Chapter 15 #2
She settled on her haunches next to the nearest box and opened a lid, finding yet another stash of linen.
Whoever the mysterious Camilla had been, she’d had impeccable taste.
Egyptian cotton sheets and the very best quality hundred per cent duck-down quilts – a bit unnecessary in Brisbane but too beautiful to shove in a cupboard and ignore.
As she reached in to pull out the next sheet her hand knocked against something hard and she peered in. Something was wrapped in the sheet, about the size of a large book but not as bulky. Could this be the elusive photos Alessandro had assured her were in one of the boxes?
She’d almost forgotten about them over the intervening weeks and all their distractions.
Nat’s heart tripped in her chest as she gingerly unfolded the fabric to find the back of a photo frame staring at her. A pang of something she couldn’t identify squeezed through her belly.
Was she ready to come face to face with Camilla?
Her hand shook a little as she turned it over but she needn’t have worried. It was a photo of Juliano as a baby. He was sitting like a little chubby Buddha in a sailor suit with a little sailor hat plonked artfully on his head. He was grinning at the camera, one hand stroking a sleek black cat.
She smiled. She couldn’t help it. Juliano looked so happy. Loved, content, secure. Not a worry in the world – as it should be. So different to the boy she’d first met. How unfair was it that in only a few short years after this candid snap his whole world had turned upside down?
The resemblance to his father also struck her.
Looking at Juliano, she had a glimpse of what a young Alessandro must have looked like.
Dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin and cherubic lips.
She traced Juliano’s mouth with her finger, so like his father’s.
And that sparkle in his eyes. One that she was seeing more and more of in Alessandro’s gaze these days.
He must have been a beautiful baby.
She dipped into the box, eager to see more, her hands finding the tell-tale signs of more frames wrapped in sheets. She pulled them out one by one, unwrapping them like Christmas presents, each one a moment captured in time, a window, an insight into Alessandro’s life.
Most of the frames held pictures of a solo Juliano at various stages of his life, chronicling his four years.
Crawling. Walking. His first birthday party.
But there were two with other people. One with an older Italian-looking woman holding Juliano in what appeared to be a christening gown.
Alessandro’s mother? Or maybe his aunt? Valentino’s mother?
And the other with Alessandro on the London Eye, the magnificent Houses of Parliament forming an imposing backdrop.
Juliano looked about two and both he and Alessandro were pointing at something outside the glass bubble and beyond the view of the camera.
It was obviously a candid shot, father and son caught in fierce concentration, not smiling, their brows wrinkled, their faces frozen in serious contemplation.
It was strikingly similar to how they’d both looked when she’d first met them.
Unsmiling, serious. But there was an ease in the older photograph that hadn’t been evident then.
Their heads were almost touching, Alessandro’s hold was loose and comfortable and Juliano’s little arm around his father’s neck spoke volumes about his innate trust.
Nat dragged her gaze away from the photo and put it aside, delving for more.
The next several frames were academic qualifications of Alessandro’s.
She spent a few moments trying to decipher the formal Italian, practise her rusty command of the language.
But it was too academic for her and she put them aside with a mental note to make sure this weekend they tackled Alessandro’s office.
The box was almost empty now, with just two folded sheets sitting on top of some plump cushions. Without looking, Nat knew these were the ones. Finally, she’d get to see the woman who had won Alessandro’s heart and for whom he still grieved.
Oddly, she hesitated. After weeks of internal speculation about Alessandro’s wife she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. What if she was simply the most gorgeous creature she’d ever seen?
Could her ego stand that?
And yet there was a part of her that needed to know and she cursed it.
Cursed her innate female curiosity. Her vanity.
What had Camilla Lombardi looked like? Beautiful, no doubt.
Glamorous too, she’d bet. She couldn’t see Alessandro, a breathtakingly handsome man who must have had his pick of women, marrying anyone less than stunning.
But had she been dark and exotic like Alessandro or pale and elfin or maybe a glamorous redhead with milky skin and green eyes?
She stared down at the sheets. Was she ready to come face to face with Alessandro’s dead wife?
The woman who’d claimed his heart. She drew in a ragged breath at how disconcerting it was to think of him being loved by another woman.
Think that even when he was buried deep inside her, pounding away, his heart belonged to someone else.
Goosebumps marched across her skin and she rubbed her arms. This was stupid! She had no right to such thoughts. She and Alessandro were no more than convenient lovers. And besides, his wife was dead.
Did it really matter what she looked like?