by Maggie Cox
‘No, Dante! You mustn’t blame Alessandro!’
‘You would stand up for such a pathetic excuse for a man?’ His emerald eyes glinting like slivers of ice, he glared at her. ‘Perhaps you would be happier having a relationship with my cousin, no? You obviously admire him so much!’
Distressed, Bliss couldn’t make her mouth work to voice a single word. She was saved from struggling to do so when the door swung open and Dr Berticelli walked into the room with a nurse hurrying behind him.
‘How are you feeling, signorina?’ He narrowed his eyes as if making an assessment from her appearance alone. Trying to gather her wits, Bliss dared a glance at Dante’s glowering expression before replying. ‘I—there’s no pain. Is it because of the painkillers you gave me? Does it mean that I—?’ It was no good. She couldn’t finish the sentence. Not when her question might be sealing her own unhappy fate and also not when she sensed Dante’s deep disapproval and suspicion of her supposed interest in Alessandro.
‘Your condition is stabilised, Signorina Maguire. You have not lost the baby but over the next few months you will have to have more rest than most first-time expectant mothers if you are to carry this baby to full term. Signor di Andrea, you must ensure that she does not overdo things. I will sign a release form and leave it at the desk and tomorrow morning you may take the young signorina home again. If you need any more advice I suggest you talk to your own obstetrician at home. I will also give you a letter for him explaining our findings. These things are often difficult to detect and they will no doubt keep a closer eye on her from now on.’
From beneath her long dark lashes, Bliss saw Dante make the sign of the cross and then tears of happiness were rolling helplessly down her cheeks before she could wipe them away.
‘Thank God. Thank you, Doctor. I am so grateful for everything that you did.’
‘You are welcome, signorina. That is what we are here for. Signor di Andrea? If you will just come to the desk and sign—’ But before Dr Berticelli finished speaking, Dante rose up out of his seat and exited the room as if suddenly remembering something of vital importance. Bereft because he had not stayed to share the miracle that their baby was still safe, Bliss sank back against the pillows and sorrowfully turned her face to the window.
He was so overcome he did not know what to do first. Adrenaline was shooting through his body like a jet plane run amok, leaving him on an incredible high one minute, then sobering him with fear in the next. He didn’t want to let Bliss stay in the hospital for one more night…he wanted her home. But fear and common sense combined dictated that he do as the doctor suggested and let her remain where she was to make sure everything was all right. She had been so close to losing the baby that Dante would not knowingly jeopardise the chance of keeping them both safe, but from now on he swore to himself to do everything in his power to ensure that she would have a restful and stress-free pregnancy. He would not allow anything or anyone to put Bliss or the baby at risk again.
His mind busy with plans, he went outside to ring his parents on his cell phone. When Isabella started weeping with relief at the other end, the dam inside Dante finally burst and, giving way to his own overwhelming emotion in a way that he hadn’t done since he was a small boy, he cried openly too.
’Isabella is preparing a special meal for us tonight—just you, me and my parents. Are you up to that?’
‘Of course.’ Glancing up at him from beneath the rim of the straw hat that she wore to keep out the glare of the sun, Bliss wished he wouldn’t keep treating her as if she were spun glass or something equally fragile and breakable. She might be recovering from the scare of nearly losing their baby, but she was tougher than she looked and she wouldn’t be doing anything foolish to put herself at risk. But still, this enforced rest was not as simple as she’d hoped it would be. After taking care of herself for so long it wasn’t entirely easy to relinquish the reins, no matter how much she told herself to be grateful for the opportunity.
And Dante might be tender of her welfare, but physically he seemed to be maintaining a deliberate distance. In the three days since she’d been home from the hospital there’d been no more delicious suggestions about going somewhere because he needed to be alone with her. In fact, he seemed to want to do the exact opposite—suggesting that they join Isabella and Antonio and any friends that came to the villa at the slightest inducement. His behaviour just confirmed to Bliss what she already believed to be true: Dante was only interested in the baby. Once the baby came, would she be relegated to mother and wife only, not lover or friend? The thought swept cruelly through her like the desolate sound of rain falling on a burnt-out building—too late to put out the fire.
