She heard the questions in her head but veered away from them. She didn’t know and didn’t have the answers.
‘Good. Do so,’ he replied, his tone brisk and businesslike. He got to his feet. ‘Shall we go? It’s getting dark and chilly. I’ve booked us into a hotel a short drive away.’
Ariana tensed.
Luca looked at her. ‘Separate rooms,’ he said drily. His expression changed. ‘It’s good that you’ve agreed to take on this villa. I’m glad it’s come in useful after all.’
Was there an edge in his voice? She didn’t know and didn’t care. Nor did she reply. There wasn’t anything to say. As she had told him, Mia would have hated the place, and feared the water so close by. But she would have never told him so.
Poor Mia—poor, meek, biddable Mia. Pleasing everyone but herself. Letting herself be placed like a doll, never exerting any will of her own.
And now she herself was not exerting any will of her own either. She had let Luca take her over.
Have I been turning into Mia? Opting out of any agency over my own life? Letting Luca put me in his car, his apartment, while I turn my face to the wall, dissociate myself from the world, give in to his will...
She turned, looking at the villa, its faded beauty. It was unloved—sad and forlorn.
It needs a new start, a new purpose.
‘Ariana?’
Luca was standing by the car, holding open the passenger door, clearly waiting for her to get in. She gave one last look at the villa, silhouetted against the darkening sky. Then got into the car.
She realised, with a strange sense of acceptance, that her mind was already running down a mental list of what the villa’s refurbishment would require. That a sense of purpose was filling her...
CHAPTER ELEVEN
LUCASATBACKin his dining chair. They were eating at the hotel overlooking the lake, dark now except for the lights on a further shore. For the first time since the call had come through from the investigator keeping Ariana under surveillance he felt the tension racking him begin, fractionally, to ease its iron grip.
Ariana was talking, and all he had to do was sit back and listen, answering questions as and when required. She was talking about the villa, and had sketched out on hotel notepaper a new downstairs and upstairs layout. It was the first time he had seen any animation in her face since he had intercepted her planned disappearance and driven her to Milan instead, to begin the future that faced both of them.
Whether we want that future or not...
There was no choice about it. Not for him. Or for her. He had accepted it—she must too. His eyes rested on her now, his mouth tightening without his realising it. And she must not sink into the depression winding its dark tentacles around her, dulling her will to do anything other than lie on her bed, staring at the ceiling, hour after hour, going through the motions, nothing more, taking no care of herself or anything else... Passive and inert.
Docile.
The word plucked at him again, and he pushed it aside. The obstetrician’s advice had been to do what he was now doing. Change the scenery and give her something to do—a project to provide her with some purpose other than simply waiting for the baby to be born. The obstetrician knew nothing of the dark conception of the baby, only that it was unplanned, unforeseen.
Into his head, disturbingly, came the memory of Ariana saying that her own mother had wished her never to have been born and her father had disowned her. She’d lost her surrogate parents, had found the loss difficult to cope with, had been sent away.
An unhappy childhood.
Like mine was.
His thoughts sheered away. He did not want to feel any similarities between them. Any kinship.
His eyes rested on her again. The new animation in her face was renewing her familiar beauty too. She had regained some weight and her face was less gaunt, cheekbones less sharp, complexion less wan. She was still not showing her pregnancy yet, but it was early days. Her first scan was still weeks away.
His thoughts sheered away again. A scan would make the baby real in a way that mere pregnancy tests and obstetric checks did not.
How can we do this? How can we bring a child into the world with parents between whom is such enmity, such discord—such anger?
But he knew the answer to that too. Had grown up with it.
Emotion stabbed in him. For that reason of all reasons he knew he mustseek a better future for this child his own intemperate, disastrous weakness had created.
And that was what he was striving to do now. However appallingly Ariana had behaved—wrecking her cousin’s wedding as she had, just to spite him—he had to move on from it.