Italian Tycoon, Secret Son

‘Once you let the demons into your mind, you can’t get rid of them. Don’t let them in, Mandy.’

‘It’s too late,’ she said. ‘They’ve been there all the time. Not just Joan and Peter, but you. You saved my life, throwing me to safety. If I’d grabbed you a little faster, I might have stopped you falling away.’

‘You couldn’t have done that,’ he said in the most gentle voice she’d heard him use yet. ‘You hit your head on the wall, and that stunned you.’

‘I’ve often thought,’ she said slowly, ‘what might have happened if you’d just grabbed me and run to the back. We might both have been safe.’

‘Or we might both have gone over. There wasn’t time. I was desperate to get you to safety, and throwing you in that rather brutal fashion was the quickest way.’

‘Or if I’d stayed at the back of the room instead of coming closer to you in that stupid way, you wouldn’t have had to save me at all, and you might have had time to save yourself.’

He stopped her with a finger over her mouth, and she saw kindness in his eyes.

‘It wasn’t your fault. Nothing was your fault.’

‘But how do you know if you can’t remember?’ she dared to ask.

It was a mistake. He drew back.

‘I don’t know what I remember,’ he said. ‘Things I thought were real turn out to be figments of my imagination and…the other way round. That’s why talking to you is so useful.’

He said the last word deliberately, like a shield being put into place. Her heart sank. And yet she’d been given more than she’d dared hope for.

His face changed again, becoming haggard and racked with a pain that was more than physical.

‘Talk to me,’ she begged. ‘It’s been a bad time for me too. We can help each other as nobody else could.’

‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Or maybe it would be the opposite, for both of us.’

Mandy understood. She might be the one to unlock the demons he was suppressing with iron control, and the resulting catastrophe would destroy him. He was already terrifyingly close to that edge.

‘How do you survive?’ he whispered.

‘I wasn’t as badly hurt as you. But you didn’t mean that, did you?’

‘In here,’ he said, indicating his head. ‘At night, in the dark.’

‘I’m not as alone as you. I have help.’

‘Ah, yes, your friend, Sue.’

She drew a deep breath, knowing that the moment had come when she could tell him about Danny, the child of hope who could bring him new life, as he’d done for her.

‘It’s not just her-’

She stopped, for he’d covered his eyes with his hand.

‘Never mind,’ he said harshly. ‘I didn’t mean to ask.’

‘But I’ll gladly tell you-’

‘Another time, perhaps. I need to be alone.’

The moment had gone. There was nothing to do but face it.

‘All right, you’ve had enough. Get some rest.’

Smiling faintly, he nodded. Unable to stop herself, she laid her hand against his face. He might spurn her, but nothing could have stopped her offering him comfort in the hope of breaking through the barrier he’d built around himself.

At first he didn’t move, but then he touched her hand, holding it against him. His eyes closed, his whole body shook, and she realized that, incredibly, he was weeping.

Then he pushed her hand away.

‘Go,’ he said curtly. ‘Just go.’

‘Shall I come back tomorrow?’

‘No…yes…I don’t know. I’ll call you.’

‘I’ll be waiting.’

He didn’t reply, and her heart broke for him. As she left, she turned to see him sitting in the wheelchair, his back towards her, his body rigid. As she walked away, her hand was still wet with his tears.

Mandy half expected him to call her later that day, but he didn’t. Nor the next day.

When she telephoned Sue, her friend was indignant. ‘Don’t let him treat you like this. March in there and tell him he’s got a son and it’s time he faced facts.’

‘No,’ Mandy said at once. ‘That would only make him retreat further. He’ll only come back if he comes willingly. If not-’

She couldn’t make herself finish the sentence. It was too soon to face the possibility of another parting, truly final this time.

But, as the days passed with no word from him, she grew annoyed. Whatever his feelings, he had no right to treat her like a pathetic ex-girlfriend, dumped because she was a bore.

Again and again, her mind played over the end of their last meeting, when anger had made him speak without restraint and his hard face had softened, just for a moment. And then he had wept, and she’d dared to hope that warmth might grow again between them.

But perhaps the fact that she’d seen his tears had been her undoing. After that he’d wanted to get rid of her.

On the third day she rebelled. If he thought she was going to sit here awaiting his pleasure, he was badly mistaken. She was, after all, in Milan, a city so famous for fashion that it had given the world the word milliner. She spent a fascinating afternoon studying the expensive shops, ended in a restaurant and took a taxi back to the hotel.

‘Signorina,’ said the receptionist as soon as she entered, ‘a gentleman has left many messages for you to call him back.’

The relief was overwhelming. It had come right at last, as she had surely known it would. Taking the paper he held out, she hurried up to her room and dialled the number she saw written there.

‘Pronto!’ The voice that answered was not Renzo’s.

‘This is the Signorina Amanda Jenkins,’ she said hesitantly.

‘Signorina, thank you so much for calling back. My name is Eugenio Ferrini. I understand that you are a researcher of the highest calibre.’

She sat down abruptly on the bed. It wasn’t Renzo. He still hadn’t called her.

Mandy made some reply, and the smooth voice at the other end explained that he was embarking on a book for which he would need some research done in England, and she had been recommended to him.

‘Why me?’ she asked, dazed.

‘Your name is better known than you think. My wife and I would be so glad if you would join us for dinner tomorrow evening. I can show you my papers and we can discuss the work you can do for me.’

‘Thank you, I should love to,’ she said, making a note of his address.

At least this way her trip would not be wasted, she thought angrily.

His house was close to the Via Montenapoleone, the fashionable street where she’d walked that very afternoon, and therefore the most expensive part of town. If the Ferrinis lived there, she had better take a lot of trouble about her appearance.

By next morning there was still no call from Renzo and she set out on a shopping trip in a mood of determination. First Gucci, then Armani, then Louis Vuitton, then a dozen others, until she had settled on a simple dress of dark green that echoed her eyes, set off with tiny earrings that were a convincing imitation of gold, and shoes with suicidally high heels that did wonders for her ankles and legs.

Then it was the beauty parlour for a session that left her skin dazzling and her hair teased into a curvy confection, disdaining the slight severity of her usual style. When she’d returned to the hotel and donned her new clothes she knew herself to be fit for the most glamorous party.

A limousine called at exactly seven o’clock and conveyed her the short distance to the Ferrini villa, which looked as if it had been built several hundred years earlier by an inspired architect.

Lights poured from the building and her host was already at the door on the top of the steps, smiling in welcome.

‘Dottoressa, how kind of you to come at such short notice.’