Chapter Twelve #2
As Flora walked into the large reception room, she was greeted with genuine affection by some of the women she’d met since she’d been living in the city.
Arianna and her friends had shown her nothing but kindness and she liked them very much, although at first she’d been forced to work her way through a minefield of expectation as they asked her questions she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—answer.
They seemed to find it incredible that Vito Monticelli was in a relationship at last but Flora couldn’t bear to enlighten them that it had never been a relationship, just a festive one-night stand—with consequences.
Terrified of provoking their pity or concern, she couldn’t bring herself to disclose the cold-blooded nature of their arrangement.
She settled down to enjoy a sugar-rush from one of the local canestrelli cookies, along with a cup of peppermint tea.
There were several women she hadn’t met before and one in particular seemed eager to chat.
Be-atrice Maresca was the girlfriend of someone called Alessio Cardini and Flora screwed up her nose because the name rang a bell.
‘I haven’t met him, but I’ve definitely heard of him,’ she said.
‘Yes, you would have done,’ replied Beatrice, in her perfect English accent.
‘Vito goes skiing with Marco and Alessio every Christmas.’ She pulled a face.
‘Only this year they’ve added some extra dates to the diary.
Because their ski trip was cut short—poor darlings!
—they’ve decided to go salmon fishing in Iceland in October!
And October just happens to be when I have my birthday. How outrageous is that?’
It was also when a tiny baby would be barely a month old.
Flora’s fingers crushed her cookie and a shower of fine crumbs was immediately demolished by Luisa’s tiny dog.
And now Beatrice was asking was everything okay, because she’d gone so pale?
And Flora told her that everything was fine, hoping that her brittle smile was reassuring.
Somehow she managed to hold it together during the drive home, though her responses to Arianna were little more than monosyllabic and she heaved a sigh of relief when she reached Vito’s grand apartment, grateful to be on her own.
Politely telling the staff that she neither wanted nor needed anything, she paced around one of the vast reception rooms, as she waited for him to come home, feeling at a loss.
With a heavy heart she acknowledged that she’d been walking on a tightrope for all these weeks and she knew the time had come to talk to him.
To say what?
She hadn’t decided.
Pace, pace, pace over the polished wooden floors she went, wondering if some sixth sense had warned Vito that she was on the warpath and he’d deliberately chosen to work even later than usual as a result.
She knew how much he loathed ‘scenes’ because he had taken great pains to inform her, and up until now she hadn’t felt inclined to complain about a situation she had voluntarily signed up for.
But something had happened today in that balloon-filled room.
She’d had some kind of epiphany and her restraint had flown out of the window, so that by the time Vito walked into the reception room where she was lying on the sofa staring sightlessly at a magazine, she couldn’t contain her rage.
‘Here you are—at last!’ She threw the magazine down and his eyes narrowed.
A pair of black eyebrows swooped upwards. ‘Is something the matter, Flora?’
His cool, almost indifferent query only added fuel to the fire and Flora sucked in a deep breath, knowing it would serve her purpose better if she stayed calm—but any type of serenity seemed to be beyond her as all her repressed emotions bubbled to the surface.
‘You’re going fishing in October!’ she accused.
Vito almost laughed because she made his pursuit of salmon sound as reprehensible as if he’d acquired another mistress and was keeping two of them concurrently on the go.
But he didn’t laugh. He might often have been accused of coldness but he wasn’t stupid and he could see she was angry—angrier than he’d ever imagined she could be.
‘Yes, I am,’ he agreed. ‘Do you have a problem with that?’
‘Do I have a problem with that?’ she echoed. ‘Vito, what are you thinking? You do realise we’ll have a newborn by then?’
A single word leapt from out of her diatribe and hung there in terrible isolation, like the blade of a guillotine, hovering above his head.
We’ll.
How could one small word assume such inappropriate and presumptuous significance?
He raised his eyebrows. ‘And?’
But his determination to remain cool didn’t have the desired effect because she leapt up off the sofa as if it was contaminated.
‘I don’t have the luxury of going away on some luxury trip!’ she accused him hotly. ‘Because I’ll be looking after a baby.’ She paused and sucked in an angry breath before staring at him very steadily. ‘Your baby.’
In the beat which followed Vito felt a sense of panic rising up inside him and he dealt with it in a way which had always proved fail-safe in the past. ‘You will have childcare help around the clock,’ he assured her. ‘You know that.’
‘Oh, for goodness sake! That’s not what I’m talking about!’ she objected. ‘You’re still in denial, aren’t you? You haven’t actually accepted that this baby is really happening—whether you like it or not!’
He shot the words out like bullets. ‘Things will get back to normal.’
‘But that’s where you’re wrong, Vito. They won’t. Not like you’re used to. Not like before. It’s going to be a completely different kind of normal. I know that from when I had to care for Amy. Nothing will ever be the same.’ She hesitated. ‘And deep down, you probably don’t really want it to.’
Her voice had grown almost gentle and in many ways, Vito found that more difficult to deal with than her anger.
‘What are you talking about?’ he questioned forbiddingly.
‘I think you already love this baby more than you know.’ She took a step towards him and instinctively, he tensed. ‘I saw your face when I was having a scan,’ she informed him softly. ‘I saw how choked up you were.’
How dare she try to second-guess him, he thought furiously.
To put herself inside his head and tell him what he was thinking, instead of listening to what he was actually saying to her.
Wasn’t this his worst nightmare come true—all the mess and misunderstanding of human emotion, right here—in his home, like a nest of hornets?
