But this was too awful to endure. She let Alessandro take her up to the suite they always used. He went through to the sitting room where a temporary nursery had been arranged. Bree took Lorenzo and Alessandro came back to their bedroom, closing the door behind him.
“I want to go to the town house,” Octavia said firmly. There was no way she could sleep here. The verdant estate was beautiful and the view gave way to a distant scape of the city against the smudged blue of the bay, but antagonistic waves penetrated the walls and floors.
“Putting off this confrontation will only make it worse.” He unbent her folded arms and stole her light coat, tossing it to a chair and nudging her toward the bed. “But can you see that if I had left you in London, they would have held you in suspicion? By bringing you back to face them, you’re showing them you’re blameless.” He pressed her shoulder to sit on the edge of the bed, then he bent to pick up her feet, tipping her onto her side while he removed her shoes. “Once I make it clear that I fired Primo and the hospital is pressing charges, as well, they won’t hold you accountable.”
“I’ve never known you to be delusional, Sandro,” she said on a dry laugh. “If they didn’t warm up to me in the past, they certainly won’t now.”
He paused in reaching for the blanket folded on the foot of the bed.
“What did you say?”
“That you’re being optimistic. If it was just me, I could take their dislike, but I’m scared for Lorenzo. I realize he doesn’t even know what he’s in the middle of, but—”
“This is for Lorenzo, but no. What did you call me?” He dropped the blanket and sat his hip next to hers on the mattress.
His weight rolled her into him and a funny self-consciousness washed over her. “They all call you Sandro. I didn’t think you minded if I did.”
“You haven’t called me that in months.” His hand went to the outside of her thigh, light but familiar, making tingles fan out from the spot across her abdomen and down to her knee and inward to her loins.
She shifted, but he didn’t let the movement dislodge his hand.
“I didn’t notice,” she murmured. Avoiding his nickname hadn’t been a conscious decision and she couldn’t believe it mattered to him either way. The fact that he was remarking on it now made her use of the familiarity seem overly significant and intimate. She looked away, gaze scanning the ceiling for somewhere safe to land, but he lifted his hand off her hip and touched her chin, drawing her to look back at him.
The moment grew even more momentous for no reason at all. Neither of them spoke, but it was as if she’d opened a door and a million emotions had flooded in.
He was coming into her. And he took up a lot of space.
She desperately wished she could backpedal, but she couldn’t. All she could do was close her eyes in an attempt to shut him out. “I am tired,” she lied.
The mattress shifted and his breath warmed her lips before he kissed her.
She almost lifted a hand, wanting to draw it out. Her lips clung, but he kept the contact brief.
“We will get through this, cara,” he said, making it sound like a vow.
He stood and opened the blanket across her, letting it drift down in a puff of air and a layer of softness and warmth.
As he left, she kept her stinging eyes closed tight and tried to believe he wasn’t being optimistic. She wanted so badly to believe him.
But what if he was wrong?
* * *
Alessandro reentered the suite an hour later and saw the bed was empty. Clothes were strewed on the chair and the foot of the mattress. She wasn’t in the bathroom.
He was so keyed up, his heart lurched in his chest, convinced in that first second that she’d left in a hurry, but her cases were still here, one of them open on the floor near the closet.
The door into the sitting room was also open. He strode in to find Lorenzo asleep, which was reassuring, but there was no sign of the nanny or Octavia.
A hand appeared on the brocade curtain and Octavia peered at him from where she was sitting in the sun on the balcony. “Are you hungry? I ordered for both of us.”
He stepped outside to join her, finding her picking over a selection of antipasto, the scene so commonplace it made his leap to wrong conclusions embarrassing.
“I came up to see if you were awake and wanted to join us for a late lunch.” He stole a square of sharp cheese and hunger contracted his stomach. He dug in to the rest. “Where’s Bree?”
“I said I’d listen for Lorenzo so she could introduce herself to the kitchen and walk the grounds, get her bearings. Don’t eat all the olives.”
His mouth twitched at her command, still not used to her new assertiveness, but there was something engaging about it. Like finding unexpected talent in your tennis opponent so the match was more challenging.