‘I was certain you’d make a big fuss if you knew I’d gone out. It was only a little white lie. If everything hadn’t all gone wrong, you’d never have found out. I didn’t think there could be any harm in my taking Marco out with me!’ Bernice instantly began to argue in her own defence. ‘He was perfectly happy. I put him in a cot in my friend’s house and he was fine. How was I to know he would climb out of the cot?’
‘If only you had told me when I phoned that you needed me to come back immediately, so that you could go out.’ Vivien sighed. ‘I’m not blaming you—’
‘But I am blaming you, Bernice,’ Lucca slotted in with chilling coldness, banding an arm to Vivien’s taut spine. ‘Nor will we discuss this further. Right now, Marco’s need for us is of greater importance.’
‘I’ll be staying with friends tonight,’ Bernice snapped with a defiant toss of her head and she stalked off in a temper before her sister could intervene.
Lucca had arranged a private room for Marco’s use
and it was there that Marco was finally reunited with his parents. Impervious to the efforts of the nurse attempting to comfort him, Marco was hunched in the corner of a metal cot sobbing his heart out. At the sound of his mother’s soft voice, he clawed himself upright, huge dark eyes telegraphing hope. His brow was scraped, his nose cut and there was a purplish bruise on the side of one chubby cheek. In tears herself and striving to repress all pointless conjecture about the further evils that might have befallen the child she adored, Vivien scooped his solid little body up and hugged him tightly to her. At that instant she didn’t ever want to let go of him again.
Finally raising his curly dark head from his mother’s shoulder, Marco stared in wide-eyed astonishment at his tall darkly handsome father. ‘Papà…?’ he questioned doubtfully.
For the very first time, Vivien watched her son hold out his arms to Lucca. But no sooner had Marco made that apparent choice between them than he changed his mind again, clung fearfully to his mother and burst back into floods of tears.
‘He’s not used to seeing us together. It’s very confusing for him and he’s not in the mood to be upset.’ Lucca proffered that opinion half under his breath and his intonation was grim.
Vivien was very pale. The unfamiliar sight of his parents together distressed their child and whose fault was that? It was an issue that cut like a knife to the very heart of her already burdened conscience. She had ended their marriage. She was responsible for the reality that Marco was growing up with a father who could only feature in his life as an occasional visitor. Biting her lip and tasting blood in her dry mouth, she fought back the welling tears and promised herself there and then that, no matter what the personal cost, she would make sure that Lucca had every possible opportunity to make up for that lost time with his son. That was not something that should hinge on Lucca’s lack of response to her intensely personal attempt to put their broken marriage back together again, she told herself staunchly. Never again would she allow her anguish and hurt pride to interfere with Lucca’s relationship with Marco.
‘Let’s get him home,’ Lucca advised with decisive cool.
Inside the limo, Marco was buckled into a car seat. Still on the breathless edge of a threatening sob, he reached out and closed a small hand tightly into the fabric of Lucca’s jacket sleeve. Although it was obvious that their son was fighting sleep, he would not let his eyes close and kept on glancing anxiously at each of his parents in turn as though to reassure himself of their continuing presence.
‘He’s had a frightening experience. It’ll take time for him to recover from his ordeal,’ Lucca opined, his tone light for his son’s benefit but his brilliant eyes hard as polished steel, for the little boy’s normal buoyant, trusting confidence was now strikingly absent.
Weighed down with guilt, Vivien evaded his accusing scrutiny. It was her fault that at the tender age of eighteen months Marco had learnt that his safe little world could turn scary and threatening and that his mother was not always there when he needed her.
Lucca was not impressed by his first glimpse of Vivien’s minute rose-covered cottage. He banged his head on a low-slung beam just inside the door and was in the act of suppressing a succinct swear word when a tiny set of needle-sharp teeth nipped into his trouser leg. Assaulted by a small, wildly barking mop of wiry black hair, he stepped back out of reach.
The dog lurched, fell over and played dead.
‘Oh, my goodness, you shouldn’t have moved so quickly!’ Vivien gasped in dismay. ‘Jock was depending on you for support.’
‘Jock…my Jock…’ Marco demonstrated his first sign of returning independence and animation by scrambling out of his mother’s arms to pet the dog.
His incredulity growing, Lucca watched while Vivien and his son fussed over an animal that, in his opinion, was staging an award-winning performance.
‘He bit me,’ Lucca breathed drily.
‘Oh, my goodness, I can’t believe that he would do anything like that. But if he did, you must’ve given him an awful fright!’ Vivien lamented, engaged in searching the still mop of black hair for vital signs of life. ‘Jock’s very sensitive.’
Jock twitched, snuffled and opened bright, beady eyes.
‘Dio mio…is that a fact?’ Lucca breathed, reluctantly enthralled by the graceful dramatic touches at which the little animal excelled.
‘He had such a traumatic time of it before he came to us,’ Vivien told him earnestly while she carefully raised the little terrier upright again on his three sturdy legs. ‘Someone abandoned him out on the road. While he was chasing cars trying to find his owner again he got hurt. He’s a little suspicious of men but he’s a wonderful watchdog and quite devoted to Marco.’
Jock contrived to look simultaneously tragic and a master of one-upmanship. Having walked the first round in the popularity contest, he trotted past Lucca with his tail held high. Vivien carried Marco upstairs and Lucca followed. He was seriously underwhelmed by his surroundings. It was a shabby, chic dwelling designed for very small people who did not suffer from claustrophobia. To watch Marco being tucked into the cot beside Vivien’s bed, Lucca had to stand out on the landing. His extravagantly handsome face was by then clenched in tough, uncompromising lines. He was sincerely angry that Marco was being denied the space, luxury and toys that he considered to be his son’s most basic right and due.
Vivien watched Marco tense and raise his curly head in dismay when his father shifted position beyond the doorway. ‘He’s scared you’re going to leave. I think he feels safer with both of us here.’
‘I’ll stay until he’s asleep,’ Lucca declared.
The toddler focused huge, sleepy eyes on his father. Vivien averted her attention again. It felt so strange to see father and son interact. For the first time she was seeing the extra dimension to Marco’s world, the dimension where only Lucca held sway. Her son was intensely attached to Lucca, much more attached than she had ever dreamt he could be. Why had she naively assumed that as Marco’s mother she would automatically command the lion’s share of her son’s affection? Even as she watched Marco stretched out a small, hopeful hand through the bars of the cot and Lucca finally strode into the room with a rueful laugh of acceptance.
Sinking down on the edge of her bed, Lucca leant forward and clasped his son’s seeking fingers. Marco smiled happily and finally closed his eyes. Vivien could quite easily have burst into tears at that point. She was seeing stuff she had never thought she would see: Lucca being tender and protective, Marco revealing his total trust and sense of security in his father’s presence. The minutes passed in silence. The lamplight gleamed over Lucca’s luxuriant cropped black hair, picking up on the dense length of long spiky lashes as dark as charcoal. At length, he settled Marco’s relaxed hand down on the mattress with infinite gentleness. Watching them together, her throat tightened.
‘Let’s go downstairs,’ Lucca murmured quietly. ‘It’s late but I have a couple of things I want to say.’