‘Sorry?’ He really was not thinking straight. ‘Why?’
‘Nico, we will be returning to Silibri with you, of course.’
‘Aurora, what you guys do is up to you—but I need to get back now.’
‘So do we scramble to get a flight and the cuccette while you fly in your big plush helicopter alone?’
He sighed, defeated. ‘Of course not.’
* * *
His driver offered condolences, and in the hotel lobby stood Marianna, looking grim. There too were the Silibri contingent, all dressed in black.
‘No one is better prepared for death than a Sicilian,’ Aurora commented.
Even in grief she could still make him smile.
‘Royalty travel with black outfits too,’ Nico pointed out.
‘Not always,’ Aurora said, and Nico gave a soft laugh.
She disappeared and returned fifteen minutes later, showered and changed, wearing no make up, and he could tell there had been a fresh batch of tears.
Those stunning locks had been washed and her hair was now pulled back in a severe low bun. Her dress was black, as were her shoes, and those gorgeous legs were encased in black stockings.
Yes, these Sicilians were more prepared for death than the Queen of England. And none of them had ever been in a helicopter, which meant there were a lot of shouts and nervous laughter as they took off.
The Silibri contingent had been to Rome but now they were returning.
And they were bringing their Nico home.
CHAPTER NINE
‘CONDOGLIANZE...’
One by one they took his hand and kissed his cheeks, but all Nico wanted was for this day to be over and then never to have to return to the place that had brought him so much grief.
As the last member of his family, Nico stood alone. There was just this line-up to get through, he told himself. And then his duty would be almost done.
There was to be a small gathering back at the house and then he could return to Rome.
‘Le mie più sentite condoglianze,’ Pino said.
‘Thank you for all you did for him,’ Nico said.
Aurora was just a couple of people down the line. Soon her hand would find his.
‘Condoglianze,’ Francesca said. ‘Nico, he is at peace.’
‘I know—thank you.’
Where was his own peace, though? Nico thought, for his head felt like a warzone.
‘Nico...’ Aurora said.
There was his peace.
A small moment of it in the chaos of a turbulent day.
Her hand took his and he closed his fingers around hers, causing her to look down at their hands rather than up at his face.
‘Condoglianze,’ she said.
‘Grazie,’ he responded, but he did not let her hand go.
She leant forward and kissed his cheek and it was as cool as marble against hers. She kissed the other and then looked at his beautiful mouth, now so pale.
‘He thought a lot of you,’ Nico told her.
I did it all for you, Nico. I know what Geo did, and I did not respect him for that. But he is...was...your father. Though it was hard at times, I always tried to respect that. I took care of Geo as I would have had you been my husband.
She did not say that, of course. ‘I thought a lot of him too,’ was her gentle response.
‘Thanks for all your help with the arrangements.’
‘Of course,’ Aurora said.
It was, for Aurora, as simple as that. Of course she would be there for him.
Marianna, who had thought she knew everything there was to know about Nico’s life, did not quite know how things were done down here.
Aurora had sat in the house during the vigil, as the villagers came, stayed and went.
That was not the role of a PA.
And Aurora had sat with Nico when he had asked the priest not to speak too much of a Geo having had a loving marriage to Maria, or to go on about his loving son.
‘You did love him, though, Nico,’ she had said.
And that was not the role of a PA.
But she did not know her own role with Nico. She did not know what part she played in his life. She had been Geo’s carer, and at times she had been Nico’s lover, but what was she now? His employee?
Still, Aurora had worked hard for this funeral. And she took care of things as a wife would when the mourners moved back to Geo’s house. She oversaw the proceedings like a hawk.
The coffee needed to be served more seamlessly, she told Chi-Chi, who was trying to chat up a guy. And the people over there had not been offered food for a while.
Aurora dealt with it all. She was constantly watching, swooping when needed, and then returning to be beside her master.
She looked across the room and could see that Nico was struggling to speak with Pino and his wife Rosa.
‘Stay tonight,’ Pino said. ‘Come and eat with us.’
‘Yes, Nico,’ Rosa said. ‘Don’t go back to Rome tonight.’
Aurora, who had been speaking to her father, saw the strain drawing Nico’s features taut. She caught his eye and moved to his side.
‘We were just saying to Nico he can stay with us tonight,’ Rosa explained as Aurora joined the conversation.
‘My father has offered the same,’ Aurora said. ‘But Nico has to get back to Rome.’
‘When will you be in Silibri again?’ Pino asked him.
‘We’ll see.’
Aurora felt the cannelloni she had just eaten curdle in her stomach at Nico’s vague reply. Nico truly answered to no one.
And then, one by one and two by two, the mourners were gone.
There is no sadder place than a house after a funeral when everyone has gone home, she thought.
