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CHAPTER ELEVEN

LARA REMEMBERED THE first time she had walked into the entrance hall of the palazzo and got her first impression of the grandeur and history of the ancient building. Her voice had echoed around the vaulted ceiling while Raoul’s ancestors had looked down at her from the stone walls with varying degrees of disapproval.

She’d bumped into a suit of armour and tried to pretend she wasn’t daunted, but she had been, even though she had grown up in the shadow of a very different but equally impressive historic house where her parents had worked, and where her mum was still housekeeper.

Today as she walked in, the smell of the hospital still lingering on her clothes, the stone walls lined with priceless tapestries felt like a haven. They felt like home.

When had that happened?

‘What are these?’

‘I have no idea,’ Raoul admitted, walking across the room ahead of her to the items arranged on the heavily carved and inlaid table that took centre stage.

He turned and waved her to the table. ‘For you.’

‘Me?’

He watched the emotions on her face as she moved along the line, looking at one gift and then the next. She turned back to him holding the bouquet of prize roses grown by the palazzo’s head gardener, a surly, monosyllabic individual who grew them for the horticultural event he won every year—the blooms were normally off-limits to everyone.

She closed her eyes and inhaled the heady fragrance. ‘Marguerite has cooked me my favourite biscuits, those lovely little almond ones.’ Her throat closed over with emotion as she picked up an offering she had missed, a glossy magazine tied with a fluorescent bow.

‘Rosa,’ she said with a smile even before she glanced at the attached card.

‘Who is Rosa?’

‘One day she’ll be famous, but right now she helps in the kitchen. She’s halfway through a fine arts degree. I pass on my magazines to her.’

Small wonder she was so popular with the staff. In the comparatively short time she had been here Lara had come to know more about the people who lived and worked on the estate than he did.

‘Everyone is so kind.’

‘It would seem you have won their hearts.’

Lara looked away, burying her face in the roses before he could see the truth she knew was written on her face—there was only one heart she was interested in winning and that belonged to someone else.

If she couldn’t have his heart, she could have his baby; she could give the man she loved that at least.

‘Were you serious?’ She fixed him with a grave questioning stare. ‘Do you want to try again?’

‘I do.’

The admission had been a long time coming.

Since Lucy he had not allowed himself to think about a family, not even when his grandfather had brought up the subject. A family came with love; you couldn’t have one without the other. The logic was inescapable.

Almost having a child by accident had exposed the lie: he wanted an heir, a child...and he wanted it with Lara, who did not ask him for things he could not give.

‘But maybe now is not the time to think about it.’

‘I have thought.’ She tipped her head up. ‘I think I’d like that.’

‘That is not a decision to make now. We will discuss this later.’

‘When later?’

‘You’re asking me to give you a date?’

She pressed her lips together.

‘Even if you do know your own mind, your body needs time to recover. If you still feel the same way in a year...’

‘A year!’ she yelped.

‘All right, nine months.’

‘I won’t change my mind,’ she said, thinking, but you might.

* * *

Raoul stood a little apart from the family group as Lara embraced her mother and then her twin, bending a head to brush her lips across the forehead of the baby. For someone who was looking for it, all the sadness and pain she had been struggling to hide all day under a bright, bubbly exterior was there glistening in her eyes.

Watching, helpless to do a damned thing, he felt as if a blunt knife were twisting in his stomach... Surely they must see...? But no, her twin and her mother were both focused on the baby.

He didn’t know whether to applaud or weep when, a moment later, Lara was smiling, back in control and giving an Oscar-worthy performance of the self-absorbed, wild-child sister, and all the time crying inside.

‘Well, rather you than me, Lily.’ She laughed, patting her flat stomach with a complacent smile that made it seem as if she had nothing more to worry about in the world than her waistline. ‘I don’t fancy having to change my wardrobe.’

How often had she hidden her feelings this way in the past? he wondered? Maybe she wasn’t so easy to read after all? He had debated whether to invent an urgent appointment and bring this visit to a premature end, but he was glad now that they had stayed longer. Not that Lara would have broken down, she was too determined to appear thrilled for her sister, but if he had to watch her being bright and smiley while her heart was breaking for another second...he doubted he would be able to fulfil his promise of silence on the subject of her miscarriage.

‘I can’t get over how much she’s grown,’ Lara said, retrieving a toy that had been tossed on the floor.

‘They usually do in a year,’ her twin responded quietly.

The stricken look that slid across Lara’s face could have been caused by the undertone in her twin’s voice, or the reminder of the previous visit, right after the birth, when Lara had insisted on flying over to see her sister.

Only a couple of weeks after her own miscarriage. Raoul had tried his best to dissuade her, but in the end she’d threatened to catch a flight on her own, so he’d taken her.

It had been a nightmare. Oh, Lara had managed to say all the right things at the hospital, had held the baby and told her sister how clever she was, but outside she had virtually collapsed in a heap.

