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He wore suit trousers and a white shirt—which somehow, despite the ash floating in the air, looked fresh. His hair was black and clean, unlike hers, which felt heavy after a day spent sweeping leaves outside Geo’s home and trying to get his house as safe as possible.
Oh, why couldn’t he have arrived in a couple of hours, when she was all washed and dressed up for Antonietta’s party?
But, really, what did it matter? Nico would never look at her in that way.
‘How did you get here?’ Aurora asked. ‘The road from the airport is closed.’
‘I came by helicopter,’ Nico said.
‘Told you,’ Geo declared to Aurora, but then he addressed his son. ‘I’m not going anywhere and you’re not welcome here. Get out!’
Here we go, Aurora thought, and sure enough, within two minutes of Nico arriving, Geo was shouting and waving his stick at his son.
‘Get out!’ he raged.
‘Pa…’
‘Out!’ Geo shouted. ‘I want you gone. You bring nothing but trouble. You’re not welcome in my home. You’re a thief and a liar and you ruined me.’
It was Aurora who calmed things down. ‘I’ll take Nico outside and show him what has been done to prepare for the fire,’ she suggested.
They stepped out of the small house, but there was no reprieve—Geo’s words followed them out into the oppressive heat, where the air was smoky.
‘He won’t leave willingly,’ she said.
‘I know he won’t.’ Nico sighed.
He had his chopper waiting, and a care facility in Rome ready to receive Geo, but even as Nico had asked Marianna to put the arrangements in place he had known it was futile.
‘You could carry him out,’ Aurora suggested.
‘I could,’ Nico agreed, ‘but then he would die on my shoulders just to spite me. What about you?’
‘Me?’
‘Yes, why are you staying, Aurora?’
‘Because we have to protect the village.’
‘And what can you do against the might of a wildfire?’ Nico asked.
All five-foot-three of her. She was tiny—a stick.
Except she wasn’t a stick any more.
They had avoided each other as much as possible since that awkward walk four years ago, and he had watched her blossom from a distance. The child he had rejected was now all woman. The cheeky, precocious brat who had hung on his every word was a forthright, assertive woman who, to Nico’s cold surprise, completely turned him on.
Not that he showed it. For one thing had not changed. Nico did not want a family and he did not want the responsibility of another heart.
‘Aurora, you can’t do anything to stop the fire.’
‘I can feed the firefighters,’ Aurora responded. ‘Anyway, Pa says the village is safe.’
‘Aurora…’ Nico kept his voice even, but fear licked at his throat at the thought of her staying here.
The village was not safe. Far from it. Nico had, after all, just viewed the fires from the sky, and heard the worrying comments from his pilot, who was ex-military. Bruno, Aurora’s father, was probably regretting his foolish decision and just putting on a brave face.
‘Leave.’
‘No.’
He persisted. ‘Come with me now and get out.’
‘I already told you—no.’
‘I could insist…’ Nico said, and it angered him when she snorted.
Did she not get that the village was going to go up in smoke and that the fire would destroy all in its path?
‘I could just put you over my shoulder—the same way I am tempted to do with my father.’
‘And then what, Nico? What will you do with me in Rome?’
He gritted his teeth.
‘My father would not object,’ she said. ‘In fact, all the villagers would come out and cheer if you carried me off.’ She gave him a smile that did not quite meet her eyes. ‘But then you would surely return me, Nico, and that would not go down very well.’
No, Nico thought, it would not. ‘Don’t you ever think of leaving?’ he asked.
‘Why would I?’ Aurora shrugged. ‘La famiglia is everything to me. Give me good food and family and my day is complete. What more could I want?’
‘You should deepen your voice, Aurora,’ Nico said, ‘when you impersonate your father.’
‘But I wasn’t impersonating him.’
‘No? You’ve heard it so often you believe it to be your own thought.’
‘Why do you have to criticise?’
‘I’m not.’
‘Oh, but you are.’
Nico took a breath. Aurora was correct. He was criticising—and he had no right to. Especially when she did so much for his father.
He addressed that issue. ‘You still haven’t sent me your bank account details so that I can pay you for the time spent with my father.’
‘I don’t count it as work.’
No, she saw it as duty. Nico knew that.
Even though he had not married her, she had taken on the role of caring for his family.