Just Nico and Aurora remained. They were alone again. But she was suddenly scared that it was for the very last time. That the next time she saw him it would only be about work.
The cups and glasses and plates were all washed and put away. None of the endless food that had been made and brought was left in the kitchen—Nico had asked his guests to take the leftovers with them.
‘You could stay at the hotel if you don’t want to stay here,’ Aurora suggested as she plumped the cushions in Geo’s empty chair and missed the grumpy old man. ‘I know it’s not open yet, but there are suites...’
‘I would rather go home.’
And that made her breath hitch—because here was home. Could he not see that?
‘When do you think you will be back?’ Aurora could not stop herself from asking, hoping that although he had been vague with Pino he might not be with her.
‘I don’t know,’ Nico said.
He had an army of people who would take care of the small paperwork trail Geo had left. And the house...? He would send someone to shut it up properly, and work out what to do with it later.
Right now he wanted to get back to the cool order of his life in Rome.
He turned his mind to answer her question. ‘I’ll be back for the hotel opening.’
‘But that is four months away,’ Aurora pointed out, and dread clenched like a fist as she realised Nico was really putting Silibri—and her—behind him.
‘Yes.’
‘Will you sell the house?’
‘Probably.’ Just stop with the questions, he wanted to tell her, for his head was pounding. ‘Yes.’
‘But wouldn’t it be nice to have a home here? Like you do in Rome?’
‘This was never my home, Aurora.’
‘I don’t mean the house. I mean Silibri...’
‘I do too,’ Nico said.
He did not have family here. There was no guilt or duty to bring him back to the village. Just work.
And he would soon pass that on. He would get the hotel up
and running and then sell it, he decided. Finally he would be done with Silibri.
He would not keep her hanging.
‘Aurora, the hotel will be up and running in no time. I will pass on the management of it and then...’
He shared his business decisions with no one, and yet Aurora did not fit into the category of ‘no one’, so he told her what his grieving mind had decided.
‘And then I shall sell it.’
It was too painful for him to be here now. He had done his best for the village, and now his father was gone.
‘There is no reason for me to return to Silibri,’ Nico said. ‘I have not one decent memory of this place.’
Aurora gasped.
Not one? What about that time on the sofa, Nico? Does the night you took my virginity not even rate?
Hawks had talons, and Aurora felt hers then.
She wanted to slap his face, to deliver to him some of the pain he had flung at her. But she was not a violent person. She had never understood how Geo could lay a hand on someone he loved, and she would not lower herself to do it now.
‘Not one decent memory?’ Aurora checked.
Nico closed his eyes and wished that she had slapped him, for it would have been so much easier to end this on a row. To throw up his arms and feel justified in walking away.
But instead her velvet brown eyes tried to meet his. ‘How many more ways can you hurt me, Nico?’
‘Aurora...’ He already regretted those words. He could both see and hear the hurt they had caused, for her voice was raw and her face was bleached white. ‘I should not have said—’
‘No,’ she interjected. ‘Don’t bother apologising, or rephrasing, or trying to find another way to say what you really mean. I finally get the message, Nico. It’s the same one you have been giving me for eight years now. You. Don’t. Want. Me.’
If he refuted that, Nico knew that they would end up in bed.
Again.
Or rather they would have sex on the floor, because he could not stand the thought of sex in his father’s bed.
Or perhaps they would go to one of the empty suites at the hotel and he would bury himself in her there.
He thought all that even as he stood with her sad vocalisation of his feelings for her ringing in his ears.
And when he did not refute Aurora got her answer from his silence.
Aurora regretted so many things, but somehow—somehow—she must not live to regret the moment she left. She must not break down within his sight.
Instead, she was as brave as she could be. ‘Live well, Nico,’ she said, and kissed his cold, pale cheeks. ‘I wish you nothing but good things.’
And finally she let herself out of the house and let Nico out of her life.
CHAPTER TEN
Four months later
‘NICO JUST LANDED.’
Aurora, who stood in the cool of Reception, nodded to Francesca. ‘Everything is ready.’
The press were here for the official opening of the hotel, and the guests mainly consisted of Nico’s wealthy contacts and a few select people from the travel industry, who would be dining in the restaurant and staying in the sumptuous suites on this very exciting day for Silibri.
The real guests would start arriving next week.
Nico had made it clear—via correspondence rather than in person—that he did not want their luxury stay to be encroached upon by the opening celebration.
Nico had stayed well away from Silibri—had not been back since the funeral. And Aurora had never been more nervous in her life to see him—though that had nothing to do with work.
Work was the one thing in her life that was going very well.
The hotel was stunning: each suite had a sumptuous view, either of the ocean or of the ancient temple ruins. Many of the suites had their own private pool, and all had a balustrade balcony made from the same stone as the temple.
It was sheer opulent luxury, and it would change the village economy entirely.
