CHAPTER ELEVEN
LAYLAHADLOCKED herself in the bathroom, showered, then thrown on the least sexy knickers she could find and the longest dress before climbing into bed. If the bedroom door had a lock on it, she’d have turned the key.
Unable to sleep...well, it wasn’t particularly late, the sun still not having fully set...she scrolled through her phone and tried to convince herself it was the earliness of the evening making her feel all upset and angst-ridden. Tried to convince herself, too, that the reason she kept blinking was because she was tired and not because she was furiously trying to stop tears falling, and she didn’t care if she was contradicting herself with her own thoughts.
She’d received a message from the conveyancer acting on her behalf for the purchase of the suburban house, which only added to her upset. Apparently it wasn’t possible to fast-track the purchase even though there was no chain, which she knew was utter twaddle. She’d bet the whole five million pounds sitting in her bank account that if Sebastiano had asked the question the purchase would complete so quickly she’d get whiplash.
She’d just fired a message to her mum when she heard movement outside the door and almost gave herself actual whiplash by throwing herself onto her side and shoving her phone under the pillow.
She closed her eyes just as the door handle turned and played at being asleep, hoping, not for the first time, that Sebastiano was deaf to the sound of her thundering heartbeats.
She wished she’d chosen a more comfortable position to feign sleep in.
When the bed dipped, she suddenly found it impossible to feign rhythmic breaths, and when a warm, lean body pressed itself against her, an arm wrapped around her waist and a mouth kissed the top of her head, the tears she’d been fighting for the last hour filled her eyes.
‘I’m sorry,’ Sebastiano said heavily into her hair.
There was the slightest softening in her rigid form.
He kissed her again and sighed. He still didn’t quite understand how they’d gone from bliss to poison in less than an hour but knew he’d been the driving force behind it. And all because the sight of Layla’s visibly pregnant stomach had set off emotions in him he didn’t know how to decipher and the starkness of her story of abandonment and rejection by her father had turned those emotions into something hot and rancid.
Layla hadn’t just been rejected by her father, he thought with an ache in his chest, but her grandparents too. Rejected before she was even born.
Wrapping himself tighter around her, he pressed his palm to the small bump of her belly. ‘I swear to you, on my own life, that the life growing beneath my hand will always have a father in me. They will be my heir and I will love them because they are innocent in all this. I will never abandon them and I will never reject them.’ Especially not now that he knew her story and not just the facts set out as a timeline.
It was incomprehensible to him that a man could abandon their own child to poverty. His family weren’t perfect—something his mother would probably disagree with—and he knew there were secret children stashed away within the family tree, but those children had not been left to suffer in poverty.
The rush of relief when Layla rolled over to face him was like a tightly coiled spring releasing.
Disconcerted at the strength of it and equally disconcerted at how deeply it cut to see the remnant of the upset he’d caused her reflecting in her eyes, he tried to lighten the tension. ‘As for the taking of a mistress... What man would want a mistress if he has a Layla in his bed?’
‘What about when I’m the size of a whale?’ she whispered.
He rubbed the tip of his nose to hers. ‘If you don’t want me to take a mistress then I won’t.’
Their eyes held.
He had another disconcerting feeling that she was trying to reach into his mind, and then she sighed and lifted a hand to his hair. Softly, she said, ‘I entered this marriage with my eyes open and knowing exactly what I was signing up for, but I’m the product of an affair. Someone always gets hurt.’
And Layla could not explain even to herself why it felt like a knife in her heart that Sebastiano would only refrain from taking a mistress while they were married because she didn’t want him to. Not because he didn’t want to.
Just to imagine him with anyone else brought on instant nausea. To imagine herself with anyone else...
She couldn’t. She could not imagine walking away from this marriage and being with anyone else. The thought of touching another man was as repulsive as imagining Sebastiano with another woman, which was exactly why she needed to think of him only as her lover. Because one day he would be someone else’s husband. He would belong to someone else.
Layla rarely spoke about her father, had never confided the story about begging her mum to let her meet him to anyone before. Telling Sebastiano the story had been painful, the memories stirring the pain she’d experienced in those long ago days like an echo in her heart.
Fear suddenly raced like cold needles up her spine, and when he said, ‘I will never do anything to hurt you, cara,’ she dug her fingers through his hair to his skull and kissed him as hard as she’d ever kissed him before.
As he snaked his way down her body, kissing and touching her all the way down to her pelvis, she screwed her eyes shut and prayed for the pleasure to drive out the fear that the echoed memories of pain in her heart were nothing but a taster of the pain Sebastiano could inflict on her.
Her last thought before the bliss of his tongue drove her to ecstasy was that she needed to guard her heart much more tightly. Sebastiano was her lover, their marriage a performance. She must remember that. She must.
An overrunning meeting in Frankfurt meant that when Sebastiano arrived back at the villa, he waited in the car for Layla to join him.
