A Taste Of Italy

‘Hello, Jack.’ Tiny Louisa held out her snuggly-grandma arms and smiled hugely as she enveloped him in a big hug. Louisa was the only person he’d suffer a hug from and the sight made Tammy smile too.

Jack emerged pink cheeked, grinned shyly, and he leaned up and kissed Louisa’s cheek. ‘Hello, Aunty Lou.’

‘You need fattening up, my boy. You and Paulo are like two skinny peas in a pod.’ She glanced fondly over at Paulo, who sat beside the window with an open book in front of him. ‘Paulo’s been forcing down my scones. Haven’t you, Paulo?’

Paulo smiled shyly at Louisa and kissed his fingers. ‘Delizioso.’

Tammy stepped in for her own hug, and she squeezed Louisa’s waist which suddenly seemed smaller than she remembered. She frowned. ‘You losing weight, Louisa?’

Louisa patted her round tummy. ‘Oh, I’m not cooking as much, though I’ve put on a pound or three since two more gorgeous Italians moved in.’

Tammy felt slightly reassured but decided she’d mention Louisa’s health to her dad next time she saw him.

She noticed Jack had wolfed down his scones by the time Peta and Nicola arrived. Misty and Ben’s girls were both fair-headed like their mother and Nicola stood half a head taller than her sister.

More hugs and more homemade strawberry jam and freshly whipped cream to be piled onto disappearing scones and then the children all trooped off to play outside. Tammy felt Paulo dragged his feet a little and she frowned after him.

She glanced at Louisa. ‘Maybe I should ring Montana? Paulo seemed happiest talking to Grace at the wedding.’ Grace was staying with Montana and Andy’s daughter while Gianni and Emma were on their first few nights of the honeymoon.

Louisa laughed. ‘She’ll be here soon. She and Dawn have been over every afternoon after school. The three get on very well.’

Tammy nodded, and helped Louisa carry their tea to the verandah. The women sat looking out over the green lawns, talked together easily while the children played and drank tea.

The sun shone on the red roof of the hospital across the road and fluffy white clouds made magical shapes in the blue of the sky. The breeze from the lake helped keep the temperature down and Tammy decided the two boys seemed to be getting on well enough.

The children’s games started simply, though even to a casual observer the boys competed for most stakes. They always seemed to be the last two to be found in hide-and-seek and were the fastest at finding people. Both were better than the girls at shooting hoops and it quickly became apparent how important it was to be the boy with the best score. Tammy shook her head as Jack whooped when he won the latest game.

The afternoon sun sank lower and Louisa went back inside to start dinner while Tammy flicked through a magazine as she watched them play.

Leon would be home soon, and her thoughts returned to the man who had erupted into her life with a compelling force she wasn’t prepared for.

She’d already seen his concern for Louisa but what was he like while he stayed here? Was he tidy and thoughtful? Did he wait to be served his meals or jump up to help? Was he a good father, attending to all Paulo’s needs? At the last thought she pulled herself up. It didn’t matter what the answer was to any of these questions, he was leaving on Sunday. And she was not going to waste her time wondering about things that didn’t concern her.

She called out to the children to suggest they finish off their games and come in. Stinky barked as he tried to join in and the sound echoed over the quiet, tree-lined street.

Tammy glanced at her watch again. He’d be here soon. The questions she’d asked herself itched like a raised rash at the back of her mind and she gave in to the urge to search out Louisa for some of the answers before it was too late.

Her mind wandered to whether or not Leon would visit her house tonight as well.

Wandered to the night after he left for his home country and how empty her den would feel.

Wandered to whether the tension she could feel heating between them could be contained to prevent an inferno, a conflagration that could damage them both as they went their separate ways in the very near future.

Her hip buzzed and she reached for her phone. It was Misty and she opened it with a smile.

Her smile fell at the unease plain in her stepmother’s voice. ‘I’ve got a bad feeling.’ Misty sounded shaky and Tammy felt her stomach drop. Misty went on. ‘Where’s your car?’

Tammy frowned into the phone. ‘Outside. Why?’

‘I’m coming over.’ Misty hung up.

Outside, the girls were happy to quit but the boys had one more point they wanted to settle and the ultimate test was Jack’s idea.

