Читать книгу Modern Romance October 2019 Books 1-4 - Кейт Хьюит - Страница 24

Rome

THE GLORIOUS SIGHT of the city at night, from the vantage point of his helicopter, did not lift Nico’s spirits and there was no sense of relief to be home.

With wealth, Nico decided, came too much cream.

Here in Rome the chefs had been drilled as to his preference for plain food, but it hadn’t translated so well at the Silibri site. There the chefs had seemed determined to impress, but they had failed. Oh, the food had been spectacular, but for the first time Nico had heartburn.

Or was it more a sense of unease as he disembarked from his helicopter and saw his regular driver waiting for him?

‘I thought you were on leave?’ Nico said.

His driver and his housekeeper were married, and Nico had expected a stand-in driver to greet him.

‘My leave starts tomorrow,’

Nico glanced at the time. ‘It already is tomorrow.’

‘Perhaps, but better a familiar face to greet you than a stranger. How was the trip?’ his driver asked.

‘Fine,’ Nico responded. ‘It went well.’

By all accounts it had been amazing. The new hotel was sumptuous, and naturally he had his choice of suite there, so when he visited Silibri there would be no awkward stays with neighbours. He had visited the cemetery and knew his father was finally at peace. The hotel was thriving, with the rich and famous and even royalty reserving their spaces. It was wonderful to see the village come alive again.

Yet there was no Aurora.

And without her, without even the slightest chance of bumping into her, Silibri had felt more than ever like a ghost town.

He wished his driver all the best for his vacation and then let himself into his immaculate house. He left his case in the hall and went straight upstairs.

He stripped and showered. Got into bed. Though tired, he was restless. It was months since he and Aurora had last spoken, yet their last meeting still replayed in his head as if it were yesterday.

Why the hell couldn’t he move on?

Aurora had. As he had wanted her to do for so long.

He needed distraction, so he climbed out of bed to select a book. He was more than aware that he had lost focus of late.

And then he frowned when he saw a book he didn’t recognise on the shelf by his bed.

He laughed as he flicked through it—but then the laugh caught in his throat, because he had never shared his laughter with her.

Not really…

He turned off the light and lay there, thinking of a home that was far away, and the home he now lay in, and the world he had made for himself in Rome.

His driver had been right.

Better a familiar face to greet you than a stranger.

Aurora had always been the familiar face when he went to Silibri. Aurora had been the one he had tried to avoid yet nevertheless had found himself seeking out, and she had always made things better.

But now when he went to Silibri it was as if she had been erased.

Bruno hardly mentioned her, and her mother spoke only about Aurora’s fancy new career that rendered her too busy to come back just yet. ‘Maybe soon…’

And then Nico’s eyes opened in the dark.

Hadn’t he heard those same frustrating words growing up? Known the code of silence when Pino’s daughter had suddenly left school and gone to take care of her aunt in Palermo.

She had returned a few months later, pale and gaunt and with the saddest eyes.

But not Aurora, surely?

Nico sat up.

She would tell him if she was pregnant.

Wouldn’t she?

He went over and over that last conversation and within it he found not a clue.

Over and over he replayed it.

Not one clue.

Until the very end.

‘The taxi will be here soon.’

Bruno had a car. Why would he not take his daughter to the station on the day she left home?

There was only one reason Nico could see.

His heart was jumping in his chest and he wanted to reach for his phone and call her. But it was the middle of the night. And anyway, she might not answer. Or even if she did she might not reveal anything.

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow he would have Marianna find out just where Aurora had relocated to and then he would call her.

He just had to get through this night.

Rome was not so beautiful this early morning. It was still dark, and also it was freezing cold. She only had with her a few hastily grabbed necessities for Gabe.

But she had her baby, Aurora told herself, and he was unharmed and safe and she cradled him close.

What to do?

She had always wondered why Nico had chosen to sleep in a park rather than in her family home, and now she knew—pride.

But she had a son.

Their son.

And Gabe deserved better than to be outside on a freezing cold morning.

She had never wanted to call Nico like this. She had wanted to be calm and together when she told him. But that choice had been taken from her now.

What if his number had changed or he had blocked her? Or what if he had taken her advice and started turning off his phone at night?

For once she was grateful that he had not.

‘Aurora?’

Something inside her jolted. Her name must be on the phone he carried with him. He knew it was her.

‘Nico, I am sorry to call—’

‘Never be sorry for calling me.’

