In one split instant, she realised that she had made a fatal error. She had hoped to quench Riccardo’s curiosity by producing a fiancé and she had also, she’d thought, killed two birds with one stone because she’d figured that a fiancé would show him just how much her life had moved on.
She should have known that his curiosity over Ben would not have politely stopped the minute she’d hopped in her little car and driven away. Riccardo was not a polite person. If he hadn’t bumped into her at that club, then sooner or later he would have tracked her down, because he would have wanted to meet the man he thought she was intimately involved with.
He was staring at her, waiting for her to respond, and knowing that with each passing second of silence her discomfort was increasing.
Casually he let his eyes drift through the room. Pale colours. Not what he would have expected from a woman with a deeply passionate nature, but then maybe she was trying to stifle that passion. A small flat-screen television was perched on top of an antique pine bookcase. And in front of that row of books…
Riccardo stood up and strolled towards the bookcase, then he squatted down and looked at the framed pictures. They were all of the same person. He picked one up and stood up.
‘Who is she? That niece of yours in Australia?’
Charlotte literally couldn’t answer because her vocal cords seemed to have seized up. Nor could she get to her feet and do something useful like snatch the photo from him. Not when her legs had turned to lead.
Nor did she have to, because as his question hung in the silence the sound of the doorbell was already answering his question.
‘Are you going to get that?’ He replaced the photo on the shelf, but remained standing where he was. ‘Might be someone important.’
Charlotte stood up shakily and looked at him.
‘Yes. Yes, I’m sure it will be…’
CHAPTER FIVE
GINA had been to the corner shop with Amy and her mum and had returned the proud owner of a very large bag of teeth-destroying sweets. Despite a daily diet of healthy foods, and stern chats about the horrors of eating sweets, she still saved her pocket money for her weekly sugar fix. For once, Charlotte didn’t frown, shake her head and tell her that there was no way she would be allowed to eat the lot in one go. In fact, she opened the door and stood there, looking at her beautiful daughter who bore such a stunning resemblance to the man sitting in her lounge.#p#分页标题#e#
‘Are you feeling sick, Mum?’ Gina frowned anxiously. ‘You could have one of my sweets, if you like,’ she said kindly. ‘But not any of the orange ones.’
‘Come in, baby.’
Gina looked at her mother in alarm. This was not the normal Saturday sweet-buying routine. She popped a Fruit Pastille nervously into her mouth and was even more alarmed when nothing was said. ‘I promise I’ll tidy my room right now,’ she declared.
‘There’s someone I think you need to meet, Gina.’
‘Is it Mr Forbes?’ Her eyes began to well up. ‘Because it wasn’t my fault that I forgot to do my homework!’
‘You forgot to do your homework?’ Charlotte was momentarily distracted, then she remembered Riccardo in the lounge and gave Gina a reassuring smile. ‘No, it’s not Mr Forbes.’ Very gently she helped her daughter out of her puffy black coat, then the black boots, until she was left just in her pair of jeans and long-sleeved black jumper. Charlotte had given up trying to coax her daughter into pink a long time ago.
‘Okay?’ Charlotte asked, and Gina nodded and slipped another sweet into her mouth which, pleasantly surprised, she got away with.
Charlotte was holding Gina’s hand as they walked into the lounge to find Riccardo standing by the window, arms folded. They both stopped by the door and, on a roll, Gina dipped her hand into the bag of sweets, only for Charlotte to relieve her of it and place it on a side table.
‘Riccardo, I’d like you to meet Gina.’
Gina stood stock still by her mother’s side and stared unblinkingly at the man looking at her.
‘That’s a pretty name,’ Riccardo said, for want of anything better. He had next to no experience of children. As an only child, there had been no nephews or nieces. ‘How old you are?’ he asked, discomfited by the silence that greeted his trite remark.
‘Gina’s eight,’ Charlotte said quickly, waiting to see if the penny would drop. But of course it didn’t. There was no reason for him to think that Gina was her daughter, and in the absence of that crucial piece of information she would just be a random kid to him.