Yet he was struggling to carry on, knowing that Ariana must be suffering now. For the first time, Gian wantedmoreinformation on the details of a woman’s private life. He was fighting with himself not to call Ariana to see what was going on, how she was coping, what she knew...
Her brief appearance told him nothing. She was immaculate. Ariana really should be on the stage, for there was no hint of tension in her body language.
She wore a navy linen suit and her hair was smooth and tied back in a slick ponytail. She even paused and smiled her gorgeous red-lipped smile for the cameras.
‘This can wait,’ he told Luna, and wrapped up their morning meeting so he could focus on the news. ‘If you could just bring coffee.’
‘Of course.’
Throughout the morning, the little pings became more and more frequent for there was drama aplenty. Dante Romano and Mia were engaged to be married! Gian could not imagine that going down well with a certain hot-headed lady, but there Ariana was, still smiling for the cameras as she left the building and climbed into a car.
Ariana would come to him.
Of that Gian was certain.
Despite their exchange yesterday, Gian was quietly confident that Ariana would arrive in his office, because whenever there was drama in Ariana Romano’s life, inevitably Luna announced she was at his door and a mini-tornado would burst in.
‘Any messages from Ariana Romano?’ he checked with Luna.
‘None.’
‘If she arrives here,’ Gian said, ‘please send her straight through.’
Ariana did not arrive, though, for sherefusedto run to him.
The car was mercifully cool and, rather than stare ahead, Ariana looked out of the window and smiled at the cameras as if the drama surrounding Dante and Mia hadn’t affected her in the slightest. In fact, their engagement was the merest tip of an iceberg that had just been exposed to her in all its blinding glory. Ariana was having trouble taking it all in.
‘Home?’ the driver checked.
‘No...’ She hesitated, not quite ready for the emptiness of her apartment and the noise of her own thoughts. ‘Just drive, please.’
She took a gulp of water from a chilled bottle the driver handed to her and tried to come to terms with the fact that her life, her childhood—in fact, all she had ever known—had been built on a lie. Her parents’ marriage, of which she’d been so proud, had been a sham. They’d both had other partners and the marriage had been in name only, so much so that she and Stefano had been IVF babies.
It felt as if she was the very last to know.
They drove for ages. It was rush hour in Rome, all the workers spilling out, some rushing for transport, others taking their time for a coffee, or to sit in a bar.
She felt like an alien.
A stranger in her own body.
As they passed La Fiordelise she had never been more tempted to ask the driver to pull in, to push through the brass doors and escape to the cool calmness of Gian’s office and unburden herself, as she would usually do. Except, thanks to their argument yesterday, that refuge was denied her now.
Instead, Ariana asked to be dropped off where they had walked that lonely night. She wandered there, too shocked and stunned for tears. It was a sticky late spring day and she drifted a while, ignoring the buzz of her phone.
Finally she glanced at the endless missed calls.
He came first and last.
Gian.
Mamma.
Gian.
Gian.
Mamma.