Hot, perspiring and cross as tacks after having to locate their driver and interrupt him at his evening meal to gain access to the bag that had been left in the car, Jazz made it back into the bedroom, which was comfortingly empty because she had had enough of Vitale for one day. She got to keep the jewellery, yippee, big wow there if she was a gold-digger but, sadly, she wasn’t. She had wanted to keep him, not the jewellery, which was the sort of thought that tore Jazz apart inside and made her feel humiliated because Vitale had made it very clear that he did not want to keep her. She undressed and slid on the robe.
Entering the bathroom, Jazz was sharply disconcerted to find it transformed. The bath had already been run for her and candles had been lit round the bath, turning it into a soothing space while the lilac blossoms exuded a pale luminous glow in one corner. Rose petals floated on the surface of the water and she blinked in disconcertion at the inviting vision. Vitale? No, she decided. He wasn’t capable of making that kind of romantic effort. She tested the water, found it warm and, with a shrug, she dropped the robe and climbed in.
Vitale pushed open the door, relieved she hadn’t locked it, and extended a wine glass to her.
At the intrusion, Jazz jerked in surprise, water sloshing noisily around her slight body as she raised her knees automatically to conceal herself in a defensive pose. ‘What are you doing?’ she exclaimed, her voice sharp, accusing.
‘Trying,’ Vitale retorted curtly. ‘Maybe I’m not very good at this.’
‘You ran my bath, lit the candles?’ Jazz gasped, wide-eyed with astonishment.
Vitale crouched down by the side of the bath, far too close for comfort, dark golden eyes enhanced by curling gold-tipped lashes stunningly intent on her flushed face. ‘You’re my wife. This is our wedding day. You’re sick and you’re unhappy. Isn’t it believable that I would try to turn that around?’
Her soft pink mouth opened uncertainly and then closed again, her lashes fluttering up on disconcerted green eyes. ‘You don’t usually make any effort,’ she pointed out somewhat ungraciously.
‘Situations change,’ Vitale reasoned, speaking as though every word he spoke might have a punitive tax imposed on it and he were being forced to keep speech to the absolute minimum.
‘I suppose they do,’ Jazz muttered, accepting the glass. ‘You know I can’t drink this?’
‘It’s non-alcoholic,’ he informed her.
Jazz sipped the delicious ice-cool drink and suddenly laughed with real amusement, startling herself almost as much as him. ‘It’s homemade lemonade!’
‘My cousins visit me here occasionally. They have children and Agnella always likes to be prepared. She was my nurse when I was a child,’ he confided. ‘My mother sacked her when she reached a certain age because she prefers a youthful staff but Agnella wasn’t ready to be put out to grass. She and her husband look after this place for me.’
‘You’re making your mother sound more and more like an evil villain,’ Jazz whispered, for the bathroom with little flames sending shadows flickering on the stone walls was as disturbingly intimate as Vitale’s proximity.
Vitale lifted and dropped a wide shoulder in silent dismissal. His jacket and tie had vanished but he hadn’t unbuttoned his collar and, without even thinking about it, Jazz stretched out her hand and loosened the button, spreading the edges apart to show off his strong brown throat. ‘There, now you look more relaxed,’ she proclaimed, colouring a little at what she had done. ‘Everything’s changed, Vitale.’
‘Sì...but we’re in this together,’ Vitale reminded her with gruff emphasis.
‘Obviously,’ she conceded. ‘But I don’t know where we go from here.’
‘We don’t have to change,’ he argued with a sudden vehemence that disconcerted her. ‘We can go on exactly the way we were in London.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Jazz declared, her heart quickening its beat with a kind of panic at how vulnerable that would make her, to continue as though she didn’t know her happiness was on a strict timeline with a definite ending. She had to protect herself, be sensible and look to the future. Continuing what they had shared before now looked far too dangerous. ‘I mean, since the moment I announced that I was pregnant, you backed off like I’d developed the bubonic plague.’
‘Giulio warned to be careful with you.’
‘Giulio? Mr Verratti?’ she queried. ‘He told you not to touch me? That we couldn’t have sex?’
Vitale frowned. ‘No, only to be careful and you were so obviously tired and unwell I respected the warning. Naturally, I left you alone,’ he confided grittily. ‘I didn’t want to be selfish and I am naturally selfish and thoughtless. I was raised to always put myself first in relationships, so I have to look out more than most to avoid that kind of behaviour.’
He was so serious in the way in which he told her that that it touched Jazz. He knew his flaws, strove to keep them under control, didn’t trust in his senses to read situations, never thought of explaining himself, simply strove to avoid the consequences of doing something wrong. It was a very rudimentary approach to a relationship and almost certain to result in misunderstandings. Jazz studied the disturbingly grave set of his lean, darkly handsome features and stroked her fingers down the side of his sombre face, fingertips brushing through a dark shadow of prickly black stubble.
‘If you’re coming to bed with me, you need a shave,’ she told him softly, knowing she couldn’t fight the way she felt at that moment, the yearning that was welling up from deep inside her to be with him again.
Right at this moment, Vitale was hers, and maybe she would never have more than a few fleeting moments feeling like that but did that mean she shouldn’t have him at all? Yes, it would hurt when it ended but why shouldn’t she be happy while she still could be? Wasn’t trying to prepare for the end of their relationship now simply borrowing trouble?
Stark disconcertion had widened Vitale’s dark gaze, letting her know that sex had not actually been his goal for once and Jazz smiled sunnily, replete with the feminine power of having surprised him.
‘OK, bellezza mia...’ His dark deep masculine drawl was slightly fractured and he vaulted back upright, sending her a flashing brilliant smile that made her tummy perform a somersault. ‘I’ll shave.’
And away he went to do it, where she had no idea, as she lay back in her candlelit bath, full of warm fuzzy feelings powered only by lemonade and candlelight. He had surprised her too and she was genuinely amazed by
that reality. Vitale could be so very conservative and polite that it was often hard to catch a glimpse of what lay beneath. A man who was worried and concerned enough about their troubled relationship to run her a bath and put candles and flowers around it. Only a little thing though, much like her snow globe but it showed her the other side of Vitale, the side he worked so hard to hide and suppress, the sensitive, caring side. That could be enough for her, she told herself firmly, that could be enough to make the risk of loving him worthwhile even if it couldn’t last for ever. Not everyone got a happy-ever-after.
He had said he was ‘trying’. Well, she could try too, no shame in that, she told herself urgently, blowing out the candles and drying her overheated skin with a fleecy towel before walking naked into the empty bedroom to climb into the bed and rejoice in the cool linen embrace of the sheets.
Vitale reappeared, closed the door and surveyed her where she lay, Titian ringlets spilling across the white pillows like a vibrant banner. Hunger leapt through him with a ferocity that still disturbed him. His motto was moderation in all things but there was nothing moderate or practical about his desire for Jazz. It was a need that took hold of him at odd times of the day even when she wasn’t in front of him, a kind of craving that had creeped him out when he’d first learned that she was pregnant because what had been going on inside his head should, in his estimation, have killed all desire for her, not fuelled it. But now he didn’t even have to think about that anomaly, he told himself with fierce satisfaction. They had reached an accord, he didn’t know how and he didn’t need to know, did he? How wasn’t important; that the accord existed was enough for him.