called impetuously from behind him, ‘Do you really think money will make up for it?’
Gio stopped in his tracks and after long silent tense seconds he turned around from the bottom of the steps. His face was stark. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Valentina had gone too far now. Something very personal and dark was pushing her over this edge. ‘You know what I’m talking about. You’re trying to atone—’
Gio bounded up the steps again so fast and with such ruthless intent that Valentina took a step back.
‘So what if I am?’ he asked rawly. ‘Is that so bad if it saves your father?’
Valentina felt like something was breaking apart inside her. ‘Yes. Because it won’t bring him back.’
Gio took her arms in a tight grip with his hands. ‘Do you think I don’t know that?’
For a second Valentina glimpsed a depth and level of stark pain in Gio’s eyes that made her want to cry out. It echoed within her like a keening cry. And another echo sounded deep within her, telling her she was a fraud of the worst kind, because she was deliberately pushing Gio away to avoid facing up to a dark truth inside her.
It was the same reason she’d hurled those cruel words at him last week at the track: Since when have you cared so much for others...
She’d been able to push it down for seven years, but standing in front of him now—it was rising inexorably within her, demanding that she acknowledge it. And she couldn’t. Gio was unwittingly forcing her look at herself and she didn’t like what she saw. Breaking the intense eye contact Valentina ripped herself free of his grip and stepped around him to hurry down the steps. She went straight to a nearby hospital taxi rank.
Before Gio could stop her she’d got into the first taxi and was pulling out of the hospital forecourt. He looked at the taxi’s break lights winking just before it disappeared completely. A wave of bleakness washed over him. Was Valentina right? Was he interfering where he shouldn’t? Acting out of a crippling sense of guilt? Trying to buy his soul back by saving Mario’s father?
The fact that Mario’s parents had apparently forgiven Gio was small comfort now. Gio knew that the only hope he had for his soul to find some peace was through Valentina’s forgiveness, and her father’s words came back to Gio then: It was very hard for her to come to terms with...she was so angry...she still is.
The anger Valentina felt was palpable, not in question. She’d only come to him for help because he was literally the only person on the island who would defy his aunt to employ her. His mouth firmed and he made his way to his jeep. He would not apologise for wanting to help her father and he was not doing it to buy forgiveness. He was doing it because Mario wasn’t here to take care of his family, but Gio was. And Valentina could rant and rail all she liked.
* * *
Valentina stared blindly out of the taxi window, the lights of a busy Friday Palermo night flashing past. But the lights blurred as weak ineffectual tears filled her eyes. She’d just run away like the abject coward that she was. Angry with herself for feeling so emotional, Valentina dashed them away, avoiding the driver’s curious glances in the rearview mirror.
She hated the ease with which Gio had been so comprehensively all but welcomed back into the bosom of her family. She hated the ease with which he was able to guarantee her father’s well-being. And she hated herself for being like this.
Gio was highlighting the big flaw that was Valentina in her own family. Mario had been the one on whom all hopes and dreams had rested. So Valentina had been more or less forgotten about. Not the most academic of students anyway, she’d left school at sixteen to work with her grandmother in the small trattoria.
Mario had known of her ambitions to succeed and make something of herself. But when he’d died, that link had gone and her parents had been despondent, left with their only other child who had no glittering prospects.
That’s why Valentina had worked so hard to build up a business. But even when it had taken off, her parents had been wary more than proud. They were of the old school and thought that what really counted was academic qualification and a solid career. And also that Valentina should find a nice man and settle down, find someone who would provide for her...and them. Provide them with grandchildren.
But instead, her nemesis Giacomo Corretti had been the one to step into the breach. In more ways than one. Little by little she was becoming more and more beholden to him. She resented him for it but then she’d been the one to invite him back into their lives so she had no one to blame but herself.
She remembered what it had been like to look into his eyes just now, to see the abject pain in those green and brown depths. The way her heart had clenched, the way her conscience had mocked her. And worse, the way her pulse had pounded with a deeply unsettling rhythm just to be near him. As it always did, as it always had. Why did he still have to have this effect on her?
The taxi was pulling up outside her apartment building now and Valentina paid the driver and refused to let Gio dominate her thoughts any more. It was only when she fell into a fitful sleep sometime later that he came to haunt her in her dreams.
* * *
‘What’s this?’
Valentina stood in front of Gio the following Monday morning in his office. Her head was still reeling at how fast things had moved in just thirty-six hours. Her father was already settled in the private clinic in Syracuse and she’d moved into the staff accommodation the previous evening.
Gio was sitting behind his desk looking absurdly out of place in his grey T-shirt. He looked far too vital and virile and sexy to be sitting at a desk.
Valentina dragged her attention back to his question. ‘It’s the advance on my pay that you gave me. I need to pay you back for what you’re doing for my father. I realise that it’ll take a lot—’
Gio stood up abruptly, making Valentina stop talking. His face had darkened visibly and he held the cheque back out to her. ‘Don’t insult me, Valentina. Please.’
Valentina refused to take the cheque, her own face darkening as blood rushed into it. She felt embarrassed. ‘When I came to you looking for work it was to make enough money to support and care for my parents. What I earn should go into their care and as you’re paying for that at the moment...’ She trailed off, a little scared at the way Gio’s eyes had darkened almost to black by now.
‘I offered to pay for your father’s treatment with no strings attached.’
Valentina observed scathingly, ‘There’s always strings attached.’
Gio shook his head and looked at her pityingly, making a hot rush of humiliation rush through Valentina. He came around his desk to face her and she wished he hadn’t. In flat runners he towered over her own not inconsiderable five feet seven inches.
‘What happened to you? What made you become so cynical?’ He frowned. ‘Was it a love affair gone wrong?’
Valentina nearly choked. A love affair gone wrong? Gio had no idea. She’d had plenty of men chasing after her but she’d kept them all at arm’s length. Terrified on some level of getting close to anyone. Terrified of the way one minute someone you loved could be there, and the next minute they could be gone. For ever. That realisation seemed to explode into her consciousness like a bomb going off. She’d never even really articulated it to herself like that before. She’d just always instinctively avoided relationships. Losing Mario had made her cynical. It had twisted something inside her soul.
Made weak by this insight, Valentina was barely aware when Gio took her hand and folded the cheque back into it, closing her fingers over it. His hand was big and warm around hers and she looked up at him. They were standing much closer than she’d realised and his scent, musky and warm, unleashed an avalanche of vivid memories in her imagination.
Jerkily she pulled her hand back from his, with the cheque in it, and stepped back. The only coherent thing in her head was that