empty like an unused shrine.
And Leon watched her.
It had taken until midnight for Tammy to decide she couldn’t stay at her father’s house. She’d said she wanted to be near Jack’s things. Leon had refused to allow her to go alone and he was still glad he’d come. But as he watched her, she glittered like glass in moonlight with nervous energy. Every sound made her jump, every creak of the polished floorboards made her shiver, and Leon ached for the damage he’d caused to this sleepy town and to this woman.
He patted the sofa beside him and held out his hand. ‘Come. Sit by me. Let me help you rest for a few moments at least.’
She turned jerkily towards him. ‘I can’t believe he’s not here.’ Staccato words stabbed the air in the room like little knives, tiny steel-tipped blades of guilt that found their mark on him.
‘They will have them by morning. My men have promised me.’ Leon rose to slide his arm around her stiff shoulders and pull her down to sit beside him so their hips touched. She was so cold and stiff and he nudged more firmly against her hip, offering comfort to both of them, and a safe place to rest if only for a moment, and if only she could.
‘Your men?’ She sniffed. ‘If they were so good the boys would never have been taken at all.’
‘Nobody expected this here. We were lucky they were still with us.’ Leon had his own demons. Paulo gone and he didn’t know if he was alive. Or Jack. Surely they would get them back.
There had been no demand yet. Would they discard the boy they didn’t need? Would they leave him alive? It had been his choice to delay the police while his men followed the trail initially.
The trail Tamara had wanted to chase. His first sight of her face as she drove past him like a woman possessed still affected him. Her little car pushed to its limits to the point where his more powerful motor could barely catch her. His throat tightened. ‘I can’t believe you pursued them in your car.’
She brushed the hair out of her eyes impatiently. ‘Why would I not?’ Her eyes searched his. ‘I could still be chasing them if you hadn’t stopped me. What if they’ve disappeared and we never find where they went? What, then?’
He shook his head at the thought. No! It would not be like that. He had to trust what his operatives told him. Tomorrow in the early morning, it would be okay. ‘I was terrified for you as well. What were you going to do if you caught them?’
Her eyes burned. ‘Whatever I had to. They have my son.’
And mine. She had no idea. And he did and should never have brought this on these people. He knew what loss and guilt did to people. ‘What you did was too dangerous.’
Another swift scornful search of his face. ‘For them?’
‘For you and for the boys.’
She shook her head. ‘For the first time in a lot of years I don’t know what to do. You tell me to wait. But how long must I wait? I want him now.’ Her shoulders slumped and slowly, like the deflation of an overstretched balloon, all the fight leaked out of her and she sagged against him as she buried her face in his shoulder.
He smoothed her hair. Had to touch her and try to soothe her agitation as she went on. ‘There’s never been such hard waiting. I’ve never had such fear. Make me forget the horror I can’t shake. Talk to me. Tell me something that helps.’
He pulled her onto his lap and hugged her, still smoothing her hair and whispering endearments she wouldn’t understand. Assuring her the boys would be returned. That he knew she was scared. That he was scared.
His hand travelled over her hair and his mind seemed to narrow its focus, the room faded until only the sheen of silk beneath his fingers existed. Rhythmically he stroked as he murmured until suddenly he began to speak more easily.
In his own language, not hers. All the things he’d bottled up for years but never said.
He said he knew how scared she was. How scared one could be in that moment of loss. He could taste his first moment of absolute fear and horror, all those years ago on the ocean, at fourteen, not yet a man but about to become one.
The storm upon them before his father realised, the sudden wave that washed he and his brother overboard, and his father throwing them the lifebuoy just as the boom smashed him and his mother into the water after them.
He’d grabbed Gianni’s collar and heaved him against his chest so his head was out of the water. He could remember that frozen instant in time. Them all overboard, Gianni unconscious and only he with something to cling to. He couldn’t let go of his brother and, screaming out against God, he’d watched his parents sink below the surface.
So alone in the Mediterranean under a black sky. It had grown darker as the night came; Gianni awoke, and he’d had to tell him of their parents’ fate.
Such fear and swamping grief as they’d bobbed in the dark, imagining sharks and trying not to move too much, chilled to the core, fingers locked to the rope of the buoy. Knowing they would die.
Their rescue had been an anticlimax. A fishing boat pulled them in. Then the week in hospital alone and grieving, with visits from lawyers and one old aunt and her change-of-life son who’d hated them both.
He’d vowed that day he would be strong. And he had been.
He’d married Maria as his parents had betrothed them, and finally they’d had Paulo. His heritage safe again.
Then Maria had died and Paulo had been almost taken. He’d realised his life could fall apart again any moment and he’d needed to see his brother, his only family.
He, who’d never spoke of anything that exposed his soul, poured it all out to Tammy. It eased the burden of guilt he carried to tell her how he felt, without the complication of her knowing. From somewhere within it was as if the walls he’d erected around his emotions began to crumble, walls he’d erected not just since Maria’s death, but since that lost summer all those years ago when he’d felt he failed his parents. Walls that prevented him being touched by feelings that could flay him alive.
He continued to murmur into her hair as her softness lay against his chest. His native tongue disguising the compromise and giving freedom to express the beginning of something he hadn’t admitted to himself as he held her warmth against his heart. Her healing warmth. The way she touched his soul. He told the truth.
How sorry he was to have brought this on her. How the lure of her physical attraction for him had begun to change to a more complete absorption. How she made him feel alive as he hadn’t felt for years, even if sometimes it was with impatience or frustration when she thwarted him.
How beautiful she was, how she’d captured his attention after their first dance at his brother’s wedding, how he’d never felt that connection before with another woman, even his wife, and that made him feel even worse.
How these past few days he couldn’t stay away, spent his mornings and afternoons dragging his thoughts away from her so he could concentrate on business—something he had never had trouble with before—when in fact he was waiting for the evening when he could call on her.
The lonely nights dreaming of her in her house a street away, staring out through the window all night so he could start the whole process again.
