‘I was not a part of their plans.’
‘What were their plans?’
‘To party,’ Gian said. ‘And a late baby nearly put paid to that.’
‘But it didn’t?’
‘No,’ he admitted. ‘They carried right on.’
‘With a baby?’
‘Without,’ Gian said. ‘A lot of nannies, a lot of time in Luctano... It’s better this way, though. It taught me independence, so by the time they were gone, there was nothing to miss. They were never a necessary part of my life, or I of theirs.’
She could not imagine it.
Sure, her father had pulled back, but that had been in her twenties, and her mother still called her every day.
And even though she and Stefano were not as close now as they once had been, she would die if he pulled away so completely.
Even Dante, always remote and distant, was still a vital part of her world.
To have no one.
To miss no one.
‘I don’t believe you,’ she admitted. ‘I can’t believe you don’t miss them.’
‘Truth?’ Gian said, still floating in that void where there were no sides and no barriers hemming you in. ‘I have missed them from the day I was born.’
‘Gian?’ She lifted her head when he fell silent.
‘Go to sleep,’ he said, but she wanted to ask him how they were supposed to be with each other in the cold light of day.
‘What?’ he asked her, when her head stayed up and her eyes remained focused on him.
Self-preservation struck—or was it sanity?—and Ariana, even with little experience in the bedroom, knew that pushing the issue with Gian would be something she would live to regret.
‘I’m cold,’ she said, though she had never felt safer or warmer.
Ariana knew when, and how, to lie.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
GIANWOKETODISORDER.
Not just the knot of limbs and the scent of sex, for that he was used to, but the exposure of thoughts and the deep intimacies of last night had brought disorder into his mind.
He did not want to love her.
Ariana awoke to a cold empty bed and the sound of the shower.
She could almost feel the weight of his regret in the air.
There was no sense of regret from her. In fact, she wanted to stretch like a cat and purr at the memory of their lovemaking.
She had thought nothing could beat the first time, but again Gian had surprised her.
In his arms, as he’d driven her to the very edge and then toppled them, it had felt as if they were one.