To her surprise, he cut the call after a brief conversation in Italian. ‘That was Luisa, to say that Nico is awake.’
Nico! Guilt swept through Kristen that she had forgotten about him while she had been in Sergio’s bed. It was ridiculous to feel shy with Sergio after she had made love with him but she couldn’t meet his gaze as she slid out of bed and quickly pulled on the shirt he had lent her, wincing as the material grazed her sensitised nipples.
‘I must go to him,’ she muttered. ‘I hope he hasn’t been sick again.’
‘Luisa assured me that he woke up full of beans, ate all his breakfast and now he’s playing with his train set. But I agree we ought to get up. We’re due to have lunch with my father in an hour, which means, regrettably, that we can’t spend the rest of the day in bed like we used to do.’ Sergio studied her pink cheeks speculatively. ‘Do you remember, cara, how sometimes we would make love for hours and only leave the bedroom when we needed food?’
‘Four years is a long time, and I don’t remember much about our affair,’ Kristen lied. Anxious to change the subject, she asked, ‘Do you know what happened to my clothes?’
‘The maid took them to be washed after Nico was sick over you. But in the wardrobe you will find a few outfits that I ordered for you from a friend who owns a boutique in Palermo.’
‘A few outfits’ turned out to be a whole range of clothes, from formal evening dresses to casual-wear that bore designer labels, which Kristen knew were completely out of her price range. ‘I don’t need all these clothes, and I can’t afford them,’ she said as she flicked through the rail. ‘You suggested that Nico and I should stay here for a couple of weeks so that he can have a holiday, but I’ll have to go back to my job in London...and I’ll be taking him with me.’
‘We have a lot to discuss,’ Sergio said non-committally. ‘Perhaps you can solve a puzzle for me. I sent a member of my staff to your house in Camden to bring back some of your clothes, but all Marco could find were a few items that look frankly as though they belong in a charity shop.’
Kristen shrugged. ‘That’s where I buy most of my clothes. You can find some real bargains if you look carefully.’
‘I’ll take your word for it. But if you buy second-hand clothes, why do you have thousands of pounds’ worth of credit card debts and bills for designer goods?’
Realising that she had no option but to tell him the truth, she sighed heavily. ‘I’m not in debt...but Mum owed a fortune when she died. The letters you saw from debt collecting agencies are trying to claim money from her estate. But Mum only had a few hundred pounds in savings, and that has already gone to her creditors.
‘Don’t think badly of her,’ she told Sergio fiercely, even though he’d not said a word. ‘I had no idea that she was so unhappy being married to my stepfather. She admitted that she only stayed with Alan because he was my gymnastics coach and she didn’t want to ruin my chances of success. But he was a very controlling man and he destroyed her confidence. She used to go shopping to make herself feel better, but it became a compulsion. It was a form of depression. She never even wore the things she bought; she just hid them at the back of the wardrobe.
‘When Alan found out that she had run up huge debts he refused to help her sort things out. The worry of it made her ill, and so I took charge of her finances and I’ve been trying to repay the money she owed. Even after Mum died, the debt agencies have still been hounding me.’
She glanced at Sergio, wishing she knew what he was thinking, but his expression gave nothing away.