Текст книги "The Affair"
Автор книги: Beth Kery
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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 34 страниц)
Week
THREE
Chapter 11
Emma had been fooling herself. It shocked her beyond words that she had the ability to blind her own judgment, to delude herself into not seeing the obvious, like a magician with a sleight of hand.
When she exited the bathroom a few minutes later, she found Mrs. Shaw and Montand—Vanni—in the living room of the suite. His gaze landed on her when she entered the room, but he continued talking with subdued authority to someone on the phone. Ignoring Mrs. Shaw, she found Cristina’s chart and began to make an entry in regard to the death.
“When are they coming to get the body?” Emma asked quietly when Vanni hung up the phone. Just thinking his name in her head caused a bitter taste at the back of her mouth. She continued staring at the page as she wrote methodically in the chart.
“They’ll be here within the hour,” he said. “Vera? Leave us, please.”
Emma blinked in confusion. Who was Vera? Her question was answered when she glanced around and saw Mrs. Shaw hastening out of the room, even if her disapproval seemed to linger.
Her gaze leapt over to him, anxiety rising in her when she recognized they were alone. He stood next to a coffee table, his expression rigid. In his jeans, simple white T-shirt, and with the shadow of dark whiskers, he really might have been the familiar man she had begun to know . . . care about, even. She thought she’d begun to know him. It’d been an illusion—a spell—one she’d cast herself. She’d already thought him way out of her league. Her certainty was greater now that she knew he was that man who liked to tie up and whip women whom he cared nothing about.
It was too much to think about the details now that the elusive face from that night—from her dreams—was clear to her.
He studied her for a moment; the silence seemed to swell and billow around them.
“What is it?” he asked quietly. “Did Cristina’s passing upset you that much?”
“No. Yes,” she corrected. She closed her eyes briefly in frustration before she met his stare again. “You’re not who I thought you were.”
His eyebrows furrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?
“You cut your hair,” she said starkly, lost in her ruminations. “If it’d been long, I might have recognized you.”
Something flickered across his stark features. He took a step toward her, his eyes narrowing dangerously. Emma held her ground, but it took an effort.
“What did you say?” he asked.
Swallowing back an enormous lump in her throat, Emma turned and gathered up the hospice paperwork in preparation to leave. “It’s nothing. It’s not important. You haven’t done anything wrong. It’s me. I’ll inform the hospice and contact the night nurse so that she won’t come—”
“Don’t walk away from me, Emma.”
“I have to,” she said miserably before she could stop herself.
“You’re condemning me for what you saw in there without knowing anything about Cristina and me?” he demanded sharply, pointing to the bedroom. “I thought you were less judgmental than that. I’m disappointed.”
You’re disappointed?
She caught herself just in time from saying the words out loud. He didn’t deserve her angst and agitation. Besides, it wasn’t that. Not really. She wasn’t disappointed. He hadn’t done anything to hurt her on purpose. It was just that he was more than she’d bargained for. How could she explain to him? She couldn’t. It was too humiliating. Too overwhelming. She’d agreed to this affair, but she hadn’t agreed while knowing who he was.
While acknowledging the truth fully, anyway. Now the truth was inescapable, and all Emma wanted to do was hide from it again.
“You just . . . aren’t who I thought you were,” she repeated inadequately.
“Well I’m damn sorry for not being what you expected.”
She turned and left the room, hating his quiet, snarling cynicism . . . despising her cowardice even more.
She only slept for a few hours a night for the rest of her work-week. When she did finally sleep on Sunday night, it was no relief, because she dreamed.
Again, she was blinded by night and was in Vanni’s arms, his cock piercing her, her flesh quickening and thrilling around him. She was secure in the cocooning darkness, safe to move at her body’s urging and at his command, free to take his intimate touches, glad to hear his hot, whispered words as he took control of their fierce joining.
“Arch your back, Emma. Offer yourself to me.”
Her spine curved in supple acquiescence, thrusting forth her breasts as far as her restraints would allow. Restraints? Yes, she wasn’t on the beach, after all. The dream had shifted. Her wrists were bound securely over her head. Her legs were spread wide, and his cock thrust high inside her, pounding her like a relentless wave. She couldn’t move. She didn’t want to.
“That’s right,” he murmured darkly in her ear as if he’d just heard her thought. “There’s nowhere for you to go now. You can’t escape.”
