But the way Pia looked at him, with startling emotion from the depths of her warm brown eyes, for the first time since he had accepted Giovanni’s unspoken challenge, unease settled in his chest.
If all the trappings of his wealth and status were removed, if his ambition and his driving need not to become his father or share his fate were removed, then who was he at his core? Without the shame he felt for his father’s failure, the bitterness brewed for years by his mother’s careless callousness, the cynicism he had developed in order to bear Allegra’s affairs—who was he then?
Had Gio ever wondered if that man was good enough for his precious Pia Alessandra Vito?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
NOTHING, IT SEEMED to Pia, had gone right the day of her engagement party to Raphael.
The mid-October day had dawned sunny enough, with just the right amount of chill in the air. Pia’s usual breakfast with Gio on the small veranda, the perfect start to her day, hadn’t happened because he’d been interrupted yet again by a call from one of his sisters and he’d left immediately.
Pia had begun to dislike Thea Rosa quite a bit, for she seemed to delight in torturing Giovanni with all kinds of escapades at her old age.
So she’d breakfasted alone. All her misgivings about Raphael had grown into an insurmountable obstacle.
The toast she’d had sat in her tummy like a piece of lead, hard and unforgiving. And since she hadn’t been paying attention, she had accidentally spilled hot water over her fingers and scalded herself.
What, or rather who, she really wanted was Raphael. They hadn’t seen each other for a fortnight and Pia felt quite a juvenile resentment that his business always seemed to take him away when she needed him the most.
Just as he’d been unavailable the day she’d realized her period was three weeks late and had freaked out. After the first night with Raphael, she’d immediately gone on the pill. He was the one she wanted to freak out and panic with, since he partly shared the blame if she were pregnant. But no, Raphael had been in blasted Tokyo negotiating a new trade agreement between Vito Automobiles and a Japanese manufacturing company.
Instead, she’d had to beg Emilio to drive her to a pharmacy at least twenty kilometers from Gio’s estate and Como where Raphael lived, to buy a pregnancy test. And then she’d performed the test in secret, because she was terrified of a servant finding out and telling Gio before she’d had a chance to process it and told Raphael.
Fortunately, the test had been negative.
Yet Pia had sat in the restroom for half an hour, feeling an inexplicable but violent urge to cry.
What she’d wanted then was the solid, comforting presence of the man she loved. The man who it seemed took care of every small thing for her.
On his return from Japan, Pia had broached the subject of his cutting down at work, and had received the most piercing stare leveled at her. He hadn’t shut her down as he usually did but he hadn’t responded to her suggestion either. Even Gio had backed her, saying he could delegate more.
“My father delegated, he trusted people he shouldn’t have and his business sank within two years,” had been his reply.
Since she didn’t want to hurt him, and his father had always been a touchy subject with Raphael, Pia had left it at that.
She had let a lot of things slide, she realized now, but weren’t those the growing pains of a new relationship? Pia had learned that Raphael, even after being married once, rarely, if ever, shared his thoughts with anybody. He was used to going it alone, used to that role of problem solver so much.
But the more they saw of each other and the more they had planned their engagement, the more Raphael had begun retreating from her. He’d become the stranger she had met that first night, brooding and unapproachable, except for the fact that she was allowed to sleep with him now.
Like clockwork, he either brought her to his apartment, kept her up until dawn—not that Pia wasn’t just as voracious for his touch, for his possession—or he came to her at Gio’s house, long after Gio and the staff had gone to bed. Usually, he found Pia studying or working on her toys.
When she was, he shed his shirt and shoes and waited for her to finish—as if she could make sense of a single line when his mere presence fried her brain. And then he took her to bed.