He tried to think now of what it would be like if it were Mia standing by his car—but he could not see her. She had gone...slipped away...a dream, a ghost...
Mia...sweet, gentle Mia...who had not deserved the treatment her own cousin had so humiliatingly and so viciously subjected her to at her wedding. Cruel and heartless—jealous and vindictive.
His expression steeled.
Thatwas why he didn’t want to want the woman he was going to have to marry now! The woman carrying his child. That was what he must remember—that hideous scene in the church and only that! Not Ariana telling him she could not take any more anger from him, with her tears falling on his hand, nor Ariana just now, pulling away from him, not able to bear him to touch her even when he meant her no harm...
He felt confusion well up in him...emotions dark and difficult deep within. They were making no sense.
He made himself start walking towards the car again. She was standing by the locked passenger door, staring into nothing. Her pregnancy barely showed under her loose top. A pregnancy she would never have told him about. If he hadn’t discovered it she would have left Italy for ever.
I would never have seen her again.
He stopped dead.
That had been his intention that morning in New York as he’d left her there, lying in his bed. Never to see her again.
And if he hadn’t—if he’d never set eyes on her again for the rest of his life...?
If that had been the reality, instead of this reality now...?
What would I feel?
He forced himself to close the distance between them. While inside his head all that he had been sure of was no longer there. Rearranged completely. But into what, he did not know.
Luca slowed to take a bend on the winding lakeside road, hemmed in between the plunging mountain slope to one side and the deep lake on the other, then accelerated again. His thoughts were inward, circling, as if he were an eagle high overhead, making no landing.
At his side, Ariana was studying her phone, looking at an invoice of some kind that she was scrolling through. Something to do with the villa refurbishment, he assumed.
His hands tightened on the wheel. He was not looking forward to the afternoon and what it would bring, but it had to be faced. It was all arranged.
She was closing her phone, slipping it back into her handbag. ‘Where are we having lunch? Not too far, I hope. The electrician’s turning up at three to put some more sockets in the utility room.’
Her tone of voice was as normal as it ever was when she was talking to him about the villa. But as he answered her he knew his voice was edged with tension. He would have preferred telling her over lunch, but she might as well know now. He had kept the preparations from her—it would be easier that way. It was something to be got through with as little fuss as possible—a mere legality for the sake of the baby they unwillingly shared, meaning nothing more than that. For either of them.
That was what he permitted himself to think about—not the questions circling in his head.
‘You’ll need to cancel him,’ he told her. ‘We won’t be back by three.’
She turned to him, clearly about to say something, but he did not let her. He made himself say what needed to be said.
‘We’re going to Como, Ariana. We’re getting married—it’s all arranged. Just a civil ceremony, obviously, simply to get it done.’
He’d kept his voice neutral, inexpressive, as he made the announcement, but at his side he heard her gasp.
‘Are youmad?’
He set his face, not looking at her, only at the twisting road ahead. ‘It has to happen, Ariana. I made that clear from the outset.’
He didn’t want an issue made out of it. He’d undertaken to complete the paperwork, assembled the documents, made the necessary appointment as methodically as if he were preparing a business dossier. Now they just had to show up for the occasion itself. As brief and as businesslike as he could make it. Then it would be done.
She swivelled in her seat. ‘AndImade it clear that no way was I going tomarryyou!’
He could hear the protest in her voice. He slammed down on it—hard. Slammed down on the biting emotion starting to rise up in him at her protest.
‘We will marry for the sake of the baby, to regularise its existence. As I said, it’s all arranged, I’ve seen to all the paperwork. You just need to show up, that’s all.’ He felt his teeth gritting. ‘Ariana, this has to happen! You know it as well as I do.’
‘Luca—no! No, it doesnothave to happen! And it won’t.’