He thrust so hard that a cry popped out of her throat. It hurt. No . . . it wasn’t pain, it was a knot of pleasure so tight, it felt like a brutal cramp. But then the pressure unfurled, and she was climaxing.
“Look at me.” She gasped, her body shuddering in sharp pleasure. “Open your eyes. Look at me,” he shouted. Only then did she realize she couldn’t see him because her eyelids were clamped tight.
She opened her eyes and saw him over her, naked and savage, bracing himself on muscular arms. She was on a bed, and the room was lit with golden light. His face was rigid and cold, but his eyes burned her. He thrust his hips and grunted gutturally, the symbols on dense, swelling biceps flashing in her dazed vision like they were lighted neon, not black ink. She felt his cock jerk and erupt inside her, his warm semen filling her.
“Don’t you dare look away,” he grated out, white teeth flashing.
Emma awoke with a start, Vanni’s command still ringing in her ears. Without thinking, she plunged her hand beneath her shorts and underwear and moved it frantically, gasping as she finished climaxing powerfully.
A moment later, her hand fell against the bed, damp from her juices. She panted softly. She was in her bedroom, dawn peeking through the blinds. The dream was still with her, the memory palpable. She could still see his eyes, feel his cock swell inside her before he grunted in release, savage and beautiful.
There’s nowhere for you to go now. Don’t you dare look away.
She rose sluggishly from her mussed bed. This was reality, not a dream, and she needed to get ready for work. Her hospice had quickly reassigned her to a dozen households where she visited several times a week. It was both a comfort to go back to her usual schedule following her assignment at the Breakers, and yet also jarring somehow, as if she was trying to fit a new Emma into an old world.
On the way to the bathroom, she felt compelled to check her cell phone. Vanni had called again last night. She’d listened to the first message he’d left last Friday with a strange mixture of wariness and hunger.
“I need to speak with you. I think I might understand,” he’d said in that clipped, authoritative manner of his. “Call me at this number.”
How could he understand when she didn’t? She’d teased him about his insistence that he was selfish, not really believing because of what she’d seen of him, because of how much he gave her with his smallest touch. But he and that man with the voluptuous Astrid were one and the same. He was selfish, and he’d been right to warn her.
She was to blame. She’d only seen what she wanted to see. All her life, she’d made a habit of doing that. Her mother would fret and worry over lack of finances or Emma’s health. After Emma’s health crisis had resolved, circumstances had altered. Both Amanda and her mother had started to look to Emma for a sense of steady optimism, the go-to girl for a laugh and for seeing the glass half-full. She was her mother’s “miracle” child, a spot of sunshine when the fog of doubt settled. She was the stubborn one who refused to admit defeat, no matter the intimidating playing field. It was that quirk in her personality that had made her overlook what was happening with Colin and Amanda, what was probably obvious to everyone else.
It was that same fault in her character that had made her see only what she wanted to see with Vanni Montand. She’d wanted to experience a grand passion so much that she’d blinded herself, exposed herself to a situation where her naiveté and lack of experience would have undoubtedly wounded her in the end.
It already had wounded her. Thank God there wasn’t a chance for the knife to cut deeper.
She jumped slightly when her phone began to ring. It was Vanni again, she realized as a tingling sensation rippled down her limbs. She dropped the phone abruptly onto her dresser with a thud when she recognized how much she wanted to answer, how much she wanted to hear his voice again.
It suddenly struck her that her phone number was unlisted, and she’d never given it to him.
She was leaving her last home hospice visit that afternoon when she noticed a gleaming silver car whip into her patient’s driveway and glide toward her with silent stealth. The hair on her nape and arms stood on end. She recognized the vehicle from Vanni’s garage—a sleek, aerodynamically shaped four-door. Apparently, Automobiles Montand could make even a sedate sedan look as fierce and edgy as its sports cars. Her patient, Mrs. Slater, resided in a neat, working-class neighborhood in Evanston. The car couldn’t have been more out of place.
A mingled sense of dread and excitement went through her when the driver’s side door flung open.
The image of him uncoiling his long body and stepping onto the pavement burned her consciousness. Sunlight turned his hair into thick, burnished brown waves. He removed a pair of sunglasses and fixed her with his stare. Everything came to a temporary halt.
Her heartbeat. Her judgment. Time.
