already said she’d told me nothing. She died four years ago, still having told me nothing.’
Unbidden, the hurt of so many years was spilling out, fury at her mother mixed with fury at Leo. But it was crazy, dumb, useless. It was adolescent anger, hurt from a time she should have put behind her.
She understood now, or she thought she did. After that night she’d done her own investigation into her mother’s family and she even understood why Leo had walked away. Sort of.
‘If I’d stayed with you I could never have come home again,’ he said. ‘I knew that.’
‘And coming home was everything.’
‘It was.’ He hesitated. ‘Hell, Anna, I should have spelled it out. I know that. But this country…you’re getting a sense now of how impoverished we are. To send me to London to do medicine…it was a huge deal for the islanders. My father was dead and my mother had no means of support. I should have gone fishing when I was twelve, but my teachers told the town how smart I was. To be honest, most smart kids leave the island as soon as they can but I couldn’t walk away from my mother for ever, and the islanders knew it. So when I said I wanted to be a doctor, somehow they managed it. I still don’t know how. Because of the draconian rule of your family, every cent had to be accounted for.’
‘But they never have been my family,’ she managed, and he held up his hands, the same way he’d held them up ten years ago. Warding her off.
‘Anna, I’ve said I’m sorry. I’m also sorry for being too immature to explain properly, for walking away so fast. But to be honest, maybe it was for the best, getting it over with fast.’ He hesitated. ‘I hope you did get over it fast. You have a partner now?’
What was there to say to that? A woman had some pride. ‘Don’t kid yourself that I’ve mourned you for ten years,’ she told him, attempting to glower. ‘I’ve had a very good time. I have a great job, a lovely home, dogs. I started dating Martin two years ago. He’s a lawyer and a friend, and he’d be here in a flash if I asked him. As would any number of my friends.’
‘But not now that you’re injured?’
‘I have a sore head, not a cerebral bleed. And you…’ Two could play at his game. ‘Wife? Kids? Goldfish?’
‘I’m too busy for relationships,’ he said brusquely. ‘Moving on. Anna, the idea of the hospital…you’re saying no.’
She hesitated. She was trying hard to be grown up, she told herself. She needed to shelve her adolescent self. She needed to get over a pain that surely should be well gone.
A hospital. Here.
Martin’s advice had been sound. ‘Do nothing. You can spend twenty years planning what to do when you finally inherit. Just go and look and then come home.’
Home sounded infinitely appealing.
But so did doing something. Something splendid?
‘I didn’t say no,’ she said, slowly now, thinking it through. If she could get over the past, if she could see how this could happen… If she could get over how this man made her feel…
‘Tell you what,’ she said, pushing herself to her feet again. And once again she wobbled and needed to let Leo take her arm to steady her. Regardless. ‘I’m rested,’ she said. ‘Yes, I’m still a bit shaky but I’m okay. Let’s put…let’s put everything behind us. You know this castle?’
‘I have been in it,’ he said. ‘I was your cousin’s treating doctor.’
‘So you’ve been in his bedroom and in the entrance. Anywhere else?’
‘I knew a lot of it as a boy,’ he admitted. ‘Your uncle ran on a skeleton staff so we could sneak around undetected. As kids…we did do our own exploring.’
‘Well, there you go,’ she said, determinedly cheerful. Determined to let bygones be bygones. Determined not to let the feel of his hand on her arm make her feel…what she needed to be long over feeling. ‘You know it, and you’ve obviously thought this through. So, Dr Aretino. Let’s forget the girlfriend-boyfriend thing. Let’s also forget the doctor-patient thing. We’re medical colleagues and you have a medical-based proposal. Let’s take a walk through this castle. My castle,’ she amended, because she was still getting her head around it and if she was going to face Victoir down then she needed the authority. And it wouldn’t hurt if this man held her at a distance either.
‘Victoir’s shown me Yanni’s over-the-top apartments and he’s shown me through sections that are obviously dangerous,’ she told him. ‘But I know he has his own agenda. Let’s turn what we can into more opulence and knock the rest down, is the gist of what he’s telling me. So, Dr Aretino, let’s go for a tour and you can tell me how any other option would be possible.’
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