“Quietly,” Lauren warned, slowing his step. “Don’t wake your sister. I’ll start dinner,” Lauren said with a well-practiced hostess smile.
“You will not,” Paolo told her. “I’ll cook when I come in. Stay off your feet.”
A man willing to cook. Gwyn was so astonished it took her a moment to blurt out the sensible solution that broke the challenging stare between the married couple.
“I can make dinner.”
Everyone looked at her. These two men really were too much masculinity in one impactful wall for any woman to handle.
“Unless you need me to be there while you talk?” She had no doubt she would be the topic of their discussion. Frankly, she was hoping to avoid listening to her humiliation being kicked over like something a dog owner had failed to dispose of properly.
“I would appreciate your cooking, if it’s something you don’t mind doing,” Paolo said, then turned to his wife. “You may sit and chop tomatoes if you promise not to put your weight behind it.”
She made a face at him.
“If our daughter wakes, would you call me?” he added to Gwyn. “She’s under the weather and will want to be held, but Lauren needs to take it easy. At this stage the hiccups will start her labor. I have my hands full enough without catching a baby today.”
“It’s twenty minutes out of your life,” Lauren murmured, looking at her fingernails. “I don’t know what you’re complaining about.”
He caught her hand and brought her curled knuckles to his lips. “I can barely think of anything else as it is. You know that. Try to buy us a few more days while we settle this work crisis? Please?”
The looks they were giving each other were such a mix of open emotion, tender and teasing and loving, Gwyn knew she ought to look away. It was a private couple’s moment, but it was so beautiful, she was transfixed. She wanted that. The cajole and silent communication and connection that bound in a thousand ways. The secretive smile. The way they looked like they wanted to kiss, but were in no hurry because Paolo was stroking her bent knuckle against his upper lip and they had an abundance of time and opportunities for loving affection.
“Maybe this one will have my patience instead of your lack of impulse control,” Lauren teased. “We could get lucky.”
“Do not blame me!” Paolo scoffed. “They wind up with your sense of humor and think it’s funny—stop laughing. I’m serious. No laughing. You’ll put yourself into labor.”
Lauren disobeyed, releasing a hearty chuckle that made Gwyn smile along with her.
Their son came outside in his trunks and Gwyn turned her expression of amusement into a greeting for the boy, giving the couple their privacy to exchange a kiss.
When she glanced at Vito, she saw he was watching her, his expression unreadable.
* * *
A few minutes later, Gwyn was moving around Lauren’s kitchen, chatting with her with surprising ease. Perhaps Lauren wasn’t resting with her feet up as her husband had demanded, but since she wasn’t holding anything heavier than a paring knife, Gwyn didn’t say anything. Besides, every birth story she’d ever heard was a lengthy process, happening in the midnight hours. Lauren wasn’t complaining of a backache or any of those other things women talked about as precursors to labor. She was relaxed and pleasant and ever so nice!
Feeling as vilified as she did, Gwyn was deeply relieved to be treated like a normal person.
“Did you get that top at the boutique on the far end of the lake?” Lauren asked. “I bought the red-and-gold one two months ago. They have amazing stuff, don’t they?”
Gwyn agreed, then, as she set a pot of water to boil and the conversation lulled, she screwed up her courage and said, “I, um, lived in Charleston before I came here. I’m not trying to pry,” she hurried to add. “I just thought I should tell you that I couldn’t help but be aware of all the coverage about your husband. Um, first husband, I mean.”
Lauren’s expression smoothed to something very grave, gaze sliding away to hide her thoughts. “It was a heartbreaking time.”
“I’m very sorry for your loss,” Gwyn said quickly, feeling it was the decent thing to say to the widow of a war hero, but it wasn’t why she’d brought it up. She wasn’t asking the big question that had been on everyone else’s mind at the time: had Lauren slept with her husband’s best friend the night she had learned her husband was dead? The answer to that was outside throwing rocks into the lake, as far as Gwyn could tell.
“I wouldn’t have mentioned it except... Is it bad taste to ask how you handled all the attention?” Gwyn asked.