‘And if you marry me then you will get the full force of my love.’
‘Aurora,’ he said, very definitely, ‘you will get the full force of mine.’
‘All I want, Nico, is the full force of your love.’
It was all she had ever wanted, and she felt as if it had been fully received—but those worms of doubt had started wriggling, and then, from the other side of this vast house, she heard a tiny wail.
Was it Gabe he was here for?
‘I have to go to him,’ Aurora said.
‘I know,’ Nico agreed.
Even though there was the nanny he had had checked and re-checked a hundred times over. She was the very best nanny, and she would love both mother and infant, but she did not do housework.
In any way shape or form.
‘Gabe...’ Aurora walked into the comfy lounge, where her son was being winded midway through his bottle. ‘I’ll give him the second half,’ she said. ‘And then put him down again.’
He seemed to have grown in the time he’d been here, Aurora thought as she fed him, and she looked into eyes that could not be called navy any more.
They were black.
‘Your father,’ Aurora said, ‘is the most complicated man I know.’
She looked at her son for a very long time.
At the long fingers that clutched hers as she fed him.
At his lashes, which she had already counted.
Then at the perfect dent in his jaw.
‘I love him and I believe he loves me...’ she whispered, and her breath hitched. ‘Not a hundred percent as yet, and not as fiercely as I love him, but, my dear son, I do believe he is trying to love our little family.’
She knew eight years of rejection could not be eradicated in one night.
Aurora padded back to the bedroom and Nico could see that she had cried. It twisted him up inside that his cold, unwilling heart had hurt her.
‘We’ll build a house in Silibri,’ Nico said as she climbed back into bed.
‘And you will fly back to Rome...’
‘No,’ Nico said, ‘we will fly back to Rome. We will be based in Silibri, though.’
‘No.’
Her emphatic no surprised them both. It was immediate, even though she had never dared to give a future with Nico true thought.
Aurora loved Silibri very much, but though there were so many decent memories she could think of, there were old hurts that resided there for Nico, and current ones for Aurora too, for her parents had turned their backs when she had needed them the most.
‘We’ll be based here, Nico,’ she said. ‘I want to sleep most nights in the bed where Gabe was made, and I want to wake to the Villa Borghese Park outside my window.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Very,’ Aurora said, and then thought about it some more. ‘We’ll go back often,’ she added, and then she looked over to him. ‘And, of course, I would like to manage the temple weddings.’
‘You don’t give in, do you?’
‘Never,’ Aurora said. ‘Not when I know I am right.’
She had tried to give up on their love so many times and to let Nico go. She thought of her tears, and the coin-toss at the Trevi Fountain when she had begged to be made love to in Rome.
‘I want that job, Nico.’
‘Then you shall have it.’
‘I don’t want favours, though,’ she said as she lay in his bed. ‘I really am the best for that role.’
She was also, Aurora knew, the best for his heart.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
‘LISTEN TO ME, NICO...’
Of all the bizarre moments in Nico’s life, this possibly earned top billing: Pino giving him marital advice.
As it turned out, Nico wasn’t the last in his family.
He still had many of them. Not blood relatives, perhaps, but neither would he introduce them as friends, for they were so much more.
‘You have to keep the romance,’ Pino said. ‘I have been married to Rosa for thirty years, so listen when I give you advice. Even if it has not been a good day, you have to find a way to enjoy the night.’
‘I can do that.’ Nico nodded.
‘And you have to dance,’ Francesca added. ‘Often.’
But Nico dismissed that suggestion with a shake of his head. ‘I don’t dance.’
It was three hours until sunset, and while Aurora was having all her treatments in the oratory, he was in the café on the hill with the Silibri contingent.
‘Aurora can dance. She can dance very well,’ Francesca said. ‘You cannot let her down.’
And who knew that Vincenzo just happened to have been a ballroom champion, or a tango master, or something along those lines, a decade ago?
But Vincenzo wasn’t a kind teacher.
Vincenzo was impatient, and exacting, and Nico could never have imagined he would spend the hours before his wedding dancing with a man in a butterscotch suit.
‘And there will be the tarantella,’ Francesca said.
Nico frowned. He’d rather avoided weddings.
Until now.
* * *
Luigi had been brought in for this very special day, but instead of an elegant chignon, or snaky curls, Aurora chose to wear her hair loose and long.
Her make-up was for the most part subtle, but she asked Luigi to go to town with the eyeliner.
‘Not just yet,’ Luigi said, and glanced up. ‘There’s a surprise for you!’
‘What?’
And then through the doors came Antonietta.
‘Oh!’
‘Don’t cry,’ Antonietta warned as they embraced.
She wanted to, though, for it had been four long years with just the occasional message in between. ‘I never thought you’d come today!’ Aurora said.
‘I nearly didn’t,’ Antonietta admitted. ‘But I could not stay away from your wedding.’
‘Have you seen any of your family since you’ve been back?’
