LITMIR.BIZ

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that?’

      ‘An hour ago you asked me to marry you. Or were you just going through the motions? You must have known that I’d turn you down.’

      She hadn’t known how he’d react to the news that he was about to become a father but she had anticipated his proposal, been prepared to turn him down. It had been a hundred times harder than she’d ever imagined but she’d told herself that she was doing the Right Thing.

      Now she wondered if she’d just been thinking of herself, unable to cope with the fact that Rachel would always be there, between them.

      Selfish...

      Cleve had already lost the baby that was to be his future and she’d as good as told him the baby she was carrying didn’t need him. Of course it would need him and making a home for their baby, being a father, would give him something to get up for each morning. To live for.

      ‘Isn’t that what marriage is?’ she asked.

      Marriage...

      Cleve watched a lazy bee, drawn by the scent of the fruit he’d bought, or more likely the marmalade leaking from the broken jar, head for the bags that Matt had left by the gate.

      ‘Maybe we should have breakfast,’ he said.

      ‘Breakfast?’ He heard the catch in her throat.

      ‘I think better when I’m not hungry. We’d better eat in the garden. I don’t think smoke is going to improve the flavour of your banana.’ He looked up at the door behind them. ‘I’ll open this door so that the air can blow through.’

      ‘It’s blocked. The ceiling sagged when rain got in.’

      ‘I’ll take a look at it.’

      ‘Do you have time?’ she asked, challenging him.

      Having done his duty and proposed, been given a clear pass, would he really opt out and become a chequebook father?

      An hour ago, with the scent of rosemary clearing his head, he’d been full of plans for the future. Realising how close he’d come to tragedy had been the kind of reality check he would wish on no one. One that had sent him reeling back into the darkness of guilt. To stay and wallow in it would be an act of gross self-indulgence.

      Miranda had reached out to him at his lowest ebb. He owed her his life; what poor specimen of mankind would walk away when she needed him? If only to save her from a spider in the bath.

      ‘I take it you’re not planning to include the word obey in your vows?’ he asked.

      ‘Vows?’

      ‘Love, honour...?’ There was a moment of confusion as she absorbed his meaning followed by an emotion less easy to read. Relief, no doubt, and regret that unlike her twin she hadn’t been swept off her feet by the man of her dreams.

      ‘And obey?’ she finished. ‘What do you think?’

      Then the green-gold of her eyes softened in a smile that reached out to warm him, a smile that had always made the sun shine a little brighter, and he knew he was looking at his redemption.

      He might not be the man of her dreams but he would do everything in his power to make Miranda happy. To give her, and their baby, a good life.

      ‘I think I’ll get the plates,’ he said, picking up the bags. He opened one to check its contents and handed it to her.

      ‘I’d better wash my hands.’

      ‘And your face,’ he said, brushing the backs of his fingers lightly over her cheek before heading for the door.

      ‘I’ll be out by the conservatory,’ she called into the kitchen.

      ‘I’ll be right there.’

      Andie stood there for a moment, the bag of groceries clutched against her chest, a lump the size of a tennis ball in her throat, before following him.

      She put the groceries on the hall table beside an exquisite bowl filled with little shells and pieces of sea glass that they’d found on the beach.

      Above it, in a gilded rococo frame, was a drawing that Posy had made of the house. It must have been on one of their earliest visits because it was too naïve, unconscious, to have been drawn by a teenager and she took a tissue from her pocket and wiped away the dust.

      If she’d thought about it, she’d have imagined that having a house full of noisy children, teens, was the price Sofia’d paid for having her oldest friend stay for a couple of weeks twice a year. But maybe the childless woman had longed for a family and they had given her that, if only briefly, and for a moment Andie lay her hand over it.

      ‘What’s that?’ Cleve asked.

      She let her hand drop. ‘A picture Posy drew for Sofia. She couldn’t have been more than six.’

      ‘And this, presumably, is Sofia.’

      He was looking at the black and white portrait, a head shot dominated by her huge eyes...

      ‘She was older than that when we knew her but her skin, her bone structure... Well, you can see. She had the kind of looks that would have still been turning heads when she was eighty, ninety. If she’d lived that long.’

      ‘No doubt. Put the bag on the tray.’

      He was carrying a tray loaded with plates, glasses, cutlery. She picked up the groceries and added them to the tray, which he then handed to her. ‘I’ll be right with you. I just want to take a look at that door.’

      ‘So long as you’re not going up on the roof.’

      ‘Not today.’

      She put the tray down in the snug, carefully checked the bathroom for any signs of eight-footed livestock, then caught sight of herself in the mirror. Her cheek was smeared with sooty smoke and her hair had dried in ginger corkscrews. It was no wonder that Cleve had been ready to run.

      She washed her face and hands then damped down her hair and quickly plaited it.

      ‘I’ll be outside the conservatory,’ she called from the hall. The only response was a curse from deep within the scullery. She definitely wasn’t getting involved in whatever he was doing out there, and instead opened the door to the painted drawing room. The furniture was covered in dust sheets but there was a crack across the beautiful arched ceiling, no doubt caused in the same tremor that had brought down the roof tiles. The patchwork of stained glass in the roof of the conservatory had suffered too.

      She wondered if the house was listed. Did they even have a system of listing buildings of special importance in L’Isola dei Fiori or would whoever eventually bought it simply pull it down and start again?

      She opened the doors and stepped out onto a terrace where they’d sat out in evenings watching the fishing boats return to the safety of the village harbour, the lights coming on along the coast.

      Last year’s weeds that had grown through the cracks were tall and dry, but bright new leaves were pushing through and if nothing was done they would soon dislodge the stones.

      She put the tray on the long wooden table where they’d so often had breakfast and crossed to the wall built along the edge of the cliff. The villa might be a bit of a mess but the location was spectacular. Below them, the beach was only accessible from the villa or the sea—and even from the sea you had to know it was there to find your way in—but from here the entire Baia di Rose and the village climbing up from the harbour into the hill behind was laid out in front of her.

      She didn’t turn as Cleve joined her.

      ‘I saw a promising café when I was down in the village,’ he said after a moment. ‘Right on the harbour.’

      ‘Was it painted blue, with lobster pots outside?’ She sensed rather than saw him nod. ‘We used to walk down there for lunch sometimes. Just us girls. Sofia would give us some money and tell us not to spend it all on wine...’

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