unanswered. She might be afraid of other people’s reactions to her, but she was not prepared to admit the fact that rejection still hurt her way more than it should have done. ‘If you really want me to, I’ll do it … Christmas for you but don’t blame me if people think you’re crazy.’
Vito had fixed his brilliant eyes to Harvey, who had practically merged with the hearth rug in his relaxation. ‘I’ve already told you how much I care about that.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘I prefer women who agree with me.’
‘No, you do not!’ Ava snapped back. ‘You just get bored and walk all over them!’
Vito felt that even walking over her might be fun and his black lashes dropped low on his reflective eyes. He was still in an odd mood, he acknowledged in exasperation, a mood of unease where random thoughts clouded his usually crystal-clear brain. He wondered if it was the season or talking about Olly that had disturbed him and settled for that obvious explanation with relief. ‘Staying at the castle may give you the opportunity to see your family again.’
‘It will shock them, annoy them, as they’ve made it quite clear they don’t want me back in their lives,’ she pointed out heavily. ‘But that’s their right and I have to accept it.’
Vito made no comment, still taken aback by what he had done. A spur of the moment idea had fired him up with an almost missionary zeal to make changes. Putting Ava in charge of Christmas was as much for her benefit as his own. It would toughen him up, banish the atrocious vulnerability that afflicted and destabilised him whenever he thought about his little brother. That was a weakness that Vito could not accept and he could no longer live with it and the necessity of constantly suppressing negative responses. He thought of all the people who had recommended therapy to deal with his grief and his beautifully moulded mouth took on a derisive slant. Therapy wasn’t his style. He didn’t discuss such things with strangers, nor would he ever have sought professional help for a loss he deemed to be a perfectly normal, if traumatic, life experience. He was totally capable of dealing with his own problem and by the end of the Christmas party, when Ava Fitzgerald departed from his life again, he would have finally made an important step in the recovery process. Avoiding her, acting all touchy-feely sensitive as he saw it, would have been the wrong thing to do, he acknowledged fiercely. He would deal with her in the present and move on, all the stronger for the experience.
‘Can I bring Harvey with me to the castle?’ Ava asked abruptly, realising that that would remove the dog from Marge’s small overcrowded house.
Dark brows drawing together, Vito frowned, for his antipathy to indoor animals had only allowed him to stretch as far as a guinea pig and goldfish even for Olly.
‘Honestly he won’t be any trouble!’ Ava promised feverishly, eager to persuade Vito round to her point of view. ‘It’s just Harvey will be put down if I can’t find a home for him because Marge hasn’t the room to keep him any longer. It’ll buy him a little more time, that’s all, and who knows? Someone may take a fancy to him on your estate.’
Vito surveyed Harvey, who was snoring loudly, remarkably relaxed for an animal apparently facing a sentence of death. He did not think he had ever seen a less prepossessing dog. ‘Is he some peculiar breed?’
‘No, he’s a mongrel. He was a stray but he’s young and healthy.’ Ava gave him a tremulous, optimistic smile. ‘He loves children too. He would be a great addition to the party if I put a Santa hat on him … or maybe I could dress him up like a reindeer?’
Vito groaned out loud at the thought of more festive absurdity. ‘Bring him with you if you like but don’t get the idea that I’ll keep him.’
‘Oh, I would never expect that.’ Ava laughed, released from tension and weak with relief on Harvey’s behalf. ‘I’ll keep him away from you. I know you’re no good with dogs. Olly told me you were bitten when you were a child!’
Annoyance coursed through Vito and his eyes veiled, his jaw line hardening. He was an extremely private man. He wondered what other inappropriate revelations his little brother had made and once again he reflected that the sooner Ava was out of his workplace, the better.
‘I’ll have to get permission from my probation officer to leave London,’ Ava told him suddenly, her expression anxious. ‘I see her every month.’
‘You’ll only be away a couple of weeks—why bother mentioning it?’
‘I’m out on parole, Vito. I have to follow the rules if I don’t want to end up back inside,’ she replied tightly.
Vito compressed his lips and gave an imperious nod of his handsome dark head in acknowledgement. ‘I’ll send a car to pick you up late Sunday afternoon.’
And then he was gone and the room felt cold and empty as if the sun had gone in. She sat down by the fire, all of a sudden cold on the inside as well and very shaky. What had she done? What madness had possessed her to agree to his proposition? The same madness that had made Vito Barbieri voice the suggestion? He wanted closure. She understood that, felt worse than ever when she thought about how hard it must have been for so reserved a male to deal with such a colossal tragedy. But on one level he was right—life went on whether you wanted it to or not and, just as he had done, she had to learn how to adapt to survive.
‘I understand you’ll only be here until Friday,’ Karen Harper remarked sweetly the following morning as she checked over the typing that Ava had completed and sent her out to cover Reception over lunch. ‘I had no idea just how friendly you were with the boss—’
‘Friendly would be the wrong word,’ Ava fielded awkwardly. ‘Vito’s still my boss.’
But the atmosphere around her for the rest of the week was strained and she was in receipt of more nosy questions than she wanted to answer. It was a relief to leave early on Friday to keep her regular appointment with Sally, her probation officer.
‘You’ll be staying in a real castle?’ Sally queried, goggle-eyed, as she made a note of the address.
‘Not a medieval one—Bolderwood is a Victorian house,’ Ava explained.
‘And owned by Oliver Barbieri’s brother,’ Sally slotted in, smiling widely at Ava. ‘He must be a very forgiving person.’
‘No, he’ll never forgive and forget where his brother’s concerned and I don’t blame him for that,’ Ava replied tautly, her expression sober beneath the older woman’s curious gaze. ‘But he thinks we both need to get back to normal and he sees this as the best way of achieving that.’
‘It’s still a remarkably generous gesture.’
Travelling down to Bolderwood Castle two days later in the opulent luxury of a limousine with Harvey asleep at her feet and her holdall packed in the boot, Ava was thinking that she had never known that Vito possessed such a streak of generosity. But she should have done, she reasoned ruefully. Hadn’t he given Olly a home when his kid brother was left alone in the world? A little boy he had only met a couple of times, a half-brother some adults might have thoroughly resented? Yet on the outside Vito Barbieri was as tough and inflexible as granite. In business he was as much feared as respected by competitors and at work—if AeroCarlton was anything to go by—his very high expectations and ruthless efficiency intimidated his employees.
As the familiar countryside passed the windows Ava grew increasingly tense. She was both terrified and exhilarated to be heading back to her childhood stomping grounds. Would she dare to visit her father or her sisters? She thought not, best not to push herself in rudely where she wasn’t wanted. Her father and sisters would only resent her for turning up uninvited on their doorsteps and putting them on the spot. Her eyes awash with moisture, she blinked back tears. She had to put her life back together alone but at least she still had her life.
‘You have a very negative attitude,’ Olly had once scolded her with his easy smile.
But then aside of his mother dying and his father having been