He wore a black suit, white shirt, and light silver tie. He looked impossibly handsome and . . . foreign somehow to her stunned brain. Exotic. She was reminded that he was the CEO and owner of a French car company and had extensive family roots in Europe. His tall, lean, muscular body might have been made to wear suits like that. He looked perfectly comfortable and natural in the expensive, fashionable clothing. He probably wore suits like that all the time. Most people were likely used to seeing him attired in such a way. She’d witnessed the exception, seeing him in gray mechanic’s coveralls and jeans.
The realization that she’d peered into his private world and seen a part of him that the rest of the world hadn’t made her feel heartsore, like she’d lost something.
Something you never had.
The thought galvanized her. Without saying a word to him, she hurried toward her car, digging in her purse for her keys.
“Emma,” he said behind her. She gave him a reluctant sideways glance as he approached while she unlocked her car.
“How did you find me?” she asked, straining to keep her voice even.
He shrugged as if the question was unimportant. He was clean-shaven today. His cheeks looked a little hollowed out, but he didn’t appear gaunt. If anything, he looked more handsome to her than he ever had.
So far out of her league.
In more ways than one.
The realization made her drop her gaze and reach for the door handle.
“Cristina’s funeral is in an hour,” he said. “It’s a small one. Graveside. I’d like you to come.”
A stabbing sensation of sadness went through her. She lowered her head, protecting herself instinctively.
“You really liked her, didn’t you?” he asked quietly, and she knew he’d noticed her sudden sadness.
She nodded, reigning in her upsurge of emotion. “I did like Cristina. She was edgy and sharp, yes, but she had a forceful personality and she made me laugh.”
“Laugh?”
“Laugh. She was an excellent observer of character. She saw straight to the heart of someone and read their faults,” Emma said, staring unblinkingly at the top of her car.
Maybe you’re the one who is afraid. Maybe you’re such an expert on death because you’re afraid to live.
“Everyone’s faults but her own,” Vanni stated dryly.
Emma recalled Cristina talking in her sleep during that nightmare. You knew what I was capable of and what I wasn’t.
“She did see her faults,” Emma said quietly. “She felt so guilty about them that it was hard for her to speak of them out loud. She dreamed of them, though. They haunted her.”
His gaze narrowed on her. “Did she tell you anything significant about her life?”
“What do you mean?” Emma asked slowly. “Are you talking about what she said at the end?”
“No, I heard most of that. Anything about when she was young?” he prodded.
“She told me about that shop that she owned where all the women donated their designer clothes and things, and other women bought them. She used to talk about your father and the French Riviera, just little details.”
He didn’t respond. She glanced at him uneasily and was caught in his gleaming stare.
“I came to get you,” he said simply.
She shook her head adamantly. “The hospice holds two funerals every year for all of our patients that have passed. Family can come, but it’s primarily an opportunity for the staff to mourn,” she explained, avoiding his steady stare by examining her hand on the door handle. “If I went to every patient’s funeral, it’d—”
Finish me.
“Were you there? In my bedroom suite last Monday night? When I was with Astrid?” he asked suddenly.
Chapter 12
Her hand fell away from the metal handle. She stared up at him, dry-mouthed. Mute.
After a moment, he closed his eyes and lowered his head slightly. The breeze ruffled his thick hair in the taut silence that followed.
“You were,” he said with an air of grim finality. He inhaled, a tried executive who had just realized his worst assessment of the situation had come to pass, and was grimly positioning himself for his next move. Her heart beat uncomfortably against her breastbone. “Why?” he asked simply, opening his eyes.
“I didn’t want to be there. It was an accident,” she said, unable to keep the misery from her tone. His arm jerked slightly, as if he wanted to touch her, but then it went still at his side. She recalled how she’d flinched away from him after Cristina had died. He’d thought she’d recoil again at his touch, she realized, her throat swelling. “The washer was broken in Cristina’s suite and the repairman said he wouldn’t have the part to fix it until the end of the week. We needed clean linens and towels.”
“So you searched for a washer and ended up—”
“In your suite, yes, by accident,” she said, the words tumbling out of her throat now as if the confession had been stored under pressure and the lid had just been released. “I heard you two coming, so I hid. I know it was stupid, but I thought I’d be in trouble for leaving Cristina’s suite. I panicked,” she admitted.
“You hid in the armoire,” he said heavily.
She swallowed back the dread rising in her throat. “You knew I was in there?” she whispered.
“No,” he said, staring off into the distance, his light eyes reflecting the low clouds and blue sky. “I just put it together this weekend. I thought I’d heard something rustling in there that night, but dismissed it. Later, I saw you walking up the steps. You carried a bag.”
