The Italian's Christmas Miracle

‘Thank you for coming,’ Drago said quietly. ‘I’ve thought of you all the time. Say it was the same with you.’

‘Oh, yes. You were always with me.’

He took her hand and they wandered higher. The trees grew more luxuriantly here, blocking out much of the light, so that the sunbeams slanted down like arrows piercing the shadows.

‘Do you recognise this place?’ he asked, stopping suddenly by a tree.

‘I can hardly believe it. It’s so beautiful now, and then it was—’

‘Another world,’ he said.

Leaning against the tree, he raised her hand so that he could brush the back of it against his cheek, hold it there for a moment, then press his lips against it.

‘I’ve been back here often since you went away,’ he said. ‘It’s where I come for peace, and even happiness.’

‘Can there be happiness?’ she asked wistfully.

‘There might be,’ he replied with a smile.

Lucy Gordon cut her writing teeth on magazine journalism, interviewing many of the world’s most interesting men, including Warren Beatty, Richard Chamberlain, Roger Moore, Sir Alec Guinness and Sir John Gielgud. She also camped out with lions in Africa, and had many other unusual experiences which have often provided the background for her books. She is married to a Venetian, whom she met while on holiday in Venice. They got engaged within two days. Two of her books have won the Romance Writers of America RITA® Award, SONG OF THE LORELEI in 1990, and HIS BROTHER’S CHILD in 1998, in the Best Traditional Romance category.

You can visit her website at www.lucy-gordon.com

Dear Reader

Being English by birth and Italian by marriage, I’ve experienced Christmas in both countries. Both celebrate the Nativity, but in Italy there is the extra festival of Epiphany, January 6th—the coming of the Three Kings, bearing gifts.

The great gift of Christmas is that with its promise of new beginnings it can heal wounds that once seemed beyond hope.

Alysa approaches Christmas full of joy at the life that’s opening up for her. Then a cruel act of betrayal snatches everything away, leaving a long, bitter road ahead.

She can only travel that road with the help of Drago, a man whose loss has been as terrible as her own. Two damaged people, they must stumble on together, supporting each other through pain that nobody else understands, hardly daring to believe the love growing between them, until they reach another Christmas with its promise of rebirth, new hope, and a life together.

May all your Christmases be happy.

Lucy Gordon

THE ITALIAN’S CHRISTMAS MIRACLE

BY

LUCY GORDON

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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PROLOGUE

THE Christmas lights winked down from the tree, which was hung with tinsel. It was only a small tree, and made of plastic, because the modern apartment of a successful businesswoman had room for nothing larger.

Alysa had always loved her home, its elegance and costliness affirming her triumphant career. Now, for the first time, she sensed something missing. Placing her hand over her stomach, she thought, smiling, that she knew what that something was.

Not that this was a good place for a baby. James’s home had more room, and when he knew he was to be a father he would want to finalise the marriage plans that had been vague until now. She would tell him tonight that she was pregnant.

There was one other thing to set out: a small nativity scene, showing Mary leaning protectively over the crib, her face glowing as she watched her child. Alysa had bought it on the way home as an expression of her joy.

Gently she laid it on a shelf, close to the tree so that the lights fell on it, illuminating the baby’s face. He looked up at his mother, perhaps even smiling. Alysa tried to dismiss the thought as fanciful, but it returned, whispering of happiness to come.

Why didn’t James hurry? He was an hour late, and she loved him so much, every moment in his company was precious. But he would be here soon—very soon.

For the hundredth time she checked that everything was perfect, including her appearance. For once she wore her long hair flowing freely. Usually it was pulled back and wrapped up in a chignon. She kept meaning to cut it short and adopt an austere style, suitable for her job as an accountant. But she’d always deferred the decision, possibly because she knew that her hair was her chief beauty.

She had never been pretty. Her face was attractive but, to her own critical eyes, her features were too strong for a woman.

‘No feminine graces,’ she’d often sighed. ‘Too tall, too thin. No bosom to speak of.’