He sounded so calm and so steady and so nice compared to the hell she had just left.

‘Where are you?’ he asked.

‘Sitting on a bench in the Prati district.’ She gave him the specifics.

‘I am ten minutes away,’ Nico said, for the streets would be empty.

Make that eight minutes, because he dressed so hastily and continued speaking to her as he climbed in his car. ‘What’s happened?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘Okay.’

Sometimes she was grateful for the sparseness of his words, and grateful too that he did not fill every silence.

Aurora took a deep breath. ‘Nico, there is something I have to tell you before you get here. It’s not just me. I have my baby with me…’

‘Okay.’

No questions.

Not even one.

And then she saw an expensive black car slow down and come to a stop. She found she could not bear to see the disappointment in his face, so as he got out and came towards her she looked down at Gabe.

‘He’s here,’ she told her son.

‘Aurora.’

She looked up, and standing there, in a heavy black coat and with snow in his hair, was Nico.

And Rome, early in the morning, was suddenly beautiful again.

‘You haven’t shaved.’

‘Would you have preferred to sit a while longer on that freezing bench while I did?’

‘No,’ she admitted, and was surprised that he smiled.

She opened her mouth to speak again, but did not know what to say.

Nico spoke first. ‘Not here,’ he said. ‘Not now.’

Instead, he took off his coat and wrapped it around both her and little Gabe and led them to the car.

‘My car is just here—let’s get you both inside.’

Both.

He said it so easily, but the word felt as if it pierced his brain, for there were two of them now.

Nico didn’t quite know what he meant by that, but as he drove back to his home it played over and over…

There were two of them now.

The gates opened on their approach, as they had the first time she’d arrived. How had she ever thought his home intimidating? Aurora wondered as she stepped inside. It felt so delicious that she closed her eyes for a moment and breathed in the scent of Nico’s home.

‘What do you need for…?’ He hesitated. ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’

‘A boy,’ Aurora said. ‘Gabe.’ She swallowed. ‘Well, he’s Gabriel, but he’s become Gabe.’

‘What does Gabe need?’

‘Everything,’ Aurora said, her eyes filling with tears. ‘I just have this bag…’ It was enough to get him through the next six hours at best.

‘I will call Marianna,’ Nico said, and Aurora guessed that was often his solution to irksome things. ‘What happened, Aurora?’

‘I already told you,’ she said, taking a seat on one of his plump couches. But instead of sinking into it she perched on the edge. ‘I don’t want to discuss it.’

‘Perhaps…but you have a bruise on your cheek.’

‘He didn’t mean to do that.’

She looked up and saw Nico’s face stretched into a grim smile.

She knew that look.

For she had seen it the night they had first made love. She had seen it when he had lifted her hips from his body and told her to go to bed, and she had said no.

It was the look he gave as his patience slipped away. It was the look he gave just before that steely control dissolved.

‘Okay,’ she said hurriedly. ‘I’ll tell you.’

And so she told him—about the job she had taken, and how wonderful Louanna and the children had been.

And then she watched his jaw quilt in tension when she told Nico about the husband.

‘Things were fine when he was not there, but then…’ Aurora said. ‘I was desperate, Nico, and so I stayed.’

She saw that black smile which was not really a smile return to his face. Whatever she had said had clearly displeased him, so she moved on swiftly.

‘This morning, at about two, I was putting Gabe back in his crib after feeding. I live in the summerhouse…’

‘In winter?’

‘It’s heated. I was so happy there. Anyway, I saw a light, I saw them fighting—or rather I saw him hit her—and I…’ She swallowed. ‘I intervened.’

Silence from Nico.

‘I couldn’t just do nothing.’

‘So you ran across the garden—I assume it is snowing there too—and stepped into a house where there was a raging man… Did he hit you?’

‘No—no! I was trying to get him off his wife and he pushed me, and then he told me I was not welcome in his home and that I’d caused too many problems with his wife. Then he pushed me again and I fell.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t want to talk about it any more.’

‘Fair enough,’ Nico said. ‘It will be exhausting enough going over things again with the polizia.’

‘I’m not speaking to the polizia,’ Aurora said urgently.

‘So you want me to go round there and kill him?’

‘Nico, it’s a bruise.’

‘Get it photographed while it’s visible, and tell the police the details while they’re fresh in your mind. Or,’ Nico repeated, ‘I will go round there now and I kill him.’

‘Oh, grow up!’ she sneered. ‘What’s that going to solve?’

