CAROL MARINELLI - Hired - Mistress - Wanted - Mistress and Mother / His Private Mistress / The Millionaire's Secret Mistress

They ate in more amicable silence now, the mood more relaxed, and Matilda finally addressed the issue that they were, after all, there for.

‘It would help if you could tell me a bit about Alex—her likes and dislikes.’

‘She loves water,’ Dante said without hesitation. ‘She also…’ He broke off with a shake of his head. ‘It’s nothing you can put in a garden.’

‘Tell me,’ Matilda said eagerly.

‘Flour,’ Dante said. ‘She plays with dough and flour…’

‘The textures are soothing,’ Matilda said and watched as Dante blinked in surprise. ‘I found that out when I was researching for the hospital garden. A lot of autistic children…’ She winced at her insensitivity, recalled that it was only a tentative diagnosis and one that the family didn’t want to hear. ‘I’m so—’

‘Please, don’t apologise again,’ Dante broke in with a distinct dry edge to his voice. ‘It’s becoming rather repetitive. Anyway,’ he said as Matilda struggled for a suitable response, ‘it is I who should apologise to you: I embarrassed you earlier when I told you about my wife. You can probably gather that I’m not very good at telling people. I tend to be blunt.’ He gave a very taut smile and Matilda offered a rather watery one back, reluctant to say anything in the hope her silence might allow him to elaborate. For the first time since she’d met him, her instincts were right. She watched as he swallowed, watched as those dark eyes frowned over the table towards her, and she knew in that second that he was weighing her up, deciding whether or not to go on. Her hand convulsed around her knife and fork, scared to move, scared to do anything that might dissuade him, might break this fragile moment, not even blinking until Dante gave a short, almost imperceptible nod and spoke on.

‘Fifteen months ago, I had a normal, healthy daughter. She was almost walking, she smiled she blew kisses, she waved, she was even starting to talk, and then she and my wife were involved in a car accident. Alex was strapped in her baby seat. It took two hours to extricate my wife and daughter from the car…’ Matilda felt a shiver go through her as he delivered his speech and in that moment she understood him, understood the mask he wore, because he was speaking as he must work, discarding the pain, the brutal facts, the horrors that must surely haunt him. And stating mere facts—hellish, gut-wrenching facts that were delivered in perhaps the only way he could: the detached voice of a newsreader. ‘Jasmine was unconscious, pronounced dead on arrival at hospital.’ He took a sip of his drink, probably, Matilda guessed, to take a break from the emotive tale, rather than to moisten his lips. But other than that he appeared unmoved, and she could only hazard a guess at the torture he had been through, the sheer force of willpower and rigid self-control that enabled him to deliver this speech so dispassionately. ‘At first Alex, apart from a few minor injures, appeared to have miraculously escaped relatively unscathed. She was kept in hospital for a couple of nights with bruising and for observation but she seemed fine…’

Dante frowned, his eyes narrowing as he looked across to where Matilda sat, but even though he was looking directly at her, Matilda knew he couldn’t see her, that instead he was surveying a painful moment in time, and she sat patient and still as Dante took a moment to continue. ‘But, saying that, I guess at the time I wasn’t really paying much attention…’ His voice trailed off again and this time Matilda did speak, took up this very fragile thread, wanting so very much to hear more, to know this man just a touch better.

‘You must have had a lot on your mind,’ Matilda volunteered gently, and after a beat of hesitation Dante nodded.

‘I often wonder if I failed to notice something. I was just so grateful that Alex seemed OK and she really did appear to be, but a couple of months later—it was the twenty-second of September—she started screaming…’ He registered Matilda’s frown and gave a small wistful smile. ‘I remember the date because it would have been Jasmine’s birthday. They were all difficult days, but that one in particular was…’ He didn’t elaborate, he didn’t need to. ‘I was getting ready to go to the cemetery, and it was as if Alex knew. When I say she was screaming, it wasn’t a usual tantrum, she was hysterio , deranged. It took hours to calm her. We called a doctor, and he said she was picking up on my grief, that she would be fine, but even as he spoke, even as I tried to believe him, I knew this was not normal, that something was wrong. Unfortunately I was right.’

‘It carried on?’

Dante nodded.

‘Worse each time, terrible, unmitigated outbursts of rage, and there’s no consoling her, but worse, far worse, is the withdrawal afterwards, her utter detachment. I spoke to endless doctors, Hugh was concerned, Katrina in denial…’

‘Denial?’

‘She refuses to admit there is a problem. So do I too at times, but I could not pretend things were OK and Katrina was starting to get…’ he stopped himself then, took a sip of his drink before continuing. ‘After a few months I took Alex home to Italy—I thought a change of environment might help. And, of course, it did help to have my family around me, but Hugh and Katrina were devastated,’ Dante continued. ‘They’d lost their daughter and now it seemed to them that I was taking away their granddaughter. But I had no choice and for a while Alex improved, but then suddenly, from nowhere, it all started again.’

‘So you came back?’

‘For now.’ Dante shrugged. ‘I am back in Australia to try and sort things out and make my decision. I have a major trial coming up in a week’s time so I am still working, but I am not taking on any new cases. You see now why it seemed pointless to renovate the garden when I do not know if Alex will even be here to enjoy it. But I think that Hugh and Katrina are hoping if they can do something— anything —to improve things, there is more chance that I will stay.’

‘And is there?’ Matilda asked, surprised at how much his answer mattered to her. ‘Is there a chance you might stay?’

‘My family is in Italy,’ Dante pointed out. ‘I have two brothers and three sisters, all living near Rome. Alex would have her nona , nono and endless cousins to play with, I would have more family support, instead of relying on Katrina and Hugh, but…’ He halted the conversation then, leaving her wanting to know more, wanting a deeper glimpse of him. Wondering what it was that kept him here, what it was that made him stay. But the subject was clearly closed. ‘It cannot be about me,’ Dante said instead, giving a tight shrug, and there was a finality to his words as he effectively ended the discussion. But Matilda, wanting more, attempted to carry it on.

‘What about your work?’

‘I am lucky.’ He gave a dry smile. ‘There is always someone getting into trouble, either here or in Italy—and being bilingual is a huge advantage. I can work in either country.’

‘Doesn’t it bother you?’ Matilda asked, knowing that she was crossing a line, knowing the polite thing to do would be to leave well alone, but her curiosity was piqued, her delectable salmon forgotten, barely registering as the waiter filled her wine glass. ‘Defending those sorts of people, I mean.’

‘I believe in innocent until proven guilty.’

‘So do I,’ Matilda said, staring into that brooding emotionless face and wondering what, if anything, moved him. She’d never met anyone so confident in their own skin, so incredibly not out to impress. He clearly didn’t give a damn what people thought of him; he completely dispensed with the usual social niceties and yet somehow he managed to wear it, somehow it worked. ‘But you can’t sit there and tell me that that guy who killed—’