by Lily Zante
The more she thought about it, the more it seemed likely that she’d have to return to Denver sooner than she had planned.
Chapter 15
“I’ve got you, yes I do,” Nico babbled away, chattering in baby talk as he changed Elisabetta’s diaper. The stationery, paper weight and paperwork on his desk had been moved to the side to make way for this delicate procedure. Lying among it was the local paper. This morning’s edition had been particularly hard to stomach and in light of the delay at the Cazale Ravenna, the media had gone to town, calling him the playboy who couldn’t live up to his father’s reputation. He’d read the entire article, and had tried to bury it deep inside his soul.
He continued to fasten the fresh new diaper and made faces as Elisabetta gurgled back at him. “Papa’s got you, princess,” he said, slipping her legs back into her sleeper and doing the buttons up. So far it hadn’t been too bad. He’d fed her, and then she’d fallen asleep, and he’d been able to get on with his work.
He didn’t know what the fuss was about; he didn’t understand Ava’s complaints about spending the day looking after the baby and struggling to do her work. It didn’t seem that much of a chore, and he’d been looking after her for two hours.
Bruno still hadn’t heard back from the safety department but his men were doing the last of the finishing touches. They had to re-paper and re-plaster the walls and the ceilings that had had to be stripped to replace the cables. It was the only thing that stopped Nico from getting on the phone and yelling at someone from the safety department. He wanted to ensure that Bruno’s men had finished completely.
He could hardly believe that the spa hotel was finally, nearly, almost there.
“Come in,” he said, when he heard at knock at the door. Ines poked her head in and her face grew curious to see him. He was supposed to be meeting with her now to go over the advertising campaign but it didn’t look as if it was going to happen.
“You brought your daughter in today,” gushed Ines, walking into his office with a smile when she saw Elisabetta. The look on her face turned all soft and gooey—just like it did when most people first saw her. “Hey, you,” said Ines, softly. Elisabetta suddenly perked up and waved her arm around excitedly, and then in the next moment her lower lip began to tremble and she started to cry.
Ines looked horrified. “What did I do?”
“I’m not sure,” said Nico, picking up his daughter and putting her to his shoulder. “She might have thought you were my wife.” With her shoulder-length, sandy brown hair she looked nothing like Ava, but perhaps to a baby….
“Or maybe she’s figured that she hasn’t seen her mother,” said Ines, trying unsuccessfully to soothe the baby down but Elisabetta’s cries only grew louder.
“Could you—” He was about to hand the baby to Ines, because he wanted to wash his hands, but knew he couldn’t hand her over when she was crying. “Hey, hey princess,” he said, trying to calm her down but his words only seemed to make things worse.
“I’m sorry, I’ve frightened her,” said Ines, backing away. “Is there anything I can do?” Nico shook his head as he laid his crying daughter into the baby stroller.
“I think we’ll have to postpone the meeting until tomorrow.
“Tomorrow is good,” said Ines, gravitating towards the door. “Are you leaving?”
“Yes,” he said, struggling to get all of the baby’s scattered belongings into the bag. Ines held the door open for him and by now Elisabetta was howling as he pushed the stroller out into the lobby. An alarmed group of guests looked up. Nico smiled at them politely.
“We’re going home,” he told Ines. It would be easier to take Elisabetta home and to feed her there. There was no way he was going to be able to concentrate or o get any work done here with this much noise.
A few minutes after he’d driven off, Elisabetta’s cries trailed into silence. He let out a deep breath. He glanced at her over his shoulder and saw that she was wide awake, but seemed content, whether it was the car motion, or the noise of it, or a combination of the two, it didn’t matter. She was quiet. It was good to know about such an effective silencing technique. Pleased with himself, he spoke in silly baby language as he drove and when Ava called him, it instantly went to the car’s loudspeaker.
“Hey,” she said, sounding exuberant.
Behind him, Elisabetta gurgled, probably at hearing the sound of her mother’s voice. .
“Hey, baby. Elisabetta,” Ava chirped back. “Where are you?”
“In the car.”
“Oh,” she sounded surprised. “How come?”
“We’re going for a drive.” He didn’t need to confess to his wife that he was going home early.
“Is everything okay? Did my mom show up?”
“Everything’s fine but I haven’t seen Elsa.” He hadn’t even thought to venture out into the gardens to check.
“That’s strange.”
“It’s fine, really.” He was eager to prove that he had everything under control.
“How are you coping?”
“Great,” he replied. “We’re having fun, aren’t you, princess?” He glanced over his shoulder again.
“Good,” said Ava. “Because Andrea and I are going for a late lunch. I’ll be back later.”
Later? His body tensed.
“Unless you need me to come back now.” Her voice carried the implication that he couldn’t manage by himself.
“I’ve got her,” he said, hastily.
“But didn’t you have a day of meetings?”
“It’s all taken care of.” He wanted to ask how her meeting had gone. It couldn’t have been too bad if she had nothing better to do than to go to lunch with Andrea. He looked at the clock on the dashboard. It was three o’clock. And it was only then that he remembered he hadn’t had lunch.