‘Plenty for me.’ Nico shrugged. ‘So what’s it to be?’

‘Nico, I don’t want to cause trouble. I just want to forget—’

‘You will never forget,’ Nico interrupted. ‘And nor will Louanna and the children,’ he added. ‘I know that for a fact. Ignoring and denying and sweeping things under the carpet does not improve the situation one iota. It needs to be faced.’

‘Leave it, Nico, please.’

He did not.

Sometimes she forgot that Nico was just as Sicilian as her.

Nico’s stunning apartment became busy with two uniformed police officers, who took a detailed statement. It was exhausting, but there was relief at the end, when Aurora asked if Louanna would be safe.

Nico answered for the police. ‘She will be fine. Right now she is tucked up at my hotel with the children.’

When the police had gone, Aurora turned to him. ‘You didn’t have to do that.’

‘It was my pleasure,’ Nico said. ‘I will ensure she is looked after and I will have my lawyers help her.’ He saw her bemused frown. ‘Louanna gave you a home when you needed one, and—’ He stopped whatever he had been about to say. ‘Go to bed,’ he told her.

‘I can’t. Gabe is asleep,’ she said. ‘I don’t like to bring him into bed with me in case I smother him.’

Yet she was tired—terribly so. All the adrenaline that had fired her seemed to have left en masse.

‘I could maybe take a drawer and put him in it. Or if you have a box…’

‘Or I could hold him.’

It was Aurora who was silent now.

‘Surely that’s better than a box?’ Nico said.

‘I sleep better when he is next to me.’

‘Let me hold him, Aurora.’

She handed Gabe to him and he took the baby awkwardly and held him in one arm.

‘You have to support his head.’

‘I am.’

‘And if he wakes there are two bottles left. I should put them in the fridge…’

‘Go to bed, Aurora.’

‘Which bed?’

She flushed as she asked the question—and then Nico took her breath away.

‘The one he was made in.’

Such a direct answer—and it told her that Nico did not doubt for a second that the baby was his.

It was actually a relief to close the bedroom door and be alone.

Nico knows.

How he felt about being a father was another matter entirely, but she felt a sagging of relief that he finally knew.

The bed was unmade, Aurora saw. Of course it was—he would have been asleep when she called.

Her book was on the floor beside the bed, and it made her smile that he must have read it—or at least found it.

The shower was bliss—and so, too, was it bliss to put on not a crisp clean shirt, but the one he must have taken off last night that smelled of him.

She slipped between sheets that held his cologne and the male scent of him—and then the door opened and he stood there, holding a cup in one hand and their son in the other.

‘Sweet milk,’ he said. ‘Do you want something to eat?’

‘No, milk is fine.’

‘I’ve called Marianna. She is getting some essentials and will sort out a nanny.’

‘I don’t need a nanny.’

‘Well, I do,’ Nico said.

‘Ah, yes, you have a very busy social life.’ She fixed him with her eyes. ‘What with balls and trips to the theatre…’

‘That was in the run-up to Christmas,’ Nico said, though he knew full well what Aurora was getting at. Those had been high-profile functions he had attended, and there were photos everywhere. ‘It has been a busy couple of months.’

‘I saw,’ Aurora said, and attempted to slice him in two with her eyes.

Nico held her gaze. He did not blink and then he spoke. ‘One thing, Aurora…’ He just could not let go of what she had said for a single moment longer. ‘You were never desperate.’

‘So had I arrived here eight months pregnant, with fat ankles—?’

‘You know the answer,’ he interrupted. ‘You were never desperate.’

No, because she had the golden ticket—his baby. And, whether he wanted her or not, Nico would see to his duty—and she would have done anything to avoid that.

‘Yes, Nico, I was.’

He closed the bedroom door and headed through to the lounge. He looked into navy blue eyes, and saw the groove in Gabe’s chin that mirrored his, and then went back to gazing into those sumptuous eyes.

‘Your mother,’ Nico said to his son, ‘is the most difficult woman on the face of this earth.’

And then he fell in love—because an eight-week-old could win a heart with a smile.

‘You did not inherit that smile from me,’ Nico said.

He had both of them now.

Two hearts that he had to take care of.

Two lives that twined and twisted into his.

When he had never even wanted one.

Aurora slept for a couple of hours and then woke to the sight of a crib by the bed.

And the weight of Nico’s arm over her.

He was on top of the bed, not in it, and he was asleep.

