The Heir From Nowhere (7 page)

Another sigh of relief. He was gone.

And yet still she was unable to get the picture of man and machine out of her head. She shouldn’t have looked. She’d tried to resist. But the temptation to steal just one more glance had been too much.

So she’d peeked over her shoulder and seen him standing there alongside that car of his, watching her, his arms crossed, his eyes shaded by dark glasses that may have covered his eyes but did nothing to hide the intensity of his expression.

So intense she’d had to catch her breath as sensation had skittered up her spine. The sleek black car looked like sin. Its owner had looked even more dangerous. More potent, reminding her of some of the ads in the motoring magazines Shayne had sometimes pored over, except the car would be positioned strategically at the
very edge of a cliff top or on a highway next to a rolling surf beach, places that matched driver and machine for pure unbridled beauty. Not places like Spinifex Avenue, with its drab houses and front yards filled with dead gardens and rusting car bodies.

Whoever Dominic Pirelli was and wherever he came from, he did so not belong here.

With a sigh, she pushed herself away from the door and through the near empty lounge room to the kitchen. She dropped her bag on the table, snapped on the kettle and flicked through the mail while she waited for the water to boil.
Great.
All window envelopes—electricity, rates and … Her heart tripping faster in her chest as she recognised the name of the legal aid office Shayne was using. What did they want now? She tore open the envelope and pulled out the letter, scanning its contents, her mind refusing to believe what her eyes were telling her.

She collapsed onto one of the two remaining mismatched chairs, gutted that he could do this to her. He’d already taken the car and most of the furniture. He’d told her he’d wanted nothing else but a divorce from her ever again.

She read the letter again, slower this time in spite of a heart beating like thunder that sent panic coursing around her body, but the words remained unchanged, their meaning starkly clear.

Shayne wanted a property settlement agreed as quickly as possible. Only now he was claiming half the house—the house that had been her mother’s pride and joy, the house her mother had left her in her will.
Her house.

And if he got that, there was no way she could pay
him out without selling and then where would she go? Where would she live?

What the hell was she supposed to do?

Dominic reached an intersection, knew he should turn right for the highway but inexplicably turned left instead, wending his way through streets marked with signs long past their use-by date. He didn’t need them anyway. He’d escaped his past a long time ago, he’d thought, but his past was still there, buried deep inside that box, waiting for the opportunity to burrow its way out.

His heart hammering, he slowed as he passed a tired shopping centre where all the windows wore security grilles and where half the shops were empty, feeling a strange lurch in his gut to see the laundromat shabbier but still open for business. His mother had found him crying in there, hiding behind the row of machines, bleeding from the split in his ear where a rock had caught him and from where he’d slid on gravel and taken the skin off both knees. He’d been ashamed he’d run. Ashamed he’d been caught. But most of all he’d been ashamed he’d cried.

And right there on the floor of the laundromat, amidst the steam and the hum and clang of a dozen machines, his mother had hugged him tight and cried right along with him. She would make it better, she promised him. She would take him away from his horrible school and the bullies who hated anyone who was good at anything. She would buy them both a house by the sea like Nonna and Poppa always talked about buying, somewhere he could be happy.

And his tears had dried as she’d woven her magic promises and spun a golden future for them both that he
would dream about every night in bed, just waiting for the day, because his mother worked so hard and he knew she would shift heaven and earth to make it happen.

The shopping centre fell behind, his car seemed to be on autopilot, unravelling the years as it wended its way through the suburb until he was there, crawling along the narrow street to number twenty-four, more afraid now of what he would remember than what he would find. He turned up the airconditioning, his palms sweaty against the wheel as he passed the tiny playground where his poppa had watched him play when his mother was working, his poppa busy carving a piece of wood he’d pull from his pocket. He remembered watching the shavings curl as he worked the tool through the wood, creating another tiny masterpiece. And he remembered running back to the house at dinner time, and the smell of rich tomato dishes that met him, and Nonna in the kitchen wearing a white apron and letting him stand on a chair and taste the minestrone from what seemed then like a massive wooden spoon.