‘Just one last race. A longer one. I’ll race you past the last tree and around that car down the end of the road and back. No stopping.’

Paulo looked at the distance, pondering the slight incline in the hill over the rough stones and the fact that they both had bare feet. He’d always run well in bare feet. And he was fast.

‘Sì. Then we must go in, for my father will be here soon.’

‘You’re on.’ Jack looked at the girls. ‘Grace? You be starter.’

Paulo looked confused and Grace whispered, ‘I say, “Ready, set, go.” On “go” you run like the clappers.’

Paulo nodded. He understood ‘go’.

The other girls were silent as Grace counted. ‘Ready. Set. Go.’ The two boys took off like deer in the bush, along the path, down the hill, and Stinky ran with them, barking the whole way. The girls cheered as the two distant figures ran neck and neck and then split each side of the car as they came to it and turned for the return journey. Then a strange thing happened.

The car doors opened wide and two men got out and suddenly the boys disappeared. Almost as if they were sucked into the vehicle. Both of them. The doors shut and the car pulled away on the road out of town in a skid of gravel and the roar of an engine even the girls could hear.

All that was left was the dust and the tiny four-legged figure of Stinky chasing the black sedan down the road.

Grace blinked and looked at Nicky and Peta and then she spun on her heel and raced into the house. ‘Tammyyyyy. Someone’s taken them!’

Grace ran full pelt into Tammy, who’d just shut her phone and was staring at it as if trying to understand. She steadied the girl against her chest. When she realised Grace was crying, dread curled like a huge claw in her chest and she looked at the empty lawn. Where were the boys?

She thrust Grace aside into Louisa’s arms and rushed out into the street. A white car backed out of a driveway down the road and drove away; otherwise, the road was deserted in every direction. No Jack. No Paulo. Just Nicky and Peta with their arms around each other in fright outside the door.

Tammy spun on her heel. ‘Who took them, Grace?’ Her brain searched for a reason. More kidnappers? ‘What did they look like? It wasn’t a white car, was it? What were they driving?’

Grace sniffed valiantly and her mouth opened and closed helplessly. Louisa hugged the little girl into her side as the older woman, too, tried to make sense of what had happened.

Grace swallowed a sob that blocked her throat. ‘It was a black car.’ She sniffed hugely and then the words tumbled out. ‘It was parked down the road. The boys had a race and, when they ran past, men came out of the car and pushed them inside and drove off. Stinky’s run after them.’

Tammy grabbed the keys to her own car off the table. ‘Mind the kids, Louisa. I’m going after them.’

‘Is that wise?’ Louisa’s vice trembled. ‘It could be dangerous.’

‘Dangerous for them,’ Tammy snarled. ‘Ring Dad to find Leon. Let Leon ring the police if he wants to.’ Tammy was having trouble seeing through the thick fear in her head. How dare they take her son? And Leon’s.

‘They had black shirts and black trousers on,’ Nicky said suddenly.

‘And it was a car like Grandpa’s,’ Peta added.

Tammy’s brain was chanting Jack’s words over and over. You’d find me, wouldn’t you, Mum?

Peta’s words sank in as she threw her bag over her shoulder. ‘A Range Rover?’

Peta nodded. ‘Sort of. A big black four-wheel drive.’

‘Right, then.’ And Tammy was gone, running for her car and roaring away from the kerb as she fumbled with her seatbelt. They probably only had about three minutes head start on her and she knew the road. Misty’s phone call came back to her. ‘Where’s your car?’ And here she was in her car. She hoped to hell that Misty’s premonition had seen a good end to the scenario.

The winding road into Lyrebird Lake could be treacherous for those who didn’t know it. But then if they were Italians as she expected they were, they’d be used to driving on treacherous winding roads. Damn them. She pushed the pedal down harder and she flew past a gliding Maserati she barely recognised coming into town. A minute later her mobile phone rang and she snatched it up and didn’t even consider it unusual she knew who it was. ‘I can’t drive and talk.’

‘Put it on speaker.’ Leon’s order was calm, yet brooked no refusal. She flicked the speaker on impatiently and his voice echoed in the cabin. ‘Stop your car, Tamara. Do not chase these people.’

Her foot lifted off the accelerator and then pushed down again. ‘No. I won’t stop.’ She hung up and pushed the pedal down harder. And nearly ran over Stinky, who appeared as she rounded a bend.