Her women friends were scandalised by this casual realism. ‘What do you mean, too thin?’ they’d chorused. ‘You’ve got a figure most of us would die for. You could wear anything, just like a model.’

‘That’s what I said—too thin,’ she’d responded, determinedly practical.

But then there was the hair—rich brown, with flashes of deep gold here and dark red there, growing abundantly, streaming over her shoulders and down to her waist, making her look like some mythical heroine.

James loved her hair, which she’d been wearing down when they’d first met.

‘I couldn’t take my eyes off it,’ he’d told her afterwards. ‘One look and I began scheming to get you to bed.’

‘You mean you didn’t fall in love with my upright character and solid virtue?’ she’d teased.

‘What do you think?’

How they had laughed together, and the laughter had ended, as it always did, in passion.

‘I thought you looked like Minerva,’ he’d said once. ‘I’ve got a picture of her with flowing hair, although not as beautiful as yours.’

‘But who was she?’ asked Alysa, whose education had been practical rather than artistic.

‘She was the ancient goddess of warriors, medicine, wisdom and poetry.’

It had become his special name for her, to be used only in the darkness.

He scowled when she dressed for work, taking up her hair and donning a severe suit.

‘It’s for my job,’ she’d chided him fondly. ‘I can’t be Minerva for my clients, only for you.’

Once she’d had a couple of inches cut off, without telling him, and he’d been annoyed.

They had actually squabbled about it, she recalled now, smiling.

But tonight she’d taken care to look just as he liked—a slinky dress that took advantage of her slim figure, hair flowing down to her waist so that he could run his fingers through the cascade and bury his face in its perfumed softness. Then they would go to bed, and afterwards, as they lay in each other’s arms, she would tell him her wonderful secret.

If only he would get here soon!

CHAPTER ONE

THE cold February sunlight glittered over the place where fifteen people had died in one terrible moment.

Far below, the crowd looked up to where the hanging chairs swung over the top of the waterfall. They were newly installed, replacing the ones that had broken suddenly, tossing the screaming occupants down, down to the churning water, to be smashed on the rocks.

That had been one year ago today, and the crowd of mourners was there to remember the loved ones they had lost. Out of respect for the foreign victims the service was held in both Italian and English.

‘Let us remember them at their best—with pride. Let us rejoice in having known them…’

Then it was over. Some of the crowd drifted away, but others remained, still gazing up, trying to picture the tragedy.

Alysa stayed longer than the rest because she couldn’t think what to do or where to go. Something inside her, that had been frozen for a long time, held her prisoner.

A young journalist approached her, microphone extended, speaking Italian.

‘Sono Inglese,’ she said quickly. ‘Non parle Italiano.’

He looked astonished at someone who could deny speaking Italian in such excellent Italian, and she added, ‘Those are all the words I know.’

He switched to English.

‘Can I ask why you are here? Did you lose someone?’

For a wild moment she wanted to cry out, ‘I came here to mourn the man I loved, but who betrayed me, abandoned me and our unborn child, a child he never even knew about, then died with his lover. She had a husband and child, but she deserted them as he deserted me. And I don’t know why I came here except that I couldn’t stay away’.

But she mustn’t say any of that. For a year she’d allowed nobody into her private grief, hiding behind steel doors that were bolted and barred against the world, lest anyone suspect not only her desolation but also her terrible fear that, if she let go, she might never regain control over the torrents of grief and anger.

Let us rejoice in having known them…

‘No, I didn’t lose anyone,’ she said. ‘I’m just curious.’

He was a nice lad. He gave a rueful sigh.

‘So you can’t point anyone out to me? Nobody wants to talk, and the only one I recognise is Drago di Luca.’

She jumped at the name. ‘Is he here?’

‘He’s the man over there, scowling.’

She saw where he pointed. Her first impression of Drago di Luca was of darkness. His hair was dark, and so were his eyes, which mysteriously managed to be piercing at the same time. Yet it wasn’t just a matter of appearance. This darkness was there inside him—in his mind, his heart, even perhaps his soul. Alysa shivered slightly.