And then he did a double take when he got to number twenty-four, or what was left of it, little more than a burned-out shell, the tiled roof caved in and with police tape still stuck between poles. He got out of the car and stood there on the side of the road, the air still tainted with the smell of ash and burning.

Gone. All gone now. His grandparents and the fragrant kitchen. His mother and her promises and dreams. Even the very house where he’d nursed her in her final weeks before the tumour that stopped her in her tracks had claimed her for its own.

All gone.

‘You from the insurance company?’ A grizzled old man wearing a white singlet and shorts stood watering
a stringy row of tomato plants next door with a bucket, clearly more interested in the stranger with the flash car.

Dominic shook his head. ‘What happened, do you know?’ And the old man frowned as he looked at what was left of the house. ‘Bad business. Some feud between some local school kids, barely out of primary school, not that they didn’t know what they were doing. A gang of them came around and threw home-made Molotov cocktails through the windows. The wife and I heard the crash. By the time we came out to see what was happening, the place was going like a bonfire. Too quick for the firies.’

God.
‘What about the people who lived here? Are they okay?’

‘Yeah. How they made it out in time, I don’t know. Single mum with a couple of kids. Another one on the way. A miracle they all made it out alive, we reckon.’

‘She was pregnant.’ He wasn’t really asking. He was thinking, his eyes on the burned-out shell of the house where he’d grown up.

‘Yeah. It’s a miracle, all right.’

A miracle? It sounded more like hell on earth to him. What if this had happened three streets away? What if they’d got the wrong house? What if another woman wasn’t fast enough to get out?

He imagined the fear the woman must have felt. Imagined the panic at the crash of windows and the heat from the flames and the desperation to get herself and her children out before they might succumb to the fire and the smoke. What kind of experience was that for anyone to go through, let alone a pregnant woman? Let alone her unborn child?

How could he now drive away and leave her here, exposed to who only knew what danger?

How could he calmly head home and leave his baby behind?

It wasn’t going to happen.

Something else would have to be organised. An apartment. A six month lease. It would work. Now he just had to make them see that.

Angie was still at the kitchen table clutching the letter when the knock came, loud and purposeful. She jumped and swiped a tissue over her cheeks, mopping up what she could of her tears. What now? Was Shayne already sending around real estate agents to hasten the process?

The knock came again, more insistent this time. Whoever it was wasn’t going away. She sniffed and stole a glance through the window, frowning when she saw a familiar-looking black car outside. Why was he back? Surely he hadn’t changed his mind. Although the way this day was going …

She opened the door with the safety chain in place, just enough that they could talk through the crack, not enough that he could see into the empty lounge room within. But even the small sliver of him was enough to remind her of his sheer power and presence. She could feel his aura like a blanket of heat. ‘What do you want?’

‘Let me in. I have to talk to you.’

‘What about?’

‘You expect me to talk through a crack in the door? I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not about to mug the woman carrying my child.’

She sighed. Did it really matter if he found the truth
out now rather than later? There was no way she could hide the truth for ever. She pushed the door closed, released the safety chain and reluctantly opened her house to him, knowing it would inevitably result in baring her soul.

‘I’ve got a proposal for you,’ he said, oblivious to her discomfort as he strode past her, the woody tang of his masculine scent curling into her senses. She breathed it in, wondering how just a scent could convey a sense of power and luxury. ‘When will your husband …’

He stopped, staring at the near empty room and she saw it through his eyes—the sole armchair and old television set, a rickety side table with a stack of library books on pregnancy and birth and a star-shaped ticking clock on the wall that had been there for ever.

He turned, slowly and purposefully. ‘What the hell is going on? Is this how you live?’ He peered closer at her face. ‘Have you been crying?’

Lids fell shut over eyes that still felt scratchy raw. She prayed for strength. Because the disdain was back in his voice and his words and his body language. The censure was back. And if he offered her pity she’d have the whole damned trifecta.

