It was that desire for control that made her acceptance of her current situation all the more incredible. She seemed to be taking it all in stride. He should probably tell her about the other article, though she probably already at least suspected they’d have dug around in her past. Still…
She smiled at him and reached up to pat his cheek, like she knew the confusion that was currently running through his head.
“I never much believed in crying over spilt milk, as they say. It’s done. I can’t change it. And to a certain extent this was our purpose to begin with, so we can hardly fault them for doing what we want them to be doing. After our discussion last night…” She glanced up at him, barely meeting his eyes before looking away again. “Like I said, this is your life. You’ll have to deal with it forever. I can make do for a few weeks.”
Her mention of the night before brought back a few delectable images he would have loved to dwell on but she didn’t give him the chance.
She rose up on her toes and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, shocking him for the second time. “Now, let’s ignore the vultures as best we can and go see what the children are getting into.”
“Oh God,” Luca groaned. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
He was right. The girls were splashing about in the pool like they were under attack from a shiver of sharks, and were screaming just as loudly as if they were. He wasn’t sure how there was enough water left in the pool to actually swim in— most of it seemed to be on the patio. The women watching them had apparently given up trying to keep any sort of order. Mrs. Ballas sat on a lounge chair watching the chaos with a bemused expression on her face.
Elena was the only child not going completely crazy. She hung on the edge of the pool in the shallow end, staring out to sea. He couldn’t really blame her—it was an incredible view. With his house perched on a cliff, swimmers in the pool got an unobstructed view of the crystal clear turquoise waters of the sea. If he wanted to get closer, a path ran down the rocky hill to his own little slice of sandy shoreline, but from the pool, you could see for miles. The coastline of the island, crammed with whitewashed buildings with their bright blue and red roofs, the sailboats coming in and out of the harbors, the larger ocean liners and yachts farther out.
The little girl had found one of his favorite spots to just sit and contemplate, but he was a thirty-year-old man who’d gone through enough in his life to be jaded and cynical and in need of some natural therapy. She was a little girl, five at most. What sorts of things could be running through her head to keep her from playing like her friends in their newfound paradise?
“What’s with her?” he asked, nodding at Elena.
Constance bristled. “There’s nothing ‘with’ her.” She went back into the house, beckoning him to follow.
His interest piqued, he followed.
Constance glanced back outside before she spoke. “The other girls are all foster children, but Elena is an orphan. Her parents were killed in a car accident last year. She has no other relatives and needed a home. I’d already taken on more than I planned with my five girls, but she and Magdalena were friends and we thought she should be with someone she was close to. So I took her in. She’s a good girl, but she doesn’t talk much. She loses her temper frequently. I try to be there for her as much as I can, but she doesn’t really let anyone get close.”
Luca watched the little girl, not joining in on the fun even when the other girls tried to include her.
“You’re worried about her,” he said.
Every time she looked at Elena, Constance’s whole being shifted, like she was trying to pour positive energy into the little girl just by sheer will, not unlike what she had done with him the night before.
“Yes,” she answered. “She seems to like being in my company, but she’s been through too much and I can’t take it away, though I wish with every ounce of me I could. There’s only so much I can do for her.”
She gave him a half-hearted smile and went back out to sit beside Elena.
Luca frowned. The sadness he’d seen in her eyes created an ache in his heart he didn’t know how to deal with. What was this woman doing to him? He’d known her two days and already he was willing to rearrange his life just to put a smile on her face. Had she been anyone else that might not have been such a problem, but this particular woman would turn his life upside down and bring a whole lot of noisy, destructive baggage along with her.
Still, he wanted to try, and the thought shook him to his core.
“Joe,” he said.
The man was by his side in a second. “Yes, sir?”