Chapter Ten
LILY HAD HARDLY any sleep the night before. Tossing and turning, obsessing, dreaming of Rocco’s touch. How he’d left her unfulfilled.
‘I wouldn’t want to influence your decision.’
Damn him. He’d known exactly what he’d been doing when he’d walked away from her last night. Not wanting to influence …all she could think of was him being inside her again. How he would feel.
His touch had spoken of wicked promise. She craved it like the addict she was halfway to becoming.
The blood surging through her veins at the thought.
She was like a ripe plum just waiting to be plucked and devoured.
Her morning sickness replaced by desire.
It had to be the hormones. She’d been told that approaching the second trimester she’d feel more like herself again.
Except that wasn’t what she was experiencing right now.
She didn’t just feel better. She felt more of everything.
The overwhelming urge to simply throw herself at Rocco, which had no doubt been part of his plan all along.
Marriage.
Something that sounded utterly ridiculous the night before in the shock of his announcement. And yet, she was horrified to concede that she was thinking about it. More than just thinking.
‘You’ll want for nothing. I can look after you. Our baby will have my name, be my heir …’
Lily walked to the balcony of her room overlooking the garden below and the ruins in the distance. She gripped the rail, the metal cool under her palm. Shutting her eyes, allowing the warm midday breeze to wash over her.
It wasn’t as if she couldn’t look after herself.
Maxine had promised that she’d always have a job.
But working would mean childcare. A nanny, maybe.
Living in London wasn’t cheap. She had little doubt that Rocco would support their child, but she also understood that she had to carry her own weight. That’s just what you did, wasn’t it?
Still, the thought of leaving her baby alone with a stranger made her stomach clench.
She placed her hand over her belly. Lily knew what it was like to be raised that way.
Her parents, distant figures. Her and her brother’s care subcontracted to a retinue of staff.
She’d been lucky—they hadn’t been bad. But she didn’t want that for her own child.
She’d always wanted to be an involved mother.
Sure, there was paid maternity leave, and she was lucky for that. But after six weeks it wasn’t her full wage. She’d need more to give her baby, their baby, the attention she wanted to.
Her thoughts swirled and tangled, knotting her up. Yet a few words kept repeating themselves. ‘I can look after you.’ The temptation to have someone take over her life, to care for her, was real and almost palpable. The passion was one thing. His thoughtfulness might be her real undoing.
That, and his honesty.
Rocco could have pretended. Whilst telling her she was beautiful, spouting words of love.
It might even have been believable, the way they were together.
How they simply ignited. Instead, he’d been truthful about this marriage being one of practicality.
Taking love off the table, offering passion and purpose instead.
Marriages had been agreed on for far less.
At least having been offered, she should consider it, shouldn’t she? If she was putting her baby first, it made complete sense. She wasn’t the important one here.
It was like a fist gripped her heart and squeezed. The breath seizing in her chest.
‘She’s so dull …’
‘You can always find excitement elsewhere.’
She had good reason not to consider marriage.
In so many ways the experience with Richard had broken her.
Would passion be enough to sustain a lifetime?
Rocco was a man who ran a billion-dollar business.
When she met him, he was at a ball that had made her blush whereas he’d been at ease.
She was a babe in the woods. He, a wolf waiting to devour.
Forget passion sustaining a marriage to a man like Rocco Silvestri.
Could she? Lily Rutherford?
Would she ever be enough?
Lily couldn’t stand still anymore, wanting to crawl out of her own skin.
Venice had been a rebirth of sorts, but she wasn’t fully formed.
She left her room, which had in many ways become a sanctuary, to find Rocco and …
do what? She wasn’t sure. All she wanted was to stop feeling like a stranger in her own body. Become whole.
She wandered through the magnificent home to the kitchen, where Carmella spent a good deal of her time.
‘Do you know where Rocco is?’
Carmella smiled. The woman was a force of nature, running Rocco’s home and likely his life.
Making sure Lily was always well-fed and supplied with tempting snacks when she hadn’t been able to stomach a full meal.
There’d been no judgement at all about Lily’s obvious predicament.
