A Sicilian Husband - Kate Walker [66]
The coming Sunday was the anniversary of Lucia’s birthday. And Rosa was here to arrange the trip to the cemetery to leave flowers as they had done each year.
‘I…’ he began but Rosa clearly wasn’t listening. Instead she was staring past him, over his shoulder, her eyes fixed in an expression of disbelief.
‘Who…?’ she demanded in furious Italian. ‘Who is that!’
Gio didn’t have to turn to look to know who she meant. Clearly Terrie had paused at the bottom of the stairs, not making her way into the kitchen as he had suggested. He groaned inwardly. There never would be a good way for Rosa to meet the new woman in his life. But this was definitely not the best.
Inevitably, it had hit the older woman desperately hard when her daughter had died. Something of her had died with Lucia, and she had never recovered.
Half turning, he glanced to where Terrie stood behind him. She looked pale, he noted in concern. If only Rosa hadn’t appeared, then he could find out what was wrong.
‘This is Teresa,’ he responded, in the same language that his mother-in-law had used, hoping that that would be enough.
It wasn’t.
‘And who is Teresa?’ Rosa asked, bristling with antagonism. ‘What is she doing here?’
He could answer that very simply and quickly—if only it was Teresa he was talking to. But it was Rosa who had asked the question. Rosa, who he knew would never leave until she had had an answer.
And Rosa had no right to be the first to know how he truly felt about Terrie. Certainly not before he had told Terrie herself.
But he had to say something. Anything. Something that would convince Rosa.
It was then that he remembered a conversation he had had with his mother-in-law a couple of months ago, just before he had set off on his trip to England. He snatched at the memory on a rush of relief as he turned back to Rosa.
‘She’s the person we talked about, remember?’
He kept to Italian, knowing Terrie spoke very little of the language.
‘When we discussed getting a nanny for Paolo. An English nanny—someone who could look after him in his own home when I had to be away.’
To his relief he saw a wave of comprehension cross the older woman’s face and she nodded almost approvingly.
‘Ah, yes, the English governess. A good idea…’
Behind him, Gio heard the faint sound of movement and relaxed slightly. Terrie was obviously heading into the kitchen; he could join her there as soon as possible and they could start the day over again.
Luckily, Rosa didn’t want to linger, and it was only another few minutes before she said her goodbyes and drove away. Shutting the door on a sigh of relief, Gio hurried to the kitchen, a wide smile on his face.
A smile that faltered, died, when he found that the room was empty. Terrie was nowhere to be seen—so where…?
A sound from up above, the creak of floorboards from someone moving about, had him striding swiftly to the stairs.
‘Teresa?’
The first tug of real anxiety hit when she didn’t respond to his call.
‘Teresa!’
Still no response. The tug became a sharply painful twist, some sudden instinct clutching at his guts as he started to climb the stairs, steadily at first, then increasing his pace, taking them two steps at a time as he felt his panic grow.
‘Teresa! What…?’
The first thing he saw when he pushed open the bedroom door was her case lying open on the bed.
Open and half-filled.
No!
Anxiety became the brutal clutch of fear; the terrible suspicion that everything he had dreamed of during the night, and woken up to wanting today, had all been based on nothing but just that. A dream of wanting. With no foundation in fact.
And fear made him desperate to hide the truth until he knew just what the facts were.
‘What’s going on here?’
The protective fury in his voice brought Terrie whirling round from where she had been standing beside the open