“That was the laundry,” she said tremulously. Her pulse began to throb at her temple. Her head ached with all of her thoughts. He knew she’d watched him flog that woman. He knew she’d seen him screw her with such ruthless precision using that gliding rack that had clearly been designed for his selfish kink. The same man had made love to her with sweet, intense passion on that beach. What was she supposed to do with the paradox? Michael Montand Jr. Vanni. She rubbed her temple. She was going to have a headache later. “I never saw your face,” she murmured, wanting to get this over with now that she’d started. “And like I said last Thursday, your hair was longer and lighter looking. When you cut it, a lot of the sun streaks disappeared. And she—Astrid—called you Vanni. I didn’t know that was what you were called.”
“So you didn’t realize Vanni was me, am I right?” he asked, exhaling heavily, his tone making it clear that the pieces were falling into place for him. “Emma?” he prodded. He waited for her to answer.
“You didn’t realize it was me until you heard Cristina call me Vanni. Do I have it right?” he pushed.
His gaze narrowed on her when she didn’t reply.
“I wouldn’t have wanted you to see that,” he grated out. “I didn’t ask you to watch. In fact, it’d be one of the last things I’d want anyone to witness,” he said in a hard, quiet voice. “I’m well aware it wasn’t my finest moment. But what you saw was consensual between Astrid and me. I’d never even met you. It was just a bad coincidence. It doesn’t have anything to do with what happened between us.”
“Of course it doesn’t. For you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, anger entering his tone.
“Why didn’t you just tell me your name was Vanni?”
“I don’t know,” he replied just as edgily. He paused, seeming to search for an explanation for her question. “Not everyone calls me Vanni. Besides, I don’t recall you ever calling me anything. What did you mean when you said you watching me with Astrid doesn’t mean anything to me, but it does you?”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to stand in my patient’s driveway and have this conversation,” she said, once again reaching for her door handle.
“What was it that upset you the most?” he demanded, subduing his anger.
Her mouth sagged open with disbelief. She couldn’t seem to inhale a full breath. She felt cornered by his direct question and piercing stare.
“I’d be hard-pressed to name something that didn’t. It all disgusted me,” she blurted out.
He caught her wrist when she reached for the door. She looked up at him, startled.
“You’ve been lying to yourself, Emma. You knew it was me. Or part of you did. You knew since that night I called you to the dining room.” She gasped in shock at his calm, concise understanding of the private inner workings of her mind. His fingers moved slightly on her skin as if to soothe the sting of his words. He lowered his head and spoke near her ear, his warm breath making her shiver. “I’m not an animal. Don’t label me depraved just because it makes things easier for you. Are you forgetting I’ve made love to you? You might be inexperienced, but you enjoyed giving control to me. There’s nothing wrong with it. It was natural the way you responded to me. Beautiful,” he said, his softly uttered words striking her as palpably intimate even in this unlikely setting. “Don’t run from what you don’t understand.”
It was too much. His quiet voice, not entreating her exactly, but calling to her. Speaking to something deep inside her that he knew she heard.
Somehow.
I’ve told you what I can offer you. It’s the same I can offer any woman. It isn’t much, she recalled him telling Astrid so coldly. I’m going to bind you onto the sliding track, then use the flogger on you.
Something hot and volatile swelled in her chest. He was too complex for her, too dark. The last thing she needed was someone like Vanni Montand in her life. She couldn’t handle it. She couldn’t handle him.
He leaned down, his lips brushing her temple, and her fearful thoughts evaporated.
“Leave your keys under the seat,” he directed in her ear. “I’ll call someone and have them pick up your car and deliver it to your apartment. Come with me now. I want you at Cristina’s funeral.”
“Why?” she whispered numbly.
“Because she made you laugh.” She turned her head and met his stare. “She deserves to have someone there who liked her, don’t you think? But that’s not the only reason. I need you there.”
She stared at him, aghast at his harsh declaration of need.
“We’ll talk more about what you saw later, after the funeral. You’re not a coward, Emma,” he said, his quiet words piercing her like hot knives. “You can’t keep running from this.”
She tugged again on her arm and this time he let her go.
His expression was impassive when she faced him after putting her keys beneath the driver’s seat and slamming the car door. Even so, Emma didn’t think it was her imagination that she saw stark relief flicker across his bold features ever so briefly.
