Confessions of His Christmas Housekeeper by Sharon Kendrick

CHAPTER ELEVEN

LOUISE’SSIMMERINGMOODwas still in evidence when Giacomo closed the door of the apartment behind them and worked out what he was going to say to her. He watched as she removed her coat, the light bouncing off her glossy hair, and he was suddenly filled with an overwhelming desire to run his fingers through it.

‘I’m off to bed now,’ she said, reaching for the sparkly little bag she’d placed on the hall table.

‘No.’

‘No?’ She jerked back, a look of surprise on her face. ‘How very authoritarian of you, Giacomo! Haven’t you forgotten I’m supposed to be your wife now, not your obedient housekeeper? And since there’s nobody around to see us, we can stop all the play-acting. And I’m very tired. I found that party quite draining. So if it’s all right with you, I’ll say goodnight. We can talk in the morning.’

‘Please?’ he said, and he saw her hesitate—a flicker of uncertainty replacing the feisty defiance.

‘Have you learnt how powerful that little word can be when you hardly ever say it?’ she questioned huskily, her voice a little unsteady. ‘Is that your favourite manipulative tool?’

‘Or maybe it’s a genuine question?’ he parried softly. ‘All I’m asking is that you come and sit by the fire with me for a while, because I want to talk to you.’

Her body stiffening, she met his gaze. ‘You’ve remembered something?’

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘This is something I’ve known all along. Something I’ve never forgotten, no matter how much I’ve wished I could.’

He saw something alter in her expression, as if she’d recognised that the rules of the game had suddenly changed.

‘Okay,’ she said cautiously.

She led the way into the sitting room and sat down on one of the sofas and he thought how at ease she seemed here, despite the sudden watchfulness which had darkened her extraordinary blue eyes. Rosa must have lit the fire and put a silver tray of drinks on a table, next to an elaborate display of roses and berries, which scented the air. It occurred to him that for once the elegant room seemed almost...homely. Was that because she was there? ‘Drink?’ he said, gesturing towards a decanter of brandy.

She looked up as she crossed one elegant leg over the other—a movement he found momentarily distracting. ‘Why, do you think I’ll need one?’

He shook his head and walked over to stand close to the fire in an attempt to warm his skin, which suddenly felt ice-cold. He thought how best to frame his words until he realised this wasn’t like those presentations he’d given in his early years, when he’d been eager to acquire the confidence and funding of his potential backers. He wasn’t standing before the woman he had married seeking judgement or even approval, but to offer an explanation of what had made him the man he was.

In the hope of what?

That she would love him?

Ruthlessly, he crushed the thought. Why give headspace to something he’d never really believed in?

‘You were always curious about my childhood,’ he began slowly. ‘And you must have quickly learnt that I don’t like talking about it.’

‘You could say that.’ She looked flustered, as if she couldn’t quite believe that he had voluntarily brought up the subject. As if she couldn’t quite believe he might be about to answer all the questions he’d always thrown back at her before.

‘So, go ahead,’ he continued. ‘Ask.’

She uncrossed her legs and pressed her knees very close together. ‘Well, I know about your time at the orphanage, because sometimes you referred to that. But you didn’t go there until you were eleven, did you?’

‘No,’ he said flatly.

‘So...well, it couldn’t have been the only defining factor in your life.’ She shrugged. ‘There must have been a lot which happened before that.’

There was a long pause. ‘You’re referring to my mother, I assume?’

‘The mother you also never talk about,’ she affirmed, in a low voice. ‘But at least you had a mother. You’re lucky.’

‘Has it ever occurred to you why I don’t talk about her?’

‘I don’t know.’ She went very still. ‘Because it upsets you too much?’

He gave a laugh which didn’t really feel much like a laugh. ‘Oh, Louise. How sweetly naïve you can be at times.’

‘Maybe because I don’t remember either of my parents!’ she retorted, with a return of customary fire. ‘That could be one of the reasons why I sentimentalise parenthood, don’t you think?’

‘Or maybe you’re the lucky one,’ he said slowly.

His words tailed away but she didn’t prompt him. Maybe if she had he would have clammed up—as deep down he really wanted to. But he was aware that time was running out for them and something was telling him he needed to resurrect the past if he was going to stand any chance of leaving it behind. To drag it up from that dark place where he’d buried it so long ago.

‘She was a single mother,’ he began. ‘But she never let that cramp her lifestyle, which was...how best to describe it? Energetic,’ he concluded with a grim twist of his mouth. ‘We lived in a tenement block in Turin and whenever she wanted to go out, she left me with whichever neighbour happened to be around. Or not. I was on my own a lot and learned how to fend for myself. To find food from somewhere. Anywhere. I guess you could have described me as feral.’