Guests would soon be strolling through the long empty streets. Cafés that had closed and lain empty for years had been renovated and would be opening again—not just for the hotel patrons, but for the fleet of staff who would work at the hotel, as well as their families.
Life was returning to Silibri.
And soon Aurora would have no choice but to leave.
She was pregnant.
In the first few weeks after Nico had left Aurora had been too angry and confused to consider the possibility that she might be pregnant. She had been grieving for Geo, as well as mourning the loss of Nico from her life.
She had buried herself in work and it had been her saviour. She hadn’t just worked alongside Vincenzo, but off her own bat had made a gorgeous library of the photos she had taken of the renovations, which now had its own section on the hotel’s website.
Her first inkling that something was amiss had come when the new uniforms had arrived. Aurora had at first assumed there had been a mix-up and that she had tried on someone else’s.
The jacket had not done up across her generous bust.
The skirt had felt too snug on her hips.
Aurora had checked the label and seen that indeed it was her uniform—and then realisation had started to hit.
Stupido!
That had been her first thought as she had frantically tried to remember when her last period had been.
Stupido!
It had been her second thought too—but aimed at both of them. Because Nico hadn’t used protection and neither had he asked if she was on the Pill.
And she hadn’t told him that she wasn’t.
There had been no thought on that balmy afternoon—just his mouth and his hands and his touch and the heaven to which he had taken her.
Aurora had sent the uniform back and today she wore one a full size bigger—already it was too tight.
She could not stand to think of Nico’s reaction. He would consider that she had set out to get pregnant deliberately, Aurora was sure. That she was trying to trap him into marriage. It was an old-fashioned village and marriage was still a foregone conclusion for lovers who found themselves in the family way.
Family.
She gave a wry laugh at that.
Nico did not want one.
‘Aurora?’
Vincenzo was going through the list of questions that might come their way as they took their separate groups around the hotel. He, of course, had Nico and all the bigwigs, and she had the local dignitaries. It didn’t trouble Aurora, for it was an hour that she would not have to spend avoiding Nico’s eyes.
‘Right, I’m going to the oratory,’ Vincenzo said. ‘Good luck today. Any questions you can’t handle, just refer them to me—though remember I have to leave by eight.’
Vincenzo was appearing on breakfast television tomorrow and could not stop mentioning it.
‘Of course I’ll remember. You look very smart,’ Aurora added, for in his butterscotch suit indeed he did.
‘Thank you,’ Vincenzo said, smoothing his auburn hair. ‘So do you.’
She wore her hair up and had subtle make-up on, but it had taken some considerable effort to conceal her new curves.
Aurora had let out the waistband of her skirt herself, and her breasts were practically strapped down. She was bursting out of everything and was just a day away from telling her family the news—once Nico had safely flown out.
Today, though, he had flown in.
Should she tell him?
It was the question that she both woke and fell asleep to, and then asked herself a thousand times during the hours in between.
And as Nico and his entourage crossed the foyer she asked it again.
Should she tell the man who did not want her—the man who was attempting to cut all ties with her and the villa
ge—that she was having his baby?
Or rather, did she tell the man who wanted her only in bed and not by his side that she was pregnant? The same man who had told her as they made love to keep on wanting him.
Oh, she still wanted him—for even from this distance the sight of him jolted her senses and turned her on.
He wore a dark suit, presumably stitched by his usual master tailor, but to Aurora’s skilled eye it was looking a touch loose on him.
Nico had lost weight.
Not a lot, but enough that she wanted to race to the chef, scream for pasta and force-feed him. It was the Sicilian way.
But she restrained herself.
In fact, for once, Aurora was a picture of restraint.
‘It is good to see you.’ She smiled, and shook his hand. And this time, as Nico moved in to kiss her in the way old friends would, it was she who put up her hand to halt him. ‘I believe Vincenzo has your people gathered in the oratory.’
‘How are you, Aurora?’
‘Very well.’
She looked incredible.
Nico knew she had been working frantically, but she looked as if she had spent all these weeks lying on a recliner by the pool in the hot Sicilian sun. The Persian Orange of her uniform was indeed perfect, and brought out the little flecks of gold in her dark eyes. Her lips were plump and shaped in a mild smile.
He tried to gauge her level of hurt, and he checked for hostility in those amazing eyes, but saw none.
For there was none.
She loved him—and that, sadly, was that.
‘Aurora,’ he said as she went to move off. He spoke with his people and then nodded to Francesca, who took the group through to the oratory. ‘I need to see you.’
‘Of course.’ She fixed on a smile. ‘What do you need?’
‘Not here,’ Nico said. ‘Not now.’
Nico truly loathed his treatment of her on the day his father had been laid to rest. He regretted with every fibre of his being the way they had parted.
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