After Vanni had opened the passenger door for her and she got inside, she looked down at what she was wearing.
“I can’t go to Cristina’s funeral like this,” she said once he was seated next to her, anxiety overtaking her. “Can you take me to my apartment to change?”
His gaze swept down over her in a cool assessment, making her skin prickle in awareness. It was warm today, so she’d opted for a lightweight floral skirt, a pink T-shirt, and flats. It was better than jeans and high-tops, but it was still inappropriate for the funeral of Cristina Montand.
“You’re fine,” he said. “It’s going to be a very simple ceremony. Only a few people will be there.”
“But—”
“You’re fine,” he repeated quietly. You’re fine because I said you were fine. He didn’t say it, but it seemed like he did. She opened her mouth to protest.
“There isn’t time for me to take you to your apartment. Please, don’t concern yourself about what you’re wearing. It’s the last thing I’m worried about, Emma, and I told you. I need you there,” he said quietly. Forcefully. Again, she was reminded of the brew of complex emotion she sensed boiling behind his cool façade.
“All right,” she said in a choked voice.
He cleared his throat, and the charged atmosphere seemed to dissipate. He reached for a hands-free phone headset.
“I hope you don’t mind. There are a few phone calls I need to make on the way. My company is sponsoring a big racing event in France this summer. It’s the first time for it.” He grimaced as he put on the headset. “I just hope it’s not the last.”
Emma exhaled, relief going through her at the realization they weren’t going to plunge into anxiety-provoking topics like what she’d experienced in that armoire. “Is it that French-American grand prix road-racing event Montand Motorworks is sponsoring on the French Riviera?” He gave her a surprised glance. “I read about it in the Chicago Tribune,” Emma explained.
He nodded. “It’s experimental. I’m not sure how it’ll go over. I’m tramping on European tradition a bit, attempting it.”
She didn’t really understand what he meant. She’d never been remotely interested in car racing. Him, she understood better. Or at least she experienced his unruffled manner and bone-deep confidence. “If anyone can do it, you can,” she said.
She saw his blank expression of surprise. “Why would you say that so certainly?” he asked, dark brows furrowed in puzzlement.
“Because of your background and your knowledge of cars and everything. You’re both American and French and you know all about racing and you have that . . . cachet.”
He leaned forward slightly, hands on the wheel. “Cachet?”
“Sure,” Emma said, hiding her blush by digging in her purse for her phone. “The Aloof Automobile Prince Raised in America. Racecar Royalty Returns to His Roots—”
She halted her rambling and looked around at the sound she heard. He laughed. Really laughed. The sound was deep and rich and uninhibited. His smile cut her to the quick. Somehow, he seemed relieved. Something twisted and pulled inside her at the vision of white, straight teeth and the look of stark amusement on his face. There was something else gleaming in his aquamarine eyes: genuine warmth as he stared at her. This was the same man whom she’d watched make love so coldly.
Knitting the two images together was going to be so hard. Wasn’t it?
“You really are odd at times,” he said, his gaze narrowed on her. She held her breath when he reached up and touched the angel at her throat. It suddenly struck her that she hadn’t removed it, even while she slept, since she’d hurried out of the Breakers after Cristina’s death. Surely that meant something.
“You’re not so normal yourself,” she muttered.
He smiled slightly and dropped his hand, and she immediately regretted her need to lighten the moment. His attention turned to driving and his phone calls, but Emma couldn’t help but notice that although his smile had faded, his usually hard mouth looked a little softer. She really had provided him a moment of relief. The realization warmed her more than she liked to admit. It also made her wonder for the thousandth time about the unspoken tension that seemed to shroud him anytime Cristina was mentioned. She was texting a message to her patient’s daughter, explaining about her car being left in the driveway and someone coming to pick it up, when Vanni began to talk. He spoke to someone named Jake whom he asked to retrieve Emma’s car. When it came time for him to say where to deliver the vehicle, Emma leaned forward, trying to get his attention to give him her address. He remained turned in profile to her, however, and crisply supplied her street address as if it were his own. She was a little mystified that he’d been able to see the address, given how dark and rainy it’d been that night he’d followed her home.
On his next call he began speaking in fluid French. She stared out the window as the urban landscape passed by her, her entire attention focusing on the sound of him. At first, she tried to see if she could pull out any words that she might comprehend. When she couldn’t, she found herself relaxing to the sound of his voice: the rich resonance, the rhythmic cadence, the foreign words blending together into a sensual anthem that both lulled her and created a tickle of excitement along her skin and at her core.
