Italian Tycoon, Secret Son

‘Argue it out some other time,’ Mandy said hastily. ‘Now, if Signor Pesce will give you the cup.’

Signor Pesce duly obliged, holding it out to Danny, who reached out for it, floundering but determined.

‘I’d better take it,’ Mandy said, laughing.

With a little help, Danny managed to get both hands on the cup and aim it roughly at his mouth to take a long satisfying drink. Then he gazed defiantly at his mother, as if to say, See!

‘Oh, yes, you’re very clever,’ she told him. ‘You don’t have to tell me. I know you are. And now you’re going to prove it by going back to sleep.’

His defiance didn’t waver, but his eyes began to close.

‘I guess you won that one,’ Renzo said softly.

‘It’s not hard. He’s worked out that the more he sleeps, the better mayhem he can create tomorrow. Come on, my darling.’

She laid Danny back in his cot. He was already asleep.

‘He looks so innocent,’ Renzo said in wonder.

‘It’s a trick. That’s how he fools you. You don’t find out he’s actually a villain until it’s too late and he’s got a grip on your heart. Ask Bruno.’

He laughed softly. ‘I know. Nonno always said I practised a Who, me? look. He said the more innocent I seemed the more alarmed he became.’

‘I know exactly what he means,’ she said tenderly.

After a moment he said, ‘Thank you for today. Nonno doesn’t have much left to hope for in his life, and you gave him something that made him happy.’

‘No, it was you who did that.’

‘Don’t flatter me. You’ve had the hard part, I know-bearing Danny and raising him alone. How did you ever do it?’

‘I did it for you,’ she said simply. ‘You were always there with me. I was never alone.’

‘Never alone,’ he said slowly. ‘How could I be with you, and not know?’

‘Perhaps you did know, in your heart,’ she said slowly.

He nodded thoughtfully but said no more. Danny stirred, and he glanced back at him.

‘You said he was born in October.’

She gave him the exact date.

‘Was it very hard?’

‘It took a long time. First babies often do. Once they thought something was going wrong and I was terrified in case I lost him. But Sue was there, holding my hand, and it was all right in the end. I couldn’t have borne to lose him. It would have been like losing you all over again.’

‘I should have been there,’ he whispered. ‘Mio dio, it should have been me holding your hand.’

‘Yes,’ she said sadly. ‘You should have been the first one to see him and hold him. You should have been there when he cut his first tooth at seven months. Wait, I’ll show you.’

She put on the bedside light and got up, reaching into a drawer and pulled out a book which she opened for him, showing it to be a photo album.

‘Sue brought it with her,’ she said.

Renzo was staring at the picture on the first page.

‘But-that’s me,’ he said, thunderstruck. ‘How could you possibly have my photograph?’

‘Low cunning,’ she said. ‘Never fails. When we were in the mountains I could take pictures with my cellphone. I took several of you, without you knowing. When the rescue party found me in the hut they found my things, as well, and the cellphone was there. After I returned to England, I had the pictures developed. That was the best, but there were some other nice ones.’

Renzo turned the page and saw himself as he’d been then, in climbing gear, laughing, game for action, king of the world.

‘I wonder who he was,’ he mused. ‘I don’t know him. He looks a paltry fellow, the sort who’d swing off balconies and think he was being clever.’

‘Oh, he had his good moments,’ she said in a considering voice. ‘I can’t remember them right now, but he must have had something.’

‘Thank you, ma’am,’ he said, grinning.

But then his grin faded as he turned the page and saw a picture of Mandy, taken in the hospital, holding the day-old Danny. Watching his face she saw an expression of unutterable sadness that only deepened as he went through the book and saw more pictures.

There was Danny at his christening, sleeping soundly in his mother’s arms, then sitting up in his high chair, clearly older and bigger, beaming mischievously. And, just behind him, was the enlarged picture of his father.

More pictures, all telling the same story, of a child growing quickly in strength, health and intelligence. And every time Renzo’s photograph could be seen, never far from his son, as if watching over him.

‘You kept me alive for him,’ he whispered.

‘I tried to. It helped me too. I had someone to talk to.’

He wondered if she knew how the unconscious inflection in her voice had betrayed the depths of her loneliness. But she wouldn’t know, he guessed. There had never been anyone less given to self-pity than her.

‘Why didn’t you show me this earlier?’ he asked.

‘I’ve always wanted to. It wasn’t the right moment before. But tonight…it was.’

Tonight he’d begun to open his heart to his child and she was alive with hope.

He was turning the pages, lingering over a picture of Danny with a warm smile.

‘They say babies start being shy of strangers after a few months,’ Mandy said, ‘but he never was. His attitude was always bring ’em on.’

‘So much I missed,’ he mused. ‘Lost for ever.’

‘But there’s much more still to come,’ she reminded him. ‘A lifetime. You don’t have to miss that.’

‘A lifetime.’ He looked at her across the cot. ‘Do you really think you could put up with me for a lifetime?’

‘Try me.’

‘You were always brave, but you’d need all the courage in the world to take me on.’

‘It would take far more courage to live without you,’ she told him softly. ‘That’s what I can’t face.’

He came to sit beside her on the bed and spoke fervently. ‘Do you remember when I said I loved you back then?’

‘Every word.’

‘I never thought I’d get the chance to say it again. I was wild with hope and despair. You were the one, the only woman I wanted, the only woman who’d ever made me feel I wanted to be with her for the rest of my life, and there was so little of that life left. So much to say and do, and it was too late.

‘I wanted for ever with you then, and I want for ever with you now. Marry me. Stay with me always.’ He took her in his arms. ‘Say yes. Say it quickly.’

‘Yes,’ she told him joyfully. ‘Yes, oh, yes.’

Their kiss was long and deep, an exchange of promises too powerful to need words. Renzo pressed her gently back onto the bed, kissing her face, her neck, moving tenderly down until he came to the flimsy nightdress.

‘Why are you so overdressed?’ he murmured.

He helped draw it over her head, removed the shorts that were all he wore and pulled her back into his arms as though the urgency that swept through him was too fierce for more delay.

It wasn’t the first time they’d made love since their reunion, but this was different. Now they had rediscovered each other in a way that hadn’t been true before, and each kiss, each caress, each incitement was imbued with new meaning.

He kissed her breasts softly, teasing, coaxing until they burned under his touch, making her arch against him in delight. She was demanding and offering in the same moment, clasping her fingers in his hair and pressing her body against his in an urgent plea for more.

‘You mean it?’ he murmured. ‘You’ll stay with me always?’

‘Always,’ she said, speaking with difficulty through her mounting excitement.

‘Never leave me.’