His face seemed to be made from angles, with no roundness or softening anywhere. The nose was sharp and distinctive, the mouth and jaw firm, the eyes ferocious, even at this distance. The whole effect was one of hauteur, as though he defied anyone to dare speak to him.

‘You wouldn’t want to get on his wrong side, would you?’ the young man said. ‘Mind you, he’s got a lot to scowl about. His wife died here, and the grapevine says she’d left him for another man.’

It took a moment before Alysa could answer. ‘The grapevine? Doesn’t anyone know for sure?’

‘She was a lawyer, and the official story is that she was on a trip to see clients. If anyone dares to suggest otherwise di Luca comes down on them like a ton of his own bricks. He’s a builder, you see, takes on big projects—new stuff, restoring ancient buildings, that sort of thing.’

She looked again. Di Luca was tall and powerfully built, with broad shoulders and large hands, as though he personally constructed his projects.

‘I can see that people could find him scary,’ she mused.

‘I’ll say. He’s a big man in Florence. Someone suggested that he stand for the council and he laughed. He has all the influence over the council that he needs without spending time in meetings. They say he has the ear of every important person in town, and he pulls strings whenever it suits him. I tried to speak to him earlier and I thought he was going to kill me.’

She took a last look at Drago, and was disconcerted when he seemed to be looking back at her. Impossible, surely? But for a moment the surroundings faded to silence and all she could hear was a call that he seemed to be sending to her.

Stop being fanciful, she told herself.

‘I must be going,’ she told the journalist.

She drifted away, managing to keep Drago di Luca in her sights. She knew his face from a hundred obsessive searches of the internet. James had accidentally let slip that his new lover was called Carlotta. Then he’d clammed up.

Three weeks later the tragedy at the Pinosa Falls, near Florence, in Italy, had hit the headlines and she had learned from a newspaper that he was dead. Going through the list of names, she’d discovered Signora Carlotta di Luca, a young lawyer of great promise. Searching the internet, Alysa had discovered several articles about her, and some photographs.

They’d revealed a dark-haired, vivacious woman—not beautiful, but with a special quality. One picture had showed Carlotta with her husband and child, a little girl about four years old, who bore a strong resemblance to her mother. The man with them had been in his late thirties with a face that Alysa hadn’t been able to read—strong, and blank of emotion.

Was he also a brutal husband whose unkindness had driven his wife into the arms of another man, and so to her death? Seeing him today, she could believe it.

The internet had also contained depictions of the accident that no newspaper would have dared to publish—intimate, shocking pictures taken by mercenary ghouls, showing smashed bodies in terrifying detail. One had showed Carlotta and James, lying dead on the ground. James’s face had been covered with blood, but Alysa had recognised his jacket.

They’d still been in the chair, leaving no doubt that they had travelled together. She’d just been able to make out that in the last moments before death he and Carlotta had thrown themselves into each other’s arms.

Now it was over, she told herself. Ended. Finished. Forget it.

One night, as she’d stared at the computer screen, she’d felt shafts of pain go through her like knives. What had happened then had been too fast for her even to call for help. Stumbling to the bathroom, she’d collapsed on the floor and fainted. When she’d come round, she had lost James’s child.

Afterwards she’d been glad that she hadn’t confided in anybody. Now she could weep in privacy. But the tears hadn’t come. Night after night she’d lain alone in the darkness, staring into nothing, while her heart had turned to stone.

After giving the matter some rational thought she’d decided it was for the best. If she couldn’t cry now she would never cry again, which was surely useful. When you loved nothing, feared nothing, cared for nothing, what was there to worry about?

With that settled, she’d embarked on the transformation of her life. A shopping trip had provided her with a collection of trouser suits, all stunningly fashionable and costly. Next she’d lopped off the extravagant tresses that had marked her earlier existence. The resulting boyish crop was elegant, but she cared little. What counted was that it marked the end of her old life and the start of her new one.

