail. Her hands shook, her mind filled with him, with Pepe.
After their talk on the balcony he had disappeared, muttering about needing a swim. Wordlessly she had let him go, too shocked and heartsick at his story to even attempt to stop him.
Her heart stopped when she found him in the kitchen eating a pain au chocolat. He’d added a black T-shirt to his jeans, his black hair was damp and he’d had a shave.
He lifted his eyes to see her standing hesitantly in the doorway, and got to his feet. ‘Please, help yourself,’ he said, indicating the plate heaped with pastries in the centre of the table. ‘I’ve made a pot of tea for you.’
Knowing he had gone out of his way to make the tea especially for her kick-started her heart. When he moved with fluid grace to pour a cup out for her and she spotted his bare feet, she had to blink back the sting of hot tears that burned in the backs of her eyes.
She reached for a plain croissant and placed it on the plate he’d laid out for her, then took the seat next to him. She broke a bit of it off and popped it into her mouth, all the while watching as he added milk to her cup before placing it before her.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered, breaking off another piece of croissant and nibbling at it. She wanted to touch him. She wanted to place her hands on his cheeks and kiss him.
‘Do you know what I love the most about Grace?’ she asked him when he’d sat back down.
He cocked an eye.
‘Nothing. I love everything about her. When I moved to England at thirteen and started a new school, I was cold-shouldered by practically everyone. They all had their cliques. I was the outsider. But Grace took me under her wing. She would drag me into the art room at lunch breaks. She would drag me to parties at weekends and stay right by my side, making sure everyone included me. She introduced me to art. Even when it was obvious that I couldn’t draw much more than matchstick men, she never put me down. I ended up practically moving into her home. She encouraged me to study History of Art at university because she could see that’s where my passion lay. We studied different courses but we lived together and remained inseparable. I would give my life for Grace. She was more than a best friend. She was the one person who believed in me. My parents were so wrapped up in themselves they didn’t care about me other than on the level of feeding and clothing me.’
Cara kept her gaze on Pepe as she spoke. If he could lay his soul bare then so could she.
‘My father had so many affairs I lost count. Time after time, Mam would say she was leaving but every time she forgave him.’ She shuddered. ‘I would hear them having make-up sex. It was the most disgusting sound I’ve ever heard. Do you know what the worst part was?’
He shook his head, his face a mask.
‘He left her. After all the affairs, the lies and the humiliation, one day he went to work and never came back. He’d found a teenage lover who “made him feel like a young man again”. My mother was utterly devastated. I don’t think she would ever have left him. She held on for two years in the hope that he would come back to her, but when he served her with divorce papers she finally accepted it was over and carted me off to England to start over.’
She popped the last of the croissant into her mouth. Unable to resist any longer, she stroked a hand down his smooth cheek and rubbed her thumb over the thick bristles on his chin. His deep blue eyes, which hadn’t left her face, dilated, and his chest rose.
‘Not long after we arrived in England, my mam started a new relationship with a man who was just like my dad. An unfaithful charmer. Everyone loves him but he is incapable of keeping his pecker in his trousers. And just like with my dad, she forgives him every time. I’ve spent my entire life feeling second best to my parents’ libidos and hormones, and I’m terrified of turning out like them. Our child will never feel second best. Ever. I won’t let it happen. Our child is innocent and deserves all the love I—and hopefully you—can heap on him or her.’ She bit her lip. ‘But, Pepe, I’m so scared.’
‘Scared of what?’
‘You,’ she answered starkly. ‘Until I met you, sex to me was tawdry and meant nothing but power and humiliation. I wanted none of it. But now I can understand why my mam let my dad treat her like a piece of rubbish and why she lets my stepdad treat her the same way, because I can feel it happening inside me when I’m with you. I woke up this morning and I knew I should leave but I was almost helpless to resist you. I’m scared that if I stay much longer I’ll never want to go.’