‘I am going out for a little while. Can I bring you anything back? Some magazines, a book…maybe some candy?’
Bliss shook her head. Then, before melancholy settled on her shoulders like an unwanted but familiar cloak, she glanced back at him with hope in her eyes. ‘If you’re going out, can I come with you? I’d love a drive somewhere.’
The question seemed to give him more trouble than it should. Finally, as he shook his head Dante’s tightly controlled little smile wasn’t even rueful. ‘No. That would not be a good idea, in my opinion. Stay here and rest. I do not intend to be away for long.’
‘Is yours the only opinion that counts around here, Dante?’ Drawing her knees up to her chest in the sun lounger, Bliss irritably wrapped her arms around them. ‘This is a beautiful place, but I’m beginning to feel a little like a prisoner wrapped in velvet. The doctor said I needed to rest; he didn’t say I should never go out again.’
‘In two days’ time we are flying back to the UK to see Sandrine. She will have to keep a very close eye on you now, after all that has occurred. There is also our wedding to think about. I want to make sure you are fully up to the travelling before we go and have to deal with these things, so in the meantime you need to rest as much as possible. It is not a question of me telling you what to do, it is a matter of you using your common sense.’
‘Are you suggesting mine is in short supply?’ she shot back, her irritation threatening to explode into full-blown anger. Rather than irritate him, her petulant retort seemed to amuse him. Levelling his disturbingly sexy green eyes on her, he smiled. It was the first real smile he’d bestowed upon her in the longest time and Bliss basked in the sultry summer glow of it, her senses revelling in the intimate attention like a shaded flower leant towards a sudden glimpse of the sun.
‘I can see that you are spoiling for a fight, but I am sorry, piccola, I am not.’
‘Why? Because you’re afraid I’m going to break or something if I dare raise my voice or do something vaguely normal?’ Rising to her feet, she whipped off her sunhat and threw it onto the striped lounger, almost in defiance of using her common sense. With her hands on her hips, she glared at him. ‘Where are you going? Why can’t I come with you? Are you going to meet another woman? Is that why you don’t want to take me with you?’
‘You really think I would cheat on you, Bliss?’ Disturbed beyond measure that she would even fantasise about such a thing, Dante directed his slow-burning gaze fully on her trim, sexy body in her red shorts and white scooped-neck tee shirt. A heavy, languid heat attacked the lower part of his body and made his heart race with desire. If she hadn’t recently almost lost their baby, he would have spent every spare moment they had together making love to her. His treacherous body was on fire for her, for the opportunity to repeat what they had done beneath the chestnut trees just a few short days ago with even more abandon than they had surrendered to then.
‘You are more than enough woman for me, carina. I do not need to go elsewhere to find physical satisfaction, and I hope you do not either.’ His heart beating a little too fast at the memory of Bliss’s quick defence of Alessandro, Dante hoped that she had no regrets about marrying him and didn’t wish it were his foolish younger cousin she was marrying instead. Even if she did, he was going to hold her to this marriage if it was the l
ast thing he did, and barring acts of God they were going to make it work—at least for the sake of their child.
Biting her lip, Bliss turned away and hugged her arms over her chest. She was blind to the wonderful view of lush green forest that the horizon presented in a shimmering haze. Her senses were immune to the scent of honeysuckle and jasmine that floated so seductively on the air and her skin numb to the warmth of the sun that caressed the places on her body where it was exposed. All she was aware of, all she wanted to be aware of, was Dante. If only he could see how much she loved him, if only he could love her back in the same unrestrained, risk-all way that was burgeoning in her heart, then they might have a chance of making this coming marriage of theirs really work.
‘Don’t pretend you care whether I am physically satisfied or not, Dante. Not when you haven’t come near me since I came back from the hospital.’