Only kindness and every effort to make her comfortable.
‘Signor Silvestri is in his studio.’
Lily raised her eyebrows. ‘Studio? Where’s that?’
Carmella led her through the house to the back patio and pointed to a structure nestled behind some trees at the end of the garage. She’d seen it before but hadn’t really thought much about what it was. ‘If he’s not in the house, you can usually find him there.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Tell him for me that lunch is at two. He asked for it a little later today.’
Lily promised she would, then made her way outside into the garden, her feet swishing through the grass with its now fading jonquils.
A studio suggested something artistic, yet he’d given her no hint of it.
Neither had the article written about him, or any of the online mentions or social media she’d read before she came to Italy to find him.
His roughened hands might be a clue … Maybe he made furniture?
Though, finding out about a studio led to more questions—and the realisation that she might be contemplating marrying the man, but she didn’t know him at all.
She reached the structure but couldn’t hear anything coming from the inside.
Would he mind being disturbed? Lily peered through a window into what looked like a living area.
A rug on the floor under a well-used lounge.
A kitchenette in a corner. She rounded the small building and found the door, slightly ajar. Her belly tensed. Should she knock?
A rhythmic tapping from the inside punctuated the quiet. Stopped. Started again. What was that? Lily opened the door a fraction wider and peered inside. Her heart tripped, skipping a few beats.
In a corner in front of a large piece of pale wood, sitting on a plinth at almost his height, stood Rocco.
He wasn’t dressed in his usual stylish clothes.
These were something far more utilitarian.
A pair of cargo pants sat low on his hips.
A worn T-shirt gripped the angles and planes of his body leaving nothing to the imagination.
His back muscles flexing underneath the soft cotton as he applied what appeared to be a chisel to the wood, and tapped it with a mallet.
Shavings fell to the floor, scattered about him like petals on the ground.
He placed down the chisel and reached out a hand, reverently stroking the artwork.
Leaving it there, dropping his head as if trying to divine something from the wood.
A sculpture, still formless but somehow taking shape.
Like a rough figure …emerging. After a few moments, his work recommenced.
He picked up the chisel again, and began circling.
His focus on the piece before him, complete.
Like his focus had been on her when they’d made love.
He seemed to find what he’d been looking for and started working again.
She stood there, like a voyeur, peeking through the crack of the door.
The way his biceps flexed. The play in his strong forearms. The whole scene inflaming her in ways she’d never contemplated before.
After how long she couldn’t say, being lost in watching Rocco work, he put down his tools again and lifted the front of his T-shirt.
Revealing the washboard of an abdomen that left her breathless.
He wiped his face with the fabric, then dropped it and she mourned the illicit view of his body.
It didn’t have to be illicit though. He was offering it to her with one condition …
She couldn’t stand there like this—it didn’t feel right, as if she was invading a personal and private space. She knocked gently at the door and his gaze fixed on her immediately with laser focus.
‘Lily.’
The way he said her name. Perhaps it was simply his accent, but his tone seemed choked with need.
She stepped inside the space. A single, large room.
Along one end a workspace. Tools set out in an orderly way according to size and function, she guessed.
Shelves on the wall, which looked like they held small figures.
At the other was the living space she’d spied through the window.
‘What are you doing in here?’ she asked. It was probably self-evident but she wanted to hear it from him.
A faint hint of red flashed across his cheeks. ‘Working.’
‘But …your work involves furniture.’
His brow creased. The frown almost imperceptible, but she noticed because it was as if they were attuned. The look on his face darkened, speaking of a kind of pain.
‘Silvestri Furniture is what I do. But this—’ he swept his arm back and forth as if inviting her to view the space ‘—is who I am.’
Who he was? It was a precious insight, something deep and secret about him. Something of real value. She’d often heard artists at Max’s gallery talking about their work as their passion. How it was the core of their being. She’d never imagined …Rocco. A sculptor, not a businessman.
She walked to one of the shelves holding small carvings. Birds, sinuous bodies, torsos. All little masterpieces.
‘May I touch?’