She had sobbed uncontrollably on the flight back and pretty much for the next two days. Since then she had made excuses whenever a visit home was suggested, until today.

‘Goodbye, Emily Rose, be good for Mummy.’

The baby, who was dressed in a cute pink outfit that she was almost too big for at eleven months, grabbed for Lara’s hair.

‘No, Emmy.’ Lily clicked her tongue and detached the chubby fingers.

From where he was standing Raoul could see the muscles in Lara’s pale throat working as she straightened up. Even someone with an armour-plated heart could not have failed to be moved by her struggle for control. He might not agree with her decision to keep the miscarriage a secret, but it was her decision, and he had to respect that. However wrong, misguided and pig-headed he thought she was being.

He cleared his throat and glanced pointedly at the time that blinked on the screen of his phone. ‘I’m sorry to break up the party and drag you away, but we’re on the clock here.’

It worked. Lara’s twin and mother looked at her with sympathy and him with a lack of it—which was fine by Raoul. He was not seeking either their sympathy or approval.

He placed a hand on Lara’s elbow and, projecting a level of callous impatience that he hoped was consistent with someone heartless and controlling—after all, was it a million miles from his actual character?—he raised his voice once more to be heard above the whirr of the blades of the waiting helicopter.

‘Ladies.’ He tipped his head curtly and pulled Lara, skipping along on her spiky heels to keep up with him, towards the door. She still retained her grip on his arm, though she no longer needed his support.

Behind them the two women exchanged worried glances.

Once they took off and the figures below vanished from view, Lara released a long shuddering sigh and leaned back, her eyes closed.

Sitting opposite her, Raoul sat waiting.

‘There is no urgent appointment, is there?’

‘No.’

She opened her eyes, which were luminescent with tears. ‘I could have coped.’

‘I’m sure you could,’ he returned smoothly. ‘But I probably wouldn’t have if we’d stayed any longer.’

She shook her head as if the idea the day had been anything other than a breeze for him had not occurred to her. ‘It was lovely to see everyone.’

People she missed...a life she regretted leaving behind? He pushed the thought away. ‘Everyone said how lovely the baby was.’

He arched a brow at her quick defence. ‘And nobody, not a soul, mentioned the father.’

Eyes wide with horror, she leaned forward in her seat. ‘You didn’t...?’

‘What, after you told me the subject was off-limits? I wouldn’t dare.’

She gave a disbelieving grunt and settled back in her seat.

‘But the strain of not mentioning the elephant in the room was beginning to tell.’

‘Lily hasn’t told anyone.’ Not even me. ‘Raoul...? It’s been nearly a year now, and I haven’t changed my mind.’

Though she had been angry at the time, she was grateful now that he had insisted on the wait. For the last few months her emotions had been all over the place.

She knew she hadn’t been easy to live with but Raoul had been incredibly patient, when she got angry with him, herself or life in general. And then there had been the sad times when all she could do was cry.

‘Today—’

‘Today was hard,’ she admitted. ‘Inside,’ she said, pressing a hand to her chest, ‘I feel like a mother but no one can see that. One day I hurt, the next I feel as if it had happened to someone else. I know I’ve been hell to live with and that was never part of the contract.’

‘I broke the contract when I got you pregnant.’

‘So your guilt is keeping us together.’ She turned to stare at the clouds.

He wished he could have said yes, that would have made things simpler to sort in his own mind, but though guilt played a part there was a lot more keeping him with Lara, more than he wanted to think about.

‘A little while back I thought you’d changed your mind... Was I wrong?’

She turned her head and looked at him in astonishment. ‘For a while,’ she admitted, ‘I did feel as though having another baby would be betraying the one I lost... I suppose that sounds mad to you.’

‘No, it doesn’t.’

Her eyes slid from his and she looked out of the window. ‘It might never happen for us.’

He responded with an emotion-dampening positivity. ‘Of course it will, and if it doesn’t it won’t be for lack of trying.’

‘So you haven’t changed your mind?’

His libido gave a lazy kick as she relaxed and laughed again; the sound made him realise how rare these moments were now.

‘I want...’ He wanted to see her happy, he wanted to repair the damage he had wrought after watching what she had been through during the last year. He would have done anything to make her laugh like that again. ‘No,’ he said softly.

‘How about it, then...?’ Holding his interested gaze, she slipped off her spiky heels and, tongue caught between her teeth in sexy concentration, her green eyes wide and mockingly innocent, she stretched out her bare foot and moved it slowly up his leg.

‘You think...?’

He felt the heat rising up his neck, then the heat coalesced a little lower as her foot came to rest between his thighs. ‘In a helicopter, really...?’

Eyes dancing, she gave a wicked chuckle and withdrew her foot. ‘Well, maybe it can wait until the plane... I mean, what’s the use of having a private jet if you can’t make use of the privacy?’

‘I like the way your mind works,’ he said, thinking now this was the way babies should be made!