‘Goodness me.’ She sat back on her heels, too stunned to hold back the next comment. ‘You look terrible.’
His answering wry smile was more a fatalistic rueful grimace. ‘I hate it,’ he admitted, and slapped a thin hand on the wheelchair arm. ‘Hate this too.’
I just bet you do, she thought with a moment’s soft pity for this man who used to be a giant despite his lack of inches.
Then he was sending her a look that had all hint of compassion draining right out of her. For this man was still dangerous, physically incapacitated or not. Those two bright hunter’s gold eyes were burning pinpoints of astuteness and guile, warning her that the sharp brain behind them still functioned at its old breakneck pace.
‘You, I see, are more beautiful than ever,’ he remarked. ‘The child is hewn in your image. Your hair, your face, your inherently sweet and gentle nature.’
‘I was a coward, Alfredo,’ Sara countered, ignoring the attempted compliment. ‘My daughter is not.’
Something she had discovered via listening painfully as Lia had over the last few days let little things slip which suggested that the child had not made it easy for her kidnappers.
‘It will be my son’s genes which give her courage.’ He nodded proudly. ‘Or maybe even my own.’
‘God help her,’ Sara responded, amazed that he wasn’t even going to pretend he did not know exactly who Lia’s father was. ‘If she has much of you in her, Alfredo, then she will need God’s help.’ She fixed him with a hard and cold look. ‘Have you any idea how much you frightened her having her snatched like that?’
‘Me?’ At last he decided to use his striking ability to fake innocence, actually managing to look shocked by the accusation. ‘I did not snatch the bambina!’ he denied. ‘I would not wish to frighten a hair on her beautiful head!’
‘Liar.’ Blue eyes suddenly hot with anger, she stood up and went to lean over him. ‘I saw your expression when you held my baby in your arms! You were glowing with triumph! With everything alive in you, you were staking ownership! Possessive and territorial! I saw it, Alfredo. I saw it!’
It made him gasp, the very fact that she could spit at him like that utterly astounding him. ‘You grow brave in the face of a shrivelled old man in a wheelchair,’ he murmured feebly.
‘Don’t try the poor sick old man routine on me,’ she said scathingly as she straightened away. ‘It just won’t work.’
With that, she bent to pick up her coil of garden wire and secateurs and made to leave.
‘Don’t walk away from me, woman!’ he growled.
Oddly, it stopped her. Not the words themselves but the way he had said them. There was a bitter, biting frustration there—frustration with his physical disadvantage.
She turned back to glance at him just as his fist made furious contact with the wheelchair arm, his face a twisted map of angry helplessness.
‘I did not take the child!’ He scowled mutinously up at her. ‘If I had thought of it, I would have!’ he added bluntly. ‘But I did not!’ Then he sighed heavily because the burst of passionate anger had obviously drained his energy.
Sara saw him go a paler shade of sallow, his eyes lose the vibrant spark of life, and her bottom lip twitched in a spasm of unwanted feeling for this man who was her enemy. She didn’t know whether to believe him, or even if it really mattered that much now that the deed was done. But she could not afford to relax her guard around Alfredo, she reminded herself grimly. Past experience had taught her that lesson the hardest way anyone could learn a lesson in life.
But nor was it in her nature to be cruel to the afflicted, and Alfredo was certainly afflicted at the moment.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked stiffly.
‘Sì,’ he clipped back, but he was leaning heavily on his forearms, his silvered head lowered while he seemed to be concentrating on pacing his breathing.
A child’s laughter drifted up from the small beach below, tinkling around both of them and diverting their attention to the sight of Lia dressed in white cotton dungarees and a white cotton mob-cap pulled on over her hair, running as fast as her little legs could take her, away from Fabia who was chasing with a string of wet seaweed dangling from one hand.
Sara laughed too; she couldn’t help it. Leaning her thighs against the terrace wall, she folded her arms and watched the chase.
Suddenly the wheelchair was right beside her, Alfredo leaning forward as much as he could to follow what was going on.
‘Run, little one. Run!’ he encouraged gruffly, a thin hand making a fist which he used to urge the child further.
It was miraculous. In those few short seconds he had doubled in strength, in life, in sheer vitality. And the chase was lost to Sara as she took all of this in.
A tingling on the back of her neck—that sixth sense at work again, probably—made her turn and look up—up the white-walled terraces, to see Nicolas standing several levels above them, his dark face carved in a mask of pained observation.
Pain not for the child but for the father. Her heart squeezed in her breast. He too had seen the change in Alfredo—perhaps even heard the exchange which had preceded it.
His eyes flicked to her and turned cold—as cold as yellow ice. Yes, he had heard, she realised with a small shiver. Not all of it, but enough. He had warned her not to upset his father. Now retribution was due because she had.
‘Hah!’ said Alfredo, sitting back in his chair with a triumphant laugh. ‘Did you see that?’ He chuckled delightedly, unaware of the other exchange going on. ‘She escaped by ducking right between Fabia’s legs!’
Dragging her eyes from Nicolas’s, she glanced down at the beach where Fabia was now giving chase in the other direction. When she looked up again, Nicolas was gone.
‘Aye, aye, aye …’ Alfredo sighed envyingly. ‘To be able to go down there and join in the fun …’
‘Alfredo—’ Impulsively, Sara knelt down to his level. ‘Lia is your grandchild—’
‘I know this.’ He turned, eyes so incredibly softened by pride and joy that it caught at her throat.
‘You love her already.’
‘Sì,’ he confirmed. ‘We—how you English say?—bonded!’ he exclaimed. ‘From the moment she saw me, Sara! She came into my arms as if she had known them always! I love her,’ he sighed. ‘She loves me! It is wonderful!’
‘She is part of me too, Alfredo,’ Sara firmly reminded him.
‘It would be difficult to deny this when she is the image of you.’ He grinned.
‘She needs her mother.’
‘Of course!’ He looked almost shocked that she should feel the need to tell him that. ‘All children need their mother …’ he added, his attention drifting back to the beach where the game had now finished and
