had been and that sooner or later he would be seduced into committing a crime from which there would be no going back. Livia’s strength of mind and moral code were rare.
He stood his niece on his lap and stared at her cherubic face and felt the tightness in his chest loosen. This little one would be raised with security and love. She would never be exposed to the danger and violence his wife and her siblings had lived.
Huge blue eyes stared back. Unable to resist, he sniffed the top of her head. She smelled of baby.
‘When are you two going to have one of those?’ Raul asked with a grin.
Ice laced like a snake up Massimo’s spine in an instant.
All eyes focused on him…and the presence he sensed behind him. Livia had returned from her phone call.
She sat back down, phone clutched in her hand. ‘It’s not the right time for us to have a child,’ she said and shrugged apologetically. ‘You know the hours Massimo puts into his work.’
‘You would work those hours if there was a child?’ his mother said, looking at him with an air of bewilderment. It was a look he’d become used to during his childhood, a physical expression that the differences between Massimo and his family were felt as keenly by them as they were by him.
‘My work is important,’ he pointed out cordially. He didn’t expect her to understand. To his parents, work was only important in as much as it paid the bills. That hadn’t stopped his parents from accepting the luxury home he’d purchased for them and for which he footed all the bills and the monthly sum he transferred into their bank account for everything else they could possibly need. He did the same for his sister and his grandfather and for his father’s siblings and their offspring. He would have done the same for his mother’s siblings if she’d had any.
He had stopped them ever having to work again—work being something none of the extended Briatores had been enamoured with either—and still his work ethic bewildered them. He provided for them all and the source of their wealth came from the technology he was creating that would, hopefully, allow baby Elizabeth, along with future generations of Briatores, to live on a planet that wasn’t a raging fireball. And still they stared at him with bewilderment, unable to comprehend why he worked as hard as he did.
‘I know, but…’ His mother must have sensed something from his expression for her voice trailed off.
Livia had no such sensibilities. Pouring herself a glass of fruit cocktail, she said, ‘Your son is a workaholic, Sera. It makes for a lonely life for me. I could not bring a child into that.’
‘You could get help,’ his mother suggested hopefully.
Livia shook her head. ‘In America, any help would be from English speakers. I’ve been trying to learn but it’s very hard. I had a cut on my leg last year that needed stitching and it was very stressful trying to understand the staff at the hospital.’
Talk of that incident made Massimo’s guts clench uncomfortably and his gaze automatically drift down to her leg. The scar, although expertly stitched and incredibly neat, was still vivid. Livia had gone for a swim in their outdoor pool in LA. One of the pebbled tiles around its perimeter had broken away leaving a sharp edge that she had sliced her calf on when hauling herself out of the pool. He’d been at his testing facility when she’d called to tell him about it, saying only that she’d cut her leg and needed help communicating with a medical practitioner about it. He’d sent Lindy, fluent in Italian, to deal with it and translate for her.
He’d been furious when he’d returned home that night and seen the extent of the damage. Seventeen stitches, internal and external. Her reply had been the coolest he’d ever received from her—up to that point anyway—Livia saying, ‘I didn’t want to make a drama out of it and worry you while you were driving.’ He’d stared at her quizzically. Her lips had tightened. ‘I assumed you would come.’
It wasn’t his fault, he told himself stubbornly. He wasn’t a mind reader. He couldn’t have known how bad the damage had been.
The damage it had caused to their marriage in the longer term had been far more extensive.
‘Look!’ His sister’s exclamation cut through his moody reminiscences.
Everyone followed Madeline’s pointed finger. Holding Elizabeth securely in his arms, Massimo carried her to the balustrade. Swimming beside the yacht, almost racing them, was a pod of bottlenose dolphins.
Around thirty of the beautiful mammals sped sleekly through the water, creating huge white foams with their dives. It was as if they’d come to check them out and decided to stay for a while and play.
It was one of the most incredible sights he had ever seen and it filled him with something indefinable; indefinable because it was nothing he’d ever felt before.
He looked at Livia and the awed joy on her face and experienced a fleeting gratitude that she’d forced him from his work and enabled him to enjoy this priceless moment.
Elizabeth wriggled in his arms. He tightened his hold on her to stop her falling and, as he did, Livia’s blame as to their childless state came back to him and the brief lightness that had filled his chest leached back out.
Livia tried her hardest to keep a happy front going but it only got harder as time passed. Gianluca hadn’t answered her returned call and he hadn’t called or left a message since.
And then there was Massimo.
The excitement of the dolphins racing so joyously alongside them had waned once they’d finally swum off and the lightness she’d witnessed in his eyes had quickly waned too. Was she the only one to notice his underlying tension? She would bet the knots on his shoulders had become even tighter.
Her assumption that he would keep the reasons for his anger to himself was dispelled when they returned to the island. His family retired to their chalets for a late siesta before dinner, leaving them together on the terrace of the lodge drinking a coconut and rum creation the head bar steward had made for them.
The moment they were alone, he fixed her with hard eyes. ‘Why did you say all that rubbish about a baby?’
‘What rubbish?’
‘You let my family believe the issue of us not having children lies with me.’
‘I’m prepared to pretend that our marriage is intact but I’m not prepared to tell an outright lie.’
‘You’re the one who didn’t want a child. Not me.’
Confused, she blinked. ‘When did I say I didn’t want a child?’
His jaw clenched. ‘You laughed when I suggested we have one.’
‘Do you mean the time you suggested we have a child to cure me of my loneliness? Is that the time you’re referring to?’ Of course it was. It was the only time the subject of a baby had come up since their first heady days when they’d spoken of a future that involved children. ‘I laughed at the suggestion, yes, because it was laughable. And even if you hadn’t suggested a child as a sticking plaster for my loneliness I would still have laughed and for the reasons I shared with your mother—ours
