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 inter
rupted. ‘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.’
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