by Penny Jordan
“I do,” he assured her, surprised to discover it was true because he hadn’t examined his feelings on the job for years. He’d been too head-down busy. “In the beginning it was almost more than I could handle. For all my schooling I wasn’t prepared, and quickly developed a new respect for my father and how easy he’d made it seem. I’ve grown into it, though. It still challenges me—mentally, not physically, but the stakes are higher than I ever expected, affecting not just my life and family but in some cases millions of lives. That’s enough to keep me focused and engaged.”
“It sounds very demanding.”
“Are you worried what that means for you? Don’t.” He touched where she was crinkling her chin into a concerned frown. “You’ll make a fine banker’s wife. You have poise and style and discretion. I’m more than pleased to have you at my side.”
Her lips parted as though she was about to say something, but then her brows twitched in surprised puzzlement. “Do you travel a lot?”
“Quite a lot, yes.”
“And what does that mean for me?”
He hadn’t given it much thought. “Well, I suppose it means you’ll have some quiet days and nights. I can’t take you with me. Not while you’re pregnant.” As for after the baby came, he’d watched his sisters take their children on the road and it required as much preparation as launching a satellite. Definitely not worth the effort for anything less than ten days.
A mask of cool tolerance slid over Lauren’s features. Her smile was tight. “Not the sort of marriage I would have chosen for myself, having lived in one just like it, but it’s not about me, is it? As you said, time to put away romantic notions. This is something we did for the baby.”
That was the second time she’d made their marriage sound like something she’d done out of practicality. It chafed even more this time. That was not the only reason they had married. Was it? Reflexively, he rolled her under him, spreading her legs with the pressure of his thighs so she could feel how quickly his body readied itself for hers.
He could feel her dampness, watched a flush of anticipation bloom under the surprise that transformed her face and heard the catch in her breath.
“I keep reminding myself you’re pregnant and I shouldn’t make too many demands, but do you want me again, Lauren?”
It was a deliberately worded question, one she might have answered if he hadn’t leaned down to fill his hands and mouth with velvet mounds and firm, jutting nipples. The cry he wrung from her was thin and far away, reassuring him how quickly she succumbed to the same passion that held him in thrall.
He wanted to thrust into her and stamp her as his for all time, but held back, making his point in a much subtler, more enduring way, playing with her nipples until she was rocking her wet center against his shaft. Then and only then did he shift so he could kiss her while removing himself from the temptation of burying himself in her, using his hand to caress her and bring her to the brink, not letting her tip as he steadily built the intensity for both of them.
She arched her breasts into his crisp chest hair, teasing him with their damp, hard tips, while her hands roamed mindlessly over him, scratching at his buttocks and urging him to take her.
Holding back nearly killed him. His skin was incinerating by the time he slid into her. Delicate inner shivering began around his erection almost immediately and he held them both still, waiting for it to pass, mercilessly smothering her groan of protest with his hard kiss.
Finally he began the serious task of claiming her flesh and senses, pushing them to the brink of mindless intensity with slow, deep thrusts. When waves of shuddering pleasure racked her, he finally abandoned control. He thrust fast and the eruption was so fierce he shouted with ragged ecstasy, body twitching in rapture.
Then he sank onto her, weak with relief as she clung to him, shaking with joy.
“Tu sei mia,” he said. You’re mine.
But later, when they were eating spaghetti by the pool in their robes, he wondered if it was true. No romantic notions. Would she ever really be his?
* * *
The honeymoon lasted until New Year. Aside from a few mornings when Paolo went into his office in Milan, they were almost constantly together. They shopped for the children, sent gifts to her mother and step-nieces and nephews, and spent time with his family. There were only two awkward hiccups.
The first happened immediately after they returned from Sicily. Champagne was opened the moment they arrived at his mother’s for a big family dinner. When someone handed her a glass, Lauren was caught off guard enough to hesitate before taking it, her mind teetering through the implications of refusing against taking a few sips that probably wouldn’t hurt the baby.
“Thanks, but we’re expecting,” Paolo said smoothly, his arm curling warmly across her back. “Celebrating, but not with drink.”
Into the startled silence, Vittorio drawled, “Only one day home from his honeymoon. Works fast, doesn’t he?”
The blunt reminder of their indiscretion in Charleston made Lauren’s heart drop, but quick as a whip, Paolo said, “Pressure’s off me now. When are you going to marry and produce?”
“I keep asking him that,” Paolo’s aunt, Vittorio’s mother, exclaimed as she came forward to offer Lauren a kiss. “Vito doesn’t have your sense of duty, Paolo.”
Paolo bent to hug her, smirking privately as a din of echoed badgering was aimed at Vittorio. Vittorio ruefully muttered, “Bastardo,” at Paolo before embracing Lauren.
“Keep him in line, would you?” he urged her.
With everything in the open, Lauren relaxed. She and Paolo entertained at both the penthouse and the lake and ate at a restaurant where Paolo introduced her to some of his friends and their wives. It was all very festive and fun.
