Catherine Spencer The Italian's Secret Child [HPS

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.“If you say so,” he murmured.“A presto, cara.See you soon.”She fervently hoped not, but knew there was little chance she’d get her wish.The most she could be grateful for was that Simon had blue eyes and was blond like her, even though his hair was a shade or two darker.He bore no resemblance at all to Matteo, and no one looking at them would for a moment suspect the two were father and son.The bickering and backbiting of its residents having finally petered out, the villa lay blanketed by the heavy silence of night.In the room adjoining hers, Simon sprawled in his bed, long ago asleep.But Stephanie, too restless to settle, paced the narrow balcony outside her bedroom, and wondered whatever had possessed her to think, for one moment, that her family was capable of spending more than an hour together before the in-fighting began.Not that they resorted to raising voices or hurling dishes at one another.Heaven forbid they should so far forget themselves as to behave in a manner unbefitting the descendants of statesmen on both sides of the Canada-U.S.border! Instead, they delighted in sly, hurtful innuendo; in nasty little digs that slipped past a person’s guard as stealthily as a knife sliding between the ribs.Simon had inadvertently started tonight’s incident, midway through dinner.“Who was that man you were talking to this afternoon, Mom?” he’d piped up, between the main course and dessert, and that’s all it had taken for the rest of the meal to go down the tubes in fine style.“He lives in the cottage next door,” she’d said.“I ran into him while I was exploring the garden.”“Why was he holding your hand?”Dismally aware of all eyes swiveling in her direction, Stephanie had touched her napkin to her mouth and done her best to contain the flush threatening to lay waste to her composure.“He wasn’t holding my hand, Simon.He was shaking it.We were just saying hello again because we first met a long time ago.”“A somewhat far-fetched coincidence, meeting him again now, wouldn’t you say?” Her father, ever the dignified professor quizzing a delinquent student, ever the disapproving parent saddled with a rebel daughter instead of a third, perfect son, had inspected her suspiciously over the top of his gold-rimmed glasses.She’d held his gaze.“But true, nevertheless.”Not liking the defiance he heard in her voice, he’d raised his brows in silent reproof.“Indeed? And does this man have a name?”“Of course he does, Victor,” her grandfather said.“It’s Matteo De Luca.”“And that’s supposed to mean something to me?”“It should.He came over from Italy and spent almost six weeks with us, the summer Stephanie graduated high school.He bought that special tool I invented for cutting granite—the one you said no one would ever want because it would never work.”“I have no recollection of any such person.”“I’m not surprised, Bruce,” her grandmother said tartly.“That was the summer your father had back surgery and could have used some help getting around afterward, but you chose to remain in the city and were too busy jockeying for Head of Department status at the college, to care how we were coping.Thankfully, Matteo wasn’t, and always made time to lend a hand when it was needed.I don’t know how we’d have managed without him.”Andrew, spoke up then.“I remember him! Met him when we came out to the lake one long weekend.Nice guy, as I recall.Played a mean game of racquetball and could swim like a fish.Worked like a Trojan, too.Except when he took an hour off once in a while, I don’t think I ever saw him that he wasn’t up to his elbows in oil and grease, trying to get Grandfather’s gadget up and running.He was a real hands-on kind of guy.”“Now that you mention it, I remember him, too.” Cast in his father’s image, right down to the aquiline nose and prematurely iron-gray hair, Victor had curled his lip in a sneer.“Given half a chance, he’d have had his hands all over Stephanie as well, and I don’t think she’d have minded one bit.”Stephanie had almost choked on her wine.Victor was the most self-absorbed man on the planet, yet if he’d picked up on the attraction between her and Matteo, it was more than likely that others had noticed it, too.“That’s ridiculous!”“It had better be,” her father ordained.“You were taught to uphold certain standards of behavior.If I’d had any inkling that you were monkeying around with some transient laborer behind my back—!”“Oh, Bruce, we might not have spent much time at the lake that summer, but I’m sure I’d have noticed if Stephanie did any such thing,” her mother cut in with unusual temerity.One did not interrupt the almighty Professor Leyland when he was in full throttle; one hung on his every word and waited for permission to speak.Just to impress on his wife how far she’d overstepped the mark, he let a second or two of thundering silence tick by before replying, “I wish I shared your certainty, Vivienne.Instead, I find myself more inclined to understand why, if sinking to the level of the lowest common denominator is what most appealed to our daughter, it’s such small wonder she couldn’t hold on to Charles.”Aware that her cheeks were flaming, as much from anger as embarrassment, Stephanie had shoved back her chair and scooped Simon out of his.There was a great deal she’d have liked to say, not the least being that she’d neither submit to being reprimanded as if she were still in her teens, nor tolerate having her imperfect past served up for dessert.The days when her father’s icy contempt could wound her were long gone, but she’d wait for a more propitious time to tell him so.“I think I’ve heard enough, and my son certainly has.”“Touched a nerve, have we? I thought as much!”Victor’s voice had floated snidely after them as she hustled Simon inside the house, and it had taken every ounce of willpower for her not to race back to the terrace and give him a piece of her mind he wouldn’t soon forget.“Stop it this instant!” she’d heard their grandmother snap [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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