The closest he could come to describing the feelings in his stomach on the drive home was butterflies. Whatever the feeling, when she appeared moments after the car came to a stop, the butterflies dived into his chest and extended their wings inside it.
She glided out of the front door and past the statues of scholars bathed in early-autumn sunshine, and as she stepped to the car, the backdrop of the villa and the golden glow suffusing her formed an angelic aura that dazzled him with the same strength as when she’d walked down the aisle to him.
So taken was he by the vision that he didn’t notice the phone stuck to her ear until she slid beside him and mouthed, Sorry.
It was not the greeting he’d envisaged after their first night apart since their wedding.
Just one night away from her and her beauty had grown. His expert eye noted her breasts, jutting against her red maxi-dress, had grown too and that the neat little bump that would shortly be scanned at the private hospital used by generations of Russos was more prominent than he remembered.
She ended her call with a long exhale before finally bestowing her attention upon him. ‘Sorry about that. Good trip?’
He bit back the churlish answer he wanted to throw at her and leaned in for a kiss that was far too brief for his liking, especially when he’d spent the journey back to her fantasising about the passionate kiss she would greet him with. ‘Productive. Who were you talking to? It sounded important.’
‘My conveyancer—the solicitor who’s supposed to be arranging the purchase of the house for me.’
It took a moment for this to digest. ‘You’re buying a house?’
‘I put the offer in when I first got here. I’d viewed it the weekend before you kidnapped me and it’s perfect.’
Her blithe reminder of why she’d married him twisted his guts. ‘Perfect for what?’
‘A family.’
‘And you didn’t think to mention this to me?’
Surprise lit her face. ‘But I did. I told you I wanted the money to buy a house for me and the baby.’
‘You have a home,’ he pointed out, finding himself having to swallow back his temper. ‘Here with me.’
‘But it won’t be for ever, and besides I’m desperate to get Mum out of that hellhole.’ She gritted her teeth and gave another long exhale. ‘She’s finally agreed to move into it but the longer it all drags on, the more I worry she’ll change her mind. If she refuses to move when the purchase goes through I’ll have to get you to kidnap her.’
‘Good to know you have uses for me,’ he said with only faint sarcasm.
Her eyebrow rose. ‘What does that mean?’
He had to take a long breath of his own before he trusted himself to answer.
It was sheer arrogance that had let him assume Layla would have missed him during their first night apart in three weeks. It hadn’t occurred to him that he would miss her, not until he’d found himself in his apartment contemplating flying home for a few hours and then returning to Frankfurt first thing.
From the way Layla was acting, he might as well have been gone only ten minutes.
Keeping his tone moderate, he said, ‘Layla, I have just learned you are buying a home without my knowledge and that you’re trying to move your mother out of the house you’ve just described as a hellhole. Do you not think these are things you should have discussed with me?’
She looked nonplussed.
‘I’m your husband.’ Did she just flinch at that? ‘You should discuss important things with me.’
‘Do you discuss important things with me?’
‘If I had important things to discuss then I would.’ He took another deep breath. He didn’t want an argument. That night on their honeymoon when bliss had turned to poison still lingered in him, although he had no clue why. Neither of them had mentioned it again. They’d returned home and embarked on married life, and for all that it was proving to be working well between them—better than even he’d hoped—and for all the copious amounts of sex they enjoyed together, he couldn’t shake the feeling that they were building a marriage on sand. ‘Tell me about this house.’
Her gaze troubled, she sighed. ‘The prospectus is still online.’
After she’d recited the address, he found it.
‘It’s small,’ he observed.
‘It’s huge compared to my old house.’
He scrolled for more information on it. ‘It’s in a good neighbourhood,’ he eventually said, ‘but installing adequate security will be impossible.’
‘I don’t need security.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re my wife. Your child will be a Russo. They will be a target for kidnappers. I’m sorry, Layla, but this is completely unsuitable.’ He then proceeded to tell her exactly why it was unsuitable, making such a good fist of it that she’d turned quite pale by the time he’d finished.
‘I have a proposition,’ he told her as they turned onto the long drive that led to the hospital. ‘We can look for a suitable house together which I will buy but have put in your name. We can use it as our London base.’
As of next Monday, Layla would spend her working weeks in London as had been pre-agreed. They’d only spoken about it in vague terms but it was something that had played on his mind since the honeymoon. Sebastiano’s rarely used apartment in central London would work fine for a baby but not an inquisitive toddler. They needed a proper home there, and Layla had given him the perfect opening to suggest it.
‘We?’ she queried.
‘I will arrange my schedule so I can be London-based as much as is practicable. We are newly-weds,’ he reminded her. ‘This is our honeymoon stage. If we spend too much time apart too soon then people will talk.’