‘Do you think that’s how I want things to be?’ Taking her by surprise, he came up behind her and turned her to face him almost savagely. ‘It is torture for me day and night not to have you in my bed! I only have to catch the smallest flavour of your scent on the air and I am aroused almost beyond bearing! But I will not jeopardise our baby’s chance of survival with my own selfish needs, Bliss. Already I worried…I feared that day in the woods when we…when I—’
Hardly aware that his fingers were digging almost painfully into her bare upper arms, Bliss stared at Dante with shock and sorrow in her heart. ‘You don’t think that because we made love that it somehow almost made me miscarry? Oh, Dante!’
Now that his fear was out, the relief of releasing it was like being let out of jail. How could he have lived with himself if anything had happened to their precious child because of him? He’d already carried the burden of feeling responsible for his father’s rift with his parents for too long, without taking on another psychological load that had the potential to cripple him.
‘A man thinks many crazy things when something like this happens,’ he confessed hoarsely, tenderly stroking Bliss’s hair back from her forehead as he did so.
‘You take on too much, my love.’ Letting her fingers graze down his beautifully shaped cheekbone, Bliss felt her eyes sting with the ache of holding back her tears. Dante’s anguish about the baby was almost too much for her to bear. A man that had that much love inside him for a child not yet born surely didn’t deserve for her to walk away just because he couldn’t fully commit his heart to her?
She sensed him grow very still in front of her, his emerald eyes boring into her with profound surprise.
‘What did you say?’ he challenged her, his hand now burning her shoulder with the full, wonderful weight of his touch.
‘I said you take on too much. You can’t be responsible for everything that happens all the time. We are all adults here making our own decisions. I’m sure your family would be devastated to think that you felt you had to be solely responsible for their welfare. I know how that feels, because from a little girl I assumed all my parents’ worries. Little mother, that was me, always trying to fix everybody’s problems and taking all the blame for their hurts as though they were my fault.’
Wanting to press her to learn if she had meant the endearment she had addressed to him, Dante kept silent, understanding that Bliss carried too much pain about her own past and feeling remiss that he had not tackled her about it before.
‘Why did your mother take her own life?’
Startled by the question, Bliss released a short, ragged breath before replying, her eyes downcast as she was forced to confront the stinging memory. ‘She used to sit for hours just staring out of the window with a particular look on her face—’ The trauma of the recollection seizing her chest in a vice, Bliss stared at Dante with a fleeting glance of terror, then quickly glanced away again.
‘What look? Tell me.’
‘As if—as if she was waiting for someone to come and rescue her and take her away from all the pain. Impossible, of course, when all the pain was on the inside. Sometimes I don’t think my mother understood what she was doing on the earth at all, you know? It was as if she believed she was here by mistake. She walked around in a world of her own with my father and me on the outside desperately trying to make contact. I was so scared something bad was going to happen. So scared…’ Briefly lifting her head, Bliss found it excruciatingly difficult to accept the compassion she saw blazing from Dante’s eyes as he absorbed the words that fell from her lips. She had never fully expressed her feelings about her mother’s death with anyone before—not even her father. This was a first.
‘The depression she suffered from just intensified over time. The doctor gave her tranquillisers and antidepressants and eventually she just withdrew into herself completely. My dad didn’t know how to handle it. He loved her so much and it was killing him to see her like that so he turned more and more to drink to dull the pain. The week leading up to my mother’s suicide, she suddenly became very animated and interested in what I was doing. I thought at first that it meant she was getting better…’ Her throat feeling paralysed, Bliss sucked in a deep breath to try and anchor herself. Dante’s hands tightened a little on her arms. ‘I think what had happened was that she’d already made her mind up what she was going to do. Suddenly showering me with attention was her way of saying goodbye to me.’
’Santo cielo!’ When Dante would have impelled her into his arms, Bliss deliberately resisted. Now that she was talking about things at last, she didn’t want to stop until she’d finished. She hoped it would be cathartic if nothing else, even if she suspected that it wouldn’t.
