Still he didn’t question her. She looked into his eyes, black in this light, and her heart swelled with tenderness. He could be understanding as well as demanding.
‘My name’s Alison Dennehy, but I’ve always been called Ally.’ Her whispered words to Angelo on the beach that first day had been right. ‘I come from Tasmania, the island state at the south of Australia.’
Angelo nodded his encouragement but didn’t press for more. He was letting her take her time and the realisation made something shift hard inside her.
‘It was the lavender.’ She pointed to the clump growing near the sundial. ‘I brushed it and the smell brought it all back.’ She smiled and felt her facial muscles pull high on one side. Maybe it was more of a grimace. ‘I grew up on a lavender farm and apple orchard.’
‘No wonder the perfume sparked memories.’
Ally nodded. ‘It’s a potent scent and they say there’s nothing like smell to evoke the past.’
That was something which had particularly interested her in her work with essences.
So much was coming back. There were blanks still but she had enough sense of herself and her past to understand what had happened. She rubbed her hand up her bare arm as a glacial shiver prickled her skin.
‘Your family is still on the farm?’
‘Yes,’ she said quickly, feeling pain stab. ‘My uncle lives in the old farmhouse now with his wife and children.’ Ally swallowed hard. ‘I lived there from the age of four. After my parents died in a car crash my gran raised me.’ Angelo squeezed her hand and she was grateful for his understanding. ‘The pair of us lived together there for years.’
‘Just the two of you?’
His voice told her he’d guessed what was coming. She inclined her head. ‘Just Gran and me. Uncle Ben worked on the farm but lived in town.’
‘And you liked it there.’
It wasn’t a question. Ally wondered what Angelo heard in her voice.
‘I adored it. No wonder I like helping Enzo in the garden.’ She forced a laugh. ‘It’s where I’m most at home. Growing things, keeping bees, making things from what we grew, like herbal essences, soaps and scents.’ She met Angelo’s gaze. ‘I’m good at it too. I’d developed a range of lavender and honey products.’
She’d planned to make that her future.
‘I’m sure you are. You seem a natural.’
Ally looked at their linked hands, knowing she should withdraw from him but not having the strength.
‘I’m not a city girl like Alexa.’
She felt him start. ‘So youarerelated?’
‘We’re cousins. Our mothers were identical twins. That’s why we look similar, but she’s a few years older.’
And in experience even older. Poor Alexa. Despite what Angelo had revealed, Ally knew there were reasons for her cousin’s behaviour, if not excuses, starting with an abusive stepfather who’d skewed her ideas about relationships.
‘You’ve seen her recently?’
‘Not for years. She visited Gran and stayed for a while. That’s how I knew about this place. She spoke about the island with such affection, said it was the most beautiful, peaceful place in the world. I always thought that if I had the chance I’d visit.’
She paused, remembering why she now had time for travel. ‘I think she must have visited soon after your divorce. She was troubled and Gran has always been good at listening to problems in a way that helps you work out what to do about them.’
Ally swallowed that hot ache in her throat. ‘Alexa was at some sort of crossroads.’ She flashed him a look. Her impression was that Alexa didn’t like the woman she’d become. ‘She’s living interstate now, working for an organisation that supports victims of sexual violence.’
Angelo’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. ‘She sounds like a different woman to the one I knew.’
‘Perhaps she is.’
Ally waited for him to pump her for more information about the woman who’d figured so large in his life. The woman he still desired.
His next words surprised her, for they weren’t about Alexa.