Or just the end of life?

Her face too had changed, but in ways she couldn’t see. It was tense, strained, so that every feature was sharpened in a way that would have been forbidding if her large eyes had not softened her appearance. They were now her main claim to beauty, and more than one man had admired them, only to find them looking right through him.

She’d thrown herself into her career with renewed fervour. Her bosses were impressed. The word ‘partnership’ began to be whispered. A year after James’s death, she should have completely moved on. And yet…

She wandered slowly back to the water and looked up again to the place where James and Carlotta had swung up high, moments before the cable had snapped.

‘Why am I here?’ she asked him. ‘Why haven’t I managed to forget you yet?’

Because he was a ghost who haunted her even now, and in this place she’d planned to exorcise him. Foolish hope.

‘Leave me alone,’ she whispered desperately, closing her eyes. ‘In the name of pity, leave me alone.’

Silence. He wasn’t there, but even his absence had a mocking quality.

Beneath a huge tree a stone had been erected, bearing the names of the dead, with James near the bottom. She knelt and touched his name, feeling the stone cold beneath her fingers. This was as close to him as she would ever be again.

‘Sapevi che lui?’

The voice, coming from behind her, made her turn and find Drago di Luca towering over her, glowering. He looked immense, blotting out the sun, forcing her to see only him.

‘Sono Inglese,’ she said.

‘I asked if you knew the man whose name you touch.’

‘Yes,’ she said defiantly. ‘I knew him.’

‘Well?’ He rapped the word out.

‘Yes, well. Very well. Is that any business of yours?’

‘Everything concerning that man is my business.’

She rose to face him. ‘Because he ran off with your wife?’

She heard his sharp intake of breath and knew that he would have controlled it if he could. His eyes were full of murder. Much like her own, she suspected.

‘If you know that—’ he said slowly.

‘James Franklin was my boyfriend. He left me for a woman called Carlotta.’

‘What else did he tell you about her?’

‘Nothing. He let her name slip, then refused to say any more. But when this happened—’ She shrugged.

‘Yes,’ he said heavily. ‘Then every detail came out for the entertainment of the world.’

The crowd jostled her slightly and she moved away. At once he took her arm, leading her in the direction he chose, as though in no doubt of her compliance.

‘Are you still in love with him?’ he demanded sharply.

Strangely the question didn’t offend her as it would have done from anyone else. Their plight was the same.

‘I don’t know,’ she said simply. ‘How can I be? By now it should be all behind me, and yet—somehow it isn’t.’

He nodded, and the sight gave her an almost eerie feeling, as though she and this stranger were linked by a total understanding that reduced everything else to irrelevance.

‘Is that why you came?’ she asked.

‘Partly. I also came for my daughter’s sake.’

He indicated the child standing a little way off with an elderly woman who was leaning down, talking to her. It was the same child who’d been in the picture, a year older.

As Alysa watched, the two moved across to where the flowers lay, so that the little girl could lay down her posy in tribute. Looking up, she saw her father, and she smiled and began to run towards him, crying, ‘Poppa!’ At once he reached down to pick her up.

Alysa closed her eyes and turned slightly. When she opened her eyes again the child would be out of her sight line. Something was happening inside her, and when it had finished she would be all right. It was a technique she’d perfected months ago, based on computer systems.

It started with ‘power up’ when she got out of bed, then a quick run-through of necessary programs and she was ready to start the day. A liberal use of the ‘delete’ button helped to keep things straight in her head, and if something threatened her with unwanted emotion she hit the ‘standby’ button. As a last resort there was always total shut-down and reboot, but that meant walking away to be completely alone, which could be inconvenient.

Luckily, standby was enough this time, and after a moment she was able to turn back and smile in a way that was almost natural. She could do this as long as she aimed her gaze slightly to the right, so that she wasn’t looking directly at the child.

Drago was absorbed in the little girl, whom he was holding up in his arms. Alysa marvelled at how his face softened as he murmured to his daughter, words she could not catch.

