Chapter Twenty-three

Andrea tensed. ‘When was that?’

‘I was ten when Dad first set up home with Kelsey and her daughters. Unfortunately, Rose and Silvia didn’t take to me and, for the sake of peace, I was sent off to school. I hated it.’

‘Why … were you bullied?’

‘For waking the other girls up with my nightmares and being a terrible cry-baby.’ Elena winced in remembered shame over her past weakness. ‘I was horribly homesick—’

Andrea reached behind him with a long arm and tipped her round and deftly forward into his lap. ‘I was too, but I didn’t have a home to go to any more.’

‘You boarded too?’

‘My mother was dead and her generous employer paid for my education at an exclusive school. I didn’t fit in. Sardinian mothers spoil their sons. I spoke lousy English, and I was a science geek and very small—’

Elena squinted up at his shadowy profile. ‘Small?’ she interrupted in disbelief.

Andrea nodded. ‘Tiny … I didn’t shoot up until I was well into my teens.’

‘Were you bullied too?’

‘Of course not.’

But Elena cau