‘I will call Marianna,’ Nico said, and Aurora guessed that was often his solution to irksome things. ‘What happened, Aurora?’
‘I already told you,’ she said, taking a seat on one of his plump couches. But instead of sinking into it she perched on the edge. ‘I don’t want to discuss it.’
‘Perhaps…but you have a bruise on your cheek.’
‘He didn’t mean to do that.’
She looked up and saw Nico’s face stretched into a grim smile.
She knew that look.
For she had seen it the night they had first made love. She had seen it when he had lifted her hips from his body and told her to go to bed, and she had said no.
It was the look he gave as his patience slipped away. It was the look he gave just before that steely control dissolved.
‘Okay,’ she said hurriedly. ‘I’ll tell you.’
And so she told him—about the job she had taken, and how wonderful Louanna and the children had been.
And then she watched his jaw quilt in tension when she told Nico about the husband.
‘Things were fine when he was not there, but then…’ Aurora said. ‘I was desperate, Nico, and so I stayed.’
She saw that black smile which was not really a smile return to his face. Whatever she had said had clearly displeased him, so she moved on swiftly.
‘This morning, at about two, I was putting Gabe back in his crib after feeding. I live in the summerhouse…’
‘In winter?’
‘It’s heated. I was so happy there. Anyway, I saw a light, I saw them fighting—or rather I saw him hit her—and I…’ She swallowed. ‘I intervened.’
Silence from Nico.
‘I couldn’t just do nothing.’
‘So you ran across the garden—I assume it is snowing there too—and stepped into a house where there was a raging man… Did he hit you?’
‘No—no! I was trying to get him off his wife and he pushed me, and then he told me I was not welcome in his home and that I’d caused too many problems with his wife. Then he pushed me again and I fell.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t want to talk about it any more.’
‘Fair enough,’ Nico said. ‘It will be exhausting enough going over things again with the polizia.’
‘I’m not speaking to the polizia,’ Aurora said urgently.
‘So you want me to go round there and kill him?’
‘Nico, it’s a bruise.’
‘Get it photographed while it’s visible, and tell the police the details while they’re fresh in your mind. Or,’ Nico repeated, ‘I will go round there now and I kill him.’
‘Oh, grow up!’ she sneered. ‘What’s that going to solve?’
‘Plenty for me.’ Nico shrugged. ‘So what’s it to be?’
‘Nico, I don’t want to cause trouble. I just want to forget—’
‘You will never forget,’ Nico interrupted. ‘And nor will Louanna and the children,’ he added. ‘I know that for a fact. Ignoring and denying and sweeping things under the carpet does not improve the situation one iota. It needs to be faced.’
‘Leave it, Nico, please.’
He did not.
Sometimes she forgot that Nico was just as Sicilian as her.
Nico’s stunning apartment became busy with two uniformed police officers, who took a detailed statement. It was exhausting, but there was relief at the end, when Aurora asked if Louanna would be safe.
Nico answered for the police. ‘She will be fine. Right now she is tucked up at my hotel with the children.’
When the police had gone, Aurora turned to him. ‘You didn’t have to do that.’
‘It was my pleasure,’ Nico said. ‘I will ensure she is looked after and I will have my lawyers help her.’ He saw her bemused frown. ‘Louanna gave you a home when you needed one, and—’ He stopped whatever he had been about to say. ‘Go to bed,’ he told her.
‘I can’t. Gabe is asleep,’ she said. ‘I don’t like to bring him into bed with me in case I smother him.’
Yet she was tired—terribly so. All the adrenaline that had fired her seemed to have left en masse.
‘I could maybe take a drawer and put him in it. Or if you have a box…’
‘Or I could hold him.’
It was Aurora who was silent now.
‘Surely that’s better than a box?’ Nico said.
‘I sleep better when he is next to me.’
‘Let me hold him, Aurora.’
She handed Gabe to him and he took the baby awkwardly and held him in one arm.
‘You have to support his head.’
‘I am.’
‘And if he wakes there are two bottles left. I should put them in the fridge…’
‘Go to bed, Aurora.’
‘Which bed?’
She flushed as she asked the question—and then Nico took her breath away.
‘The one he was made in.’
Such a direct answer—and it told her that Nico did not doubt for a second that the baby was his.
It was actually a relief to close the bedroom door and be alone.
Nico knows.
How he felt about being a father was another matter entirely, but she felt a sagging of relief that he finally knew.
The bed was unmade, Aurora saw. Of course it was—he would have been asleep when she called.
Her book was on the floor beside the bed, and it made her smile that he must have read it—or at least found it.
The shower was bliss—and so, too, was it bliss to put on not a crisp clean shirt, but the one he must have taken off last night that smelled of him.
She slipped between sheets that held his cologne and the male scent of him—and then the door opened and he stood there, holding a cup in one hand and their son in the other.
‘Sweet milk,’ he said. ‘Do you want something to eat?’
‘No, milk is fine.’
‘I’ve called Marianna. She is getting some essentials and will sort out a nanny.’
‘I don’t need a nanny.’
‘Well, I do,’ Nico said.
‘Ah, yes, you have a very busy social life.’ She fixed him with her eyes. ‘What with balls and trips to the theatre…’
‘That was in the run-up to Christmas,’ Nico said, though he knew full well what Aurora was getting at. Those had been high-profile functions he had attended, and there were photos everywhere. ‘It has been a busy couple of months.’
‘I saw,’ Aurora said, and attempted to slice him in two with her eyes.
Nico held her gaze. He did not blink and then he spoke. ‘One thing, Aurora…’ He just could not let go of what she had said for a single moment longer. ‘You were never desperate.’