She skidded to a halt, reversed, leaned over to the passenger’s side and opened the door. She breathed deeply in and out several times. She wasn’t surprised when she looked in the rearview mirror and Leon’s car was behind her.

Stinky’s tongue was hanging twice its length as he gulped air. ‘Get in, Stinky.’ Stinky leaned his paws on the frame and sighed. Such was his dedication to chasing the boys he didn’t have the energy left to jump in.

Tammy pulled on the handbrake, opened her door, dashed around the car and picked up the little dog, but before she could bundle him in, Leon pulled up behind her. He was out of his car in a flash.

‘Do not follow them. That’s an order. You do not understand and will cause more harm than help.’

His words dashed over her like a bucket of cold water and she didn’t reply as he went on implacably. ‘Your son will be safer if you do not confront them.’ His voice lowered. ‘And so will mine.’

Her footsteps stopped beside her car, as did the frozen focus that had consumed her, and she slumped, horrified again at what had happened and chillingly aware of how the fear in her chest was almost choking her. She turned and leaned her face on her arm against the roof of her vehicle and then she felt Leon’s hands as he pulled her back into his body.

She almost sank into him until she remembered he’d brought this on her. They’d taken Paulo and now he’d brought this agony to her when they’d taken Jack too. He wrapped his arms around her stiff body, but there was no yielding, no relief he could give her. Nothing would help the cold that seeped into her as if she were being slowly submerged in an icy blanket of dread. Her son had been abducted.

Her chest ached with the spiralling fear started by Misty’s call and the empty yard.

And they sped away further as she stood here. She yanked herself free of his embrace. He was letting them get away. ‘I could have caught them.’ She threw her head back and glared into his face. ‘Seen where they went.’

His voice was flat. Cold. Implacable. A stranger. ‘I will know where they went. Those who follow them are better prepared to apprehend than you or me. I told you I had people protecting my family.’

Great. That was just great. ‘And what about mine? Whose protection does my son have?’

‘My protection too, of course,’ he ground out. Her eyes flashed a deep fear at him that tore at his faith in his men and his belief he’d done the right thing to stop her. He’d done this to her. Why had he left Paulo again today? He’d created a pattern. The first rule of prevention. So much for his belief the threat had passed. So much for his efforts to not be too protective of his son. Now his nightmare had spilled over onto Tamara.

But he hadn’t believed they’d follow him here. It didn’t make sense. Why would they do such a thing? Was it not easier to wait until he returned to Italy? Even Gianni had thought danger in Australia highly unlikely. But thinking these thoughts brought no solace at this point.

She was waiting for a crumb of reassurance and he was too slow with it. ‘Of course he will be safe. You have to trust me.’

She stepped back, further out of his arms, and spun away. ‘You’re asking a lot,’ she threw over her shoulder as she paced. ‘To trust you with the most important person to me in the world.’

He knew it was such a huge thing she entrusted to him. Her shoulders were rigid with it. ‘I know,’ he said.

She narrowed her eyes as she turned to face him. With her arms crossed tight across her breasts as if to hold in the fear, she searched for a hint of unsure-ness or ambivalence on the rightness of his actions. He hoped there was none.

Did she trust him? It was achingly important she could. Her chest rose and fell in a painful rasping breath full of unshed tears that tore at his own pain like the claws of a bird.

He saw the moment she accepted there was nothing physical she could do. He’d taken that away from her but he’d had to, for her own safety, and for the boys. She sagged back against her car. ‘What happens now, then?’

‘We go back home and wait.’

She shook her head angrily at the passiveness of the action, then threw herself off the car and back into action. ‘I’m going to see Misty.’

CHAPTER SIX

‘MY MUM’S going to rip your arms off!’

‘And my father will see you in hell.’

Both boys looked at each other and nodded. The captors, three dark-clothed Italian men, laughed as they drove.

Jack screwed up his face at the men and patted Paulo’s leg. ‘Don’t worry, Paulo. She’ll come.’

Paulo hunched his shoulders. ‘It is my father who will come. And these dogs will pay.’ The bravado was wearing a little thin but it still helped the fear that crept up their arms and settled around their tight little bellies as they sat wedged between two burly men. Two small boys in a situation they shouldn’t have had to deal with.