“You go to lunch with Andrea,” he said, “and don’t worry about us.”
“Okay, if you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
“’Bye baby Lisabetta.” He heard the sound of her blowing loud kisses. “I’ll see you later then,” she said to him.
“See you later.”
He ended the call feeling a little anxious. “Mommy’s going out to dinner,” he said, looking at his daughter through the rear view mirror. “It’s just you and me, princess.” But with her mother’s voice no longer to be heard, Elisabetta dissolved into howls of tears once more.
And Nico’s jaw tensed up.
The next few hours were like Groundhog Day. He fed her, then burped her, then changed her, then tried to get her to nap, and when that failed he tried to read to her, or play with her, or rock her. And then he fed her, and burped her, and changed her again, and once more tried to get her to nap.
It still didn’t work.
For some reason his daughter was fighting her sleep, but she was tired, he could see it in her eyes. When she continued to wail for more than ten minutes and he couldn’t calm her down, he got in his car and drove around.
She was asleep within minutes.
Feeling completely worn out himself, he carried her gently back to the bedroom and, exhausted himself, he lay down with her.
When he next came to, it was to the sound of Elisabetta crying on the bed beside him. Nico opened his eyes and turned over. He’d propped pillows up on the other side of her to stop her from falling. It was past six in the evening.
Where had the time gone?
He’d had some paperwork and emails to catch up on but it had been impossible to get anything done with Elisabetta around.
How did Ava do it?
He wondered if having breasts might have helped his cause, because nothing he tried seemed to work. “Hey,” he said, holding his daughter against his shoulder. She continued to cry. Then he hugged her against his chest, then rocked her but nothing seemed to help. “Does your diaper need changing?” Was that it? How much pee could a baby do? He ran his hands over it to check but her diaper wasn’t bloated or soggy.
He bent his head down and sniffed but he couldn’t smell a number two either.
“Hey, Elisabetta,” he said, his voice almost faint. “Shush, Mommy’s going to be here soon.” But of course that didn’t do a thing.
“Milk. Do you want some more milk?” Maybe she wanted more milk. He’d tried all the other options. He opened his bedroom door at the same time that Elsa knocked.
“That’s where you were hiding!” she exclaimed, her eyes shining as soon as she saw her granddaughter. Nico could almost have kissed her when he saw the bottle of milk in her hands.
“I heard her crying, so I got her milk ready. Shall I take her?” Elsa asked. He couldn’t hand the baby over fast enough.
“I’ll feed her in the nursery,” said Elsa, and entered from the main door. Nico followed. “When did you come home?” he asked, watching her ease into the glider slowly. “About an hour ago. My phone battery died along the way and I didn’t notice until later and that’s why I didn’t get Ava’s messages or I’d have turned up sooner.”
“She was hoping you’d be at the Casa Adriana.”
“I was, later on. Salvatore went to the nursery to look at some things for the gardens and I went along with him.”
Nico nodded, understanding.
“But we didn’t get back until late afternoon, and that’s when Gina told me you’d gone home. I came as soon as I heard.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” he said, all the same feeling relieved that she had. He wasn’t sure how much more of Elisabetta’s crying he could have taken. The baby hadn’t been like that when he’d been at home convalescing. Of course she hadn’t—Ava had been here. Perhaps all his daughter wanted was her mother. He leaned against the door with his hands in his pockets and watched Elsa throw an adoring look at her granddaughter whose tiny hands gripped the bottle as if she would never let it go.
“Ava’s having dinner with Andrea.” Elsa reported, beaming at him as if this was good news.
“I know.”
“It’s good for her to be out and about. She needed a day to herself.”
“I suppose she did.”
“I was beginning to worry with her being at home all the time. It can’t be easy, Nico, and it’s not as if she has a lot of company and she’s been so busy with her work.”
“She doesn’t have to work,” he said it before he could stop himself, but he also knew that Elsa wasn’t one to go running to her daughter and relay all that he’d said to her.
“She doesn’t have to work, no,” replied Elsa carefully, “and she’s very lucky to have that choice, but she wants to work, and you’re very lucky that she’s that sort of woman, and not the type who wants everything handed to her on a silver platter.” If that didn’t put him in his place, he didn’t know what would. Feeling sheepish, he straightened up. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I know, but you don’t look too happy at the moment, and I can’t help but overhear the things you two bicker about. I don’t want you to take it out on her when she gets back. Having a baby can put enormous pressure on a couple sometimes, and the two of you haven’t had an easy time of things. Instead of taking it out on one another, maybe you both need to remember who you were when you first met.”
He had to give it to her. Elsa had a way of putting him in his place and spelling things out for him and he didn’t mind. Not the way she said it. He coughed lightly. “It’s not that I’ve forgotten, Elsa,” he said, trying to salvage his reputation. “It’s that there are so many other urgent things that are screaming out for attention. It’s easy to take things for granted, and it’s easy to get irritable.”
“That may be,” replied Elsa stiffly. “But having a new baby isn’t easy and, I know you might not want to hear this, but it gets harder as the children get older.”
His heart sank. This afternoon had been nothing like he’d expected and now Elsa was telling him that it was going to get worse?
