‘We’d only finished breakfast when the helicopters landed in the field on the other side of the road,’ Gaetano recalled.
Lara remembered racing upstairs to have a better view of what was happening and when she had seen all those men converging on the farmhouse, some of them clearly policemen, she had started to panic. They had traced Gaetano by a sighting from a local in a neighbouring village. Rushing back downstairs, she had joined Gaetano at the front door as a young, bearded man wearing a troubled expression had come through the gate.
Gaetano’s arm had dropped from her shoulders, and he had said slowly, heavily, almost as though he had been drugged, ‘Dario...what’s happened?’
And the two men had stood there chattering volubly in Italian while she’d hovered like a third wheel, desperate to know what was going on but shut out by the language barrier. It was Dario who had guided Gaetano back indoors and urged him down into a seat. For the first time, Gaetano had recognised someone, and it was obvious that with that recognition his memory had returned just as quickly as he had lost it. Whatever he had learned from Dario had left him looking drawn and devastated. Finally, she had tugged at his sleeve to remind him of her presence.
‘Dario, this is my wife, Lara...use English, please.’
‘Yourwife, Your Majesty?’ Dario had been stunned almost speechless by that introduction.
‘Don’t call me that,’ Gaetano had urged sickly.
‘What else can I call you? You became our King the instant your brother died,’ Dario had proclaimed.
‘That was the moment,’ Gaetano murmured, dragging Lara back to the present after that mutual surge of recollection. ‘That was the moment when I realised what a hash I’d made of everything.’
‘In marrying me,’ Lara completed tightly, pale as milk and pushing her plate away.
‘No, in leaving home without my phone, in going off grid and the way I’d married you insecret. I was in shock at Vittorio’s death and the knowledge that I had to step up to the throne. My brother was terminally ill. That’s why he sent me away. He said he wouldn’t have me hovering by his deathbed like Giulia and that I had to enjoy what freedom I had left before I was forced to replace him. But he believed he had months of life left,’ Gaetano advanced.
‘Just before you explained our marriage in Italian to Dario, you looked at me in horror and said, “What the hell have I done?”’ Lara swallowed hard and pushed back from the table to rise and move over to the windows. She folded her arms because her hands were shaking. ‘And it seemed quite clear to me that the minute that you realisedwhoyou were, you regretted marrying me.’
‘That’s not how it was,’ Gaetano countered in fierce disagreement. ‘I was in a state of disbelief that I had marriedanyone! Lara, I was a hopeless womaniser before I met you and I’d never had a normal relationship with a woman! I had never been in love either. I had sex. I had a lot of sex but not with anyone who mattered to me. You were in a class of your own and I was blown away that I had met you, fallen in love with you and married you that quickly.’
Lara swallowed hard. ‘Well, I interpreted your attitude differently. I assumed that you deeply regretted our marriage and Dario’s reaction convinced me that you thought you’d made a mistake in marrying me.’
His ebony brows pleated. ‘That’s not how I felt. But I can see now that I was being selfish that day and only focusing on my own concerns. I was totally blind to how you might be reacting to the news that you had married a royal and... I thinkyoupanicked.’
Lara breathed in deep and slow to calm herself, ready to snap back at that reading of her behaviour. But she connected with brilliant dark golden eyes fringed by lush black lashes and lifted her chin, unable to lie to him. ‘Yes, you’re right. Later I couldn’t admit that to myself—that I had panicked. But you had also made me feel rejected... I felt I wasn’t good enough to be married to you. Add in that I genuinely believed that our marriage might be illegal then and I had no good reason to stay.’
‘Ishould have been your reason to stay,’ Gaetano told her, setting his empty wine glass down with a snap as he stood up. ‘I relied on you. I trusted you. You are the first woman I ever trusted apart from Giulia and yet you walked out on me when I needed you the most!’
Lara was badly shaken by that condemnation. ‘Youneededme?’ she whispered.
‘Of course, I did when I’d just lost the only family I had. I was grieving for my brother. I had the throne, but I didn’t want it... I had never wanted it. I was closer to you than I’d ever been to anyone and when you disappeared, it almost destroyed me. I went through the year that followed like a zombie on autopilot. I wasn’t expecting you to walk out on me and disappear. I wasn’t prepared for that to happen...and Istillhave this ridiculous fear that you will vanish again!’ Gaetano ground out in a raw undertone.
Tears of guilt and discomfiture were lashing Lara’s eyes. She closed the distance between them and wrapped her arms tightly round him, gripped by a powerful wave of remorse. ‘If I had understood that you needed me, I would never have left you.’
‘But you did, and you can’t turn back time and change it. It happened. You had your reasons for doubting my commitment to you. I neglected to give you the reassurance you needed, and I have to learn to live with that,’ he breathed tautly.
‘I had to live without you too,’ Lara whispered shakily.
‘But youchoseto do that... I didn’t. And I missed out on Freddy as a baby.’
‘I can’t change those things,’ Lara pointed out wretchedly as her arms dropped from him.
‘I know.’ Gaetano bent his handsome dark head and claimed her lips with a hungry sound of urgency before she could step back from him. ‘I’m working on myself,’ he declared against her swollen mouth, returning for another taste with intense enthusiasm.
Three days later, Dario entered the nursery to find Lara reading Freddy his favourite storybook complete with all the choo-choo noises that accompanied it and made her son squeal with laughter. He held out an envelope. ‘This came marked urgent. I guessed what it was and thought you’d like some privacy to open it.’
Lara smiled at him, marvelling at the change that had occurred in their relationship. The longer she had known him, the friendlier and warmer Gaetano’s right-hand man had become. She had begun to admire his efficiency, his fierce loyalty to Gaetano and his protectiveness towards him. She understood exactly what had caused his more aggressive attitude the first time they had met. His driving motivation was always Gaetano’s wellbeing and if Gaetano had got himself into the wrong marriage, Dario would have been the first to help him to get out of it again.
Lara left her son to his nap and wandered off to the sitting room to open the letter. It had to be the DNA results. She tore it open and lifted out the paper within. A little scream of excitement broke from her parted lips. She had a sister, an actual living, breathing sister, which meant that she had a half-brother as well, not to mention a whole host of nieces and nephews! She performed a little happy dance in the middle of the room. She would finally be able to find out the whole story of who she was and where she came from and she could discover it all in private from the brother and sister who had been involved in that same story. She thought that would be wonderful.
She looked for Gaetano and couldn’t find him. She headed for Dario’s office, hoping he would be able to help her find her sister’s email address or phone number, so that she could make the next move. She heard male voices within and hovered, reluctant to walk in on an official meeting of some kind. She smiled as she heard Gaetano speak, his deep dark voice louder than usual.
‘I ignored all your advice and it’s come back to bite me. I believed I was deceiving Lara! That was the price of getting thembothhome to Mosvakia. I had to make her believe that it was a reconciliation. I couldn’t face a court battle for custody or doing anything more underhand, like luring her out here and then springing a custody suit on her in a Mosvakian court. And all the time I believed that we were happy because I was a great actor, I waslyingto myself...in fact I was lying to myself from the very minute I met her again!’