‘How have we two of them?’ The Italian accent was coarser than Paulo’s dad’s and his partner shrugged.

‘Didn’t know which to take. We can get rid of the other one.’

In the back the boys huddled closer together.

Tammy parked her car outside Louisa’s house and left the door gaping as she ran straight into Misty’s arms. Ben came out of the house to meet them.

Leon heard Misty say, ‘I feel they’re fine. Honestly,’ and he grimaced at the strange comment. He passed Tammy’s open car door and shut it with tightly leashed control before he followed her in.

He felt suspended above himself, detached and icy cold as though he were peering down a long tunnel when all he wanted to do was find the people who had taken their sons and crush their throats. But he needed to stay calm for Tamara—and for the boys. He’d been speaking to his bodyguards and they had caught up with the car but were keeping distance between them. They had to find a way to stop the vehicle and keep the boys safe.

When he entered the residence it seemed the room was full of people. Louisa, her lined face white and shaking, stared at him as if she didn’t understand. Kidnappings and violence were not in her life and Leon moved swiftly across and folded her in his arms. He stroked her hair. Nothing like this would have ever happened before in Lyrebird Lake.

Leon remembered his hope he wouldn’t need to call on his brother’s help for just such a situation. Gianni wasn’t here but it seemed he’d get as many people as he needed. But for the moment he had to trust his own men and, now that he’d just contacted them, the Australian police. They would ring him if he could do anything.

And past his fear for his son was Tammy, and her son’s kidnapping, leaving Leon devastated he’d brought this on her by association, and regretful of her pain. His own agony was like a gaping wound in his chest and no doubt it would be as bad if not worse for a mother. Louisa shuddered in his arms and he rested his chin on the top of her grey head. Poor Louisa. Poor Tammy. And what of the boys?

The afternoon stretched into evening and then to night. Six hours after his return to the lake Leon stood tall and isolated in Tammy’s den. He searched her face for ways to help but he knew she wasn’t able to let herself relax enough to take the comfort he wanted to offer.

He carried the coffee he’d made her from the machine in the kitchen and the strong aroma of the familiar beans made him think of home. At home he would have more access to resources.

His arms ached to pull her against him and trans-fuse the strength she needed in the closing of this tumultuous day. Her distress left him powerless in a way he wasn’t used to and he placed the cup on the mantel, then sighed as he reluctantly lowered himself to the sofa to watch her. ‘I stay until we have them back.’

Tammy heard him. The coffee aroma drifted past her nose. She was glad he’d finally sat down. It gave her more room to pace and her eyes closed as she processed his words. Until we have them back. ‘I want my son.’ She wanted to wring her hands. ‘I want Jack now. I don’t want you.’

That wasn’t strictly true. She’d driven everyone else away—her father, her stepmother—but she’d been unable to evict Leon from her presence. He’d flatly refused to leave her. And she needed him near her so she could know she was kept in the loop. Despite her wall of pain she seemed to be able to draw some strength from Leon which seemed absurd when he was the reason she was going through this.

She reached for the cup and took a sip. It was strong, and black, as she liked it. She’d drunk her coffee that way since she’d been that impressionable teen who’d fallen for a man similar to this one. Or was that unfair to Leon?

What was it with her and men that attracted trouble and danger?

At sixteen Vincente Salvatore had taught her to love his language, his country, all things Italian, with a heady persistence that endeared her to him. An Italian with trouble riding his shoulders, hot-headed and hot-blooded. Then he blew it all away with a reckless abandon for right and wrong that left her with the realisation of just how dangerous his lifestyle was. She swallowed a half-sob in a gulp of coffee. Maybe Vincente’s friends could find Jack.

How on earth had she embroiled herself and her son in trouble without realising it? But she would have to deal with that. It was her fault. She couldn’t believe she’d been so irresponsible as to let the children out of her sight. Couldn’t forgive herself for daydreaming her way to negligence. Such stupidity could have cost Jack his life. And Paulo his.

It wasn’t as if she hadn’t known of the possibility of danger. Even though Leon had said it was past. And what had she been doing? Daydreaming about a man. Following Louisa for titbits of gossip about his presence at the old residence. Anything to feed her growing fascination for Leon.