“But that stage doesn’t last long either. In fact,” she seemed to be talking more to herself that to him, “All the stages in our life are fleeting when you look back on them from where I’m standing. You should stop and take a moment to enjoy them, Nico, for they will soon be over.”
He let the words sink in. “Is that how you feel?”
“My life has flown by so fast. Seeing you both with your baby, it reminds me of when mine were that age, and if I let myself wallow in the memories too long, it doesn’t seem as long ago as it really is.”
He nodded.
“You wait until she turns into a teenager,” said Elsa, looking up at him. “They think they know everything then. They think they don’t need you. Something for you to bear in mind.”
He couldn’t imagine a time when his own daughter would tell him she didn’t need him and it wasn’t something he wanted to think about.
“Why don’t you go and do whatever it was you need to do,” said Elsa. “I’ve got her.”
Chapter 16
“That was delicious, and I got to eat without any interruptions.”
“See what you’d have missed out on,” said Andrea.
“I was anxious to get back home.”
“You shouldn’t worry about Elisabetta. Your mom is there, and you have the housekeeper.”
“The housekeeper doesn’t look after the baby and my mom, well,” Ava wiped her lips with her napkin. “My mom’s been rather busy lately, and I’m not sure what with.”
“Oh?” Andrea held the wine glass in her hands as if waiting for more gossip. “She’s doing her own thing, and I suppose I must let her. I mean—“ Ava wiped her mouth and laid down her napkin. “I want her to do her own thing, I don’t want her to feel that she’s bound to me, to us, in any way. She helps out a lot as it is, but today, of all days—I could have really done with her being around.”
“You mean to say that Nico’s looking after Elisabetta?”
“He sounded fine when I called him.”
They giggled.
“It will be a good experience for him,” said Ava. She wanted him to know what a whole day with the baby could be like.
“I’m sure he’s a really good father,” said Andrea. “I mean,” she sat upright, “I mean the way he was with Alessa on the few times I saw him with her. When he used to talk about her it often seemed that he cared more for that child than her own mother did.”
“He did,” replied Ava, remembering her early days when she’d started to fall for Nico. Around that time, and before, there had been many rumors that Silvia Azzarone’s child had been fathered by Nico. They’d had a short summer fling, and when the child was born people assumed it was Nico’s. Silvia had never thought to put them straight and it took a paternity test for the truth to come out. The child wasn’t his. “Silvia’s a sly little snake, isn’t she?” Andrea declared, before taking a sip of her wine. Ava nodded, agreeing. She felt nothing but contempt for the woman who seemed to have made it her life’s work to cause problems for her and Nico.
“She hates you,” said Andrea, putting her wine glass down.
“I know she does. The sad thing is that we feel nothing but pity for her.”
“Pity?” Andrea asked. “You don’t hate her?”
“Hating would mean exerting too much of my energy. I should hate her, because she found a way to get to Nico, but hate is a strong emotion and I don’t feel that much for her.”
“You mean with the hotel inspection?”
“We think so but we can’t prove it. All we have is the project manager’s word to go on. He has a contact at the safety department. We don’t actually have proper proof.”
“He was trying to lobby for worker’s rights wasn’t he?” asked Andrea.
“He made a thinly veiled reference to business men who forget they have a duty to do the right thing, and then he mentioned something about a new hotel opening and the owner, a multi-millionaire not re-wiring it properly—something along those lines,” said Ava, her voice was weary as she recoun
ted it. “He was smart, he mentioned no names but that’s what he said. I’ve read the article in the paper.”
“So how did what he said stop your hotel from opening?”
“It didn’t. The health and safety department didn’t pass it based on a few minor technicalities and somehow,” she air-quoted the ‘somehow’, “the people we’d newly hired to work at the hotel, all of a sudden they started to grumble.”
“It sounds like too much of a coincidence,” remarked Andrea, making a face as if she’d smelled a skunk.
“He drove back later, soon after that meeting, and that’s when he had the accident. I’d gone into labor and he was racing back to get to me.”
Andrea squinted, as if recalling that time. “That’s right,” she said softly. “It all happened that day.”
“And then I had the baby and we were both recovering, and here we are.” Ava took a sip of her lemonade.
“I’m surprised Nico hasn’t disputed it.”
“What’s the point?” said Ava, shrugging. “He gone ahead and fixed it now, and he’s so desperate for it to open and start making money.”
“He must hate the sight of those two.”
“With a passion,” said Ava. “I don’t know what he’d do if he saw Silvia again. Every now and then we read things about her and Vieri in the local papers and it makes Nico’s blood boil.”
“He gets around, that politician,” Andrea said. “He’s always in the news for one thing or another. But I don’t understand what she’s doing with him. He must be old enough to be her father.”
“Silvia is all about status and power,” Ava declared. “She doesn’t care how old he is, or even what sort of a person he is, I’m not even sure they have that much in common. All she wants are connections.”
“Thank goodness she didn’t get her claws into Nico,” said Andrea. She quickly added, “Not that he ever would have gone back to her. He knew what to avoid, and he knew a good thing when he found it.”