by Lily Zante
“Where are you going?”
“I need to check a few things.” Kim might have emailed her during the night.
~~
She wasn’t the only one who was left feeling irritated and unsatisfied. The rest of the morning didn’t go too well for Nico either. He’d been on a call for a long time and had a face like thunder when he finished, retiring into his study later. At times like this she knew better than to question him and so she let him do as he pleased. The Sunday afternoon she’d planned with only the three of them, soon fell to the wayside.
There had been no emails from Kim overnight but she was eager for an updated and wanted to find out more. She’d held off calling Kim until Elisabetta was having a nap but it seemed that her child was refusing to take a nap today.
Ava tried to sneak into the study a few times when the baby was asleep but after a short while, Elisabetta would stir again. In the end, fed up with the constant scurrying back and forth, Ava picked her up and held her in her arms while she called Kim.
“Do you know how many we shipped out?” Nervousness chewed the insides of her stomach. She sat upright in her chair, clutching the phone with one hand and bouncing the baby on her knee trying to calm her.
“Two hundred and fifteen.”
“From the new shipment?”
“From the new shipment,” Kim confirmed.
“Any more complaints?” Ava was anxious to find out.
“No more than the ones I told you about a few days ago. I’ll check the stock properly tomorrow when I get to work,” Kim promised. “I didn’t get a chance to go to the warehouse over the weekend.”
“Don’t worry,” Ava replied, just as Elisabetta started to cry. She quickly put the baby to her breast.
“Some orders came through yesterday and I expect a similar amount today, but I’m going to hold off sending them out. We need to find out more from the unhappy customers, but I’m wary of calling them over the weekend.” Ava relaxed into her chair. Kim was a godsend and a woman after her own heart. The two of them thought alike.
“I think it’s best if you call them tomorrow, and we’ll speak later,” said Ava. Just as she hung up, the study door opened and Nico walked in, catching her by surprise so that she dropped her cell phone. He picked it up and gave her a derisory glance while the baby suckled at her breast. She felt uncomfortable, and exposed, and wished he would leave. But he didn’t. He just stood there.
“Is it necessary to feed Elisabetta in front of the computer? Can’t your work wait, Ava?”
He was telling her? This man who stayed up late and constantly worried and harangued Bruno? He was one to talk. “Something urgent came up,” she said, “I needed to deal with it just the way you take care of urgent things with your business, Nico. You always lock yourself away in your study.”
“But you’ve got Elisabetta in your arms,” he said. “What if she fell?”
“I’m not about to drop my baby,” Ava replied, her cheeks heating.
“But you dropped your cell phone,” he cried. “You should see yourself, Ava. You’re working too hard.”
“I’m taking care of my business, Nico,” she said, wishing she had one of her cotton cloths to cover herself up with. For some reason she felt naked in front of him, and at a disadvantage.
“You should be taking care of your baby.”
She threw her head back and gave him a hard stare. Did he really mean that?
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean it like that. I know you’re a fantastic mother, and you take great care of Elisabetta, but you have the worry and stress of the store on your shoulders. All I’m saying is that if you slow things down, enough so that Kim and Rona can take care of it without much input from you, you’ll always be able to carry on later.”
“When later?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know, Ava. Whenever the children won’t be so demanding. All I’m saying is why can't you take some proper time off? People take maternity leave, don’t they? We have it here as well.”
She seethed inwardly, not sure whether he was being facetious or condescending. “I am taking maternity leave, Nico. I’m taking three months off.”
“Except that you’re still working.”
“I’m doing a little, just as you are and you didn’t even let yourself get better.”
“But I am better.”
“Why is it so different for you?” she asked, covering up and sitting Elisabetta up in order to burp her. “Why can’t you see that this is important to me?”
“And your baby isn’t?”
She scowled at him. “You’re not doing this to me. You’re not going to make me feel guilty.”
“I’m not trying to make you feel guilty. I’m trying to make you see that it’s too early yet. That you can’t do everything at the same speed you did before the baby. You have to take it slow, Ava.”
“I can’t take it slow.” She couldn’t. Not with these recent rumblings of potential problems with her stock. The d’Este cribs were her bestselling products and she didn’t’ want to think what it might mean if there was a fault with them. Nico placed his hands on her shoulders and started to massage them.
“What if I drop the baby now?” she asked. He immediately stopped.
“I don’t want to have an argument with you over this.”
She turned to him. “This is my career Nico. You knew that when we met. This is a part of my life, another part of me. I was never going to be a woman who attended charity events and dined with the likes of Silvia,” He made a face and she realized she’d used the wrong example. He hated Silvia as much as she now did.
His about turn was the thing that hurt her the most. He’d supported her business when he’d first met her; believing in her and her dream of making this store a success, and he had helped her by introducing her to Andrea. He’d given her the encouragement that Connor never had.
And now he was asking her to walk away from her responsibility for a while and to enjoy motherhood by turning a blind eye to her business? She couldn’t turn off her ambition just like that.
“Don’t you want to spend more time with Elisabetta?”