The woman spoke in Italian. Alysa picked up ‘introdurre’, and guessed it meant ‘introduction’.

‘I am Signorina Alysa Dennis,’ she said.

The older woman nodded and switched to English.

‘I am Signora Fantoni, and this is my granddaughter, Tina.’

Tina had been watching Alysa over her father’s shoulder, her eyes bright. Now Drago set her down and she immediately turned to Alysa, holding out her hand, speaking English slowly and carefully.

‘How do you do, signorina?’

‘How do you do?’ Alysa returned.

‘We came here because of my mother,’ the child said, like a wise little old woman. ‘Did you know someone who died?’

Beside her, Alysa heard Drago give a sharp intake of breath, and her heightened sensitivity told her everything.

‘Yes, I did,’ she said.

Incredibly she felt a little hand creep into hers, comforting her.

‘Was it someone you loved very much?’ Tina asked softly.

‘Yes, but—forgive me if I don’t tell you any more. I can’t, you see.’

Without looking at Drago, she sensed him relax. He’d been afraid of what she might say in front of his little girl.

Tina nodded to show that she understood, and her hand tightened on Alysa’s.

‘It’s time to go home,’ Drago said.

‘Yes, I’ll be leaving too,’ Alysa agreed.

‘No!’ Drago rapped out the word so sharply that they stared at him. ‘I mean,’ he amended quickly, ‘I would like you to join us tonight, for supper.’

His mother-in-law frowned. ‘Surely a family occasion—’

‘We all belong to the same family of mourners,’ Drago said. ‘Signorina, you will dine with us. I won’t take no for an answer.’

He meant it, she could tell.

Drago stroked his daughter’s hair. ‘Go ahead to the car with your grandmother.’

Signora Fantoni glared, silently informing him of her disapproval, but he ignored her and she was forced to yield, taking Tina’s hand and turning away.

‘Poppa,’ Tina said, suddenly fearful. ‘You will come, won’t you?’

‘I promise,’ he said gently.

Relieved, she trotted away with her grandmother.

‘Since her mother died she’s sometimes nervous in case I vanish too,’ he said heavily.

‘Poor little mite. How does she bear it?’

‘With great pain. She adored her mother. Thank you with all my heart for guarding your words. I should have warned you, but she came to us so suddenly there was no time.’

‘Of course I was careful. I guessed you hadn’t told her very much.’

‘Nothing. She has no idea that Carlotta had left us. She thinks her mamma had to go away to visit clients, and was on her way home when she stopped off at the waterfall. If she hadn’t died, she would have been home next day. That’s what Tina believes, and what I want her to believe, at least until she’s older.’

‘Many mothers would have taken their child with them,’ Alysa mused.

‘Yes, but she abandoned hers, and that’s what I don’t want Tina to know. Even my mother-in-law has no idea. She too thinks Carlotta was on a business trip and meant to return. Why should I hurt her with the truth?’

‘No reason, so it’s better if I don’t dine with you.’

‘Not at all. I trust you. You’ve already proved that I can do so. You understood everything at once. Shall we go now?’

But suddenly Alysa’s alarm bells were ringing. This man was dangerous to her precarious peace. How dared he take her consent for granted? She should run away fast, take the next plane back to England and safety.

‘Look, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘But I never agreed to this. I have to go home.’

‘Not before we’ve talked,’ he said firmly.

Her anger rose.

‘Don’t try to give me orders,’ she flashed. ‘We’ve only just met, and you think you can dictate to me? Well, you can’t. I’m going.’

She tried to turn away but he gripped her arm.

‘How dare you?’ she snapped. ‘Let me go at once.’

He gave no sign of obeying her demand.

‘Only just met,’ he scoffed. ‘You know better than that.’

She did, and it was like a blow to the heart. They had known each other only a few minutes, yet their shared knowledge gave them a painful intimacy, isolating them together, facing the whole world on the far side of a glass barrier.