A Scandal, a Secret, a BabyMarriage Scandal, Showbiz Baby!

by Sharon Kendrick

  She’d made the biggest effort of all with Beatrix D’Arezzo—wanting her to know that she would do everything and anything for her beloved grandson. So when it came to leaving Dante’s mother hugged her tightly, with an affection which did not seem feigned and Justina felt unexpectedly choked, having to swallow down an unexpected lump in her throat as their car arrived to take them to the airport.

  She felt deflated on the flight back to England, and not just because the D’Arezzo family’s warmth contrasted so bitterly with Dante’s new coolness towards her. Now that nobody else was around he seemed to have dropped his politely solicitous attitude towards her. And that didn’t bode very well for the future, did it? They were both going to have to override their feelings and think of Nico’s welfare.

  She stared at him. The plane was lavishly equipped, and he was opposite her, working on a large pile of papers. A lock of black hair had fallen onto his forehead and her fingers itched to brush it away.

  ‘I think the visit went well,’ she ventured.

  He looked up, his eyes focussing on her almost as if he’d forgotten she was there, and Justina found herself reflecting that a look like that could be more hurtful than all the rage in the world.

  ‘On many levels, yes. I think so, too,’ he agreed.

  ‘You’ll...you’ll be going back to New York, I suppose?’

  At this he pushed away the smooth tablet of his computer and studied her with an odd kind of smile. ‘That’s what you’d like, is it, Justina?’

  Justina shrugged. What she’d like would be for him to stop sulking. She wanted things to go back to the way they’d been before he’d spoilt it all by asking her to marry him.

  ‘I don’t think what I’d like is really relevant,’ she said. ‘I just assumed you’d be going home.’

  ‘Haven’t you learned by now that it’s never wise to make assumptions when you’re dealing with a D’Arezzo man?’ His voice had deepened to a note of dark silk. ‘As it happens, I won’t be going to New York—no.’

  ‘You won’t?’ she questioned lightly. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I’m moving to London.’

  She blinked. ‘But you work in New York!’

  ‘These days I can work anywhere. That’s the beauty of modern communication.’

  ‘But you don’t have anywhere to live! Unless you’re planning on staying at the Vinoly long-term?’

  ‘A hotel suite is not ideal for a young baby,’ he said. ‘Which is why I intend on buying a house.’

  ‘You’re what?’

  ‘With a garden,’ he continued. ‘Somewhere Nico can sit outside in the fresh air during his access visits.’

  ‘Access visits?’ she whispered.

  ‘Of course. Or did you think that they were going to be on your territory and on your terms? Oh, you did?’ He gave a disdainful smile as he unclipped his seat belt and stretched out his long legs. ‘You know, for someone who has always accused me of being the ultimate control freak, you’re doing a pretty good impersonation of one yourself, Justina.’

  Justina felt spooked. When she’d spoken of access visits back in Tuscany they had been hypothetical. They’d sounded as unthreatening as a dentist’s appointment when you knew it was a whole year away. But this...

  Dante was moving to London and he was getting a house!

  The child in her wanted to scream. She wanted to tell him that she was scared. Scared he would create a proper home simply because he knew how to and she didn’t. That Nico would grow up preferring to go round to Papa’s, while she...

  ‘Miss Perry?’

  She’d been so lost in her thoughts that Justina hadn’t realised Dante was no longer there. One of the glamorous D’Arezzo stewardesses was standing over her, her perfectly plucked eyebrows raised in question and Justina turned her head just in time to see Dante disappearing into the cockpit. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Signor D’Arezzo has decided to land the plane himself, so he’s gone in to join the pilot. Would you care to fasten your seat belt?’

  Justina felt even more wrong-footed as the stewardess checked that Nico was properly clipped in. What the hell was Dante doing, landing the damned plane? She hadn’t even known he could fly!

  She glared as he exited the cockpit after a butter-smooth landing. ‘I suppose you’ve learned to walk on water, too?’ she questioned acidly.

  ‘Now, now, Justina,’ he chided. ‘Shouldn’t your role be to congratulate me and to tell Nico what a talented daddy he has?’

  She didn’t trust herself to answer—just felt an increasing swirl of frustration as they prepared to leave the plane. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be—although when she stopped to think about it what had she imagined would happen? That Dante would just disappear into the ether, only appearing at Christmas and birthdays, with a smile on his face and a gift in his hand?

  Even so, they were halfway back to London before she had plucked up enough courage to ask, ‘When do you anticipate moving to London?’

  ‘Straight away,’ he replied, shrugging his shoulders with the lazy gesture of someone who could afford to do exactly what he wanted. ‘Why wait? I’ve had my people look into availability, and I’m taking a house in Spitalfields which isn’t too far from you. A rather beautiful Georgian house in a glorious green square, as it happens.’ He tapped his finger on his laptop. ‘Would you like to see some photos?’

  Justina felt queasy. ‘I’ll pass, thank you.’

  Her apartment felt soulless and bare after the faded splendour of the Tuscan palazzo. She stood in the centre of the oatmeal sitting room while Dante put down her suitcase and thought how gorgeous he looked in his dark suit. And about as accessible as a remote and icy mountain peak.