“Don’t you think I spend enough time with her?” She lifted her baby up and kissed her on the forehead, feeling a sense of pity for her daughter who had no idea that her parents were arguing over. Elisabetta let out a little burst of wind and Ava stopped rubbing her back. She got up, putting her baby to her shoulder. “I worked hard to get this business up and running, Nico. I didn’t have it handed to me. I worked for it.” She realized her mistake as soon as she’d it.
“That’s what you think, too, is it?” He snarled, his temper flaring. She knew instantly she’d hit a nerve. The papers were constantly deriding him, claiming him to be nothing more than a playboy, and wannabe businessman who would never take over from his father. She’d effectively said the same to him just now and she might as well have slapped him for it was easy to see the hurt in his eyes. She wanted to rest her hand on him, to tell him she hadn’t meant that, but it was too late. Her words had cut deeper than she had intended and Nico walked away.
Chapter 12
He drove into work the next day on a crisp Monday morning but try as he did he couldn’t shake off Ava’s words. It was bad enough that the papers were constantly on his back but he didn’t expect it from his wife.
When he’d parked in the Casa Adriana parking lot, he sat back and stared at the interior of his car. He missed his old convertible which had had been written off when he’d crashed it. He didn’t care for the latest or the most expensive model. All he wanted were the broken in seats of his old car and his old CD collection. The collection had all the songs that were tied to memories from the past and which had now been ruined in the accident. He hadn’t even gotten around to replacing it yet.
Things sucked and on a bleak Monday morning—on the trails of a tense weekend with his wife—they seemed to suck even more. He felt a sense of lethargy about his dai
ly routine and he couldn’t pin down what it was that bothered him exactly—the spa hotel, the safety inspection or Ava and her business.
But there was no point sitting here thinking about it. That wouldn’t solve a thing and his hotels wouldn’t run by themselves.
He walked in to the lobby, nodded at the receptionist as he walked past, then made his way over to Gina’s office. The door to her office was slightly ajar and when he knocked on it, it opened further. Gina sat at her desk, her face set into a half-scowl. She obviously hadn’t heard him knock. He knocked again and stepped inside anyway. “Why so glum?” he asked.
“Monday morning,” she said, “You know how those are.”
“I do,” he said, closing the door behind him and sitting down.
“Demetrio has proposed new timings for the upgrade project,” she announced.
“He finally spoke to you about it.”
“He spoke to you about it?”
“He mentioned something, and I told him to talk to you,” said Nico. Gina pursed her lips together but said nothing more. “He thinks he needs a few more days per site,” Nico explained. “So give him a few more. He’s new and needs more time to familiarize himself with our networks and processes.”
“But the contractors we used before did it in three days. I don’t see why he needs—”
He sensed that something was a foot here and wondered why it was their personalities clashed. “I would let him have the extra days he needs, Gina. Let him ease into the job. You know our business inside out and he’s only learning about it.”
“I think it’s his job title he has a problem with,” sniffed Gina. “It’s that he doesn’t want to get his hands dirty.
“That may be,” said Nico, agreeing. He needed more time to see how the man performed. “On another note,” he said, “What happened to you on Friday night? We were looking forward to seeing you.” The expression on Gina’s face changed in an instant. She shook it off, with a shrug. “My mom wasn’t feeling too good.” Nico waited for more and when Gina wasn’t forthcoming, he asked. “And how is she now?”
“Much better.”
Not ever having had an insight into her family life, not even sure of her status, he pressed further. “What was wrong with her?”
“She had an upset stomach. I’m sorry I missed dinner. I’d been looking forward to it, especially to seeing Elisabetta again and Ava.”
“You’re welcome to come any time,” he told her, scratching the back of his neck and wondering why he knew nothing about her personal life or circumstances, and she knew everything about his.
Chapter 13
She actually preferred it now that Nico was back at work full-time. It was in such contrast to how she’d felt after the accident on hearing that he would have to take time off work and recover at home.
Maybe the problem wasn’t with them but in the circumstances around them. He had much to deal with. It seemed that each phone call to Bruno only dampened Nico’s mood further. Maybe if they’d managed to have sex, their frustrations would have been easier to deal with. But Ava had a feeling that things weren’t as simple as that.
Who could she talk this out with? Rona wasn’t around and Andrea didn’t have her problem. And Gina, the only other person she got along with well enough to trust, wasn’t exactly forthcoming about her own private life. The last thing Ava wanted was to burden her with her own set of problems.
Without her mom and Nico around, the house was relatively empty for a change. Helena was around, somewhere, or on one of the other floors. She was always busy cleaning or cooking or ironing. Elsa had gone to the Casa Adriana before noon, saying that she needed to spend time in the gardens there. Ava was certain that her mother was secretly keeping an eye on Salvatore because she didn’t trust him with her beloved lemon trees. The idea of her mother watching over the gardener made Ava smile.
Alone in the huge house with its acres of grounds, she felt truly alone and cut-off from the rest of the world. There were no other houses in sight around them. Maybe once the baby was older she would join some toddler groups, but not until Elisabetta was walking. There was no point in going to a group when her baby only wanted milk and to poop. She would also need to learn to speak in Italian. She would feel so left out if Elisabetta and Nico spoke in Italian and she couldn’t understand a word of what they were saying.
