Dante's Unexpected Legacy(42)

                ‘My pleasure, signora.’ He turned to Tom. ‘I saw your daughter yesterday, and she looks very well. You are thrilled to have a grandchild, yes?’

                ‘I am indeed.’ Tom bent to brush a kiss over Bea’s curls. ‘Though I look on this one as my own, too.’

                Grace gave her grandchild a kiss, then blew one to Rose and Dante and hurried Tom away.

                ‘Signor Morley does not approve of me?’ said Dante, frowning.

                ‘Of course he does.’ Rose looked down to see Bea eyeing Dante in speculation.

                ‘Bath time,’ she announced.

                He smiled. ‘Then perhaps I shall see you later when you are ready for bed.’

                Bea looked at her mother. ‘I want to show him my ducks.’

                ‘Are you up for that, Dante?’ asked Rose.

                ‘I am honoured,’ he assured her and smiled down at Bea. ‘You have many ducks?’

                She nodded importantly. ‘Lots and lots.’ She held up her arms to him. ‘Up,’ she ordered, then intercepted a look from her mother and dazzled Dante with her most winning smile. ‘Please?’

                He lifted her in the practised way of a man used to small children. ‘So tell me where to go, per favore—that is how I say please,’ he informed her.

                Rose checked that all was well in the oven and then followed Bea and Dante upstairs to the small bathroom, which felt even smaller with the three of them inside it.

                ‘Down now,’ said Bea as her mother turned on the taps. She took a jar from the side of the bath and shook it. ‘Bubbles,’ she informed Dante. ‘You do it.’

                Dante smiled, entranced, as he obeyed, then widened his eyes in mock awe when Bea showed him a basket piled with rubber ducks. ‘You were right, piccola, you have many, many ducks.’

                ‘Right then,’ said Rose briskly. ‘Clothes off, Bea.’

                Dante backed away. ‘I will leave now.’

                ‘No!’ ordered Bea. ‘Play with me.’

                ‘She likes races with the ducks,’ said Rose, ‘but be careful or you’ll be soaked.’

                He smiled. ‘Non importa. I have been wet many times bathing Leo’s children; Mirella’s also.’

                After a spirited session with a chortling Bea and a flotilla of ducks, Dante’s hair was wet and his sweater so damp Rose took it away to put it in the dryer, and returned with an old sweatshirt acquired from one of her rugby-playing friends in college. ‘This will have to do for a while, I’m afraid,’ she said, averting her eyes from his muscular bronzed chest. ‘Time to come out, Bea.’

                ‘Mummy reads stories now,’ the child told Dante as Rose enveloped her in a bath towel.

                ‘You are a lucky girl,’ he told her. ‘No one reads stories to me.’

                She chuckled, shaking her damp curls. ‘You’re too big.’

                ‘True.’ He glanced down at Rose, who was rubbing so hard her child protested. ‘Do you think Mummy will let me listen while she reads to you?’