Pascal could hear his own heartbeat. His breath.
He had only his mobile phone, the laptop he’d left in the car and his own thoughts—which, he had to admit, was a far sight more than the last time he’d lain like this in this same bed, when he’d had only a collection of broken bones and vague assurances that hemightmake a full recovery.Maybe.
And this time, when he looked out the window at the cold fields that stretched toward the towering mountains, he knew that somewhere out there was a child.Hischild.
Pascal was trying to picture his son’s face when he fell asleep, his body giving up after his night of driving and all the discoveries he’d made once he’d gotten here.
He woke some hours later to the insistent sound of his mobile, and scrubbed a hand over his face as he sat up, took the call and assured his secretary that he had not taken leave of his senses but was not planning to return to the office anytime soon.
His dreams had been strange and tinged with memories of that long-ago accident, which Pascal assumed was par for the course—but still irritated him.
“I will be staying up north,” he managed to growl out.
“I beg your pardon?” Guglielmo replied, in mock horror. Or perhaps, the horror was not somockfrom a deeply committed urbanite like his secretary, who had once claimed that visiting the ruins of the Roman Forum was as pastoral as he got. “You plan tostay? In that valley you claimed was lost in the mists of time? I’m sure I could not have heard you right. You don’t mean you have returned to that abbey, do you? You hate that place!”
“Cancel my appointments,” Pascal ordered him darkly. “I have things to take care of here that do not require your commentary, Guglielmo.”
“This is all very mysterious, sir,” his secretary replied, sounding as unfazed as ever, which was why Pascal tolerated his overfamiliarity and occasional small rebellions. “But how long do you intend to rusticate?”
“As long as it takes,” Pascal told him.
It was far easier to sound certain that first day. Because he’d driven so far, then woken up in his same old bed—but he was stillhim.He hadn’t woken up to discover that the last six years were all a complicated dream and he was still bedridden, weak and a nonentity with nothing to his name but a pretty novitiate who smiled too long when he looked at her.
And it wasn’t until he’d ascertained that he hadnotbeen tossed back in time to that living nightmare that Pascal accepted how deeply he must have feared it.
That didn’t sit well, so he concentrated on the present. He was here again, yes, but it wouldn’t be for long. He was more than sure. Because how long could it reasonably take?
But one day passed. Then another. Pascal entertained himself with long walks around the village in the mercurial December weather, which he hadn’t been able to do the last time he was here. He told himself he was content to inhale the sharp mountain air and feel winter coming in, swept down from those towering heights. He was taking his first holiday since he’d left this village on a Verona-bound bus six years ago, bound and determined to make something of himself with the second chance he’d been given.
Cecilia could take her time. He was fine.
The third day was stormy and cold. Rain pounded down in sheets outside, and being cooped up in a room that had once been his cell did not exactly improve Pascal’s mood.
It became harder to convince himself that he was anything remotely resemblingfine.
It wasn’t until the fourth day—when he was storming along the same looping circle through the fields no matter the suggestion of snow in the air—that the door to a cottage set back on the road between the abbey and the village opened, and Cecilia emerged.
“Is this what you are reduced to, Pascal?” she demanded when she’d shut the door behind her and walked out toward the road. Scowling. “Are you stalking me?”
“Perhaps you have forgotten that I was incapable of taking these walks when I was last here,” he told her. Perhaps too darkly. “The valley seemed larger when I could only look at it from flat on my back.”
“I’m so glad we have your vote of confidence. Perhaps we can use your enthusiasm to scare up more tourism.”
He eyed her, dressed similarly to how she’d been in the church. Except, he could tell instantly, those had been her work clothes. Cecilia was at home today, not prepared to clean an ancient building. She wore a dark sweater that looked sturdy and warm on her slender form. Her hair fell to her shoulders and he had the sudden, unwelcome memory of running his fingers through it as she’d lain beneath him. But what struck him most was the way the moody December sky seemed to reflect in her violet eyes, making her seem as unpredictable. Even though she’d come outside without a coat, and stood there, shivering.
But when he looked behind her to the cottage, with smoke coming out of the chimney and windows lit against the brooding afternoon, she stiffened.
“I’m not going to invite you inside,” she snapped at him. “You don’t get to meet him on your schedule. I thought I made that clear.”
“And this is what you want for him?” Pascal waved a hand at the fields, the clouds. “A pretty view? A limitless sky, but no real options? What can he do here besides farm the land or work as staff in the abbey?”
“As he’sfive,we have yet to engage in any hard-hitting conversations about his employment prospects.” Her voice was cool. And insulting. “He’s more into trucks.”
He considered her, and his near-overwhelming urge to get his hands on her. And not because he was angry. That was only a small part of it.
“Thank you,” he said in a low voice. “That is the first bit of information aboutmy sonthat you have bothered to give me. Trucks.”
She had the grace to flinch at that. And then look away. “People live perfectly happy lives here, as hard as that appears to be for you to understand.”