heart couldn’t be that broken, considering how quickly things had progressed between them. A little dented maybe, but she’d survived much worse before, and she would again. It really was better this way.
She was still giving herself this pep talk when she dropped Jamie off at school, mentally kicking herself when she saw that his class was having a bake sale and she was the only mother who hadn’t brought in a homemade tray bake.
‘Didn’t you read the letter we sent home?’ the teacher asked, her concerned tone still managing to hold a note of reproach.
‘I must have forgotten,’ Hannah said. She turned to Jamie, who was watching the parade of parents with their offerings of baked goods with a stoic expression that strangely reminded her of Luca. ‘Sorry, sweetheart.’
Her little man squared his shoulders. ‘It’s okay.’
But it wasn’t. She tried not to drop the ball like this, but occasionally it happened. Hannah supposed she could excuse herself considering all the distractions she’d had, but she still felt guilty for not putting Jamie first even in such a small matter.
She rang her mother on the way to work, hating to call in yet another favour but also wanting to please her son, asking if Diane could run something in that morning.
‘Oh, Hannah, I’m sorry,’ her mother said. ‘I’m volunteering at the day centre today. I would otherwise...’
‘Of course.’ Her mother volunteered several times a week with a centre for elderly people and Hannah knew she enjoyed the work. It wasn’t fair of her to call her mother away from her own life. ‘Don’t worry, it’s not a big deal,’ she said as brightly as she could. And then spent half an hour on the Tube battling a crushing sense of guilt.
She supposed she could blame Luca for this, for questioning her choices, but Hannah was honest enough to admit, at least to herself, that she’d always struggled with working mother’s remorse. It might not have been fair or reasonable, but she felt it all the same.
Luca was shut away in his office when Hannah arrived, and so she got right down to work, trying to push away all the distracting thoughts and worries that circled her mind.
Luca came to discuss some travel arrangements about an hour later, and she instinctively tensed as he approached her desk. She felt both weary and wired, but at least it kept her from shaming herself with an obvious physical response to his presence.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked after she’d taken down some dates for a trip he was planning to Asia next month.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked, startled. ‘Nothing’s wrong.’
‘You look worried.’ His whisky-brown gaze swept over her as he cocked his head. ‘Is it Jamie?’
Hannah stared at him, dumbfounded. ‘You’ve never asked me that before.’
‘I never knew you had a child before.’
‘Yes, but...’ She shook her head, more confused than ever. ‘If you had known, you would have been annoyed that I seemed worried and distracted while at work. Not...’
‘Not what?’ Luca prompted, his gaze locked on hers.
‘Not concerned.’
‘Perhaps you don’t know me as well as you thought you did.’
‘Perhaps I don’t.’ She had thought she knew what kind of man he was. But that had been a week ago, and everything had changed since then.
‘So is it your son?’ Luca asked. ‘That’s worrying you?’
Still surprised by his perception as well as his interest, Hannah relented. ‘Yes, but it’s only a small thing.’
‘What?’
‘I forgot his class had a bake sale today. Everyone brought in biscuits and cakes, lovely home-made ones, except for me.’ She shook her head, almost wanting to laugh at the bemused look on Luca’s face. This was so outside his zones of both familiarity and comfort. ‘I told you it was a small thing.’
Luca didn’t answer for a moment. Hannah sighed and turned back to the notes she’d been making. Clearly she hadn’t advanced the cause of working mothers through this exchange.
‘So,’ Luca said slowly, ‘Jamie is the only child in the class without cakes or biscuits?’
‘Yes, but it doesn’t really matter—’
‘It does matter,’ Luca stated definitively. ‘Let me make a few calls.’
Hannah stared at him in stunned disbelief as he went back into his office. Not knowing what else to do, she got on with making his travel arrangements. Fifteen minutes later, Luca reappeared.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘My limo is waiting downstairs.’
‘Your limo—where are we going?’
‘To your son’s school.’
‘What—?’
‘He can’t be the only one without cakes,’ Luca stated, and stabbed the button for the lift.
Hannah had no choice but to grab her handbag and coat and follow him into the lift. ‘Luca, what are you doing? He can manage—’
‘But why should he, when I can do something about it?’
‘I could have done something,’ Hannah muttered. ‘Couriered a cake to the school—’ Now she felt even more guilt.
‘We’ll do better than that,’ Luca announced. ‘We’ll deliver them in person.’
The cakes turned out to be forty-eight of the most glorious creations from a nearby exclusive patisserie. Hannah peeked into the white cake box and her jaw dropped at the berries glistening like jewels in folds of perfectly whipped cream.
‘These are amazing,’ she told Luca. ‘And they must have cost—’
‘It was no trouble.’
Hannah closed the cake box. ‘I’ll pay.’
‘You will not,’ Luca returned swiftly. ‘This is my gift. Do not presume to take it from me, Hannah.’
She shook her head slowly, overwhelmed but also befuddled by his generosity. ‘I really don’t understand you. Last night you seemed angry...’
‘I was surprised,’ he corrected. ‘And I don’t deal well with surprises.’
‘And now?’
‘Now I want to help.’
‘But you don’t even like children,’ Hannah burst out.
Luca glanced at her, affronted. ‘Why would you think that?’
‘Maybe because you had to make me masquerade as your fiancée to impress a self-proclaimed