  She fiddled with the button of her jacket. ‘Dante?’

  He bent to drop one final kiss on top of his sleeping son’s head, unprepared for the savage twist of pain he felt at the thought of having to say goodbye. Straightening up, he looked into her wide amber eyes and felt the twist of something else, too. Did she know how far she had pushed him and how close he was to snapping?

  ‘Justina?’ he said, striving for a neutrality which was only hanging by a thin thread.

  ‘Can’t we...?’ Say it, she urged herself. Just say it. ‘Can’t we still be friends, at least?’

  At that moment he could have gone over there and shaken her. Why was she so damned stubborn? Why couldn’t she see what was staring her in the face?

  With an effort he fought against the slow burn of rage. ‘I’m not sure whether we can ever be friends,’ he said. ‘Not in the circumstances. But I’m hopeful that we can achieve the amicable relationship you said you wanted.’

  Justina only just managed not to wince. Had she really been stupid enough to demand something like that?

  Because why on earth would she want something which now filled her with such dark foreboding?

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THINGS BEGAN TO go wrong the moment Justina got back to England. It started when the lift in her apartment block broke down and for the next two days, until it was mended, she had to lug everything up and down seven flights of stairs. It might have been simpler if she’d swallowed her pride and asked Dante for help, but she was so determined not to rely on him in any way that she said nothing—just kept reflecting on the fact that he had been right all along and this apartment really was no place to bring up a baby.

  It got worse when her breast milk dried up—and she was eaten up with guilt as a result. The midwife told her it sometimes happened as a result of stress, and that she wasn’t to beat herself up about it, but that was easier said than done. Justina’s emotions seemed to be veering all over the place. She felt a failure as a woman and now a failure as a mother.

  And wasn’t she missing Dante like crazy? Didn’t the memory of his closeness ta
unt her to the point of pain when she lay in bed at night, wondering why she felt so empty inside? Hadn’t she been left thinking that the “right” decision now seemed all wrong?

  She had only managed not to cry during a midwife’s visit by the simple expedient of rubbing her balled fists against her eyes, and it wasn’t until Dante arrived soon after and started frowning at her face that Justina glanced in the mirror and saw that her mascara-smudged eyes had left her looking like a panda.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he demanded. ‘Is it Nico?’

  ‘No. Yes. Well, in...in a way.’ She swallowed. ‘I’m not...I’m not producing any breast milk, and the midwife says that I’m to give him a bottle from now on.’

  For a moment his eyes softened, and so did his voice. ‘That’s a real pity, Justina.’

  ‘Yes.’ She nodded. For a moment she thought that he was going to reach out and pull her into his arms, and how she wished he would. All she wanted was to lay her head on his shoulder and howl her heart out so that some of this horrible emptiness might go away. She wanted to lose herself in his powerful embrace and have him tell her that everything was going to be all right, and this time around she might be prepared to believe him.

  But he did nothing like that. He just gave her arm the kind of gentle pat he might have administered to an aging family pet. ‘Babies survive brilliantly on formula milk,’ he reassured her.

  Hopefully, she looked at him. She’d forgotten that he’d read just about every book which had ever been written on the subject. ‘Do they?’

  ‘Of course they do. And in a way this might make things easier.’

  ‘Easier?’ Justina blinked at him. ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Well, up until now the fact that Nico relies solely on you has governed our timetable, hasn’t it? But now he’ll be able to come over and spend the night with me. It’ll free you up to do some work. Especially now that my new house is looking so good.’ He smiled. ‘I’ve had a nursery installed.’

  It was appalling that in the middle of such disruption and change and worry about her baby Justina should feel completely redundant and jealous. But she did. ‘You’re sure you don’t want any input from me?’ she questioned. ‘About the nursery, I mean?’

  ‘No, thanks,’ he answered coolly. ‘I have plenty of ideas of my own.’

  She forced a stoic smile. ‘Right.’

  It got worse.

  The first time Nico was due to spend the night with Dante, Justina got him ready with everything he needed for his first overnight trip away. She was trying to push off the heavy blanket of sadness which had fallen over her and to quell her own rising sense of nervousness—not least because they’d arranged she should take him over there herself. She had planned to dress up for her first visit to Dante’s new home. Maybe wear that cashmere dress he’d never seen, with her hair hanging loose and a pair of decent shoes. She was going to make sure that she looked amazing. She hadn’t dared ask herself why such action seemed important, because she was afraid of setting herself up for something which might ultimately fail.

  But now the doorbell was ringing, and instead of a cashmere dress and sexy shoes she was wearing jeans and a T-shirt liberally smeared with mashed banana. She opened the door to see Dante standing there, his dark hair windswept and his tie loosened a little at the neck. He looked formal, yet rumpled, and quite ridiculously sexy, and she had never felt more unattractive in her life.

  ‘I’m supposed to be dropping him round to you,’ she protested, wiping away the little beads of sweat which were inconveniently forming at her forehead.

  ‘I know that—but I had a meeting nearby and so I thought I’d save you the journey.’

