Chapter 224

“Please don’t. I can’t bear to think of Jake that way, knowing we were both hurting and both too stupid to just be honest with each other. If we’d been honest after we did get together then the mess with Marissa would’ve never happened.” I sigh, laying my cup down on the low table in front of us.

“Honesty is very important … as is communication, and still cherishing one another even after the first throws of passion and excitement have died.” Sylvana focuses on me very seriously. “I know from first-hand experience that marriages can stray if you don’t keep a focus on what you mean to one another and if you stop telling each other how you really feel.” She pats me again and I get the impression she’s talking about Giovanni’s affair.

I have no idea what to say, or ask, or even let on that I know what she’s talking about. It’s too forward to say a word so I say nothing at all. Sylvana doesn’t seem to notice my awkward silence, more intent on carrying on. “Giovanni had an affair with a woman I’d thought my friend.” She states rather factually. No flicker of emotion at all which completely surprises me. “We grew apart, no time for one another anymore and sadly we’d forgotten to still love and cherish one another. He found solace in another’s arms.” She sighs at the memory.

“Oh, Sylvana, I don’t know if I could ever forgive Jake for more than a kiss, I can’t imagine.” The tears start brimming in my eyes as I try not to think of the pain she must’ve endured. How much that would destroy me if I had been in her shoes, a kiss was hard enough to forgive.

“In a way, it saved our marriage. We’d grown so distant with one another and this brought emotion and pain to the surface. I realized by the depth of my heartbreak that I still loved him and by seeing me so heartbroken he realized he still loved me. The guilt pained him so much that it brought us back together, eventually, and now we’re stronger than we ever were. The same will be said of you and Jake over this nonsense with that girl.” She seems completely un-phased by this revelation about her marriage, yet I’m so gob smacked that she could’ve ever forgive something so utterly destructive. The thought of her husband having full-on sex with someone else doesn’t even seem to flicker across her face.

“What happened with her? The other woman?” I sigh at the thought of an affair, heart wrenched for this woman I adore so very much.

“I’m sure Jake told you that it was Daniel’s mother? I know Jake tells you everything, miele. It’s okay. Unfortunately, his relationship with his father is very strained because of it and I know Jake believes that Giovanni had more affairs, but I know the truth. Giovanni cut that woman from his life and has never had another dealing with her.” Her expression holds only conviction and I really believe her.

I nod rather than deny the fact, sure in the idea that she won’t really be upset about my having prior knowledge. I nod to show I’m listening because I don’t really have any actual words to say; nod to agree that Jake really does believe his father is some sort of womanizing man-whore and still despises him for it … Ironically. Whatever she took my nod to mean I hope I covered all bases.

“Jake was already becoming more than a handful. He’d gone off the rails, with that hot blood and impulsive nature of his meeting teen hormones and then a broken heart, and Giovanni was having a very difficult time reeling him in. Jacob has always been a very big handful to deal with.” She smiles affectionately for a second, crinkling her nose with a sigh. “He had a chip on his shoulder about trust and love, so finding out his father hurt me that way sort of sealed his fate. Jake has never trusted him since and he’s so very stubborn, like his father, that he wouldn’t listen to reason.” Sylvana looks so sad and broken over the fact her son and husband are still at odds over something she herself has long forgiven.

“Maybe if he knew the finer details of the affair and knew for sure his father never did it again … or even why he did?” I offer, trying to find a way to help. Really wanting my beloved to find a way to mend bridges with his dad.

“I’ve told Jake all of this. He even knows that the women in his father’s employment are blonde and blue-eyed because I made him promise never to have another woman who resembled me close to him again. Marianne Hunter was almost like a sister in looks. Daniel takes after his father with his fair hair and blue eyes while his mother and I were almost like twins. Giovanni has a very specific type of woman he finds attractive.” Sylvana pats my knee almost to emphasize the point with a hint of a smile.

This piece of information stuns me. I, myself, once took note of the sea of small blondes that Giovanni kept as his own personal staff and just assumed, he had a type. It never occurred to me that respect for his wife had prompted him to never employ any small brunettes with green eyes and Italian beauty like his wife. In his own way, Giovanni was showing his love for her and Jake completely misunderstood it or chose to ignore it.

Stubborn ass of mine!

Jake is such a publicly attentive and demonstrative person that his father’s seemingly emotionless attitude must be completely abhorrent to him. Chalk and cheese with apparently absolutely no understanding of one another in the slightest.