The second blip came when they were opening Christmas presents at his mother’s. Amid the chaos of music and crumpled paper and toys being tried out, Paolo’s mother said, “I suppose next year I’ll be visiting you here for Baby’s first Christmas.”
The croon of a Christmas carol filled the sudden silence. All eyes shifted to Paolo, Lauren’s included. She had no intention of turning his mother out of her home.
“Is that really what you want, Mama? Because Lauren and I are quite comfortable as we are,” he said calmly.
“You can’t raise a family in a skyscraper. Children need room to run and play and this house needs little feet in it full-time, not just at Christmas.”
“But we don’t want to displace you,” Lauren blurted. “If the house is too much for you, we can move in and you could live here with us.”
“You have the heart of a true daughter, Lauren,” Carlotta said with a misty smile. “Thank you, but no. I’ll be happy to stay a few weeks when the baby comes if you like, but you and Paolo will want your privacy until then. And I want to be in my gardens in Tuscany. I’ve always wanted more time there and now I can have it.”
“Don’t do anything rash,” Lauren urged. “Paolo’s right. We’re happy as we are. We have the lake house and the baby won’t be walking for a year.”
Carlotta seemed determined, though, and later took Lauren up to show her the nursery, suggesting Lauren start shopping to update it. Lauren reiterated that she was in no hurry, but couldn’t help feeling a tingle of excitement.
Putting the baby’s room together was another step toward her dream of a real family—although the part where her husband came home every night had certainly been shot down dead.
She tried not to take personally how blasé Paolo had been about traveling and leaving her at home. His position was more than a job. She understood that, but it would have been nice to see some regret. She’d had to remind herself that this was an arrangement for their child. Love and other trimmings would have to wait...if they came at all.
Nevertheless, a gaping hole opened in he
r every time she faced that she didn’t have his heart. The constant physical attention of the first weeks of their marriage was a seductive illusion, fooling her into thinking he was growing to care for her. No matter how often they came together, they didn’t seem to tire of each other, constantly finding new ways to bring forth the near violent release they were able to pull from each other. Afterward, exhausted and calmed by release, they slept tangled in a Gordian knot of bliss.
But he left, nevertheless, his mood matter-of-fact and withdrawn as he kissed her cheek and murmured something about her going into the city if she didn’t want to stay at the lake house alone.
This throwback to the distant coolness he’d shown her while she was married to Ryan was a slice of sheer hell. Lauren had thought they were past that. She had thought it had had its source in jealousy and his need to control his attraction to her.
Not wanting to come across as the needy, insecure wife begging for affection, she behaved with well-trained equanimity. She knew how to swallow a fuss. Protesting or pleading that she would miss him wouldn’t make a difference. Her feelings wouldn’t change anything.
If you can’t change your situation, change your attitude, she told herself.
But the loneliness took a toll as his schedule grew heavier. She found herself falling into old patterns of introversion, feeling isolated in this new country where Paolo’s family got back to their own lives once the New Year took hold.
It was especially uncomfortable when Paolo called her over the tablet. She might tell him about a doctor appointment or the latest chapter in the pregnancy book, but she had very little to say. He was often surly and impatient, blaming mishaps in his day.
The one thing she did look forward to filling her time with was refitting the nursery, but when she dropped by to see his mother and take some measurements, she found the room completely redecorated.
It was gorgeous, freshly painted in dusky heritage colors with a parade of baby animals inching along the baseboards. Cradle, crib and change table were in place along with a rocker and daybed. Diapers, sleepers, and receiving blankets were in the drawers and the mobile played “Frère Jacques.”
Lauren loved it at once, but had to fight revealing to Carlotta that the sight nearly pushed her to tears. What was she supposed to do for the next eighteen weeks if not daydream about a baby while organizing its nursery?
“Did you know the nursery was being done?” she asked Paolo over their evening screen time.
“Is it finished? Good.” He was signing papers as he spoke, giving her only half his attention.
“So you did know,” Lauren said.
“Did I not mention I’d asked Marie for a list of the best suppliers for baby furniture?”
“Because her husband had done all the research for safety standards. Yes, you said that, but you didn’t say you were going to buy everything on the list and have the room painted and everything. I thought I was going to do that.”
“You can’t paint.” He finally looked at her and even through the glass he could make her pulse trip. That made her even more quarrelsome.
“I could have decided the colors.”
“You don’t like them? I used the same decorator who did the lake house and you’ve said more than once you like what she’s done there.”
“That’s not the point,” Lauren said, feeling a buildup of familiar frustration. “Oh, forget it. Fighting long distance is a waste of time.”
“Something you know from experience?” he asked with a surprisingly icy edge on his tone.
It took her aback, making her retreat even further into herself.
“Fighting at all is a waste of time,” she said, trying for neutral but aware of something in her deflating. The legacy of a military wife: if this was the last time she would speak to him, did she want it to be in anger? No.