‘Aurora…’
‘I don’t have time for this, Nico. I want to move the firewood away from your father’s home. I thought my brother had done it…’
‘Give me a moment,’ Nico said.
Walking away from the house, he took out his phone and made a call to his pilot.
He could get out.
Perhaps he even should get out.
As he and the pilot both agreed, it would be a waste of vital resources to have a pilot and helicopter sitting idle, just in case Geo changed his mind.
But Nico could not leave his father to his fate alone.
And neither could he leave Aurora behind.
He looked over to her, lifting logs, doing all she could to keep the old man safe.
‘Right,’ he said walking towards her. She was filthy from the effort and he watched the streaks of ash grow as she wiped her forehead. ‘Leave the firewood to me. What else needs to be done?’
‘Aren’t you leaving?’
‘No.’
Their conversation was interrupted with the arrival of Aurora’s father. ‘Nico!’
Bruno greeted him warmly, as he always did—and that consistently surprised Nico. The fact that he had refused to marry his daughter should have caused great offence, yet Bruno had confounded Nico’s expectations and still treated him as a future son-in-law.
‘You will stay with us,’ Bruno said.
‘No, no…’ Nico attempted, for he did not want to be under the same roof as Aurora.
Or rather, he wanted to be under the same roof alone with Aurora. He wanted to strip her off in the shower and soap those breasts that now had sweat dripping between them.
He was trying to hold a conversation with Bruno even as filthy visions of the man’s daughter flashed in his mind. What was wrong with him?
‘So you’re too good for us now?’ Bruno demanded.
They all spoke from the same script, Nico thought as he dragged his mind from Aurora’s breasts. To refuse Bruno’s hospitality would be an insult, and although in his professional life Nico did not care who he offended, he attempted to do things differently here.
Like it or not, while his father was alive, he still needed these people.
More, though, he wanted to do the right thing.
‘You can have Aurora’s bed.’
‘No. Absolutely not!’ Nico would not hear of it.
‘She will be out tonight, at Antonietta’s birthday party.’
‘Aurora should be at home,’ Nico said. ‘With the threat to the village I thought the roads would be closed.’
‘The main one is, but some are open between the villages, and the threat has been here for weeks,’ Bruno said. ‘Life goes on, and Antonietta’s father is the fire chief. The firefighters are camping on his grounds so it is the safest place for her to be.’
Nico wasn’t so sure of that—and it had nothing to do with the fire!
‘I could be on lookout,’ Nico said, but Bruno shook his head.
‘It is Pino’s turn tonight. I did it last night. You shall stay with us.’
‘Well, thank you for your offer, ‘Nico said, ‘but I shall stay only if I sleep on the sofa.’
‘Up to you.’ Bruno shrugged.
Before dinner Nico checked in on his father, who had drifted off into a drunken stupor. Aurora was already there, and rolling him onto his side, making sure Geo would not choke should he become unwell during the night.
‘I told the store not to supply him with whisky,’ Nico said to her.
‘There is home delivery now.’ Aurora shrugged. ‘Even your father has worked out the Internet. And there’s always Pino stopping by, or Francesca. You can’t stop him.’
‘I send money, but then I wonder…’
‘If you didn’t send it he would drink cheap wine instead,’ Aurora pointed out. ‘Come on, it’s time to get back. Supper will soon be ready.’
‘I need to speak with the doctor first.’
The news from the doctor was the same.
Geo needed to stop drinking and he needed a more comprehensive level of care—except there was no staff to provide it in Silibri.
‘I have spoken to the agency,’ Nico said to him. ‘And I am looking to purchase the house across the street. That way—’
‘You could purchase ten houses,’ the doctor interrupted. ‘No one wants to live here. The village is dying faster than your father.’
Why did Aurora choose to remain here?
Nico thought of long-ago evenings at the Messina dinner table. She would talk of her photography, and how she would pester the manager at the winery to change the labels on his wine. To rename, rebrand. She had passion and dreams—but they had been smothered by this village, like the smoke that blanketed the valley now.
‘Come and sit down,’ Bruno said as Nico walked into the Messina home. ‘Good food and family and my day is complete. Come now, Aurora.’
But Aurora did not join them at the table.
‘No, Pa, there will be food at the party and I have to get ready.’