She wriggled out from under his arm and sat up on the edge of the bed. She peered into the crib at her son, and for that moment all was right in her world.

‘He wanted you,’ Nico said sleepily. ‘I couldn’t get him to settle in the crib, but the moment I carried it in here he fell asleep.’

‘I didn’t hear you come in.’

‘You were out of it. Come back to bed. Sleep when he does.’

‘No, I’m awake now,’ Aurora said. ‘And I’m hungry.’

But the deeper truth was she was nervous beside Nico. Nervous of the conversation to come and not sure how she was going to react to his weary, inevitable proposal.

There would be questions first, and accusations, but something told her that a proposal of marriage would come at the end of them.

Happy now? his eyes would say.

No—for she had never wanted to force him into doing his duty like this.

‘I’m going to make something to eat…’ Aurora said.

‘There’s a meal being delivered in an hour.’

‘A meal being delivered…?’ She frowned.

‘I often have the hotel chefs prepare my dinner.’

‘Well, I just want some bread,’ Aurora said. ‘Do you have that in your fancy house?’

‘I’m not sure,’ he admitted. ‘I don’t do the shopping. Marianna brought a lot of stuff over for Gabe…’

‘What did you tell her?’

‘Nothing,’ Nico said. ‘I just told her to arrange a nanny and that I needed stuff for an eight-week-old baby.’

‘And she didn’t ask any questions?’ Aurora looked over at him, and felt a delicious teasing in his vague answers.

‘She asked if you were breastfeeding.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I said that I believed not.’

‘I wasn’t able to,’ she said.

‘Well, there’s plenty of formula and bottles, and there’s an emergency nanny on her way. There is a separate wing in the house, and she shall have Gabe with her at night.’

‘No.’

‘Aurora, even aside from the bruise, you look terrible.’

‘Thank you for being so tender in your assessment of me.’

‘You are exhausted.’

She was… Not from the birth—the fog had lifted from that. And not from the night feeds, nor the drama of Louanna and her husband.

It was from eight years of chasing his love and running from his love and then chasing it again.

‘You look tired too,’ she observed.

‘Because you’re exhausting, Aurora,’ he said, and then he smiled.

The nanny arrived a little while later, and as Nico went to the entrance hall to let her in Aurora sat there, feeling on the back foot, still dressed in his shirt because her clothes were being washed. She braced herself for someone brisk and efficient, as all the people Nico hired in Rome seemed to be.

Instead she was a… Well, all Aurora could think of was a vast Italian nonna, who hugged Aurora as if she had raised her and was besotted as soon as she saw Gabe.

‘He looks just like his daddy!’

‘That’s the assumption we’re working on,’ Nico said, to the nanny’s bemusement, but it made Aurora laugh.

And as the nanny got to know Gabe, so he wouldn’t get a fright when he woke in the night and saw her, Aurora and Nico ate dinner. A gorgeous osso bucco in a wine and herb sauce. There was even bread! Well, there were rolls…

And as they sat at his gleaming dining table, and dinner was served by staff from the hotel, Aurora’s stomach growled as wine was poured.

Nico must have sensed her discomfort and dismissed the staff back to the hotel. ‘Grazie,’ he said.

‘But dessert…’ one of the waiters said.

‘We can manage.’

Manage.

That was what he would do, Aurora thought. Nico would manage this situation as best he could.

‘I’m sorry to have landed on you,’ Aurora said.

‘I’m glad you called.’

‘Please, Nico, don’t be polite.’

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I won’t be polite. Are you wearing underwear?’

She gave a shocked laugh, but then her smile faded as she felt his eyes on her.

And then Nico was serious. ‘I am glad that you called.’

‘Truly?’

‘Yes. I just wish that it had been sooner.’

‘And what would you have done?’

‘I’d have done better than a summerhouse in winter.’

‘Please don’t…’ She was starting to cry. ‘I did my best, Nico. I got us into this…’ She looked at him. ‘You think I trapped you.’

‘Did I say that?’

‘Nico, I wasn’t on the Pill.’

‘And I didn’t use a condom.’

‘But you thought I was on the Pill.’

‘Aurora, I am arrogant, yes, but not arrogant enough to expect you to remain on contraception for me because of one night four years ago.’

Oh.

‘If you had actually told me that day that you were ovulating I don’t think I’d have even heard. I was going to have you—’

‘Oh!’ She said it out loud this time.

Actually, she was surprised he knew such a word—but then the witch in her head flew in and reminded her that Nico knew all about female anatomy.