‘That must have been...hard.’

He shrugged. ‘You accept what you get given. It was all I knew. I became known as the kid whose mother didn’t want a kid. That I could deal with. The worst thing was when she used to bring her boyfriends back to the room.’ His mouth hardened. ‘That wasn’t much fun. She used to tell me that things would get better, but they never did. Just like she used to tell me she would be home at a certain time, but she never was. I learnt I could never trust a word she said.’

She flinched. ‘And your father? Wasn’t he ever around?’

‘No.’ He waited for a moment before he answered her and, again, his instinct was not to elaborate, to bite it back as he’d always done before. But something about the expression in her eyes made it hard for him to look away and Giacomo found himself being drawn into that soft and compelling gaze. ‘I only met him once. Much later. He wasn’t a local.’ A ragged breath left his lungs. ‘He was visiting Turin from Naples when they hooked up for one night.’

‘Like us, you mean?’ she questioned, her voice suddenly growing wooden.

‘No. Nothing like us. Because I saw you a lot in those early days, didn’t I?’ he questioned suddenly, his mind clearing a little.

‘Yes. Yes, you did.’ She nodded. ‘Carry on with your story. If...if you want to.’

Giacomo wondered how best to summarise the bleak discovery of his father’s attitude towards him before grimly accepting there was no way to make it palatable. He’d never talked about this, he realised. Not to a living soul. Not just because of the shame, but because there was a limit to another person’s insight. Because nobody really understood what it felt like to be hungry unless they’d been hungry themselves. Just as nobody could ever imagine how bad it felt to have those low-life wasters his mother had associated with look at you as if you were something the cat dragged in. Or a father who regarded you with nothing but cold contempt in his eyes. He’d kept it to himself because he didn’t want to be judged, but something told him that Louise would never judge him.

‘I guess things would have gone on in that way until I was old enough to make my own way in the world. Living close to the edge, but just about surviving—until my mother became ill.’

‘Oh, Giacomo,’ she whispered, as if the tone in his voice had warned her about what he was about to say.

‘Save your sympathy.’ With an abrupt slicing movement of his hand, he cut her short. ‘She brought it on herself. It was a case of one botched plastic surgery too many, in a seedy, downtown clinic. She developed sepsis and with only hours to live, she told me about my father for the first time. She said he was one of the wealthiest men in the country.’ He ran his tongue over suddenly dry lips, remembering the choked words which she’d uttered, in between those terrible gasps for air. Of a man with an impossible wealth. ‘She said she’d tried to contact him before with no success, and although she hadn’t been surprised, things were different now. That in the circumstances he would take me in and see me right. He would protect his son, because all men wanted sons.’

‘And...did he?’

Giacomo swallowed. It still hurt to think about it, that was the extraordinary thing. Even after all these years.

He looked into Louise’s blue eyes but he didn’t really see them. He was back in the past, on that early morning a quarter of a century ago, when the sun was already unbearably hot in the sky. ‘I went to see him the day after my mother’s funeral, slipping aboard the first train bound for Naples, terrified the authorities would find me and send me to the orphanage.’ The pictures in his head were vivid and coming fast on top of each other. Scruffy and unkempt, he had used his wits and cunning to find and gain access to a vast villa outside the city, right on the Peninsula Sorrentina. With its vineyard and sea views, its marble floors and chandeliers, it had been a place of such unbelievable splendour that Giacomo had felt as if he had walked into paradise.

Had he really believed that its billionaire owner would scoop him up and take him under his wing?

Maybe he had. Because hadn’t there been one remaining flicker of hope in a heart which had felt battered and drained? But after he’d blurted out his story, the man’s face had been as cold as marble and Giacomo had fished out a faded photo when asked his mother’s name.

‘It’s Loredana, sir,’ he had stuttered out. ‘Here...here she is.’

The tycoon had stared at it with unhidden contempt for a long minute before shaking his head.

‘He claimed never to have seen my mother in his life, but he called out for someone called Roberto, and that’s when a man strolled into the room and I froze as I saw the two men standing side by side. The billionaire and his bodyguard. My father was the bodyguard. I recognised him instantly, we were so alike. Apparently, he often used to pretend to be his wealthy boss because it used to guarantee him a one hundred per cent success rate whenever he wanted to get a woman into bed.’

There was silence for a moment while she absorbed this. ‘And how did he react when you told him?’ she questioned, at last. ‘I’m assuming you told him?’

‘Sì, I told him.’ Giacomo’s mouth felt as if someone had poured concrete into it, for he could barely get the words out. ‘He said he’d never wanted to be a father and if he did, he certainly wouldn’t choose some kid from the slums with a whore for a mother.’

