to make sure she doesn’t get hurt, is it? I mean, maybe I was a little over-cautious. But what was I supposed to do? Just let her have her hand bitten off?’
Nicole burst out with low laughter, her shoulders shaking from the force of it. ‘Welcome to parenthood, darling.’ She smiled at him. ‘One long endless road of worry and self-doubt.’
Rigo paused, absorbing her words. Was that what had been wrong with him today? The tension in his body at having his tiny daughter so close to the animals had almost driven him insane. In the end he had just herded them all back to the house so they could swim in the pool while he caught up on some emails.
Nicole had been pushing and pushing for him to spend more time with Anna, and he knew he was being unreasonable by keeping himself at a distance. So all week long he had tried to be more interactive—swimming and talking and trying to form some sort of bond. But he was beginning to think that maybe he just wasn’t built for fatherhood.
‘Rigo, can I ask you something?’ she asked, turning to him. ‘It’s just something that’s been playing on my mind after meeting your family and seeing you here with Anna.’
He nodded and took a sip of wine, waiting for the question he had known she would ask eventually.
‘Why did you decide not to have children at such a young age?’ She frowned. ‘You come from such a tightly knit family, it just doesn’t make sense.’
‘Nicole...’ he began, not quite knowing what to say. He didn’t want to talk about the past—that was for sure. But the look in her eyes told him that she was serious about this.
‘I just want to understand the man I’m married to. Is that so terrible?’
‘I had a vasectomy because I came to the decision that fatherhood was not for me. Is that so hard to believe?’
‘And now...?’
He paused. And now he could feel himself caring more and more for his wife and daughter every day. He’d spent this whole week with Nicole and Anna, doing various activities around the countryside. And each night he had lost himself in his wife’s passionate embrace, making love to her until they were both spent. He had never slept so well as he had since coming to his villa. The place rejuvenated him. That could be the only answer for his sudden heightened sense of well-being.
Nicole was looking at him expectantly. He took another sip of wine, eyeing her over the rim of his glass. ‘I don’t quite know what you want me to say.’
‘Do you still feel the same about fatherhood now that you have Anna?’
‘I didn’t really have a choice, to be fair,’ he said quickly, and then saw the hurt in her face. ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’
‘Never mind. I don’t know why I even bothered asking.’ She sat back, turning to look at the still bright evening sky.
‘I told you—I don’t like to live in the past.’
‘There’s a difference between living there and pretending it never happened.’ She looked at him. ‘The night of the rehearsal dinner you mentioned having a fiancée before me...’
‘If you insist on knowing ancient history, far be it from me to deny you.’
He put his glass down, clearing his throat. He felt his thumb begin to tap nervously on the side of his chair, and stilled the movement before it became too pronounced.
‘Her name was Lydia. We met when I was in my final year of college in the States. She was a year older than me...worked in a coffee shop on campus. I met her at a bar one Friday night and before I knew it we were living together.’
‘That fast?’ Nicole asked.
‘Too fast. But I couldn’t have known that at the time. I was too madly in love to see the warning signs all around me.’ He stood up, walking over to perch against the balustrade of the terrace. ‘We were barely together six months before she told me she was pregnant.’
Rigo took in a deep breath, hating the effect this was having on him. He hated thinking of that time in his life. When he had been so utterly young and naive.
‘I was a romantic fool. I proposed instantly and flew us both here to meet my family. I didn’t tell them about the baby, of course. That was to be our secret until after the wedding.’
He laughed—a cruel sound, deep in his chest.
‘She had me wrapped around her finger. If my mother hadn’t taken an instant dislike to her, who knows what way things might have gone? My mother arranged for some security checks—just a precaution before the wedding. I remained here while Lydia flew back to the States to continue the wedding plans. With my credit card, of course.’
Nicole looked up at him, her face tight with tension as he continued.
‘I remember I was sitting outside the chapel after booking our wedding date when she called me, crying. She had lost the baby.’ He shook his head. ‘I sat on the steps of that church and I cried with her, utterly heartbroken for the life we had lost. I got on the next available flight and rushed to her side. I cared for her, comforted her. I told her we would try again—that I would give her as many babies as she wanted.’
He sighed.
‘My mother arrived at my apartment unexpectedly a few weeks later. Lydia was at a spa. I’ll never forget the look on her face as she told me about the security checks she’d had performed. I was furious. I almost ordered her out. But then she showed me a copy of a medical document from one month before. It had Lydia’s name on it. And there was a picture of her from security footage. In an abortion clinic.’
Nicole clapped her hand over her mouth in horror. ‘Rigo...’
‘I confronted her the moment she got home. Naturally she denied everything until I showed her the proof.’ He shook his head. ‘She told me she was scared of having the baby, that she was worried it would make me love her less. But by that point my mother had already shown me the massive bills she had run up on my accounts and I had lost the lovesick blinkers that had blinded me to who she truly was.’
Nicole sat silently, processing the revelation that Rigo had once been in love. He had said that he didn’t believe in love and romance, but clearly at that stage in his life he had. And this woman had stomped all over that.
He continued unprompted, his face a tight mask of hurt. ‘When I was having her things removed from my apartment I found a safety pin at the bottom of the same drawer I used for my condoms. She had often urged me not to use protection, claiming she was on the pill. But I was rigorously safe, even then.’
‘She got pregnant on purpose?’ Nicole breathed.
‘She admitted it all eventually—once she realised it was over. It was hard, seeing the pretence fall away and finding that she wasn’t the person she’d said she was. She had lied about almost everything in order to take me in.’
‘So you chose to get a vasectomy because of what happened?’ Nicole asked, still struggling to get her head around it all.
‘I got over the break-up soon enough—the anger helped. I graduated and moved back to Italy to start working for my father. I was so lost
