she was brave and resilient and he admired her for those strengths.
Walking over to the writing desk, he picked up his phone, but when he saw the name which had flashed onto the screen, he felt a sense of disbelief as he scrolled down to read the message. He looked up, to where Willow hadn’t moved, a question darkening her grey eyes.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘It’s from Dario,’ he said incredulously. ‘And he wants to meet me.’
Her expression echoed his own disbelief. ‘Just like that? Right out of the blue? Just after we’d been talking about him?’
‘He says he heard I was at the house and decided to contact me.’
She gave a slightly nervous laugh. ‘So it’s just coincidence.’
‘Yeah. Just coincidence.’ But Dante found himself thinking about something he hadn’t allowed himself to think about for a long time. About the intuition which had always existed between Dario and him—that mythical twin intuition which used to drive everyone crazy with frustration. They’d used it to play tricks on people. They’d loved making their teachers guess which twin they were talking to. But there had been another side too. The internal side which had nothing to do with playacting. His pain had been his brother’s pain. Their joy and dreams had been equally shared, until a woman had come between them.
And maybe that was how it was supposed to be. Maybe he had wasted all that energy fighting against the inevitable. For now he could see that not only had he been jealous of Anais, he’d been angry that for once in his life he’d been unable to control the outcome of something he wanted. Because the little boy who’d been unable to save his mother had grown into a man with a need to orchestrate the world and the way it worked. A man who wanted to control people and places and things. And life wasn’t like that. It never could be.
He looked at Willow and once again felt that strange kick to his heart. And even though part of him wanted to act like it wasn’t happening, something was stubbornly refusing to let him off the hook so easily. Was it so bad to acknowledge the truth? To admit that she made him feel stuff he’d never felt before—stuff he hadn’t imagined himself capable of feeling. That she had given him a flicker of hope in a future which before had always seemed so unremittingly dark?
‘What does your brother say?’ she was asking.
‘That he wants to meet me.’
‘When?’
‘As soon as possible. He lives in New York. I could leave right away.’
‘Then shouldn’t you get going?’
The words were soft, and the way she said them curled over his skin, like warm smoke. Smoky like her eyes. He wanted to take her back to bed. To forget all about the damned text and touch her until he was drowning in her body and feeling that strange kind of peace he felt whenever they were together, but he knew he couldn’t. Because this meeting with Dario was long overdue. The rift was as deep as a canyon, and he needed to address it. To face it and accept the outcome, whatever that might be, and then go forward.
‘I shouldn’t be more than a few hours,’ he said.
‘Take as long as you like.’
His eyes narrowed. She was giving him a permission he hadn’t asked for and his default setting would usually have kicked against her interference. Because he hated the idea of a woman closing in on him...trapping him...trying to get her claws hooked right into him. Yet he would have welcomed Willow clawing him—raking those neatly filed fingernails all the way down his back and making him buck with pleasure.
He wondered when it was that his opinion of her had changed so radically. When he’d realised she wasn’t some overprivileged aristocrat who wanted the world to jump whenever she snapped her pretty fingers—but someone who had quietly overcome her illness? Or when she’d offered him her body and her enduring comfort, despite his arrogance and his hard, black heart?
He walked across to her. The morning sun was gilding her skin and the silky nightgown she wore was that faded pink colour you sometimes found on the inside of a shell. She looked as pink and golden as a sunrise and he put his arms around her and drew her close.
‘Have I told you that every time I look at you, I want you?’ he said unevenly.
‘I believe you said something along those lines last night.’
He tilted up her chin with the tip of his finger. ‘Well, I’m telling you again, now—only this time it’s not because I’m deep inside your body and about to explode with pleasure.’
Her lips parted. ‘Dante...’
He nuzzled his mouth against her neck, before drawing back to stare into her clear eyes, knowing now of all the things he wanted to say to her. But not now. Not yet. Not with so much unfinished business to attend to. ‘Now kiss me, Willow,’ he said softly. ‘Kiss me and give me strength, to help get me through what is going to be a difficult meeting.’
AFTER DANTE HAD gone Willow tried to keep herself busy—because it was in those quiet moments when he wasn’t around that doubts began to crowd into her mind like dark shadows. But she wasn’t going to think about the future, or wonder how his Manhattan meeting with his twin brother was going. She was trying to do something she’d been taught a long time ago. To live in the day. To realise that this day was all any of them knew for sure they had.
She set off for a long walk around the grounds, watching the light bouncing off the smooth surface of the lake. The leaves were already on the turn and the whispering canopies above her head hinted at the glorious shades of gold and bronze to come. She watched a squirrel bounding along a path ahead of her and she listened to the sound of birdsong, thinking how incredibly peaceful it was here and how unbelievable it was to think that the buzzing metropolis of the city was only a short distance away.
Later she went to the library and studied row upon row of beautifully bound books, wondering just how many of them had actually been read. She found a copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and settled down to read it, soon finding herself engrossed in the famous story and unable to believe that she’d never read it before.
The hours slid by and she watched the slanting sunlight melt into dusk and shadows fall across the manicured lawns. As evening approached, Alma came to find Willow to tell her that Giovanni was feeling well enough to join her downstairs for dinner.
It was strangely peaceful with just her and Dante’s grandfather sitting there in the candlelight, eating the delicious meal which had been brought to them. The old man ate very little, though he told Willow that the tagliatelle with truffle sauce was a meal he had enjoyed in his youth, long before he’d set foot on the shores of America.
They took coffee in one of the smaller reception rooms overlooking the darkened grounds, silhouetted with tall trees and plump bushes. Against the bruised darkness of the sky, the moon was high and it glittered a shining silver path over the surface of the lake. All around her, Willow could feel space and beauty—but she felt there was something unspoken simmering away too. Some deep sadness at Giovanni’s core. She wondered what was it with these Di Sione men who, despite all their wealth and very obvious success, had souls which seemed so troubled.
