‘Only problem is…’ Sam gave her a rueful lopsided smile that tugged at her heartstrings. ‘…I’m not sure I’m up to the challenge of being even an illegit Grazzini—’
‘You only need to be yourself.’ Glory gave him a supportive hug and sighed. ‘I love you loads, Sam. I just want you to be at peace with yourself and happy again—’
‘No teenager would ever admit to bei
ng happy, Glory,’ Sam mocked. ‘Look, I’ve got a stack of work to do for my art project. Show me where I’m to kip and I’ll get on with it and see you later.’
She was delighted that he was staying the night without argument. When Joe’s father had dropped him off Sam had set his suitcase prominently by the front door and indicated extreme unwillingness to take up residence under the same roof as her.
Her brother followed her upstairs and then, steps slowing, he drifted away from her on the landing, drawn by the paintings lining the walls.
‘Who’s this?’ Sam demanded, stopping dead in front of a canvas of an elderly man.
‘Could be one of your ancestors…but I haven’t a clue. Rafaello could tell you—’
‘Yeah…but I bet this old guy was another super-achieving Grazzini,’ Sam grimaced and accompanied her to the room she had selected for his hopeful occupation earlier that day. ‘I’m never going to fit in anywhere, Sis. This lot are all money mad and into big business, and I want to be an artist.’
‘Why shouldn’t you fit?’ Glory protested. ‘At least the Grazzinis appreciate art.’
Looking thoughtful at that obvious point in their favour, Sam glanced at her. ‘Glad you’re putting Rafaello out of his misery by marrying him.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I talk to him on the phone most days,’ Sam admitted. ‘I still feel bad that I went for him that day in London, because once he explained how things had been with you two—’
‘He did…what?’ Glory folded her arms and surveyed her brother with a martial glint in her enquiring eyes.
‘Glory…you’ve really given Rafaello the run-around. Be honest about it,’ Sam urged. ‘Of course the guy’s insecure. You keep on ditching him. He’s not even sure he can depend on you to show up at the church on Friday!’
‘Is that a fact?’ Glory absorbed this very different viewpoint of her past history with Rafaello with some difficulty.
‘Why else did he suggest I should move in here if not so that if you took some crazy notion of legging it before the wedding I could warn him?’
Glory walked slowly downstairs again. Rafaello, afraid that she might get cold feet? Her susceptible heart flowered as though the sun had come out to warm it. Rafaello had been abroad for a solid week and she had left London only the evening before. He had flown from Rome to New York, where he seemed to be working eighteen-hour days. He called her most days but their conversations had been horribly impersonal. Furthermore, Rafaello had not referred to their wedding once since she had told him to mind his own business when he had asked her if she had bought a white dress. But oh, yes, Glory was eager to think that Rafaello might care enough about her to feel even a tiny bit insecure.
Then, as more rational thought kicked in, her face fell at dramatic speed. Of course, Rafaello wasn’t insecure. But what a wonderfully devious and touching story he had dreamt up to persuade Sam to move even temporarily into Montague Park. Sam had until now been insisting that when he left Joe’s house he wanted to return to the cottage even though it was currently empty. Yet in one easy move Rafaello had got their mutual brother beneath a Grazzini roof by lowering the macho front and asking for help and support that he didn’t need!
Archie Little would not be released from hospital until the day before the wedding. Maud had stayed on in London by his side. Both her father and her future stepmother had accepted the early-retirement package that Rafaello had offered them. Not his idea either but Maud’s. Rafaello had already thrown a team of workmen into a house in the village owned by the estate. A cosy home all on one floor. He was planning to sign it over to Archie and Maud when they married along with a small car. He was very generous, very thoughtful, Glory acknowledged, dashing tears from her eyes. She had to be the most spoilt woman in the world to think she could have love as well as passion, romance as well as kindness.
Here she was with a sheaf of gold credit cards, the ability to move between three different dwellings that she knew of and very possibly more, and he was gorgeous and she loved him to death. So what if he still believed she had sold him down the river for five thousand pounds when she was eighteen? He no longer seemed to care. And if he had been telling the truth when he had said that he would kill Benito if he believed her version of events was the correct one, well, there were enough family divisions without that development, weren’t there?
Mopping her damp face with a tissue, she sat down with a maternity magazine to read articles about future motherhood that were now of absorbing interest to her. While she was scrutinising outrageously expensive but very cute items of baby apparel with dreaming eyes she heard the front door slam and then voices filtering in from the echoing hall. She stuffed the magazine behind a cushion because she was embarrassed about what had become a serious secret fix.
‘Santo cielo!’ thundered an intimidating masculine voice. ‘I am Benito Grazzini. Are you trying to tell me that I am no longer welcome in my son’s home?’
Glory’s blood ran cold in her veins. Almost falling off the sofa in her haste, she raced over to the door to peer round it in horror. The new housekeeper, engaged by Jon Lyons, was striving to apologise and soothe. ‘It’s only that Mr Grazzini doesn’t want Miss Little to be disturbed—’
‘I’m not going to disturb her…I only want to see her!’ Benito Grazzini growled, hoving into view like a big, burly silver-haired bear. ‘Surely she’s not in bed at this hour?’
Glory plastered herself up against the wall behind the door and stopped breathing. She did not even have to think about hiding—the urge came entirely naturally. So it was a further shock when the brief silence that fell was broken by yet another infinitely more familiar voice…Rafaello’s, raised in anger. Rafaello? Where had Rafaello come from? At that moment, Glory did not care. As far as she was concerned, he was like the cavalry, riding to her rescue. She recovered the courage to peek round the door again. By that time, Rafaello and his father were exchanging staccato bursts of charged Italian in anything but a friendly way. The sight distressed her, for she knew how close they had been, and she had to intervene.
‘Look…I don’t know what all this is about but please stop it,’ Glory pleaded anxiously, and in the abrupt silence that fell both men wheeled round to stare at her, wearing remarkably similar expressions of discomfiture. ‘Sam’s here and I’m sure you don’t want him to hear you shouting at each other like that.’
‘Are you kidding? This is as good as a soap opera. Family life in the raw, Grazzini-style!’ Sam mocked from his vantage point halfway down the sweeping staircase, his attention fully lodged on the older man. But her brother was very pale, one hand gripping the bannister so tight she could see his knuckles gleaming white beneath his skin.
Sam must have been drawn by the racket. Glory almost groaned out loud, for she could not have pictured a worse way for Sam to meet his birth father for the first time.
‘Just typical.’ Rafaello shot his silenced parent an exasperated appraisal. ‘You come in like a bull at a gate in spite of all my advice.’