Italian Marriage: In Name Only

‘Well, you never know—you might think differently when you look at it.’ She smiled at him.

The waitress brought his food and Victoria pushed her chair back from the table and got up. ‘Thanks for taking the time to listen to me,’ she said politely. ‘I hope you enjoy your lunch.’

After her appointment at the bank, Victoria picked Nathan up from kindergarten. And then following their usual routine she pushed him through the park in his stroller.

The sun was sending dappled light onto the path through the tracery of green branches and there was a fragrant smell from the eucalyptus trees. Hard to believe that on such a beautiful September day her life was falling apart. But it was. Because the bank had said no to her and that was her last hope.

Deep down she’d known that they wouldn’t extend her credit, but it was still the most dreadful disappointment. Now it seemed that everything she had worked so hard for was slipping away.

And what on earth was she going to tell her staff? They all seemed to have the utmost faith that she would sort the business out.

How had this happened? she wondered in anguish. How could she be the owner of a successful restaurant one moment and be staring bankruptcy in the face the next? The situation had crept up on her so gradually as to be almost insidious.

Nathan wriggled impatiently in his stroller. He wanted to get out and although he didn’t talk much yet he was making the fact very clear.

Victoria stopped and went around to unfasten his safety harness. ‘OK, honey, you can toddle for a while now,’ she told him softly, and he gave her a winning smile, his dark eyes sparkling up at her full of life and mischief.

At least she had Nathan, she thought, her heart swelling with love. He was the most important thing in her life. Everything else could be worked out.

But what would become of them now? The question made fear coil inside her like a snake. Everything she had was tied up in the business.

Victoria had experienced poverty as a child, had watched her parents scrimping and scraping to get by. They’d tried to hide the problems from her but she remembered all too well the cold hard reality of it. Her father had died when she was thirteen—the family home had been lost and for a while she and her mother had lived in a small flat in an inner city suburb of London. That had been a truly terrible time and her mother had died less than a year later, leaving Victoria under the care of social services until her mother’s sister in Australia had been found and she had been sent to live with her.

She’d never met her aunt Noreen until the day she’d stepped off the plane in Sydney and she had been incredibly nervous. All she had known about the woman was that she was her mother’s older sister but they hadn’t been close. Deep down Victoria supposed she had been hoping for a kindly aunt—someone who resembled her mum, someone who would help heal the loneliness and loss she felt. But it had been immediately apparent that Noreen was not the sentimental type and looking after a heartbroken fourteen-year-old girl was not something she had wanted at all. In fact, she’d made it very clear from the start that she had only taken her in because she’d felt obliged to. There had been no warm hug of welcome, no platitudes about how sad the situation was—just a cool handshake and a let’s-get-on-with-it attitude.

Noreen had been in her late forties, single and a formidable businesswoman. She owned a small restaurant out at Bondi Beach and she put Victoria to work there almost as soon as she arrived. ‘You’ll have to pay your way, girl. I can’t afford passengers,’ she’d told her as she tossed an apron in her direction. ‘You can have two evenings off during a school week, the rest of the time you start work at six-thirty.’

Those years had been hard and the hours unsocial but Victoria had done as she was told, and had in fact shown a natural aptitude for cooking as well as for business. And Noreen had been pleased. An emotionally cold woman, she had no time for the fripperies of being a female but she had taught her well in the ways of business, encouraging her to go on to college to get business qualifications and qualifications in catering.

When she was twenty, Victoria was running Noreen’s business for her single-handedly. But the hours were long and hard and she had little time for herself. And it was at this point that she had met Lee. He was a highly respected member of the business community and ten years her senior.

Looking back now she realized how naive she had been to fall for his smooth lines. But she had been very lonely and he had made her feel special—had looked at her and admired her and showed interest in her, and she had lapped it up.

But it had been a big mistake. As soon as she had gone to bed with Lee he had stopped being interested and had cut her dead and moved on to his next conquest.

She felt a wave of shame now as she remembered going to him to tell him she was pregnant, remembered the way he had calmly told her to have an abortion and had written a cheque and slid it across the desk to her.

Victoria hadn’t wanted to cash that cheque; she’d wanted to tear it up and fling it in his face. She’d had no intention of having the abortion. Neither had she had any intention of allowing Noreen the pleasure of throwing her out, which her aunt had coldly insisted she would do if she went ahead with the pregnancy. Instead she’d taken a leap of faith and had used the money as a down payment for rent on a small bedsit.

‘What the hell are you playing at?’ Noreen had demanded as she had watched her pack a suitcase to leave.

‘I’m doing what you told me I should do. I’m standing on my own two feet.’

She remembered her aunt’s rage. ‘You’re just like your mother! Well, don’t think you can come back here when the going gets tough because you can’t. I’ll want nothing to do with you.’

‘That’s OK. I won’t be coming back. And just for the record my mother may have been pregnant with me when she married my dad but they were very much in love. But you wouldn’t understand feelings like that.’