‘There was more furniture,’ she said, avoiding the second part of his question.

‘What did you do? Sell it to buy a tin of beans?’

No, damn it!
She wheeled away. Headed for the kitchen. She was wrong. She couldn’t do this now. She didn’t need it.

She snapped the kettle on again, determined this time to have that cup of tea she’d promised herself, but then she turned to get the milk and he was right there, shrinking the kitchen with his height and those damned broad shoulders as he took in the boxes in one corner, stacked
with crockery and glasses from the dresser Shayne had decided he’d like. ‘Are you packing? Are you going somewhere?’

‘No!’ He was standing between her and the fridge. She gave up on the milk. Pulled a cup instead from a cupboard and dropped in a herbal tea bag. Stood there with her arms crossed and her back to him while the kettle roared back into life.

‘Then do you want to tell me what the hell is going on?’

The roar from the kettle became a burble, the burble became a shrill thin whistle and her nerves stretched to breaking point.

‘What are you trying to hide?’

She reached out a hand to turn it off but he caught it and spun her around so fast she was left breathless. Or maybe it was just the touch of his big hand around her wrist, the heat of his fingers imprinting on her flesh and the impact of six foot something of potent male standing within inches of her. ‘Tell me!’

‘Fine!’ she said over the noise from the kettle. ‘Shayne took the furniture, okay!’

‘Why? Why would he take it?’

The kettle screamed, steam billowing in hot damp clouds around her. ‘So he could shack up with his teenage girlfriend. Why do you think? And now do you think I might turn that off?’

‘Shayne’s gone?’ He let her go and stepped back as she turned and pulled the plug and the fever pitch screaming wound down. Pieces of the puzzle slipped into place—her unwillingness to talk about him, her circling the issue whenever he was mentioned, the fact she’d gone to their meeting today alone.

Because her jerk of a husband had left her for someone else. ‘When did this happen?’

She shrugged, filled her cup with water and dunked her tea bag. He waited while she performed the action the requisite number of times before dropping the tea bag into the sink, where it landed with a splat. Then she turned and leaned back against the sink, cradling the cup in her hands. ‘He moved in with his girlfriend two months ago.’

She could have been reciting a shopping list, her voice was so calm, belying the obvious trauma that underpinned her words.

Two months ago? How long had they known about the mix-up? Was it a coincidence? ‘Why did he leave you?’

Her blue eyes turned misty and desolate as she stared into her tea. ‘Because I refused to have the abortion.’

He wheeled away, his hands in his hair. ‘Your husband didn’t want you carrying someone else’s child.’

‘Strangely enough, no.’

‘So you sacrificed your marriage for the sake of my child?’

She laughed, or attempted to at least before it became a hiccup instead and jerked her hands so that hot tea nearly sloshed over the top of her cup. She put it down on the bench beside her. ‘I’m hardly that noble. I think my marriage was over a long time ago. I was just the last to know. He decided he might as well move in with his girlfriend when he learned it wasn’t his baby I was carrying and when I refused to accept the clinic’s offer to fix things.’

He just nodded, amazed at the inner strength of a woman he knew from experience could get blown over by a decent gust of wind, thankful for that inner strength,
thankful for her circumstances. It suited him that the husband was gone. She would have no choice now.

He looked around the room, taking in the dated fittings and faded decor. The room was clean, he’d give her that much, but it was tired, as tired as this woman had looked when he’d met her today. ‘So now you live here alone?’

She nodded.

‘What about your family? Are they close?’

She shook her head. ‘Mum died a few years back. I was an only child.’

‘Your father?’

‘I never knew him.’

Better and better.
‘So who looks after you?’

‘I look after me, Mr Pirelli,’ she huffed, finding some of that lion-hearted feistiness she tapped into from time to time. ‘I’m not a child.’

As much as he admired her courage, anger curled the corners of his senses. Her bastard husband had walked out on her. He’d abandoned her, leaving her pregnant and alone in a house in a suburb that only the brave-hearted or the criminal or those who couldn’t afford to move out would choose.