Well, it would all stop. Now. She would promise anyone who would listen that the risk of danger to her family far outweighed any fleeting attraction this dark Italian held over her.

A bargain.

Jack and Paulo back safe and she’d never think of the man again. Honest.

She should have learned that she was destined to be brought down by her heart, and the menace of these Mediterranean men, her nemeses. Now their sons had paid the price.

Unfortunately, at this moment, it was hard to keep those thoughts clear in her mind because her shattered emotions were torn—torn between guilt for her negligence, spiralling fear for the outcome and the gnawing need for comfort from the very man who caused it all.

Louisa had been gathered up from the residence by her stepson and whisked away. And Leon was here, the only barrier to the emptiness of this house.

It was eerie how she could imagine the outside of her empty house, dark and forlorn in the moonlight, and she glanced out the window to the shifting shadows in the street outside. Strained her ears for imagined sounds and then turned abruptly from the window and put the cup down.

She even ran her fingertips along the mantelpiece as if to catch dust and at least do something useful. Her mind was fractured into so many fear-filled compartments and what-ifs she couldn’t settle.

She wanted both boys asleep in Jack’s room, with Stinky’s head on his paws as he watched his master—glancing at her every time she went in as if to ask if he could stay.

But the blue room at the end of the hall stayed empty like an unused shrine.

And Leon watched her.

It had taken until midnight for Tammy to decide she couldn’t stay at her father’s house. She’d said she wanted to be near Jack’s things. Leon had refused to allow her to go alone and he was still glad he’d come. But as he watched her, she glittered like glass in moonlight with nervous energy. Every sound made her jump, every creak of the polished floorboards made her shiver, and Leon ached for the damage he’d caused to this sleepy town and to this woman.

He patted the sofa beside him and held out his hand. ‘Come. Sit by me. Let me help you rest for a few moments at least.’

She turned jerkily towards him. ‘I can’t believe he’s not here.’ Staccato words stabbed the air in the room like little knives, tiny steel-tipped blades of guilt that found their mark on him.

‘They will have them by morning. My men have promised me.’ Leon rose to slide his arm around her stiff shoulders and pull her down to sit beside him so their hips touched. She was so cold and stiff and he nudged more firmly against her hip, offering comfort to both of them, and a safe place to rest if only for a moment, and if only she could.

‘Your men?’ She sniffed. ‘If they were so good the boys would never have been taken at all.’

‘Nobody expected this here. We were lucky they were still with us.’ Leon had his own demons. Paulo gone and he didn’t know if he was alive. Or Jack. Surely they would get them back.

There had been no demand yet. Would they discard the boy they didn’t need? Would they leave him alive? It had been his choice to delay the police while his men followed the trail initially.

The trail Tamara had wanted to chase. His first sight of her face as she drove past him like a woman possessed still affected him. Her little car pushed to its limits to the point where his more powerful motor could barely catch her. His throat tightened. ‘I can’t believe you pursued them in your car.’

She brushed the hair out of her eyes impatiently. ‘Why would I not?’ Her eyes searched his. ‘I could still be chasing them if you hadn’t stopped me. What if they’ve disappeared and we never find where they went? What, then?’

He shook his head at the thought. No! It would not be like that. He had to trust what his operatives told him. Tomorrow in the early morning, it would be okay. ‘I was terrified for you as well. What were you going to do if you caught them?’

Her eyes burned. ‘Whatever I had to. They have my son.’

And mine. She had no idea. And he did and should never have brought this on these people. He knew what loss and guilt did to people. ‘What you did was too dangerous.’

Another swift scornful search of his face. ‘For them?’

‘For you and for the boys.’

She shook her head. ‘For the first time in a lot of years I don’t know what to do. You tell me to wait. But how long must I wait? I want him now.’ Her shoulders slumped and slowly, like the deflation of an overstretched balloon, all the fight leaked out of her and she sagged against him as she buried her face in his shoulder.

He smoothed her hair. Had to touch her and try to soothe her agitation as she went on. ‘There’s never been such hard waiting. I’ve never had such fear. Make me forget the horror I can’t shake. Talk to me. Tell me something that helps.’

He pulled her onto his lap and hugged her, still smoothing her hair and whispering endearments she wouldn’t understand. Assuring her the boys would be returned. That he knew she was scared. That he was scared.

