‘He’s very volatile, isn’t he?’ Bella murmured reflectively. ‘I never saw that in him before. In fact I used to think he was a bit frozen and removed from all us lesser mortals, but yesterday it was obvious that he was absolutely raging about what Mum had done to you. I expect he feels horri
bly guilty—we all do now.’
‘I don’t want his guilt,’ Ava proclaimed and blew her nose. ‘After the party I’ll be going back to London.’
‘Oh, Ava, must you?’ Bella pressed. ‘Gina and I were looking forward to getting to know you.’
‘I would have enjoyed that.’ A tremulous smile formed on Ava’s lips as her sister gave her a hug on the doorstep. ‘But I can’t hang on Vito’s sleeve much longer—it’s getting embarrassing.’
Ava returned to the castle. The caterers phoned with a query and the owner of the firm asked to call out that afternoon to run through the final arrangements for the party one last time. Grateful to be occupied, Ava used her visit as a distraction from her harried thoughts. The bottom line in her relationship with Vito, she had almost told her sister, was that he didn’t love her. They didn’t have a future together. Vito had not once mentioned anything beyond the Christmas party and she wasn’t planning to hang around being pathetic in the hope that he suggested she extend her stay. She would get over him, it wouldn’t be easy but she would manage it. But the very prospect of a life shorn of Vito tore at her like a vision of death by a thousand cuts.
Vito phoned at supper time and asked in a worried tone how she was. His tone set her teeth on edge and she assured him that she was perfectly all right. He said he’d probably spend the night at his apartment and she didn’t blame him. He was fed up with all the hassle and drama she created around her, she decided painfully. She went to bed early, longing for the bliss of sleep, which would settle her tired, troubled mind.
At what point she started dreaming, she later had no clear idea. In her dream she was running down the steps of the castle the night of the crash and she was doing it over and over again. Olly was behind her, telling her he would run her home, and then without the slightest warning the picture in her head changed and her mother erupted into Olly’s lecture about Ava’s provocative behaviour with Vito.
‘I’ll drive!’ Gemma proclaimed, ignoring Olly before telling him that she was perfectly capable of driving them all home and refused to be driven by a teenager.
As the argument got more heated voices were raised. Ava shouted across the bonnet of the car that Gemma wasn’t allowed to drive when she had been drinking and her mother took that as a challenge, thrusting Olly furiously out of her path and jumping into the car to rev the engine like a boy racer. Ava leant across Gemma to try and steal the car keys and the car skidded with squealing tyres on the drive while Olly tried to reason with the older woman and persuade her to stop. The car careened through the gates at the foot of the drive onto the road with Ava screaming at her mother to stop while Olly urged everyone to be calm and think about what they were doing. And a split second later, it seemed, Ava saw the tree trunk looming up through the windscreen, heard Olly cry out her name … and then everything just blanked out.
Ava woke up with a frantic start, her heart hammering, anguish enclosing her like a suffocating cocoon as she realised that she had relived the accident. She was disconcerted to discover that the light was on and Vito, naked but for a pair of jeans, was on his knees beside her. ‘You were dreaming and you let out a shriek that would have wakened the dead!’ he exclaimed.
But it would never wake Olly, Ava thought foolishly, a sob catching in her throat as she hugged her knees and rocked back and forth. ‘I relived the crash … I remember what happened but why now? Why couldn’t I remember before?’
‘Why would you have wanted to remember it when you thought you were guilty? Was your mother driving?’
Ava nodded jerkily and told him what she had recalled, trembling as she spoke, the images so fresh and frightening she almost felt as though she were trapped back in that car again. In silence, Vito held her close. ‘I didn’t want you to relive that,’ he confessed. ‘I didn’t really think all this through when I listened to what Greg James had to tell me. I saw what I thought was the chance to fix it all for you and I went and saw David Lloyd and your solicitor and your father to check out all the facts.’ His strong profile was tense. ‘I was very pleased with myself.’
‘Yes,’ Ava whispered shakily, glad the tears had stopped, relaxing back into the warmth and security of his arms.
‘And then I saw your face this morning and I … I hadn’t a clue how to make it better for you,’ Vito admitted grudgingly, his frustration over that fact palpable. ‘It was only then I saw that you were devastated that your mother could have stood by and hurt you like that.’
‘She watched me take her punishment and she never breathed a word,’ Ava conceded strickenly. ‘Even if she gave way to an impulse to let me take the blame for the crash, she could have thought better of it. She could have made a statement to the police once she realised how ill she was … but even then she didn’t think better of what she had done.’
‘Let it go. That crash has already ruled your life for far too long,’ Vito murmured tautly as he released her and sprang off the bed.
‘You weren’t sleeping in here with me,’ Ava registered with a frown. ‘In fact I thought you weren’t coming back tonight.’
‘I thought better of that but I returned very late and I didn’t want to disturb you, cara mia.’
‘So where are you going now?’
‘I left some stuff in my room. I assumed you’d still be up when I got back,’ Vito admitted, compressing his lips.
A little less tense, Ava rested back against the pillows. She pushed the jagged images of the crash back out of her mind, still shaken that those mislaid memories had finally broken through to the surface. Her mother had been driving, not her. A sense of relief finally flowed through her but she felt guilty about it, as if somewhere in her mind she still couldn’t quite believe that she was entitled to feel that way.
Vito strode back from the door, still bare-chested, his remarkable abs flexing as he settled the items he carried down on the bed in front of her, for all the world like a caveman dragging a dead deer into the cave for his woman.
‘Er … you went shopping?’ Ava prompted in astonishment, lifting the wilting red roses. ‘You should’ve put these in water to keep them fresh.’
‘I haven’t physically bought flowers before,’ Vito gritted. ‘I usually order them on the phone to be delivered.’
‘That does cut out the practical aspect,’ Ava conceded in an understanding tone, pleased he had chosen her flowers personally. ‘Nobody’s ever given me flowers before. They’re lovely.’
‘If they weren’t half dead already,’ Vito quipped, settling the box of chocolates on her lap.
Ava wasted no time in opening the chocolates while covertly eying the third and final package.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t appreciate how you would feel about what your mother did to you,’ Vito volunteered. ‘I couldn’t see the wood for the trees.’