‘We made love and we made a baby,’ Nico said.

‘Yes.’

‘I came back from Silibri early because it stunk without you,’ he told her. ‘Thank goodness I had that last morning with my father, but I flew home early. Marianna said you were at the house, for the balcony…’ He looked right at her. ‘I came in and I knew you were still there. I followed my desire up the stairs and we seduced each other—the way we do and the way we always have. We took each other beyond the edge and, no, I was not thinking of pills, or condoms, or anything other than getting inside you. So, no, you did not trap me.’

‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘And another thing,’ Nico said. ‘My intention is not to lay a finger on you until we have talked this out, however, please go on the Pill—because there will be times, like this current one, where I want you on the floor.’

‘I am on the Pill,’ Aurora said.

Thank goodness, she thought, because she was squirming with how turned on she was.

‘Why?’

‘Because whatever our feelings are, or are not, we do always seem to end up in bed.’

‘We do,’ Nico agreed, and took a long drink of red wine. He held it for a moment in his mouth, then swallowed it down. ‘But not now, because we have a lot to sort out.’

‘I’m not ready to sort it all out.’

Tears were filling her eyes again. She did not want his practical solutions, she wanted his adoration—his relief that she was back in his life. Aurora wanted his love.

‘Please, Nico, I’m not ready to thrash things out with you.’

‘Then eat.’

She nodded.

‘But I mean it, Aurora. No sex till we’re sorted.’

‘Good!’

She took a mouthful of her own wine and swallowed that lie.

For the first time in her life Aurora left dirty plates at the table. She was simply too drained and exhausted as she searched out the nanny. Her room was miles away!

‘He’s a delight,’ the nanny said as Aurora took over bathing Gabe. ‘Why don’t I warm him a bottle?’

‘Thank you,’ Aurora said.

It was nice to sit in a chair and feed him, with this kindly woman watching on. She had missed her mamma so much these last few months.

‘I hope you’re settled in okay?’ Aurora said.

‘And you.’ The nanny smiled. ‘And little Gabe. It’s our first night here for all of us.’

‘True.’ Aurora gave a tired laugh.

‘Your cheek…?’

‘It wasn’t Nico,’ Aurora said, in an effort to clear the air. ‘He would never, ever do something like that.’

‘I know,’ the nanny agreed. ‘Or I would not have taken the job.’

‘I worked for someone who did, though,’ Aurora said.

Oh, heavens, she was like a leaky tap all of a sudden, but it dawned on her how much tension she had lived with these past months. All the energy spent watching the gathering storms.

Poor Louanna, Aurora thought. And Antonio and little Nadia.

She looked down at Gabe, whose eyes were heavy and sleepy. He gave her a soft smile, at the very edge of his lips and looked at her with his trusting eyes.

Poor Nico.

It hit her then, fully, just how appalling it must be to be beaten by someone you love—someone you should be able to trust.

It was no wonder Nico did not want anything more to do with love.

‘Go to bed,’ the nanny said when she saw Aurora’s tears. ‘I’ll take care of little Gabe.’

Nico and the nanny were right, Aurora thought as she kissed her son goodnight. She needed a night to sleep properly, knowing her baby was safe.

There was a surprise in the bedroom.

And not just that Nico had straightened up the bed. He stood there in his black lounge pants.

Aurora laughed. ‘I thought they were in case you had to go to hospital.’

‘Marianna talks too much,’ Nico said. ‘But, yes, these are for emergencies—and you, Aurora, are always that.’

She did not know quite what he meant, but he’d said it almost fondly.

Nico knew what he meant. She brought drama and tension into Nico’s life every time he saw her. She made the blood race through his veins and sent warnings screaming into his brain.

And always he fought to keep a cool head and control. The one time he hadn’t, or rather the few times he hadn’t…

But he must not think of sex now—he just did not want Aurora out of his sight.

At first they lay in a silence that was neither easy nor companionable; it was just silence as they both burrowed deeply into their own thoughts.

It was Aurora who broke it. ‘I don’t like leaving Gabe’s night feeds to the nanny.’

‘Well, try not to disturb me when you get up to go to him.’

She laughed in the darkness, and it scared her how right it felt to be in his bed.

‘Did it hurt?’ Nico asked. ‘The birth?’

‘Agony!’ Aurora said.

‘You didn’t tell your parents I was the father?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t want to answer that, Nico.’

‘Okay.’