His hand travelled over her hair and his mind seemed to narrow its focus, the room faded until only the sheen of silk beneath his fingers existed. Rhythmically he stroked as he murmured until suddenly he began to speak more easily.

In his own language, not hers. All the things he’d bottled up for years but never said.

He said he knew how scared she was. How scared one could be in that moment of loss. He could taste his first moment of absolute fear and horror, all those years ago on the ocean, at fourteen, not yet a man but about to become one.

The storm upon them before his father realised, the sudden wave that washed he and his brother overboard, and his father throwing them the lifebuoy just as the boom smashed him and his mother into the water after them.

He’d grabbed Gianni’s collar and heaved him against his chest so his head was out of the water. He could remember that frozen instant in time. Them all overboard, Gianni unconscious and only he with something to cling to. He couldn’t let go of his brother and, screaming out against God, he’d watched his parents sink below the surface.

So alone in the Mediterranean under a black sky. It had grown darker as the night came; Gianni awoke, and he’d had to tell him of their parents’ fate.

Such fear and swamping grief as they’d bobbed in the dark, imagining sharks and trying not to move too much, chilled to the core, fingers locked to the rope of the buoy. Knowing they would die.

Their rescue had been an anticlimax. A fishing boat pulled them in. Then the week in hospital alone and grieving, with visits from lawyers and one old aunt and her change-of-life son who’d hated them both.

He’d vowed that day he would be strong. And he had been.

He’d married Maria as his parents had betrothed them, and finally they’d had Paulo. His heritage safe again.

Then Maria had died and Paulo had been almost taken. He’d realised his life could fall apart again any moment and he’d needed to see his brother, his only family.

He, who’d never spoke of anything that exposed his soul, poured it all out to Tammy. It eased the burden of guilt he carried to tell her how he felt, without the complication of her knowing. From somewhere within it was as if the walls he’d erected around his emotions began to crumble, walls he’d erected not just since Maria’s death, but since that lost summer all those years ago when he’d felt he failed his parents. Walls that prevented him being touched by feelings that could flay him alive.

He continued to murmur into her hair as her softness lay against his chest. His native tongue disguising the compromise and giving freedom to express the beginning of something he hadn’t admitted to himself as he held her warmth against his heart. Her healing warmth. The way she touched his soul. He told the truth.

How sorry he was to have brought this on her. How the lure of her physical attraction for him had begun to change to a more complete absorption. How she made him feel alive as he hadn’t felt for years, even if sometimes it was with impatience or frustration when she thwarted him.

How beautiful she was, how she’d captured his attention after their first dance at his brother’s wedding, how he’d never felt that connection before with another woman, even his wife, and that made him feel even worse.

How these past few days he couldn’t stay away, spent his mornings and afternoons dragging his thoughts away from her so he could concentrate on business—something he had never had trouble with before—when in fact he was waiting for the evening when he could call on her.

The lonely nights dreaming of her in her house a street away, staring out through the window all night so he could start the whole process again.

How he’d glimpsed the promise of what could have grown between them, but now that had changed. Had to change. Once the boys were returned he would sit on a plane and watch the ground fall away beneath him, knowing she was still in Australia. So she and Jack would be safe, apart from the danger that followed him.

Knowing the distance of miles would not be the only distance that grew between them every second. But he would. Because she would be safe. Her son would be safe. His life was too complicated for this, the ultimate complication, but he could never regret these past few days. And he would never forget her.

Tammy listened. Her head on his chest, the regular beat of his heart under her cheek as his liquid words flowed over her. Some words and phrases she didn’t catch but most she did, like the honesty in his voice and the gist of his avowal. The sad acceptance of his promise brought tears to her eyes.

When she lifted her face to his, he saw the tears and softness in her eyes and he could no more stop himself from kissing the dampness away than he could stop himself drawing breath. Her arms came up around his neck and her face tilted until she lay suspended below him, mute appeal his undoing.

He stood with her in his arms, cradled against him, and strode to her room, a dim and disconnected haven from the reality which they both sought to escape.

To hide in each other, buffer the pain of their fears with the physical, the warmth and heat of each other’s bodies. At the very least the release might let them sleep.

Tammy knew she would regret this. But there were so many huge regrets—this tiny one was nothing if it gave her some flight from the pain, and comfort to them both.