‘Oh, I understand all right. I understand that your mother stole the only man I ever cared about, trapped him when she fell pregnant with you…’

The bitter words spilling out into the silence had explained so much about Noreen’s cold, derogatory manner over the years—her almost vehement disdain for Victoria at times, the veiled insults.

She’d never seen Noreen again. Two months later on her twenty-first birthday Victoria had received a solicitor’s letter. It seemed her mother had taken out a life insurance policy that had paid out on her death and the money had been invested and held in trust for Victoria.

She’d broken down and cried on the morning that letter had come. It had been a precious last gift from her mother at a point when she had needed it most, and she had made a conscious decision that she would use it to make a better life for her and her child.

And she’d done that. She’d known if she just banked the money and used it to pay rent that it would be gone in no time, that she needed to make it work for her, so she had decided to start her own business. She’d found a little bijou café to rent and had started out just selling teas and coffees and her homemade cakes. By the time Nathan was born she had been able to afford to take on another girl to help her. Six months after that she had extended her premises, and with the help of a bank loan had turned the business into a thriving restaurant with a small studio apartment attached for her and Nathan.

She’d sent Noreen a letter at that point telling her she was doing well and had even sent some photographs of Nathan, but her aunt had never acknowledged them and had never visited. Probably frightened in case she was asked for help.

She would never be that desperate, Victoria promised herself fiercely. She was a survivor—she would find a way around her problems. After all, she’d got them this far. And no matter how broke she was she would always find a way to provide for Nathan, to care for him and love him.

Nathan wanted to push his pram himself and she allowed him to take it over, smiling to herself as she watched the toddler’s unsteady yet resolute progress. He’d only just turned two. But he was filled with a stubborn sense of purpose that reminded her a lot of herself.

Her phone rang and she fished it out from her pocket with a feeling of hope. Maybe it would be Antonio Cavelli—maybe he’d read her business proposition and had second thoughts about it.

‘Ms Heart, this is Tom Roberts calling you from Lancier Enterprises. Just reminding you of our appointment today at four-thirty.’

Of course it wasn’t Antonio Cavelli; he’d told her he wasn’t interested in her proposal. Victoria swallowed on a hard painful knot in her throat. But she wasn’t ready to admit defeat and sign away her precious business yet, she told herself fiercely. Especially to Lancier! ‘Ah, yes, Mr Roberts. I rang and left a message with your secretary earlier today, stating that I was unable to make our appointment. Unfortunately I’ve no child care for my little boy. Could we reschedule for later in the week?’

‘Later in the week doesn’t suit, Ms Heart.’ The man’s tone was furious. ‘May I suggest you bring your child with you into the office. We need to discuss terms today. Otherwise I can’t promise that this generous offer for your business will be on the table tomorrow.’

‘How’s it going?’ Antonio’s lazy question coming from the doorway made the accountant jump nervously as he put the phone down. He hadn’t noticed his boss standing there.

‘Everything’s in hand.’ The words were firmly decisive, but Tom Roberts looked anything but in control of the situation. In fact, he looked completely flustered.

‘I take it Ms Heart is still trying to give you the runaround?’ Antonio moved further into the office.

‘She’s trying to be a little elusive but it’s nothing I can’t handle.’

‘Hmm.’ For a second Antonio remembered the way Victoria Heart had approached him with her business idea this afternoon, fixing him with those wide green intelligent eyes.

Why he was thinking about that he didn’t know. He really had more important matters on his mind right now. He sauntered over to the fax machine by the side of Tom’s desk and took out the documents his lawyer had sent for him.

The sooner he relieved his father of his shares in the company, the better, he thought angrily as he scanned the details of his directive. The old man had obviously lost his sanity completely—either that or he was having some kind of laugh at his expense!

This pretence that he was giving him an ultimatum because he cared about him and wanted him to settle down instead of working so hard was frankly ludicrous! The only thing that Luc Cavelli had ever cared about was himself. And he’d always had an overinflated sense of his own importance, an arrogance that seemed to have spilled now into some kind of obsession with Antonio providing him with the future generation of the Cavelli family.

Please!

Antonio shook his head. He’d told his father once that he had no intention of ever marrying; and he’d meant it. He knew his limitations and he knew he wasn’t the settling-down type. He enjoyed his freedom too much, enjoyed playing the field. In that respect he was probably like his father—but unlike his father he thought about the consequences of his actions, and he believed in being honest with himself and with the women he dated. The mess of his parents’ marriage had been a stark warning against anything else.

As for bringing some poor unsuspecting child into the world just to gain some shares in a business, or to fulfil his father’s ambitions! Well, the man could think again. A child was the biggest commitment of all and definitely off Antonio’s agenda.

The old guy really had lost it if he thought for one moment he would do something so irresponsible!

But if the old guy had lost it—really lost it—what would that mean for the future of the company? The thought occurred to Antonio that whilst he could walk away back to his other company unscathed, there were thousands—literally thousands—of jobs on the line at Cavelli.

‘Anyway, I laid the law down to her,’ Tom Roberts was saying smugly. ‘Told her the deal wouldn’t be on the table tomorrow if she didn’t get herself down here.’