‘She died after taking an overdose. Took so many damn pills her body must have been rattling before she—before oblivion hit.’ Her brow contorting with grief, Bliss realised she was trembling hard. ‘After—after she was gone…my father just seemed to give up on everything. I tried to get through to him, but he acted like I wasn’t even there. I spent my time going through the motions of a supposedly normal existence when basically I was so frozen inside I would have been immune to someone putting a dagger in my heart. There was nothing I could do to help him. Our little family was beyond fixing by then…not even a miracle could save us. And so when I found the note he left that day when I came home…I’d be lying if I said it hit me like a ton of bricks. I guess I’d been expecting it.’
‘And there was no one else around who could help you find him?’
Shrugging her shoulders resignedly, Bliss stared for a moment into space. ‘I went to the police, but they told me they had so many missing people on their books they didn’t hold out much hope. My dad left of his own free will and it was clear to them that he didn’t want to be found. Made me feel about two inches small, that. Do you know how it feels to learn that your parents cared for you so little that one chose to commit suicide and the other would rather leave than stay in the same house as you?’ She swore vehemently, anger as well as grief galvanising her. ‘At least you know you are loved, Dante. I wish you knew how fortunate that makes you.’
When she would have torn herself free, her face threatening to crumple under the weight of emotion that was engulfing her, Dante held onto her fast—his expression grimly determined that she wouldn’t escape before he said what he had to say.
‘Things are different now, Bliss. It would not be true to say you are not loved.’
‘I don’t want you to think I am feeling sorry for myself.’ She shuddered, trying hard to quell the almost unstoppable quivering in her lips with her fingertips. ‘I don’t know why I told you all that. It must have been the stress of nearly losing the baby that brought it on.’
‘You are not listening to me, amorina.’ Dante’s beautifully shaped mouth looked almost tender as opposed to stern and Bliss gulped down a deep breath and wished she could just allow him to hold her for a very long time, at least until she was herself again. ‘Did you not hear what I said about being loved? I love you, Bliss. My feelings for you have been growing stronger and stronger since our
very first meeting. When you nearly lost the baby I almost wanted to die for your pain as well as my own. When I first saw you, so determined to hold onto little Renata until you checked out who I was to your own satisfaction—you were like a she-bear with her cub.’ His gorgeous eyes crinkling at the corners, Dante’s smile was wide and unrestrained. ‘You impressed me then, cara, and you impress me even more now. I want a real marriage with you, Bliss. I am counting the days to our wedding…did you know that?’
Feeling as though she were in the midst of a dream, Bliss stared at Dante as relief, joy and profound shock poured through her bloodstream. He loved her? He really loved her? Dared she believe him? He wouldn’t lie about something like that, would he? She tried to swallow across the lump in her throat, but could barely manage it.
‘No…I—I didn’t know that. I thought you were only interested in the baby.’
Her confession appalled him. His brow creasing in disbelief, he was immediately anxious to alleviate her fears. ‘I think news of the baby just made me want you more, cara. I have waited a long time to have a family of my own, but I never seemed to meet the right woman to make my longing into a reality. Until you.’
‘Are you sure, Dante?’ Staring up at him as though she were frightened he might disappear before her very eyes, Bliss sighed. ‘I don’t want to be a burden to you—and I don’t want you to feel in any way obligated to marry me because of the baby. That would be my worst nightmare.’
‘No more nightmares, tesoro,’ he said ardently and made a delicious shiver run down her spine. ‘The reality is that I am honoured that such a beautiful, warm and compassionate woman has agreed to become my wife. I am marrying you because of my undying love and passion for you, my beautiful Bliss. And you can rest assured that I would have things no other way.’
‘Now I’m happy.’ Her lips curved into a delightful smile.
‘And you called me “my love”…Did you mean it, Bliss? I have to know.’