Then he would come home and she wouldn’t want to rock the boat with a fight then, either. Be a good girl, Lauren. Don’t make waves.
Her heart felt as though it would crack right open. This wasn’t the dream she had envisioned for herself! She hated that she was falling into the pattern of measuring her life by her husband’s comings and goings. Not that she didn’t spring to life when he walked in the door. Her body began tingling just knowing he was on his way home. By the time he arrived, they couldn’t get to the bed fast enough, barely speaking, insatiable. Then they’d laze about, saying nothing until she’d work up the courage to ask when he was leaving again because the only thing worse than knowing was not knowing.
A nameless tension would come between them at that point and would linger until he left again. She didn’t think he was cheating and the absences weren’t that long, usually only a few days, but she dreaded them. She felt so bereft. She didn’t even have to ensure his laundry was done or his toiletries were in order. He had residences all over the world and people who sent his suits for dry cleaning and recharged his shaver when necessary.
“I need a life,” she wailed to the empty kitchen one morning after he’d left. She could blame Paolo all she wanted for leaving her at a loose end, but the dissatisfaction and pining were not his doing. She’d married a man who didn’t love her and put herself right back into the position she’d been in when Mamie had died.
Lauren reflected on that. She had been on the brink of taking control of her life before Paolo had derailed her. Soon her baby would fill her days with diaper changes and feeding schedules and she’d be too tired to make love. Paolo’s sexual crush would cool to ambivalence and then what?
Her dream of a nuclear family would implode.
Swallowing back tears that seemed to be right under the surface these days, Lauren shook off her melancholy and reminded herself why she’d come to Italy: to find family.
Heartened by the thought of doing something strictly for herself, she dug back into the few clues she had to the man’s identity. A message left with one of her grandmother’s oldest friends resulted in a surprise invitation a few days later to meet for dinner. Since Paolo wasn’t due home for another day, Lauren accepted and began packing a bag.
* * *
Paolo was beginning to loathe business trips. At one time they had energized him, but now the slightest delay or oversight fouled his mood. Anything that created more time away from Milan grated on him.
His childhood of bouncing from country to country and school to school began to make sense. His father had spent months at a time building the bank’s reputation globally. Given how his father had felt about his mother, it was no wonder the whole family had been carted along. All those fresh starts that his father had sworn to Paolo would build character were explained: Gino hadn’t wanted to sleep alone.
Paolo hated it, too.
He could almost hear Ryan snickering at the depth of Paolo’s fall into domesticity. The irony wasn’t lost on him that Ryan had never exhibited the same eagerness to rush home to the exact same woman.
Nor was it lost on him that Lauren had complained more than once about her first husband’s absences, but seemed almost anxious to get rid of her second, asking Paolo practically the minute he was in the door when he’d be leaving next.
It didn’t help that he was doubling up on his overseas duties, trying to square away as much as possible and delegate responsibilities so he could take time when the baby came. He felt like a schoolboy watching the clock, waiting for the bell that would release him into his life outside these walls, where Lauren and their baby were waiting.
An abrupt cancellation of a meeting by a European Union representative allowed him to leave Zurich at noon, rather than waiting until the morning. Paolo frowned at the nearly visceral relief from pain. What was happening to him?
He brushed past the flight attendant in his own jet and had to fight the urge to enter the cockpit. He shouldn’t be so agitated that he wanted to take up
old coping strategies, but waiting to be taken to Lauren felt intolerable. He wanted to pilot his return to her at his own agitated speed, pushing where possible and landing in record time before opening up the engine of his sports car full throttle to the lake house.
He made himself hold back, determined not to regress into that impetuous young man who’d taken too many chances because he couldn’t contain his emotions. Intense feelings that he’d managed to tamp down for years had been flaring up ever since Lauren had sashayed back into his life. That was intolerable.
He pushed his finger and thumb into his eye sockets, pinching the bridge of his nose and reaching for patience. What he felt for Lauren was completely uncontrollable. The more he fought it, the worse it got.
Silently resolving to master himself, he held to his typical land speed of merely outrageous rather than testing the true limits of the car’s engine. That might denote desperation and he wasn’t quite there yet. He told himself.
To his surprise, Lauren was in the entryway shrugging a jacket over her shoulders. She froze as he entered. She had her boots on and an overnight bag at her feet, but a startled flash-fire of joy overrode her initial shock, sending a kick of emotion into his gut. The apprehension he’d been nursing fell away.
“I was going to email you and tell you to meet me at the penthouse. I thought you said you’d be home tomorrow.” She came forward to greet him with a kiss full of sensuous welcome. Her weight tilted into him so her bump nudged his stomach.
He wove his fingers into the warm strands of her hair, unable to stop himself from keeping her close so he could feast on her supple lips. Dio! It felt like it had been months.
When she broke away, her face shone with excitement. “This works, too. We can drive in together,” she said breathlessly.