She cast a sideways, covetous glance at him, wondering all the while what she’d gotten herself into. If she wasn’t careful, she’d end up crashing and burning like a novice behind the wheel of a superfast, high-tech Montand car.
For the hundredth time, she repeated a mantra for caution inside her head.
She was so caught up in the sound of Vanni speaking French that she forgot to be nervous about where they were going. That all came to a halt when he turned the sedan onto the grounds of a cemetery. Her anxiety started to amplify as he finished his call and deftly maneuvered the sedan on the narrow road winding through lush trees and grounds. Neither of them spoke, a hushed somberness seemingly overtaking them both.
He drove directly to a lovely spot atop a small hill. There was a lagoon with swans floating serenely on it to the right of Emma. He parked behind a hearse, three other luxury sedans, and a Nissan. In the distance, Emma caught a glimpse of the coffin down the small hill to the left of them topped with a lush, colorful flower arrangement. Her anxiety ratcheted up several degrees when she saw the pinched expression of Mrs. Shaw as she ascended the slight rise to the road. A handsome older man with a mane of silver hair followed her along with a younger, dark-haired man.
Emma got out of the sedan and went around the back to join Vanni, feeling more and more out of place by the second.
“Where have you been?” Mrs. Shaw asked Vanni with barely subdued anxiety as she approached him.
“There was something I needed to take care of,” Vanni replied coolly, hardly sparing her a glance. He shook hands with the silver-haired man and then the younger one with the Mediterranean good looks. The latter grasped him with both hands, a concerned look on his face.
“You okay?” the young man asked in a quiet, confidential tone. Here was a friend to him, Emma immediately realized. She was glad of it. Vanni struck her as so alone sometimes, like a secluded prince.
Vanni just nodded. He put out his hand toward Emma in a beckoning gesture. She saw Mrs. Shaw’s face flatten in disbelief when she turned to see Emma approach their small group. “Niki, Uncle Dean, this is Emma Shore. She’s the nurse who took care of Cristina during her last days. Emma, this is Dean Shaw, my mother’s brother. He’s also the chief financial officer of Montand Motorworks. He used to work for my father as well. And this is my good friend, Niki Dellis.” Both men greeted her warmly and took her hand in greeting. Niki’s expression was amiable, but sharp and curious. Emma decided Dean Shaw had a nice smile.
“And of course you’ve already met my aunt, Vera Shaw.”
Well, here was some news, Emma thought, hiding her shock. She’d had no inkling Mrs. Shaw was his aunt. Vera Shaw was nowhere near as welcoming as her brother or Niki Dellis had been.
“We should begin,” Vera told him tensely. Vanni nodded significantly down the hill. Vera and her brother started ahead of them, Emma following between Vanni and Niki. She glanced up at Vanni when he took her hand as they went down the slope. She didn’t require him to steady her balance, but she did appreciate his touch. This was an extremely awkward situation for her.
One look into his impassive features and stormy eyes and Emma knew it was a thousand times worse for him. Her self-consciousness diminished almost to nothing upon seeing his carefully controlled emotional state.
There were only three other people attending the simple service besides her, Niki, Vanni, Vera, and Dean. Two extremely well-put-together, very thin women already stood on the far side of the casket. They looked like they might be in their early fifties, but Emma’s instinct told her they were older and just well-preserved by plastic surgery and regular, opulent spa visits. Friends of Cristina’s most likely, she assessed, although they certainly hadn’t bothered to visit her when she’d been ill. A middle-aged man was there as well, and Emma realized he was the presiding minister when Vanni nodded at him, and he began to speak.
It was a short, simple ceremony, but the beautiful surroundings and the luminous summer afternoon seemed to bless it as special. Vanni’s and her handclasp had broken when they reached the bottom of the hill, but Emma was highly aware of him standing next to her. She sensed his tension level like a storm silently building on the horizon.
As the minister spoke, Emma glanced curiously around. The paradox of Vanni’s feelings for his stepmother was obvious here as well. The carved mahogany casket with gold fastenings was of the highest quality, and the flower arrangements were lush and stunning. Emma noticed that a large gravestone next to Cristina’s gravesite was also decorated with fresh flowers, as were two others next to it. Did those graves belong to Vanni’s father and mother?