“But you found a way through it? You learned to love him again? Surely in time Jake can also forgive him?” I’m now so completely in awe at the inner working of Giovanni and how his head must actually work. The man is a total enigma.

“Yes, we’re so very much in love.” Sylvana smiles dreamily, looking very much like me in that moment. A woman devoted and completely in love with a hard-headed Carrero. “He comes home every night regardless of the time it takes to get here. We made a promise to never drift apart again. I know he’s not an easy man on the surface, but our private moments are so very much filled with affection and love and a lot of sex.” She grins again naughtily and winks my way, part of me laughs and another wants to cringe at the very thought.

“I can only hope that one day Jake finds a way to have some sort of relationship with him; where they are now is very heart-breaking.” Sylvana positively glows as she talks of her newfound relationship with her husband, but the obvious pain about her child’s connection with him is very evident in her tear-filled eyes, it renders me speechless. A mother’s love torn with that of a wife’s heart.

Jake has no clue to the depths of care that still exist between his parents. I guess he probably avoided any sort of communication on the matter, purely because that stubborn mind of his decided his father was a villain no matter what and he would be damned to believe otherwise. If only Jake knew of the love that still runs between them and that his father still cherishes and respects Sylvana, above all others. Giovanni obviously has the same capabilities of love Jake has, that same deep heart but they just display it so very differently.

I sigh hopelessly and gaze at Sylvana affectionately.

“Maybe becoming a father will make Jake re-evaluate things with Giovanni.” I smile with a small offering of hope.

“Maybe.” Sylvana smiles back with a twinkle in her eye and a tiny little glint of possibility, knowing deep down it is highly unlikely.

* * *

“Like this, Tesoro.” Sylvana’s soothing voice is close to my ear as she molds my hands in the bowl of dough. “Gentle and delicate so the Gnocchi stays fluffy.” She smiles and pulls away as I continue the motion she’s shown me. I have a strange surge of emotion at her tender touch and the way she brushed my hair from my face with a smile. My affection for Sylvana is unlike the affection I have for Margo or even Wilma, there is something more, something deeper. I feel like I can come to her with anything, even cry over Jake, and she would embrace me with those loving, deep green, eyes with maternal security and just love me no matter what. I know she would never pick sides between us in our silly arguments and when he hurt me, she had been just so angry with him on my behalf.

Sophie is making a mess on the large table with a lot of flour and a lot of hand flapping and energetic slapping sounds but smiling widely as Sylvana moves to calm the frantic pounding of her small delicate hands in her own heavy bowl. Sylvana’s guiding touch is not rejected by the young girl either and I smile to myself.

It’s incredible knowing that her touch, so effortlessly, seems to be able to break through the force-fields that Sophie and I have; two kindred souls who used to recoil at human contact in any form and yet here we both were.

Leila is leaning over watching Sylvana, working through a bowl of shelled nuts, with a magazine in one hand lazing in the kitchen after showing up for lunch. It’s obvious she’s bored, mulling over something, and she hasn’t been her chatting sparkling self but neither does she seem upset. Leila is one of those people who lets you know when she wants to talk and is very good at saying nothing at all if she doesn’t. She just seems happy to watch us learn to cook Italian food and revel in the atmosphere.

It’s all so very relaxed and I cast my mind to where I would be right now if Jake and I had never embraced what we were to each other … probably decked out in tight tailored clothing and a set of stilettos on the sixty-fifth no doubt; stressed over contract briefs or mundane issues with financing and listening to Jake going off like a boar on the phone to some incompetent person. The thought doesn’t bring me any sense of regret or loss at all. I don’t even feel a spark of missing the offices, just the people, which is odd. For the first five years, I worked there I made no long-term bonds with anyone in that building, until Jake. He somehow infected me from the word go and changed my entire outlook on the people I worked beside.

“I think you’re maybe killing it, Sophie, dear.” Sylvana chides gently, bringing my thoughts back to the present, and I can’t help but watch with adoration as the two of them stand side by side bringing the bowl of mess to order. There’s something so complete about the whole scene at this very moment, watching someone who is truly maternal, working with a child she treats as her own, giving healing to a girl who needs it with such a simple domestic task. Simply giving her time and patient attention in safety, trusting that no one will hurt her here or would let anyone else for that matter and as I watch the same love in Leila’s eyes. I see now that maybe Sylvana did that for Leila too.