Surfacing from her daydream at the sound of her name, she realised that Gaetano needed help with Freddy. Standing up, she grabbed a big towel and went to the edge of the pool to gather the dripping, slippery little body of their toddler into its cosy folds. As she knelt down at the edge, Gaetano left the water as well and followed her across to the sunbed where she had stowed Freddy’s clothes.
‘My phone rang, and you didn’t hear it.’ He sighed, drying his hands and grabbing it up.
‘Sorry,’ Lara muttered as she slotted a wriggling Freddy back into his clothes. ‘But answering your phone is a risk and I’m risk-averse, especially after answering it and getting the prime minister!’
‘Chicken,’ Gaetano taunted with amusement as he punched buttons and walked away with that animal grace that never failed to grab her attention. His bronzed physique spattered with drops of water that sparkled in the sunshine, he still made her tummy turn a somersault and her breath catch in her throat.
She listened to his voice in the distance but tickling Freddy soon drowned Gaetano’s conversation out. She moved indoors with her son, looking forward to the cooler evening that would come but decidedly sad that they would be leaving Morocco in the morning. As their nanny reclaimed Freddy, Lara wandered into their bedroom, smiling as she always did when she noticed the spectacular ornate gold metal crown above the big bed from which mosquito netting flowed in a great billowing cascade. Gaetano’s grandfather, it seemed, had never forgotten that he was a king even when he was on holiday.
‘Something unexpected has come up,’ Gaetano said from the doorway. ‘Dario is faxing me a copy of the letter addressed to you and he apologises for opening it since it falls into the realm of personal correspondence, but you can blame me for that. He’s authorised to openallour letters.’
‘A letter for me?’ Lara frowned. ‘But who would write...personal?’
‘I’ll bring the letter for you to read,’ Gaetano declared.
‘You should get dressed first,’ she reminded him.
He glanced down at his swimming trunks and then grimaced, peeling them off in a wet heap to stride into the bathroom.
‘Letter?’ she queried before he could even turn the water on.
‘From a legal firm. Evidently one of Olivier’s photos of you was widely taken up and published round the world. A woman in Italy believes that you are the living resemblance of her late British mother and she and her brother are asking if you’re willing to take a DNA test to see if you are related to them.’
‘Good grief,’ Lara gasped, dropping down on the carved chair in the corner with her brain swirling in shock.
‘Yes, quite a surprise and your two potential connections are rich and well connected so it’s highly unlikely to be any form of a scam. Perhaps you would prefer to look into your birth family for yourself first by your own methods... I don’t know. It would take longer but it’s up to you.’
Lara blinked rapidly, sheer surprise and bewilderment plunging her into a daze. ‘I’ll think it over,’ was all she could say.
‘Don’t get your hopes up,’ Gaetano advised quietly. ‘What are the chances that your parentage could be recognised from a photograph? This will most probably come to nothing.’
CHAPTER NINE
THEYFLEWBACKto Mosvakia very early the following morning. During the flight, Lara could only think about that letter and the truth that if those two peoplewererelated to her, both her birth parents were dead.
It had been a legal letter, short and to the point, revealing the barest facts but also declaring that the two parties had been looking for their sister, who had been adopted as a newborn, for several years. And although Gaetano had pointed out that the possibility that they could be related to her was a slight one, Lara could only think how wonderful it would be to be sowantedand soimportantthat people would spend years and presumably a lot of money in search of her. Far too often as she had grown up, she had felt unwanted and tolerated rather than loved. It had often been painful and had contributed to her loneliness and insecurity and possibly even the speed at which she had decided that Gaetano no longer wanted her two years earlier.
‘I spent two years searching for you...you didn’t givemeany accolades for it,’ Gaetano declared drily.
Lara went pink. ‘That was different. I wasn’t sure we were legally married, and I assumed you wouldn’t want Freddy. But family is a connection I’ve never had.’
‘Except with me and Freddy,’ Gaetano informed her with irrefutable logic.
Lara stiffened. ‘Until Freddy was born, I had never seen anyone related to me by blood. And Freddy looks exactly likeyou. When I looked up Leah Zanetti online, though, she had black ringlets and I don’t look remotely like her or Ari Stefanos.’
Gaetano’s shapely mouth curled. ‘Don’t tear yourself up about this because there’s probably nothing in it,’ he forecast.
Inexplicably he had realised that he didn’t really want Lara to discover long-lost relatives. That would entail sharing her and he wasn’t much for sharing any part of her, he acknowledged grudgingly. He quite liked having Lara all to himself. She was the one woman in his entire life who had only ever been his and who focused almost entirely on him. True, he had to share that limelight with Freddy, but he had never enjoyed such closeness in a relationship before. Was he being selfish in not wishing to share Lara? Or was his apprehension more related to the truth that her potential siblings were wealthy enough to provide Lara with an escape hatch should she ever want one from their marriage?
She had walked out on him once. Whether he liked it or not, it could happen again. Lara could be flighty. Hadn’t he already learned that? Deep down inside where it was well hidden, Lara had insecurities. She set too low a value on herself. She didn’t give her trust easily and she still didn’t trust Gaetano. Antonella had only had to hint at a previous relationship with him to cause her very real distress. And in that distress, Lara might have been spooked into leaving him again, Gaetano reasoned worriedly.
Yet he had had to corner her to force her to tell him what was worrying her. Sadly, she had chosen not to trust him with the problem and that problem just created a bigger one. Lara could be vulnerable, and she was very emotional. It was Gaetano’s job to protect her and ensure she was happy. But how could he function in that role if she refused to have faith in him?
For possibly the first time he wondered exactly what he had said to Lara the day she walked out on him. In his memory, his recovery from his amnesia, the arrival of Dario and the police and security he had brought with him remained a hopeless blur in which Lara barely featured until she was gone. Only when she had vanished had he appreciated how much of a loss she was to him. So why hadn’t he discussed that with her yet? Why, when that one episode was so crucial to the breakdown of their relationship, had he prevented her from even talking about it? Perhaps because even now just remembering that day brought him out in a cold, clammy sweat...
Wondering at Gaetano’s unusually quiet mood, Lara accompanied him into Dario’s office.
‘Have you come to any conclusions?’ Dario asked her at the same time as he handed her a glossy magazine folded back to show the relevant page. ‘I thought you might want to see the photo that stirred all this up.’