He saw her face contort and he wanted to lash out and tell her he didn’t want her damned pity. But she was already on her feet, walking over to where he stood, and she was wrapping her arms around his neck and he could feel her—all that sweet, soft weight of her—pressing against him.

‘Giacomo,’ she said, in between whispering kisses all over his face.

And he let her.

Actually, that was a lie. He was kissing her back as if his life depended on it, and maybe it did. He wanted to tell her to give him time to catch his breath, because he could feel control leeching from his body and if he stalled it would give him time to compose himself. It would put him back in the driving seat, which was where he most liked to be. Or was he just kidding himself, when there was only one place he wanted to be right now and that was in her arms?

‘Giacomo,’ Louise said again, and emotion flooded through her as she opened her lips to his and kissed him as deeply as she knew how. There was so much he’d told her. Stuff which made her understand him more, but way too much to process now. There was only one thing they needed to do now. Because didn’t instinct tell her that her estranged husband needed her right now, as he had never needed her before?

She thought she was his equal?

So start acting like one.

She pulled away from him. ‘Let’s go to bed,’ she whispered.

Without another word, he took her hand and silently they moved through the darkened apartment, from the rose-scented room to the bedroom which once she had shared with him. She didn’t focus on the peculiarity of being back in a place which held so much emotional significance for her—or a bed where she had known great pleasure but also much distress—she just slid the buttons from his shirt with unsteady fingers, while he dealt with the zip of her dress.

It wasn’t an occasion for admiring lingerie or feasting their eyes over slowly revealed flesh. This was urgent. Hungry. Efficiently, they stripped off each other’s clothes until they were both naked and wrapped tightly in each other’s arms and lying on the bed, skin against skin, and it could have felt unbearably poignant, except that it didn’t. Louise closed her eyes.

It felt right.

So right.

Their lips met and their bodies melded. Time blurred as they stroked and kissed. He was pressed against her and the weight of his arousal felt heavy as she felt it nudging close to where she was slick and ready. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion yet it also seemed to be happening very fast.

She said only one thing.

‘Protection?’

He gave a muffled curse as he fished around in the bedside table until he had found what he had been looking for, and as he slid it carefully over his erection Louise told herself she wasn’t going to allow herself to think about the consequences of what she was about to do—all she wanted was to feel him deep inside her.

She gave a sharp intake of breath as he entered her and for a moment he stilled.

‘Okay?’ he questioned, looking down into her face.

‘Mmm.’ She bit her lip as he began to move. ‘It’s—’

‘I know it is,’ he said, in an odd kind of voice. ‘I know.’

For a while it was nothing but rhythm and sensation. Each kiss growing deeper. Each long stroke sending her higher and then higher still. He filled her completely, just as he’d always done. He felt part of her, just as he’d always done. She was aware that they had done this many times before. But this time it felt different. It was different. He might not be her husband for very much longer, but while he was—couldn’t she love him? If not with words, then surely with her body?

Her fingers caressed him, her lips drifting over every available inch of skin. She could feel the beckon of her orgasm and she tried to delay it because she didn’t want this ever to end. But she couldn’t. Of course she couldn’t. Giacomo was way too good a lover for that. Within seconds she was shuddering out her pleasure and she could feel the exquisite tension in his body just before he followed her.

‘Lulu,’ he groaned.

And that was her complete undoing. The moment when she shattered so completely that she wasn’t sure she could ever be made whole again.

She was Lulu again.

His Lulu.

For a while she didn’t speak, she was filled with a hope which she couldn’t seem to suppress. It glimmered like a flame inside her, growing brighter by the second. She lay there holding him very tightly until the frantic sound of their ragged breathing had grown steady. If only she were able to keep that moment and bottle it—this moment of perfect harmony. He had opened up to her for the first time ever and then they’d made love. Properly. Couldn’t those things be the bedrock on which they might be able to rebuild their relationship?

She turned her head to look at him, but he was staring up at the ceiling and he didn’t move or try to catch her eye, even though he must have known she wanted him to. She thought his profile looked unfamiliar and that his body had suddenly grown tense. A sudden arrow of fear shafted through her.

Had she really been lying there thinking they might be able to start again? Had she forgotten what he’d said to her? The one thing which could never be unsaid. Or forgotten.

‘Giacomo?’ she said.

He turned then and it seemed she hadn’t imagined the tension at all. His eyes were like stone and a deep foreboding made her body stiffen as she waited for what suddenly felt inevitable.

His words were edged with a quality she didn’t recognise.

‘There was a baby, wasn’t there?’