‘Don’t worry about that now,’ Antonietta said. ‘You have a wedding to attend. I’m going to head down to the ruins, but I just wanted to give you a kiss and offer my best wishes. Now, in case I don’t stay for the party after, here...’ She handed Aurora a little silver medal. ‘For you to carry with you today.’
It was a French good luck charm: Bonheur, the little medal said.
‘It means happiness,’ Antonietta explained. ‘That is my wish for you.’
Aurora thought back to that night on the hillside, watching the fires coming for them, and the wise counsel her friend had given her when she had told her to go home.
Aurora was so glad she had.
‘I will carry it with me for ever. And I wish the same for you,’ Aurora said.
But she felt the fragile shoulders beneath her hand and looked into her friend’s sad eyes. It was an almost futile wish, Aurora was sure.
No!
She would never give up on her friend.
‘We are going to catch up properly soon,’ Aurora said as tears sparkled in her eyes. ‘Even if I have to come to France to do so.’
‘You will have to come to France,’ Antonietta said, ‘for I am no longer welcome here.’ And then she recovered. ‘Get on with your wedding! Your Nico is waiting...’
‘My heart is waiting,’ Aurora corrected. ‘And I will tell this only to you. I think he almost loves me. And I believe that Nico will be the best father in the world.’
She blew at an escaped curl that Luigi would have to attend to in a moment. But right now she spoke honestly to her friend.
‘He tells me that I am mad to doubt him...’
‘Aurora...’ Antonietta said.
She braced herself for a pep talk from her friend, for Antonietta to tell her that of course she was not mad. That of course she should enter thi
s marriage with a reasonable nugget of doubt as to Nico’s love.
But Antonietta had long ago thrown away the script.
‘You are mad,’ Antonietta said. ‘Nico loves you. Why can’t you just accept it?’
It was a good question.
It had been wonderful to see her friend, although Aurora was very pleased that Luigi hadn’t applied the eyeliner before Antonietta had arrived.
‘You are ready,’ Luigi said to the bride.
He had indeed waved his magic wand—but not too much, for it was happiness that shone through on this day.
‘Oh, Aurora...’ Her father beamed when he saw her. ‘This is the best day of my life,’ he said. ‘I always knew he was right for you...’
It would be easy for her to hold a grudge. But her parents doted on Gabe and had been all over Aurora from the second they’d found out that the baby was Nico’s. They seemed to have conveniently forgotten that they had forced their pregnant daughter to leave home.
Forgiveness was not always the easier path. It was spiky and it stung as you trod on old hurts and raged internally.
‘It’s not worth it, Aurora,’ Nico had said as he’d held her hands and she had sobbed in frustration.
And she had looked up to a master. She had looked up to and learned from a man who had been beaten, but who had risen.
Yes, forgiveness was a spiky path, but if you pushed on and through it you got to those bulrushes, waiting to be snapped so that a million seeds of kindness could escape...
And so, instead of pointing out the hurts her father had caused, when Bruno said he had always known Nico was the one for his daughter, Aurora smiled and agreed. ‘You did always say that, Pa.’
It was better to be kind today.
And it was easy to be happy.
Especially when Nadia and Antonio ran in, laughing, carrying a small posy of the freshly picked wild flowers that Aurora would carry.
‘You look pretty,’ Nadia said.
‘So do you,’ Aurora said. She smiled and looked at Antonio. ‘And you look so handsome! Your mamma is going to be so proud when she sees you at the temple ruins.’
Nico had arranged for them to come to the wedding, and they were both Aurora’s flower-pickers and her little escorts on the walk to the temple.
And as she walked towards the ruins on her father’s arm the resentment slid away, for there was nowhere more calming nor more beautiful than the temple ruins at sunset...
* * *
Aurora had been absolutely right about the staff uniforms, because Persian Orange was the colour of this night.
As well as cinnamon, and gold, plus a thousand unnamed shades of orange with which the sky blazed.
And orange did not give Nico a headache tonight.
Pino nudged him needlessly, to say that his bride was here.
Her dress was white, and fell in heavy drapes, and to Nico she looked like a goddess walking towards him.
Aurora cared not for the eyebrow-raises of certain people in the village, who were clucking behind their hands at the audacity of a single mother wearing white.
It was her wedding.
The day of which she had dreamt.
Only it was better than her dreams. For in those they had not been at the temple, and Nico had not smiled at his bride the way he did on this day approaching night.
In her earlier dreams Nico had been a whole lot younger and perhaps, she conceded, just a touch less certain. On this new night and for evermore she was his chosen one. Of that she was ninety-nine-point-nine percent certain.
The whisper of doubt was so tiny in comparison that sense and hope combined to make her believe that Nico wanted this just as much as she did.
‘Aurora and Nico,’ said the celebrant, ‘we stand today amidst these ancient ruins to celebrate your unending love.’
And it was both unending and without a clear beginning, for neither could quite pin down when their love had commenced.
When she’d used to open the door and tease him with ‘Hello, husband’?
Or when Nico had denied to himself the fact that tears had pooled in her eyes when he had told her he would never marry?
