Читать книгу The Sicilian's Surprise Love-Child / Claiming My Bride Of Convenience - Кейт Хьюит - Страница 16

AURORA AWOKE VERY EARLY, as she always did, in her own bed, but to a world that felt different.

She gave no thought to the wildfires.

For days she had been obsessed by them, but now her first thoughts were of Nico and what had happened between them.

There was no regret—in fact it was bliss to recall. But there was a tremble of fear. For she had not thought she could love him more, or want him more, than she had this time yesterday.

But she did.

Only then did she register the sound of rain—a light patter against her window. Aurora climbed out of bed and peered out. There was steam from the heat, and black smoke in the sky, and a steady fine drizzle of rain.

Aurora pulled on a dress and sandals, and as she slipped out of the house she stole just one look at Nico, crashed out on the couch.

Nico was not feigning sleep this time, but he woke at the sound of the door closing softly and then the steady, welcome patter of rain.

He was not one to examine his emotions—more often he shut them down—but for a moment he lay there, trying to label how he felt.

It wasn’t so much regret that had him closing his eyes tight, for in all his twenty-six years those hours last night had been the best of his life.

It was guilt.

Guilt because although everything had changed between them nothing had changed about what he wanted from his life. He did not want love and he certainly didn’t want marriage.

Nico had lost control in the small hours and he was not used to losing control.

He always used condoms.

Always.

Yet last night he had not given them so much as a thought.

Had her brother come home, or if her parents had got up and caught them, they would be heading over to the priest right now to arrange a wedding.

Instead he dressed, and headed out to where he knew he would find her.

It was muggy and humid, and no doubt the water would evaporate long before it got to the fires, but the rain would certainly help because the mountains had been tinder-dry.

Down through the village he headed, towards the cliffs overlooking the ocean.

He found her walking through the temple ruins, clearly deep in thought, because she jumped a little when she saw him, evidently not having heard his approach.

‘Are you okay?’ Nico asked.

‘Of course,’ Aurora said.

She knew she must look a sight, with her damp dress and hair, but there was nothing she could do about that.

Nico’s shirt was damp too, and his black hair was wet from the rain. She guessed this was what he would look like coming out of the shower, and thought of the shower they hadn’t been able to have last night.

‘Do you have any regrets?’ Nico asked.

‘About last night?’ Aurora checked. ‘None.’

She wouldn’t change it even if she could. The things Aurora would change would be the now and the future without him.

‘Do you?’

‘In part,’ Nico admitted, ‘because I loathe mixed messages and—’

‘I get the message, Nico,’ Aurora halted him. ‘I heard it loud and clear—you don’t want to marry me and—’

‘I don’t want to marry, period,’ Nico said. ‘I don’t ever want a relationship.’

And therein lay the difference between them, thought Aurora. How did he so easily separate sex from a relationship? For she felt as if she was in a relationship with Nico. Right now, as they walked through the ruins, she felt the closest she ever had to another soul.

‘Aurora, you don’t want to be married to me.’

Yes, Aurora did. But for dignity’s sake she had to sound as if she wasn’t imploding when she spoke, and so she took a breath.

‘No, I don’t,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to be married to a man whose skin crawls at the thought of being here. I don’t want to be married to a man who keeps his hand on my shoulder but his eyes on the pretty—’

‘What are you talking about?’

Aurora just shrugged, and then asked him a question. ‘When are you leaving?’

‘I’ll see what’s happening with the fires,’ Nico said, ‘but I expect I shall leave today.’

Even the heavens were against her, Aurora decided, because as he said it the drizzle turned into heavy rain. Yes, he would be leaving today.

‘Aurora, did you think last night might change things?’

‘No.’

She had been under no illusion that having sex with Nico would change anything for him. There had been a kernel of hope, though…

And Nico crushed it.

‘I’ll never marry, Aurora.’

‘I shall,’ she said, and she said it harshly.

Her words punished Nico, but determinedly he did not let it show. ‘You have your own life to live and you have no obligation to me.’

‘I know.’

‘So, please, if you are going to help care for my father, at least give me your bank details.’

‘I don’t want your dirty money.’

‘Dirty money?’

‘Oh, come on, Nico, don’t take me for a fool. Since when did a boy from Silibri leave school at sixteen and go on to own hotels and his own helicopter?’

‘You really are good at assuming the worst, aren’t you, Aurora?’

‘What else is there to think?’ She stopped walking then and looked at him. ‘Nico, be careful.’

‘Of what?’

‘Whatever it is you’re mixed up in.’

‘You think I’m in the mafia?’ Nico said. ‘Or moving drugs?’ He loathed that she thought that of him. ‘I’m not involved in anything like that.’

‘Come off it, Nico,’ Aurora said, and tried to walk off. ‘Don’t lie to me.’

