The Tender Vine (Diamond of the Rockies #3)(97)

That thought hurt more than it should. But Carina was the sweetest grace he had experienced; her love had brought him from bitter solitude to joy. He couldn’t keep his thoughts there or he would break down. He forced a subjective observation of Flavio, the disarming features seductive in their beauty. Flavio looked like a work of Italian artistry, a Greco-Roman hero. Not Herculean—perhaps more like Narcissus.

After some banter, of which Quillan could only catch the cadence since he was too far to decipher any of the words he had learned, Flavio drew one man away from the others. They talked together with much nodding and gesturing, then gripped each others’ shoulders briefly and parted.

Before striding away, Flavio sent a pointed glance his direction. Quillan stiffened, surprised. Flavio knew he was there? And now he noted a distinct tightness in Flavio’s gait, like a dueler stepping out his paces. Unconsciously, Quillan’s hand dropped to his hip. No Colt. But neither was Flavio armed, as far as he could tell. Quillan slid his palm to his thigh.

The man slowly turned on his heel and sauntered away. Quillan wrapped up the rest of his cheese. He was no longer hungry. The men were openly studying him, discussing him, too, no doubt. What did Flavio want? Why had he come there? To sow more discord?

Was it some sort of challenge? A flame flickered inside—Quillan’s natural instinct. If he knew he was supposed to fight for Carina, nothing would stop him, not the whole mass of them together. But he was no longer sure she wanted that. Her face had been pained when she begged him not to endanger Flavio’s life. By now that concern for the man she had once loved could have been stoked into the passion Quillan knew too well.

Walled in by her family and fed a diet of Flavio’s attention, why would she think twice about the rogue she once deigned to love? The pain was like a living being in his heart, draining him of hope. How must Jesus have felt when all those who loved him turned away? Quillan brought out his journal and lost himself in words. It was the best way he could think to keep the pain at bay.

Flavio left the rock yard with the strain once again reaching intensity. He had spent the night in a storm, gusts of regret for his violence sliced by bolts of fascination and a rumbling confusion. He had lain still and thought of his father. He didn’t know much, only the sensation of the man’s virility, his energy, and a vague sense of equally potent rage and gloom. Probably akin to Flavio’s own.

His papa had been a republican—less kindly, a troublemaker. That trouble had cost him his life. Flavio had never discussed it with Dottore DiGratia, but it stood between them in spite of the kindness, the acceptance he’d found from the man. Once his misplaced hatred had faded, Flavio had gravitated to Angelo DiGratia like a bee to nectar, seeking sustenance of a kind he found nowhere else.

He had thought for a time to learn the man’s skill, to become a doctor himself. But the tedium of the scientific study in which Dottore DiGratia excelled was too much for Flavio. He could not sit still behind a microscope, could not still his hands long enough to mend torn flesh and damaged tissue. His mind flew from the task at hand to other thoughts more commanding, more creative.

The doctor wanted to mend, but Flavio wanted to make. The arts— they were his passion. In pictures and in music he spent his soul. No, he was not meant to follow the doctor. But that did not mean he loved him less.

Dottore DiGratia had become the father he lost. Signore Lanza was all right; Flavio had nothing against him. The man had fed and clothed him and allowed him his way. But Angelo DiGratia had taken him to his heart. Was it because he had failed to save his father?

Flavio wondered if the doctor carried that guilt or if it was just part of his profession. What was monumental in Flavio’s life might well have been forgotten in Dottore DiGratia’s. Except that sometimes he caught on the doctor’s face a look of regret and . . . shame. He felt a stirring of power and remembered one of the few things his papa had told him. “When you see a man’s weakness, use it.” Flavio had not understood the words as a child of six, but he did now.

Flavio thought with pride of the doctor’s protection of his contract with Carina, in spite of his indiscretion—which the doctor may or may not know about. Either way, Dottore DiGratia did not accept Quillan Shepard’s claim. Yet the man would not give up. Surely that justified the possibilities he had just set in motion. Quillan was a threat to the DiGratias, a threat to him, and most of all, a threat to Carina. If an accident should occur . . .

He reached his stallion and mounted. Flavio had not brought the animal into the quarry where the shards of rock could damage its hooves. He brought the animal around, remembering Carina’s trick when she had sent him sprawling and galloped off on his horse. He’d been torn by fury but also moved to ecstasy at her spirit. She was the only woman who matched his passion.

But she was too softhearted, too easily won, her love given irrepressibly. She could be deeply hurt. He knew now how deeply, and he cursed his foolish liaison with Divina. For that moment’s conquest, he’d lost Carina. For a time. But not forever. As long as Dottore DiGratia upheld his contract, he had a chance of redeeming it.

Maybe Carina would not marry him willingly, but once Quillan Shepard was removed, then carefully, so carefully, he would win her heart again. He knew the words she liked to hear, and he was a proficient lover, though at the moment she did not appreciate his experience.

He frowned. If only she hadn’t walked in on them. How stupid to use the doctor’s barn. Divina had not been worth it. He thought now of Nicolo, sick with love for Divina. Did Nicolo appreciate the seed Flavio had started that made her willing at last? Flavio felt a twinge. Was he a monster not to care that his child would be raised as another man’s?