When her cell phone rang, she leapt to answer it, more out of a feeling to hear the voice at the other end.
“Bad news.” Kim didn’t mince her words.
Ava’s heart dropped. “Tell me.”
“A customer has reported that her baby fell out of the crib and suffered a nasty bump to the head as well as bruising along his arms.”
Ava collapsed in to her swivel chair. “Babies can’t fall out of our cribs.”
“Yeah,” said Kim. “They can out of these new ones.”
“What?” Ava got up and began to pace around the room. “What do you mean?” Dino had assured her that all the cribs manufactured by his company underwent rigorous testing.
“Except that the cribs in the December shipment aren’t static. They’re drop-side cribs. I actually unpacked a box to check.”
“There has to be a mistake,” said Ava, her hand flying to her temple. “ “We’re not supposed to sell drop-side cribs in the US. They’re banned.” Her voice turned flat and monotone, but deep down her insides churned.
What the hell was Dino playing at?
“I think I know what the problem is,” said Kim. “In fact, I’m certain of it. The order numbers are crazily similar. I had it scribbled down somewhere, but I need to check online to confirm. I have a feeling that the number on the boxes in our warehouse isn’t the same order number we requested.”
Ava’s heartbeat started to race. “Can you let me know as soon as you find out.”
“Sure.”
“How old is the child?” Ava asked.
“He’s 10 months old and his parents are as mad as hell.” Kim’s words clanked like a heavy chain around her ankles. Oh, dear god. A child had been hurt and it was all her fault. Ava flopped back into her swivel chair, making it bounce with the pressure. “How is he now? Is he okay?”
“He’s fine. I heard a baby in the background and I assumed it was him, because she said she only had one child, and then she gave me the whole story of how her and her husband had been trying for ages and how finally, after so many years, they had him, and her parents brought them the crib as a present. But, yeah,” Kim paused to take a breath. “I think the kid’s fine.”
“It’s still bad,” said Ava. “This is really, really bad.” She pictured broken arms and legs, and worse for children who were still using the cribs. “We need to call in all cribs we’ve shipped out.” Before another child got injured. She wanted to dive down a dark rabbit hold and disappear. She could see lawsuits flying towards her, and businesses folding, not only hers, but Dino’s and Andrea’s, too.
“Yeah,” said Kim, sounding dismayed. “You should have heard the father. He was raging.”
“I’m sorry you had to deal with that.” But she was already worried. Who would call next? How many more children were at risk of injury?
“The three of us will need to have a conference call later.” She’d need to speak to Rona and Kim at the same time to save explaining everything twice. But they would have to let all the customers know that there had been a problem and then begin the process of arranging for these cribs to be sent back. “I’ll send out an alert on our homepage and a newsletter, and a PR release letting our customers know about the problem.”
This was bad bad bad.
“At least we have all the contact details for our customers,” Kim reminded her. “It’s not an impossible task.”
“No, it’s not. We’ll have to act quickly,” said Ava, thinking of all the things she needed to do and the ticking time bomb of preventing one more child from getting injured. “I need you and Rona to work around the clock and make sure e
very single crib owner is notified of the problems.”
Kim yawned. “I will.”
“Get some rest first,” said Ava. It was past midnight in Denver. “Go to sleep and we’ll talk tomorrow.”
“I will,” Kim hung up and Ava fell back into the chair and held her face in her hands. A baby had hit its head but what if it had been worse? It was almost too frightening to contemplate. She suddenly wished she hadn’t worked with babies. Why not sell candles, or packaging? Or envelopes? Why had she settled on children’s products where there was so much that could go wrong?
There was nothing to do but meet with Andrea immediately. But just as she began to dial Andrea’s number, Andrea called her.
“You have to recall your cribs,” Andrea said, in place of ‘hello’.
She knew. “I did. I mean, we’re in the process of doing that.”
“Dino called to say that there’s been a terrible mistake. Your order was mixed up with one of the European orders and you ended up with—”
“Drops-side cribs.”
“Not exactly,” said Andrea.
“No?”
“Dino’s company make drop-sides for the European market but these have immobilizers for those parents who want to fit them.”
She’d seen these immobilizer kits before, they came in various shapes and sized but mainly involved for a few extra brackets to be screwed onto the crib. It was fiddly to do and extra work and it was far easier to just buy fixed side cribs. She didn’t understand why Dino sold them but it would explain why some of her customers had complained and some hadn’t. It could explain how the drop-side opened and the 10 month old fell out; it seemed probable that those parents hadn’t fitted the immobilizer. But then again, whose fault was this? Those parents certainly hadn’t expected to receive a drop-side crib in the first place.
“How the hell did Dino’s company make a big mistake like that?” Ava was dumbfounded.
“He’s not happy,” confirmed Andrea.
“I’m not happy either,” retorted Ava, “I have a customer whose 10 month old son fell out and banged his head.” Andrea let out a loud whooshing sound, like the sound of a balloon deflating. “Are you serious? That’s terrible. Poor boy,” said Andrea. “Do you think his parents will sue?”
