didn’t work out with my boss…’ Ainslie attempted casual, but those astute eyes were still watching her carefully. ‘I’ll find something else.’
‘You already have,’ Elijah answered easily. ‘I don’t know how long it will be for, but I’m certainly going to be here till after Christmas…’
‘You don’t know me…’ Ainslie frowned.
‘I won’t know the girl the agency sends tomorrow either!’ he pointed out. ‘The offer’s there if you want it.’
‘Won’t his father’s family want to help out?’ She could see him bristle—see him tense, just as he had before when they were mentioned.
He was about to tell her it was none of her business—about to snap some smart response—but those green eyes that beckoned him weren’t judging, and there was no trace of nosiness in her voice. Elijah realised he didn’t want to push her away, didn’t want to be alone. For the first time in his life he actually needed to talk.
‘Our families have never got on. When Maria started going out with Rico I didn’t talk to my sister for two years.’
‘Were you close before that?’
‘We were all the other had. I was five when my mother died; Maria was only one. Our father turned to drink, and he died when I was twelve.’
He’d never told anyone this—could scarcely believe the words were coming out of his own mouth. Her jade-green eyes hardly ever left his. Every now and then she looked away, swirling her brandy in her glass as he spoke, but her gaze always returned to him. Her damp blonde hair was drying now, coiling into curls on her shoulders, and for the first time he walked through the murky depths of his past in the hope that it would guide him to the right future, that the decisions that must surely be made now would be the right ones for Guido.
‘We brought ourselves up,’ Elijah explained. ‘Did things that today I am not proud of. But at the time…’ He gave a regretful shrug. ‘There was a family in our village—the Castellas. They were as rough as us, and after the same thing—money to survive. You could say we were rivals, I guess. One day Rico’s older brother Marco came on to Maria.’ His eyes flinched at the memory. ‘She was still a child—thirteen—and she was an innocent child too. I had always been the one who did the cheating and stealing while Maria went to school; she was a good girl. Maria always hated Marco for what he did to her; she would not want him near Guido.’
‘So this isn’t about revenge?’
‘I had my revenge the day it happened,’ Elijah said darkly. ‘I beat him to a pulp.’
‘So the hatred just grew?’ Ainslie asked, but Elijah didn’t answer directly.
‘When I was seventeen I was outside a café, watching some rich tourists. It was a couple, and I was waiting till it was darker, till they’d had a few more drinks and wouldn’t be paying close attention to their wallets. They spoke to the waiter. Their Italian was quite good—they were looking to retire, wanted a property with a view…’ He smiled at the memory. ‘There was no estate agent in our small village in Sicily then—it wasn’t a tourist spot. I knew, I just knew, that I didn’t want to be stealing and cheating to get by any more. Finally I knew what I could do to get out of it.’
She didn’t comment further, didn’t frown at the fact that he’d stolen, didn’t wince at his past, and that gave him the strength to continue.
‘I sold them my late grandfather’s home—to me and to my friends it was a shack, just a deserted place we hung out in. It had been passed to us, Maria and me, but till then it had been worth nothing. But we cleaned it painted and polished it, and Maria picked flowers for the inside. I could see what they wanted, and knew that this villa was it.’
‘You sold it to them?’
‘They dealt with the lawyers, they had the papers drawn up.’ Elijah nodded. ‘Then, after that, I sold our own home. With every bit of money I made I bought more properties, then I moved out of our village and on to bigger things—and the Castellas were still there, thieving on the beach. With every success that came our way they hated us more—just as we hated them.’
‘You’re a real estate agent?’ Ainslie checked, wondering why that made him smile.
‘I’m a property developer. I buy homes like this one—beautiful homes the world over—and I retain the exterior, gut the interior, and turn them into flats.’
‘Ouch!’ Ainslie winced, staring around at this vast lounge, the size of a ballroom, at the ornate cornices and the marble mantelpiece over the dreamy fireplace, loath to think of it being destroyed.
‘Of course we try to retain as many original features as possible!’ He gave an ironic smile.
‘Philistine.’
‘Perhaps!’ Elijah conceded. ‘Maria, too, fell in love with this place.’
‘And she fell in love with Rico too?’
After the longest time he nodded, that single gesture telling her he would reveal more.
‘Not till years later. I was furious—so too was his family. None of us went to the wedding…’ He closed his eyes in regret. ‘She still worked for me, supported her husband. I kept pointing out that he wasn’t working, but slowly I started to see that they were for real. They had to be real. Because in spite of what had happened—with all that his brother had done—still she loved Rico. So we started speaking again, and then I realised how hard things were for them. Rico’s family blamed Maria for what had happened to them, for the slur to Marco’s name. They said that she had asked for it, that it had been her coming on to him…’
‘She was thirteen!’
‘Easier for them to blame her than change him. Rico is a mechanic, and his family ran the car repair place in the village, so he couldn’t work. I knew they couldn’t stay in the village—there was too much bad blood, too many slurs for them to ever make a real go of it. I suggested they move in here for a while—Maria spoke some English. I had purchased the place furnished, and I said she could oversee the plans, help with the architects and inspections till it was ready to get off the ground. It never did.’ He smiled as he said it. ‘The renovations started—only not the ones I had intended—Rico found work straight away, and they settled right in. I would often come to visit…’
‘You were living in London?’
‘No, I am mainly in Italy. But I am here once or twice a month, and every time I came here I noticed it had become more and more their home—a few new cushions for the couches, a rug here and there. And then when she got pregnant Maria started talking about a mural in the nursery. I gave in when Guido was born. I knew that they loved each other completely, and as a belated wedding gift I decided to sign the place over to them.’
‘Some wedding gift!’
‘Oh, it was to be their Christmas present too!’
Ainslie smiled at the faint joke. She knew nothing about property prices, save that London was fiercely expensive. She’d thought Gemma and Angus lived in luxury, but this house, right in the heart of London, was just stunning. Under any other circumstances she’d have paid to enter and be gazing at