‘I don’t want to talk any more.’

‘Then don’t.’

Aurora liked it that he did not push her to respond, and that he’d accepted her refusal to answer. She liked the feeling of being next to him in the darkness, even if he might not really want her there.

And so they slept—albeit restlessly.

Aurora rolled into him and rested her head on his chest, and then she found her fingers wanting to explore the dips in his ribs, and the hair on his stomach, but before she caved in and did, Aurora rolled away.

And at midnight Nico woke up hard and pressed against her, so he turned onto his back and tried to think boring, unsexy thoughts.

It was a joke that they’d pretended either of them would sleep. Nico wanted sex. And the woman he wanted to have sex with lay beside him. He could feel her desire in the thick air between them.

Yet sex could only muddy the waters.

He could tell that she was awake next to him.

‘Nico?’ she said. ‘We have to talk…’

She said it as if he was the one who was reluctant—as if he was the one who had shut down the conversation two hours ago.

Life with Aurora!

But he didn’t bother pointing it out, for indeed it was time to talk, to work things out. Here in the dark.

‘What do you want to happen, Aurora?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You must have thought about it or at least considered it.’

‘I’m confused,’ she admitted, and when he took her hand, she squeezed his back.

‘Then let’s talk it out.’

‘From what I can see I have two options.’

‘Options are good—so tell me.’

‘I want to tell you…’ She just did not know how.

But as she lay in the darkness she found a way, and she spoke to him as she had to Louanna the night before Gabe had been born.

‘I wanted to tell—’ She had been about to say, to tell you, but held it in. ‘From the moment I found out I was pregnant I wanted to tell the baby’s father. After all, there is no doubt that Gabe is his. And I believe he would support the baby.’

‘Of course he would,’ Nico answered carefully. He would give the world to get her real thoughts, and if taking himself out of the equation helped, then that was fine with him.

‘But I worry,’ Aurora said, ‘that he might suggest the other option.’

Nico was silent.

‘Marriage,’ she said. ‘You see, he turned me down once, and I would always feel I had forced him into it.’

‘Okay…’

It was a gentle okay. It gave no indication as to his thoughts. More an acknowledgment that he had heard her.

‘I think,’ Aurora said, ‘that he will want the second option—even if he doesn’t really want it. He’s a good man, and very respected by my family. They would certainly expect him to marry me.’

‘And you don’t want that?’

‘No. I think I would prefer option one.’

‘Okay…?’

It was the same response as before, but it contained a question.

‘You see,’ Aurora ventured, ‘I think he might regret that day.’

‘Well, I don’t think he does.’

‘I mean, he never wanted to marry…’

Silence from Nico.

‘But now he will try to do the right thing by me. I would hate that. I think our marriage would be a terrible mistake.’ She struggled to voice the picture that danced in her mind. ‘He would come to Silibri and see us now and then…perhaps at weekends…and then return to his life. I would have a husband and Gabe a father and we would have respect in the village, and he would have his life in Roma. His stunning apartment and…’ She did not finish.

‘And?’ Nico pushed.

‘Other women.’

Her breath was held tight in her lungs as he seemed to consider it.

‘You’d be okay with that?’ Nico checked.

And because it was dark she could not see his smile. And because she was so focussed on the awful scenario that danced in her mind she did not hear the tiny tease in his words.

She missed, completely, the fact that Nico had made a joke.

‘Of course not,’ she snapped.

‘Do you love him, Aurora?’

‘Too much.’

‘Do you believe he loves you?’

‘If he does it is a very occasional love—not enough to endure a lifetime. Which is why I prefer option one.’

‘You will always have option one, where he supports both you and the baby, but what of option two?’ Nico persisted. ‘What if he wants marriage and a family now? What if he has changed his mind?’

‘Perhaps he is just saying that to humour me. You see, I know for a fact he would prefer a quiet wife who would stay in the background…’

‘You know that for a fact?’

‘Yes!’ Aurora said. ‘Because he told me so himself. And I’m not so good at being the type of wife he prefers. I could try to be her, though…’

‘Why would you try to be someone you’re not?’

‘Because if he makes the effort for me, then I should do the same for him.’

‘Would he want you to change?’

‘He wants serene, he wants elegant, and he wants calm and peace.’ She turned and looked at him in the darkness. ‘I could try to be all of that.’

‘You won’t last five minutes, Aurora.’

‘Watch me, Nico.’

He did.

Nico watched her sleep.