Her eyes filled with open sympathy. ‘It can’t have been.’ She shook her head. ‘It must have taken its toll on you, too.’
He gave a shrug. ‘I survived.’ He looked away again, back over the dark lake water with its hidden depths below the sunlight glancing off its surface, frowning perhaps against its brightness—or for another reason. ‘Yet despite all the unhappiness my father caused my mother I still loved him.’
His words came from deep within. She knew it, understood it. Without realising it, she stretched her hand out, just touched his, as if to comfort him.
‘It’s natural to do so,’ she said, her voice low. ‘Children hate to take sides when there’s dissent between parents.’
He looked back at her. ‘Oh, I took sides, all right! My mother’s—she was the injured party. But...’ His expression changed. ‘I also knew my father should never have married. Not just never have married my mother, but never married at all.’ His voice hardened. ‘He wasn’t cut out for it.’
‘Why did he?’ Lana heard herself ask carefully.
It was strange to be hearing such intimate things about him—and yet out here, in the middle of the lake, just the two of them in the little rowing boat, so isolated from the rest of the world, maybe it was not so strange...
‘He fell for my mother—big-time,’ Salvatore answered her. ‘The trouble was—’ he gave a shake of his head ‘—what he really wanted was just an affair with her—nothing as permanent as marriage. But she came from a family where that sort of thing wasn’t approved of, so they got married instead.’
Now there was a hollow in his voice that Lana could hear distinctly.
‘She went on loving him all the time. Even when he’d got tired of her devotion.’ He took a breath, and his gaze slipped out over the water. ‘He was never actively hostile to her, simply chronically unfaithful. Indifferent to her. Never around much. He never wanted a divorce—it would have been difficult, anyway—and he stayed with her for my sake, too. He simply wanted to be able to...to play around the way he liked. Enjoyed. It was all he was capable of.’
Again, Lana was silent a moment. Then... ‘My parents were very happy together,’ she said. ‘I took it for granted. But it’s only when you realise that isn’t always the case that you truly value it.’
He looked at her. ‘They were lucky. So were you.’
She nodded. ‘Yes—they were lucky in each other. Lucky in love. They chose wisely. I only wish that I had been as—’
She broke off. Salvatore looked at her questioningly. She made a painful face.
‘I only wish I’d been as wise around Malcolm,’ she said. ‘But I know with hindsight that I just wanted someone in my life after my parents were killed—someone to make me feel less alone.’ She took a breath. ‘That makes me sound pathetic, I know.’
Salvatore’s dark eyes rested on her. ‘It makes you sound human,’ he said. ‘And he’s out of your life now—and you’re well rid of him!’
He reached for the shipped oars and dipped them into the lake water, starting to pull towards the shore, the muscles in his bare arms flexing as he pulled the boat through the water with apparently effortless strokes. Lana tried not to be conscious of his powerful physique, focussing instead on the approaching shoreline.
His words echoed in her head.
‘He’s out of your life...’
One day Salvatore would be out of her life too...
The thought seemed to pluck at her. The time would come when she was back in England, picking up her real life again. A thousand miles and more away from here.
A thousand miles and more away from Salvatore.
Her eyes went back to him and she wondered why the thought was unwelcome to her.
Wondered why she was thinking it at all.
‘Time for a swim before our sundowner?’ Salvatore enquired of Lana as she stepped out from the chalet, a bowl of freshly chopped salad in her hands.
They’d beached the rowing boat and he’d taken the fish indoors to the fridge, got the barbie going while Lana prepared the salad.
His answer was a shake of her head and a rueful laugh. ‘No, thanks—I felt the water from the boat, and it’s freezing!’
He gave a grin. ‘All the more exhilarating!’ he told her.
It did not change her mind, and with a laugh he stripped off to his trunks and plunged into the lake. It was indeed very cold, but he struck out in a fast, powerful crawl, warming up as he did so. Reaching the middle of the lake, he duck-dived and headed back, emerging with his whole body glowing.
‘Wild swimming!’ he exclaimed. ‘Nothing to beat it!’