Layla’s top teeth grazed harder than normal into her bottom lip as she held herself back from reminding him that she was buying the house for her and their baby for when their marriage was over. She’d already envisaged how she would furnish it, the colour schemes, the bedroom she’d create for the little life steadily growing inside her. And as for London...
She’d assumed Sebastiano would resume his normal working life and the copious amount of travelling it involved once their honeymoon was over. So far, though, he’d taken to working from his home office with alarming frequency, only the most important meetings taking him out of their Sicilian home.
She hadn’t factored in how determined he was to promote a genuine marriage to the world, and as a result she’d had little respite from him. She’d sit in her office and liaise with clients and colleagues and create documents and fill out paperwork entirely aware that Sebastiano was working on the other side of the door. Entirely aware. They shared all their meals together and then at night, they closed the bedroom door and fell into each other’s arms.
How was she supposed to remember that this was all a performance when they were so rarely apart and when Sebastiano was treating her as if she were his real wife? It was becoming impossible.
What made it worse were the times they did spend apart. The times when she sat in her office wholly aware of his absence. And then last night she’d slept alone and it had been awful. For the first time since arriving in Sicily, her insomnia had kicked back in. She’d been unable to settle the whole night through, sleep coming only in brief snatches.
She needed some proper separation. She’d been banking on having Mondays to Fridays away from him, a chance to create physical and emotional distance. Because that was the worst thing of all. How emotionally attached she was becoming to him. The reason she daydreamed about the home that would be hers when their marriage ended was because she knew she had to.
But she was being backed into a corner. It was too soon after their wedding to start sowing the seeds of distance that would be used to explain their marriage failing. It was unthinkable that Sebastiano would let it end before the baby was born. Speculation was already rife in the press that she was pregnant, her small bump captured in a photo during an evening gala going a long way in proving their marriage was genuine.
What frightened her more than anything was what came after the baby was born and the DNA test proved beyond doubt that it was his. What if he decided this meant their marriage should continue indefinitely, something she suspected he was already thinking? What if he didn’t? She didn’t know which scenario frightened her the most. If he wanted them to stay together it would only be because of their child. If he let her go it would be to produce a spare to her baby’s heir with another woman. Either way, Layla lost. Either way, she wouldn’t be enough for him as she was, and though she knew she shouldn’t care if she was enough for him, it was becoming increasingly hard to deny that she did care. Cared more than was healthy or safe.
‘You don’t look happy at the prospect,’ he observed, cutting through her unhappy musings, his eyes narrowed with shrewdness.
For a moment, she feared she would cry.
She couldn’t tell him why she looked unhappy. She knew she should be grateful that he was taking their baby’s security so seriously even while doubting it was his, be grateful too at his vow that he would be a father to it whatever a DNA test might say, and grateful that he was taking the pregnancy and birth seriously enough that he wanted her to be cared for in Sicily’s most eminent private hospital.
And so she swallowed back her dejection.
‘I can see that it makes sense,’ she said. And she could see it, much as she wished she couldn’t, and much as she wished she could think of the perfect counterargument. ‘But what about my mum?’
‘She can move into the London place with us. She can live here with us too.’
Her mouth dropped open in astonishment.
He raised a nonchalant shoulder. ‘We will make sure the London property has a self-contained flat or a separate dwelling on the grounds for her. Here, she can take her pick of the guest cottages.’
‘Are you serious?’
Please, Sebastiano, say no. Don’t do something else wonderful for me. I need to hate you more than love...like you.
He fixed her with a stare that read, ‘do you have to ask?’
She had to turn her face away briefly to blink back tears without him seeing. ‘You’d be happy for my mum to live with us?’
He tutted and folded his arms across his chest. ‘I’m Sicilian. Family is everything to us, and your mother is everything to you.’
The tears pooled back, hot and brimming, and she turned away again, pretending to be transfixed with the sprawling white building their driver had come to a stop at.
In England, she’d already be out of the car and hurrying inside, afraid of being late for her appointment. Here, in this exclusive private hospital with its manicured grounds that only the ridiculously rich could afford, they would wait for her. After all, she was no longer plain Layla Sansom. She was the great Sebastiano Russo’s wife.
‘She won’t agree,’ she eventually said when she was semi-certain she could speak without choking.
‘Why not?’
‘I only managed to convince her to move to the suburban house by selling the garden to her—gardening’s her therapy. She sits in our little garden with a cup of tea and manages to forget that the house next door is a narcotic shop and that the vampires all descend on the street at night.’ She closed her eyes and laughed sadly. ‘She has this amazing ability to tune out the terrible stuff and laser in on the good stuff. She turned that house into a home for us. She painted every wall and hung every curtain and it became her sanctuary from the world when she was at her most scared and vulnerable. She’s frightened of leaving it. No way will she agree to move countries.’