  ‘But...but I wanted to see the new nursery.’

  There was a pause. ‘You can see it another time.’

  She recognised the blocking tactic and her smile froze. He didn’t want her there. Had her refusal to marry him backfired in the most spectacular way possible? Had she pushed him so far away that there was to be no coming back?

  She thought she saw him glance at his watch. ‘You seem in a hurry to get away!’ she said brightly. ‘Can’t I persuade you to stay and have a coffee before you go?’

  Levelly, he met her gaze. ‘I don’t think that’s such a good idea, do you?’

  She looked into the flat expression in his eyes and flinched. ‘No,’ she said hollowly. ‘I suppose it isn’t.’

  ‘So why don’t I just take Nico and leave you to have a well-earned rest?’ He lifted his eyebrows. ‘Planning on doing something special on your first night of freedom, are you?’

  From some dark and lonely place deep inside her she produced a grimace of a smile. ‘I haven’t decided,’ she lied, as if she had a million different options open to her.

  ‘Well, have a good one, whatever it is. And I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  The apartment felt so quiet after they’d gone, and so empty. She prowled around the big modern rooms as if she was looking for something—she just wasn’t sure what that something was. The giant mirror in the bedroom gave her a glimpse of her hair, which was sticking to her clammy brow, and she thought it was no wonder that Dante hadn’t been able to wait to get away. But she knew that it was about much more than her looking as if she’d been dragged through a hedge twice over. She had thrown his offer of marriage back in his face and in doing that had wounded his pride—perhaps for ever.

  She showered and put on a robe, but still she couldn’t settle to anything. She supposed she should eat something, but there was very little in the fridge apart from two fat-free yogurts and half a bar of chocolate. She hadn’t been eating sensibly and she was going to have to start.

  This is what it’s going to be like from now on, she told herself grimly. This is your future and it’s only going to get worse. She had let fear stop her from taking what she really wanted. Too scared to embrace the start of a brand-new life, she was going to have to sit back and watch while Dante forged a future with someone else. Because sooner or later he would meet a woman. Someone who would love him as a man like him would always be loved. Who would learn to love Nico, too. Why, her beloved son might one day call another woman Mamma.

  ‘No!’ Justina shouted forcefully, as if there was someone else in the room to hear her. And then, because it felt so liberating, she shouted it again. ‘No!’

  Her hands were trembling as she ran into her bedroom and pulled on some clothes. Then she dashed outside to find a cab, giving Dante’s address in Spitalfields in a voice which was shaking.

  The air was unseasonably warm and the rush-hour traffic had died away. She stared out of the cab window as they grew closer to his home. Much of the area had been rejuvenated, and everything seemed to be bursting with life. She could see mothers with buggies and the colourful sign for a local nursery school, festooned with bumble-bees and butterflies. Despite its inner-city location it seemed a homely area, and much more suitable for a baby than her sleek apartment block, where she didn’t even know a single neighbour.

  Nerves threatened to assail her as the cab drew up outside an imposing black front door. She could see lights blazing from a first-floor room. She could hear birds singing in the nearby garden square as she paid her fare, and her thumb was trembling as she jammed it onto the doorbell.

  The sound of footsteps warned her that Dante was about to open the door, and when he did she saw a fleeting look of surprise on his face and—yes—annoyance, too. And something else—some dark emotion underpinning all that unwelcoming sternness. Suddenly she wondered what she was doing here—and whether she should chase after that cab and get back inside.

  ‘What is it?’ he demanded.

  ‘Am I...’ she forced herself to say it ‘...disturbing you?’

  He wanted to say yes, that she had been disturbing him from the first moment he’d met her, when she’d turned those
incredible amber eyes on him and he had been lost. But he was through with chasing after Justina and rainbows which didn’t exist.

  Instead, he fixed her with a questioning look. ‘What do you want?’

  She sucked in a deep breath. ‘Can I come in?’

  Wordlessly, he held open the door. She walked past him, and although he was close enough for her to reach out and touch, his body language was so forbidding that he might as well have been on a different planet.

  ‘I’m upstairs,’ he said.

  For a moment she thought he meant that he was in bed, but as she followed him upstairs she realised it was one of those tall town houses where the sitting room was situated on the first floor.

  The scene which greeted her was curiously cosy. A half-drunk glass of red wine stood next to an open newspaper and the sound of Puccini was filling the room. He had hung several huge oil-paintings on the walls and bought furniture so stylish that it must be Italian. It looked like home, she thought wistfully. The kind of home she’d always known he would be able to create.

  She wanted to go and sink into that squashy-looking sofa and have Dante join her there, pour her some wine—but the dark expression on his face told her that wasn’t going to happen.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he questioned.

  She could have blurted out a hundred conventional responses to that bald query. She could have told him she wanted to check that Nico was okay. That she wanted to see his house and the way he lived. All of those things were true, but none of them was the real reason why she was here, and somehow she knew she had to find the courage to tell him what that was.

  ‘I’m here because I miss you.’

  ‘You mean you miss the sex,’ he said cruelly.

  ‘No. I miss you. You.’

  ‘I find that very difficult to believe.’