He caught her arm. ‘I’m not,’ Nico said, he was angry. ‘Please don’t take me for some corrupt mafia gangster.’

‘I don’t,’ Aurora said. ‘Or I’m trying not to.’

‘Aurora, ask and I’ll tell you—but only you.’

She stood in the rain and it still felt like a relationship. She should walk away now, not draw herself in closer to a man who would never want her completely.

She asked, ‘How?’

‘You know when I left here that I went to my grandfather’s?’

Aurora nodded. ‘On your mother’s side?’

‘Sì. They are very modest people, who never cared much for my father. They thought my mother had made a poor choice, but she ran off and married him anyway. My grandfather suggested that I cut all ties with my father, but I could not. I got a job there and I sent half my wage home to him. I knew that he was not well and could no longer work the vines—’

‘He could have,’ Aurora interrupted. ‘He chose not to.’

‘Perhaps,’ Nico conceded. ‘Anyway, I made my own way. I worked in a bar, and then I took a loan, and then I bought a small stake in the bar and put in more hours.’

‘That does not buy you a five-star hotel in Rome and three others.’

‘I don’t own four hotels, Aurora. I have stakes in them.’

She shook her head, disbelieving. No, a Sicilian woman could not be beguiled.

‘What I do own,’ Nico said, ‘is land.’

He looked to the misty grey waters and the cliffs shining from the rain.

‘This will go no further?’ he checked.

‘Of course.’

‘Even when you sit on the hill drinking wine with Antonietta?’

‘She won’t be hearing about last night, Nico.’

‘This might be a more difficult secret to keep.’

He smiled at her slight eyebrow-raise, and the fact was he wanted to tell her. Nico wanted her take on the decision he was about to make.

‘My father married my mother not for love, but for what he thought he would get.’

‘Which was…?’

He led her out of the temple ruins and they walked towards the old monastery.

‘My grandfather owned the land we stand on—right to the edge of the temple ruins. When my mother died, he said the only good that could come out of it was that my father would never get his hands on it. He left it to me. That is why my father says I stole from him.’

‘Why did he want it?’ Aurora said.

She did not doubt it was beautiful—and, yes, the view was divine—but as far as she could see it was worthless, and she told him so.

‘Houses sit empty here for years. My father goes on about the house he had for—’ She swallowed, not wanting to say ‘us’ when no such thing existed. ‘He could not even give it away.’ She looked around again. Yes, it was her playground and, yes, she loved it, but… ‘There’s just the carcass of the old monastery and those steps down to the beach.’

‘It’s gold, Aurora. And my father would have sold it to developers. We would be standing now in a concrete jungle, with tourists being bussed in from the airport every day.’

Aurora could not picture it, though she tried to. ‘It would be good for the village, though, to have people coming through…’

‘In some ways it would—but that is not what my grandfather wanted and I agreed with him. He thought the monastery should be restored, but that would mean bringing stone up from the quarries…’ He halted. The cost and logistics were appalling. ‘Believe me, I have been tempted to just sell it—’

‘No!’ Aurora cried, and it was emphatic. ‘He left it to you!’

‘Yes.’ Nico nodded. ‘But I didn’t even know he owned it until a short while before he died.’

‘Yet you spoke of his plans for it?’

‘I thought they were just nostalgic ramblings about his hometown,’ Nico admitted. ‘And my father certainly never told me about it—though when I found out I understood better why he hates me so. He married my mother to get his hands on it.’

Aurora looked at the land she loved and knew so well, but she looked with different eyes now. It was Nico’s.

‘What will you do with it?’

‘I don’t have to do anything. It’s a huge asset and I can keep building on that.’

‘Or sell it to developers?’

‘No,’ Nico said, for he had ruled that option out long ago, even if at times he’d been tempted. And then he said what had long been on his mind. ‘I could restore the monastery.’

‘And make it into what?’

‘A very exclusive, very luxurious hotel.’

Aurora swallowed.

‘Just a few suites…’

‘But how would that make a profit?’

‘I would charge a fortune to stay in my Silibri hotel, and I believe I would get it.’

Aurora heard the steely resolve in his voice and blinked, because businessman Nico was someone she did not know.

She spoke then. ‘It would bring people back to Silibri…’

‘It would,’ Nico said, and then he made sure he crushed that last kernel of hope. ‘But not me. At least not permanently.’

‘I get it, Nico.’

She did.

Nico would not be returning to Silibri to live.

He looked at the ruins, and then he looked to the shell of an old stone cottage, and vowed it would be the first thing that was restored. Yes, he would be back to see his father, but there would be no reason to spend another night in the Messina house.

Nico would not do that to Aurora.

And finally, after years of indecision over the land, his decision was made.

He would not marry Aurora.

But he would take care of her this way.