Didn’t that cancel out the surprising fact that living with her had been more delightful than he’d ever expected?
Because this was the reality of letting a woman into your life.
The breath in his throat was raw and ragged and now he felt the hot burn of guilt.
Damn her—why was she making him feel so guilty?
‘I made the fishing arrangements a while back,’ he stated coldly.
‘Before you even came to live here. And even then, I was pretty sure you would have returned to England before the birth.’
‘You’re completely missing the point!’ she howled, lifting her hands in the air in obvious frustration. ‘You can’t just stick us in a box, no matter how much you’d like to. Your baby shouldn’t be something you compartmentalise!’
Vito felt the quick beat of alarm, knowing he needed to close this down, and quickly. And what better way than with the truth? Even though initially she might find it unpalatable, surely it would be better for her to confront it in the long run.
‘Look, this isn’t going to work, the two of us,’ he said flatly. ‘Not long-term. Your stay here was only ever intended to be temporary and nothing has changed. You are a wonderful woman in so many ways, but I cannot be the man or the father you and the baby need, and deserve.’
‘What are you talking about?’ she whispered.
‘I am a cold-blooded and arrogant bastard.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘Or so I have been told more times than I can remember, and deservedly so. Don’t you understand the truth of what I’m saying to you, Flora?’
Somehow Flora met the regretful look in his eyes without flinching, even though her heart felt as if it was shattering into a million pieces.
Perhaps he wanted her to flounce out and start packing in a dramatic and pride-salvaging way—that would certainly provide him with an easy let-out clause.
But she owed it to their baby to strive for more than that and she owed it to herself too.
Because hadn’t she grown to love this unconventional and infuriating man—no matter how much she tried not to, nor how hard he tried to push her away?
‘Can’t we at least give it a go, Vito?’ she questioned simply. ‘For all our sakes? For what it’s worth, I think those signs of cold-bloodedness and arrogance are becoming increasingly rare—’
‘And you think that has something to do with you, do you?’ he demanded dangerously.
‘Why don’t you ask yourself the same question?
’ she enquired patiently. ‘I know I have. I think we’re good for each other.
’ She sucked in a deep breath, knowing it was now or never.
And yes, this was laying her feelings on the line with a risk of getting hurt—and risk was something she had spent her life avoiding.
But some things were worth abandoning your long-held fears for.
Wouldn’t it be a pyric victory if she walked away now, without telling Vito how she really felt?
What price pride or dignity, if she spent the rest of her life feeling miserable because she hadn’t dared fight for the man she loved?
‘I actually think we might have the basis for a real relationship, and not just the friends-with-benefits thing,’ she continued, in a low voice.
‘I’ve seen the layer of goodness you try to hide beneath your grumpy exterior.
Most of the time you make me very happy and I don’t think I’m mistaken in saying that you seem quite happy too.
I also happen to think you’d make a great dad, Vito.
I really do. You’re strong and funny and clever.
’ She sucked in an unsteady breath. ‘I think we could build a life together—a good life—and if you lifted the blinkers from your eyes, you might realise that too.’
How long did it take for hope to be extinguished?
Only a few seconds, Flora discovered.
As long as it took for that ice-blue gaze to freeze over and for those sensual lips to harden into a cruel and forbidding line. That’s when she accepted what an utter fool she’d been.
There was a long pause before he spoke and when he did, it was in a voice Flora hadn’t heard for a long time.
Not since he’d started at Verdenergia last Christmas and ruthlessly pared back the ailing organisation.
When he’d got rid of the festive decorations, along with all the things which weren’t working properly—and now he was doing exactly the same to her.
‘I’m afraid that’s not going to happen,’ he said in response to her heartfelt statement, shrugging his broad shoulders and extending the palms of his hands, as if he were offering her the world. ‘I can offer you pragmatism, but not permanence.’
‘Excuse me?’ she said faintly.
‘You can have whatever you want, Flora. A house in London. A holiday home too, if you like. As many staff as you think it will take to make your life run smoothly. And a maternity nurse—I gather that’s a thing?
You will have a generous allowance and I will put a trust into place for the child,’ he continued, when she didn’t reply.
He was regarding her coolly as if waiting for a response and the only thing Flora wanted to say was—it’s our child, not the child! But that would be spiteful and emotionally manipulative—and hadn’t he already experienced enough of that to last him a lifetime?
She bit her lip with frustration and pain.
She didn’t doubt that she and the baby would thrive without him because she would make sure of that.
She’d always been strong because she’d had no choice and she would continue to be strong.
Yet maybe she owed it to Vito Monticello to call him out for his behaviour, otherwise he might just get to thinking it was acceptable?
‘You think you can just outsource everything, don’t you, Vito?
’ she demanded, in a low, shaking voice.
‘That if you throw enough money at something, it will all go away. But deep down, you’re a coward. ’
‘A coward?’ he bit out furiously. ‘How dare you say this to me?’
‘I dare because it’s true! Think about it!
’ she flared back. ‘You can just buy your way out of this situation and make the baby go away. You can file us neatly away in a box called unwanted family, but I can’t do that.
I don’t want to, but even if I did—I don’t have a choice!
’ She gave a bitter laugh, because somehow that was managing to keep the tears at bay.
‘But at least this way I’m free to nurture and love this innocent little scrap without you.
I won’t need to worry about being openly demonstrative, or commit the heinous crime of actually showing I care about you.
Maybe I really should thank you, Vito,’ she added steadily.
‘Maybe you’ve done me and our baby a big favour. ’