Had there been love there that night on her father’s sofa?
And had it returned again on the night Gabe had been made?
Or had it never left them?
It was Nico who answered as he pushed the ring on her finger. ‘I have always loved you.’
First he had loved her like a sister, and for a while they had failed as friends. But they were friends now. And they were lovers and partners and parents too.
‘And I always shall,’ Nico said, looking right into those dark velvet eyes. There was nothing more beautiful than this beautiful Sicilian woman.
And now it was Aurora’s turn to speak, and to push her ring onto his finger. ‘I tried so hard not to love you,’ she told him, and the world. ‘I can stop fighting with myself now. I love you, Nico Caruso.’
‘And I love you, Aurora Eloise Caruso.’
‘Finally!’ She smiled as her groom kissed his bride.
* * *
Nico was not a sociable person, and Aurora was not expecting a wild party. But back at the hotel the champagne flowed, and he accepted the many congratulations and danced with his bride.
Nico danced!
He pulled her in, he twirled her—and he even, to Aurora’s delight, dipped her.
She laughed. ‘Where did you learn that?’ she asked. And even before the burn of jealousy could take her over, that he might have learned it in the arms of another woman, Nico halted her.
‘Vincenzo taught me.’
‘No!’
‘Sì!’
The Silibri contingent saw the smiles and the near-kiss and started clinking their spoons on their glasses, demanding that Nico and Aurora proceed.
Oh, his kiss was heaven.
Just heavenly.
Deep and slow and loving.
And Aurora was starting to let go of that tiny little percentage of worry that Nico might not be as on board with this as she.
She could never be an actress, she knew, for she let her emotions carry her away. While Nico, on the other hand...
But this kiss was both silk and velvet, and it was at her own wedding party, which she had dreamed of.
It was Aurora who wanted to leave and go to bed...
But then it started.
A huge circle was forming, and she and Nico were being pushed into the middle.
‘The tarantella,’ Aurora informed him, still sure that weddings were not his thing.
‘I know what it is, Aurora.’
He spun her as the circle moved in and out, with laughter and dancing, friends and family. The music pushed them to dance faster, and Nico never missed a beat.
Nico pulled her into him, and even in the midst of a circle full of joy and laughter he read in the woman he loved a sense of duty.
No glass would go unfilled tonight.
And no smile would be unreturned.
In a few moments he would take her upstairs and make love to her, as expected, but there was no sense of duty there.
How did he tell this complex woman that neither guilt nor duty could have him dancing the tarantella with such glee tonight?
Nico even held her hands as they were jumping. Stood in the middle of a circle doing silly jumping claps as the accordion insisted they jump some more.
This was a husband she had never seen before.
And Aurora really had to get him to a bed!
‘My wife is tired,’ Nico explained as they left. ‘Party on.’
Aurora kissed her tiny son, who had been an absolute angel and would be treated like a prince in her parents’ home tonight.
‘I love you,’ she said to Gabe. ‘And I lov
e your father so, so much.’
‘Come on,’ Nico said, and he took her hand.
There would be celebrations aplenty tonight, if he knew this lot, but right now he wanted his wife alone.
He led her up the winding stairs and she went to walk through the cloister, but he pulled her back. ‘This way.’
‘Aren’t we staying in the Temple Suite?’ Aurora checked, for it was the suite they both loved and the view that felt like theirs.
‘Not tonight,’ Nico said. ‘In case you’ve forgotten, this is our honeymoon.’
Oh!
For all she had pored over the pictures and been on board with the renovations, she had a blind spot when it came to the Honeymoon Suite. So certain that she would never stay there.
Or, worse, that she might be there with a reluctant groom.
But now she stepped in and it was Aurora who gasped—for she had seen it by day, but never at night.
It was one Silibri’s best-kept secrets.
‘Oh, Nico!’
The glass domed ceiling revealed the stars and the Sicilian night sky.
‘And do you know,’ Nico said, ‘that there are steps down to a private beach?’
‘I wrote the brochure, Nico,’ she teased.
But in truth she was in awe. How did a boy from Silibri, even if he’d inherited the land, do all this?
For there was magic in this building.
‘It should be called the Starlight Suite,’ Aurora said. ‘And you know I’m right.’
‘Of course you are,’ Nico said, ‘and that is why I have a present for you.’
Aurora frowned as he went over to a tray, where an ice bucket was cooling a bottle of champagne, but it was not that which he brought over. Instead it was a small pouch that he handed to her.
‘Keys?’ Aurora frowned as they fell into her palm. ‘Is this to your home in Rome? Because I thought that was all electronic—’
‘Aurora, look at them.’
They were old keys. One was thick and heavy, the type you might use to open a gate.
The gate at the side of her nonna’s house...
‘Nico?’ She did not understand. ‘You’ve bought Nonna’s house?’
‘I bought your nonna’s house many months ago—through a third party, so your father wouldn’t know it was me. Aurora, the only draw about my staying in Silibri was the thought that at night I would come home to you...’
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