CHAPTER NINE
THOSEFIRSTWEEKSafter the twins’ birth were ever after a blur for Leah. Sally had to return home to the UK within days. Soon after that, Leah succumbed to an infection and was laid low for a week while at the hospital their son and daughter lurched forward one step then back another. Luca only gained weight slowly and, initially, he had feeding problems.
Leah saw very little of Gio. They talked on the phone, they met at the hospital when he was visiting the intensive care nursery to see the twins at the same time, but just as quickly he would be gone on business again. He maintained a punishing work schedule and slept in one of the guest rooms. Occasionally he joined her for breakfast or dinner and, while he was perfectly cordial, they talked about nothing other than their babies. She had no doubt whatsoever that he cared deeply for their children but had no idea how he truly felt about her or a painfully new marriage, which had never even got off the starting blocks. He had told her that he believed their marriage could work and said he wanted the opportunity to prove that to her, but so far he didn’t seem to be bothering to try and prove anything to her.
Her reminder about the DNA test he had once demanded had annoyed rather than reassured him and she didn’t understand why. She had needed to know thatheknew beyond a shadow of doubt that he was Aurora and Luca’s father but, afterwards, she had worried that mentioning the test again had been provocative and given in the wrong spirit at the ultimate wrong moment.
The first week that Aurora came home, Leah was run off her feet. If she wasn’t feeding her daughter, she was trying to soothe her and, after several sleepless nights, Gio strode into the apartment to find her in tears, fatigue and a sense of being a failure as a mother weighing down on her.
‘Let me take her now.’ Gio sighed, scooping the baby from her with careful hands. ‘Go to bed and sleep. I’m hiring a couple of nannies in the morning—’
‘I don’t need nannies,’ Leah protested.
‘You need rest and you need help. You have to get your own strength back. Your body’s been through a lot these last few months and you’re not looking after yourself,’ Gio intoned grimly, scanning her bruised eyes and drawn cheeks. ‘It’s my job to look after all of you and, since Luca will be home with us soon as well, we need extra hands on board, at least until the twins are a little less demanding.’
‘I—’
‘Don’t fight me on this, please,’ Gio urged ruefully.
Exhaustion down to her very bones haltered Leah’s ready tongue. She slept almost eighteen hours that night and by the following evening the first nanny had arrived, a pleasant girl who in no way made her feel less for not being able to cope alone.
Over breakfast, while covertly feeding Spike forbidden titbits below the table, a habit that had converted Spike into his devoted mealtime companion, Gio announced further changes. ‘We’re leaving for Italy as soon as Luca is released from hospital—’
‘But we can’t leave Athens,’ Leah protested, nervous at the prospect of leaving behind the support network she had established there.
‘Of course, we can. There is an excellent hospital nearby with a suitably qualified specialist available for any health problems the children might develop. We’ll have the nannies with us. We will also have a full staff at thecastello. They were hired to get the household ready for our arrival.Thisis why I’ve been working so hard since the wedding, Leah,’ Gio stressed, studying her with glittering resolve. ‘So that I could finally take some time off to be with my family.’
His use of that word, ‘family’, cut through Leah’s consternation and took the sharp edge off her anxieties. That he was making that effort, had indeed already made such elaborate plans to facilitate their move, touched her heart. The various health crises the twins had endured had made her reluctant to leave Athens, but she recognised that, with Luca’s release, the emergency was now over and that it was selfish to expect Gio to stay in Greece.
‘And there’s no pressure on you, no pressure whatsoever,’ Gio emphasised smoothly. ‘Your brother did tell me that, basically, you didn’t care how long our marriage lasted, only that it took place to legitimise our children—’
Gio breathed in deep and slow, having finally spilt the words that had been burning a hole in his gut ever since Ari Stefanos had voiced them. The last thing he could afford to do was make Leah feel cornered when he needed to show her that he could give her the time and space to find out for herself that their marriage could flourish.
‘Ari talked a lot of rubbish, because it’s not as though it was something we ever actually discussed!’ Leah protested heatedly, pale in receipt of the explanation he was giving her for his casual, distant attitude. He was holding back with her.
Her brother had made it sound as though she would be content with an empty shell of a marriage and now Gio was wondering if that was true, if, indeed, she had only wanted a ring and his name and nothing more. No longer did she need to wonder why he didn’t touch her, why he had made no move even to share a bedroom with her. He was following the wretched blueprint that Ari had given him, leaving it up to her to decide what she wanted.
‘If you want more,’ Gio murmured sibilantly, ‘you’ll have to tell me. Just as I wasn’t an unwilling husband, I have no desire to make you an unwilling wife.’
If you want more...Leah had wanted more from the first moment she’d laid eyes on Gio Zanetti. A lot of women suffered from the same affliction when they saw him, from the nurses in the NICU, who had christened him ‘Mr Gorgeous’, to the heads that swivelled to get a closer look at his breathtaking features whenever he was in public. Deprived of him, she scrutinised online photos; she had an addiction now, an incurable addiction to Gio. Now, flushed to the roots of her hair, she glanced at him, scanning the cut-glass cheekbones, the carved jawline and the stunning pale eyes accentuated by lush black lashes, and her heart skipped a beat as though she were still an impressionable schoolgirl.
She wanted him, she wantedmoreas much as she wanted air to breathe, but she could no more imagine making an announcement of that fact to him than she could imagine flapping imaginary wings and flying away. She couldn’t put herself out there to that extent, risking humiliation and rejection, because he had made no such announcement to encourage her, had he? She had put herself out on a limb with Oliver, had been the first to declare love, the first to seek greater intimacy, and in the end that naïve loving trust of hers had simply become another weapon to be wielded against her and increase her humiliation. And did she really want to take that huge risk anyway when she had already loved and lost so many people, from her parents to her beloved twin?
Maybe Gio already knew that he would be quite content with a shell of marriage, full access to their children and an easy pre-agreed exit when he tired of the arrangement as inevitably any highly sexed male would. But Leah didn’t believe that she could detach herself from her emotions to that extent and the prospect of unrequited love only made her tummy sink like a stone...because she had already done that once and she was determined not to do it again.
Surrounded on all sides by a pine forest, the SUV travelled up a twisty steep road into the Italian hills.
‘There it is...’ Gio indicated the great stone frontage of thecastelloand its massive circular towers where it stood in a dominant position overlooking the wooded valley.
In awe, Leah stared. ‘It’s arealcastle.’
‘Fifteenth century. The first Zanetti was a soldier and he built the fortress. His son became a very successful merchant and by the next generation the Zanettis were loaning money to royalty and acquired a title in payment. As the family grew richer their influence and ambition grew and the house became the symbol of their success,’ Gio explained.
‘How do you know so much?’
‘The old man who owned it was a cousin and he wrote an excellent book about the family history. It was fortunate that the property fell into his safe hands after my grandparents sold it. He restored it. I’ve spent the last decade buying back the original family paintings and the furniture that were auctioned off to finance that restoration.’
‘I didn’t realise that the last owner was related to you—’