Skye took a deep breath. ‘Well, there might be a chance now.’
‘According to my mother?’ he flashed at her with deep scepticism. ‘Along with her request to postpone our wedding? Can’t you see she’s dangling out an acceptance of you to stop what she and my father want to stop?’
‘They can’t stop us from getting married if we don’t let them, Luc. I trust you on that. Can’t you trust me?’
‘It’s taken me so long to convince you it’s right for us…’
‘And it is. I know it is. But I’m now feeling wrong about the way we’re doing it.’
His jaw clenched. Skye sensed he was about to erupt from his chair, but the moment of shimmering violence passed. ‘Why?’ he bit out.
She shook her head over the realisation that her fears had driven Luc to an extreme stand, and he was not prepared to back down from it. He hadn’t spelled out that in marrying her without his parents’ blessing, he’d make himself an exile, but she had blindly accepted that sacrifice from him, accepted taking him away from others, too. She’d actually been intensely relieved that she didn’t have to worry about them any more. Selfish relief.
‘Your mother loves you, Luc,’ she said quietly.
His head jerked aside as though he didn’t want to be hit by that. He grimaced and turned his gaze back to her, eyes blazing with resolution. ‘I won’t have you hurt again, Skye. In all but law you’re my wife now. My first allegiance is to you.’
She took another deep breath and said, ‘Your parents didn’t know how deeply you felt about me. They made a mistake.’
‘That’s putting it kindly,’ he mocked, still not giving an inch.
‘I’m not saying this to test you, Luc. I’ve thought about nothing else since your mother came.’ She tried a smile to lighten the tension. ‘As you just said, I’m your wife now in everything but the legality. Does it really matter if we postpone going to a registry office until after Christmas?’
His responding smile carried a load of irony. ‘Did my mother promise you a big Italian wedding if we did?’
‘No, she didn’t.’
‘Did she say if you loved me, you’d ensure that I come home for Christmas Day for the sake of family feeling?’
She sighed, regretting the huge barriers she had built. ‘It wasn’t like that, Luc. Your mother was very distressed at the rift that has developed. Can’t you just accept that without colouring it as more deception?’
‘And if it is deception?’ he bored in.
‘We’ll know soon enough, won’t we? Christmas is only five weeks away.’
‘Don’t count on my mother’s peace-plan going through. I doubt my father knows about it. And I will not be going to Bellevue Hill again without his personal invitation.’
This was said with so much harsh pride, it made Skye wonder how much Luc himself had contributed to the rift. Her reaction to the deception with the photos and her acute awareness of being considered an undesirable in the Peretti family circle had certainly played its part. Given Luc’s reaction to what she was saying now, perhaps he had drawn battle-lines with his father that couldn’t be crossed by either side.
‘He is your father, Luc,’ she reminded him.
‘No father has the right to do what he did.’
The vehemence in his voice left no room for argument. Besides which, what he said was true. His father had abrogated Luc’s right to choose whether to know or deny his own child. It was a monstrous thing to do.
‘What about your mother, then?’ she asked. ‘Must she pay for your father’s decisions? She didn’t know, Luc. She didn’t know until Easter, when you didn’t turn up for Easter Sunday.’
‘But she doesn’t turn up until now, trying to put off our wedding,’ he pointed out, no softening at all in his expression.
It’s gone too far, Skye thought, feeling totally miserable about it. ‘I said she could come again, Luc,’ she confessed on a heavy sigh. ‘Matt was so excited about having a grandmother…’
‘It’s okay. Stop worrying about it, Skye.’
He was on his feet, coming around the table to her. She felt too drained to move, too torn by the conflicts that still raged around them to achieve any peace of mind. Luc stepped behind her chair and his hands slid over her shoulders and started a gentle massage.
‘None of this is your fault,’ he murmured, dropping a kiss on the top of her head, caring for her uppermost in his tone now. ‘Try to relax, Skye. If my mother visits again…just let it be. Matt is her grandson. So long as the connection is good for him, no harm done.’
The tension in her shoulders eased under his expert manipulation. ‘What about you, Luc? You’re her son.’
‘I’ll welcome her if I’m with you and Matt. But don’t be surprised if she never comes again. My father might forbid it. In which case…’
‘Forbid?’ She shook her head over the harsh concept.
‘It’s an old-fashioned Italian marriage,’ Luc said wryly. ‘Love, honour, obey…’
‘Is that how you think, too? That you have the right to forbid me to do something you disapprove of?’
‘No. I don’t own you, Skye. I don’t see marriage as a form of ownership. Nor do I see parenthood that way. There comes a time when you have to let a child choose his own path, even against what you think are his best interests.’
‘What if your father honestly thought how he acted was in your best interests, Luc?’
‘It doesn’t excuse hurting you as he did.’
‘He didn’t know me.’
Caring too much about one person could make you blind to others, Skye thought. And protecting the life you know can make you blind to others’ lives, too. It was what she’d been doing.
Luc’s thumbs pressed harder into her muscles as he said, ‘He didn’t try to know you.’
Anger again.
Anger built on her anger at what had been done to her. Perhaps anger at himself, as well, for believing what he should never have believed, knowing her as intimately as he had. But that was far in the past now, and Skye didn’t want their future built on such a divisive foundation.
‘What if he tries now, Luc?’
The movement of his hands halted. He dragged in a deep breath and exhaled it very slowly. ‘Let’s not talk about my father, Skye. It’s you I need.’