Sebastiano digested this, breathing hard to smother the anger that had flared, not with Layla but with himself. He knew how desperate Layla had been to move out of that house before their baby was born and should have realised she’d want her mother moved out of it too. Jilly Sansom was his mother-in-law and so a part of his extended family. Her safety was as much his responsibility as her daughter and grandchild’s safety.
He gave a sharp nod. ‘Will you let me talk to her?’
Her gaze moved from the window to him. ‘And say what?’
He tapped her nose and forced a smile. ‘Trust me to find the right words.’
She responded with a smile of her own that looked as forced as his felt. ‘I know I said about you kidnapping her, but no handcuffs, okay?’
This time he smiled with his whole face, capturing her cheeks in his hand and releasing some of the angst knotted in his chest in a deep, passionate kiss. ‘Believe me, my little rabbit,’ he murmured, ‘you are the only person I wish to use handcuffs on.’
Layla felt like she’d entered a five-star hotel rather than a hospital. The only difference was the faint trace of disinfectant that permeated the walls.
A manager escorted them down a wide, thickly carpeted corridor to the maternity wing, explaining in perfect English all the facilities they had to offer the expectant mother and the excellent care she could expect. After a full tour of the birthing wing, Layla’s mind was made up. This was the hospital she would have her baby in.
By the time they entered the clinical room for her scan and she lay on the bed and lifted her top to expose her naked bump, she was filled to the brim with excitement. The first scan had been the most magical moment of her life and she’d counted down the days until she could see her baby again...
She caught the look on Sebastiano’s face and her heart sank.
There was no mirroring of her excitement there.
After a beat, she turned her stare from him, smiled at the sweet-faced sonographer, and fixed her gaze on the computer screen beside her.
She would not let his lack of visible excitement ruin this moment for her.
The rapid thuds of the baby’s heartbeat were much louder than Sebastiano had anticipated. They filled the room.
The beats of his own heart accelerated.
A mass appeared on the computer screen. The sonographer pressed the ultrasound probe down on the left of Layla’s belly. The screen became clearer. Suddenly he could discern a head...a belly...limbs...
White noise filled his head. He could no longer distinguish the individual beats battering against his ribs.
‘Is the baby the right size?’ he heard Layla ask, her anxious voice distant, as if she were far away rather than right beside him.
‘Let me take the measurements to be sure,’ the sonographer answered. ‘You are worried?’
‘A little,’ she confessed. ‘It’s only because my bump’s so small.’
She was worried about that?
Still pressing the probe to Layla’s stomach, the sonographer tapped at her computer’s keyboard with her other hand.
Sebastiano hadn’t realised he’d been holding his breath until the sonographer smiled and it escaped in a rush.
‘All normal,’ she said. ‘Your baby’s rate of growth is perfect. Everything is normal and how it should be.’
There was no mistaking the relief on Layla’s face.
No mistaking, either, the relief washing through him.
‘Would you like to know the sex?’
For the first time since she’d climbed on the medical bed, Layla turned her stare from the screen and looked at him. There was a question in her eyes. And a plea that made his still rapidly beating heart catch and his head pound.
She was pleading with him to believe her...
He cleared his throat but couldn’t clear the pounding. ‘Do you want to know?’
She shook her head.
‘Then let it be a surprise.’
In the car on their return to the villa, Sebastiano’s heart had finally decreased back to a relatively normal beat but the throbbing in his head remained. Watching Layla stare reverently at the scan photo of the baby deepened the throbs.
Keeping his voice measured, he casually said, ‘I didn’t know you were worried about the baby’s size.’
She pressed the photo to her chest, right over her heart, then slipped it into her handbag. ‘It was more a minor concern than a worry. You know, one of those things that sit in the back of your mind and niggle at you?’
He did know. Layla’s behaviour was his own niggle. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
Her forehead furrowed. ‘I never thought to. It was only a niggle.’
He held onto his temper by the skin of his teeth. That was twice in three hours he’d learned something important Layla had kept from him.
‘Cara,’ he said, taking her hand, ‘you cannot keep hiding things from me. If you have worries you must share them with me.’
Although Layla knew she shouldn’t feel guilty, it still stabbed at her. But if he wanted honesty from her...
‘It wasn’t intentional,’ she said quietly. ‘I think it’s knowing you don’t believe the baby is yours... It’s making it difficult for me to open up about the pregnancy to you.’ Increasingly difficult. He was doing everything an expectant father should but it all felt clinical, like he was going through the motions without his heart being in it.
She’d seen his reflection on the computer screen. While she’d been thrilling to see their baby, Sebastiano’s face had been emotionless. And all because he couldn’t admit to himself that the baby was his.
‘Listen to me,’ he said firmly. ‘What I believe is irrelevant. The baby is mine. I will always be its father and I will always be there for you. Trust that, Layla, and stop shutting me out. We are in this together.’
Oh, how she longed to believe him.
Longed with all her heart.