went pale in his arms.
‘I went to Silibri to speak with your father.’
‘You have told him that Gabe is yours?’
‘Of course I have.’
Nico was quiet for a moment, for it had taken great restraint not to tear into Bruno and his wife for their treatment of Aurora. He could not stand to think of all they had put their daughter through when she had needed them the most.
But they would soon be family, and he had chosen to remember that.
‘What did he say?’
‘He huffed and puffed,’ Nico said.
‘And Mamma?’
He could hear the anguish in Aurora’s voice.
‘She asked how you were and then she started crying. She asked me what Gabe looked like.’
‘Yet all she had to do to find out was pick up the phone.’
‘Of course,’ Nico said. ‘But they spoke of your dating app…’
Aurora did not laugh.
‘It was confusing for them,’ he said gently. ‘And then your father got out a bottle of—’
‘Limoncello.’ Aurora finished his sentence for him.
‘I always wondered why he did not stop speaking to me after I refused to marry you,’ Nico admitted.
‘And me,’ Aurora agreed. ‘I thought your name would be mud in our house, but he kept insisting you join us.’
‘He said he would believe that I had not offended you unless I married someone else. But if I did then all bets would be off.’ He smiled as Aurora laughed. ‘He knew,’ Nico said. ‘He knew, that night when you headed out to the party, that I was churning inside.’
‘I would hope he does not know what occurred on the sofa.’
‘Of course not—or I would be dead. And anyway, a nice girl like you would never…’ He looked over and smiled.
‘Aurora, he brought out the Grappa he had been saving for this moment.’
‘You told him you were marrying me?’
‘No,’ Nico said. ‘I told him that I wanted, more than anything, to marry his daughter. And then I told him we had stuff to sort out first.’
‘Nico, don’t make a mistake,’ Aurora said. ‘I am strong.’
‘I know you are.’
‘And if you marry me then you will get the full force of my love.’
‘Aurora,’ he said, very definitely, ‘you will get the full force of mine.’
‘All I want, Nico, is the full force of your love.’
It was all she had ever wanted, and she felt as if it had been fully received—but those worms of doubt had started wriggling, and then, from the other side of this vast house, she heard a tiny wail.
Was it Gabe he was here for?
‘I have to go to him,’ Aurora said.
‘I know,’ Nico agreed.
Even though there was the nanny he had had checked and re-checked a hundred times over. She was the very best nanny, and she would love both mother and infant, but she did not do housework.
In any way shape or form.
‘Gabe…’ Aurora walked into the comfy lounge, where her son was being winded midway through his bottle. ‘I’ll give him the second half,’ she said. ‘And then put him down again.’
He seemed to have grown in the time he’d been here, Aurora thought as she fed him, and she looked into eyes that could not be called navy any more.
They were black.
‘Your father,’ Aurora said, ‘is the most complicated man I know.’
She looked at her son for a very long time.
At the long fingers that clutched hers as she fed him.
At his lashes, which she had already counted.
Then at the perfect dent in his jaw.
‘I love him and I believe he loves me…’ she whispered, and her breath hitched. ‘Not a hundred percent as yet, and not as fiercely as I love him, but, my dear son, I do believe he is trying to love our little family.’
She knew eight years of rejection could not be eradicated in one night.
Aurora padded back to the bedroom and Nico could see that she had cried. It twisted him up inside that his cold, unwilling heart had hurt her.
‘We’ll build a house in Silibri,’ Nico said as she climbed back into bed.
‘And you will fly back to Rome…’
‘No,’ Nico said, ‘we will fly back to Rome. We will be based in Silibri, though.’
‘No.’
Her emphatic no surprised them both. It was immediate, even though she had never dared to give a future with Nico true thought.
Aurora loved Silibri very much, but though there were so many decent memories she could think of, there were old hurts that resided there for Nico, and current ones for Aurora too, for her parents had turned their backs when she had needed them the most.
‘We’ll be based here, Nico,’ she said. ‘I want to sleep most nights in the bed where Gabe was made, and I want to wake to the Villa Borghese Park outside my window.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Very,’ Aurora said, and then thought about it some more. ‘We’ll go back often,’ she added, and then she looked over to him. ‘And, of course, I would like to manage the temple weddings.’
‘You don’t give in, do you?’
‘Never,’ Aurora said. ‘Not when I know I am right.’
She had tried to give up on their love so many times and to let Nico go. She thought of her tears, and the coin-toss at the Trevi Fountain when she had begged to be made love to in Rome.
‘I want that job, Nico.’
‘Then you shall have it.’
‘I don’t want favours, though,’ she said as she lay in his bed. ‘I really am the best for that role.’
She was also, Aurora knew, the best for his heart.
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