He wanted to laugh—savagely—at the irony of what she had said. And that was not all she had said.
‘We can’t help who we want or don’t want in our lives.’
He heard them afresh and lifted his glass, taking a mouthful of the fiery liquid within as if it might scour out what was inside him. Deliberately, he tried to conjure an image of Mia—but it would not come. It was as if she were already a ghost in his life—faded from reality.
He lifted his eyes, stared out over the dark and deadly waters of the lake. Faced the truth he could not deny. Whoever Ariana was, whatever she did, he would always desire her.
But what else was true beyond desire?
For a moment he recalled reaching out to press her hand, feeling a tear splash on his. Tears? From this woman who had so heartlessly destroyed her cousin’s wedding? Why should he have felt what he had at that moment? A kind of pity...a weary sympathy for her as she had let tears fall?
He didn’t know. Couldn’t know.
He could know only that his future was mapped out for him just as he had mapped hers out for her. For the sake of this child that neither of them had sought to create they must somehow—somehow...
Be better parents than those we were given.
That was the truth of it. The only truth he could allow to matter.
With a sudden movement he downed the rest of his whisky, turning away from the window. Not wanting to think about any other truths... Truths too difficult to face. Too impossible to allow.
Ariana was talking. She was saying something about the villa’s electrics and taking another pastry from the basket on the breakfast table. She needed to show Luca that whatever had happened on the drive back from the villa yesterday evening, whatever show of weakness or vulnerability or unhappiness—and, most of all, that strange, haunting moment when he’d taken her hand as her tears had started to fall—she was now back on the neutral subject of its refurbishment.
He heard her out, and asked several relevant questions, but when she had answered him he took control of the conversation.
‘Ariana...’
She stilled. Tensing immediately. She could tell from his tone of voice, by the pause after her name, that she needed to be tense. She closed her face, veiling her eyes. Guarding herself from him. Protecting herself.
What was he going to say? What would he hurt her with now? Surely here, in the sunlit breakfast room of this expensive hotel on Lake Como, surrounded by other guests, he could not be too hostile?
His expression had changed.
‘Don’t,’ he said. His voice was low suddenly. ‘Don’t, Ariana. There is no need.’
She looked at him, her fingers tightening on the knife she was about to cut her pastry with.
‘No need to look like that,’ he said. ‘I only wanted to say—’ He stopped. Then, ‘In the car, you cried. I... I don’t want you to cry.’
She swallowed, making words come, an acknowledgement come. ‘Yes. I know. It’s not good...’ She swallowed again, more difficult this time. ‘Not good for me to upset the baby.’
Something flashed in his eyes. ‘It’s not good foryou,’ he said. He took a breath. ‘Ariana, I brought you here to the lake, to the villa, so you could do it up. In order to make things...to make things easier for you.’
He looked away, then back at her. Her expression hadn’t changed and her face was still closed, she knew, her eyes veiled. Because they had to be. Not because he was going to say something hostile to her, something harsh. But because there was something in his voice, in his eyes, that she could not bear...that hurt too much.
And yet he was not wounding her with his words... So why was her throat tightening, treacherous tears prickling again in the backs of her veiled eyes?
He was speaking again, in that same low, resolute voice, with that same watchful, intent gaze on her. ‘And I want things to be easier forus. Because thereisan us, Ariana! Whether we ever thought there would be or not, there is now. And I just want... I want...’
He fell silent, and she could not answer him or say anything. Then he was speaking again, in that same low tone, with that same holding of her eyes. Her vision was starting to blur, so fatally...
‘Last night—in my room—I... I faced a truth. About us both.’
She felt her heart stop. Her breath stop. But she did not know why.
‘We neither of us had parents who put us first as children...’ his voice was sombre ‘...and that’s whywemust for this child we have created between us. It deserves no less.’
Ariana’s heart started to beat again, her lungs to fill. Whatever it was that she had thought he might say, this was no reason for not breathing, for her heart to stop.