Happy Mother's Day! (12 page)

Why project into an unknown future? She might get hurt, yes—but she suspected she was going to get hurt anyway and only a fool would deny herself as much pleasure as possible in the meantime.

But there was no need to be a walkover. Keep him guessing. In the past she had given in to him all too easily—surely the only way to keep his interest alive was to not be a sure bet? Hadn’t he once told her that himself—that the thing about her which appealed to him was the fact that she was so enigmatic?

‘I’ll give it some thought,’ she said coolly.

Oh, but she was awesome, he thought—with reluctant admiration. Like a cold and brilliant diamond. He gave a soft laugh. ‘Just one more thing, Aisling.’

She swallowed, her heart beating so fast that she could barely get the word out. ‘What?’

His eyes flickered to the tight pony tail. ‘If I come to you tonight,’ he said softly, ‘be sure to let down your hair.’

‘I
GUESS
you must be thinking about going back to work,’ said Gianluca abruptly.

‘Work?’ echoed Aisling blankly as she looked up from spooning some mashed banana into Claudio’s sweet little mouth. She dabbed the edges of its rosebud shape with a napkin, and smiled lovingly at her baby. Feeding him always took longer than she thought it would—in fact, everything seemed to take longer. Why did no one tell you that having a baby could be such an absorbing and timeconsuming job?

And it wasn’t just the feed itself which took time, but the fact that she seemed to want to study Claudio intently to see whether he might have grown an extra centimetre overnight.

And when she wasn’t studying him, she found herself just as tempted by a sneaky scrutiny of his father. Did Gianluca have any idea of just how sexy he looked when he was fresh out of the shower and had just thrown on an old pair of jeans and a sweater? she thought longingly. Save it until later, she told herself. Until you’re in bed. Don’t give yourself away with your wistful yearnings.

At least in bed she didn’t have to pretend—because she
had discovered that sex had other kinds of uses than pleasure. She could use it to air all those emotions she usually kept hidden away. In bed, she could dare to love him with her lips and her body—even if she dared not use the words he had no requirement for.

‘Yes, work,’ said Gianluca, in an impatient kind of voice. He subjected her to a cool, questioning scrutiny. ‘You were adamant about continuing your career when you agreed to come out to Italy, weren’t you, Aisling? As I recall, it was your number one worry—’

‘I wouldn’t have said it was my number one—’

‘Perhaps not,’ said Gianluca, overriding her objection as if she hadn’t spoken. He could see her frown of confusion—but what the hell did she expect? That he hadn’t noticed the way she behaved? Spending her days like some kind of efficient robot and only coming to flesh-and-blood life in his arms at night? She might try to disguise her dissatisfaction with her life here, but he could sense her edginess—that wary way she had of looking at him sometimes. He could not deny that she had thrown herself wholeheartedly into motherhood, but anyone could see that there was something lacking in her life. He narrowed his eyes. ‘I take it you
do
want to go back?’

Had he noticed her e-mailing Suzy to get all the latest updates, then? Aisling wondered. Or scouring the financial pages of the international newspapers she had requested because she was terrified of being left behind—of being properly isolated in every sense of the word? Or had he just tapped into her own insecurity—that with her immersion into motherhood she was becoming so unlike the person she had been that she didn’t even recognise
herself,
these days.

And that was
dangerous.
Because aworld dominated by an undemonstrative husband in this lazily beautiful setting was lulling her into a false sense of security—and surely her career was her ticket to freedom if it all went disastrously wrong. If she relied on Gianluca to be the kind of husband she longed for him to be—waiting for some change of heart which would never come—then she risked losing everything she had ever worked for. Just like her mother.

Wasn’twork her one solid island in a swirling sea of uncertainty? Something she could rely on when everything else around her seemed so temporary. Even the peace she experienced in this heavenly idyll of a place seemed fragile, as if reality might shatter it at any moment.

Yes, she felt cosseted and protected by Gianluca—but only in a superficial and very physical sense. As if he would move heaven and earth to ensure the comfort of the woman who had borne his child. But emotionally, there was nothing. He was remote. Watchful. Restrained.

And
he
was working again, wasn’t he? Sometimes from home, true—but more often than not driving into his offices in Rome. He was mixing in the glossy world of business and takeovers, while she was changing into a dull little housewife who surely he would find increasingly less attractive?

‘Of course I want to go back to work,’ she said quietly.

Gianluca poured himself a cup of coffee. Should he have been surprised at her agreement? Disappointed, maybe? His mouth hardened. Of course not. Circumstances might have changed, but Aisling had not—and underneath it all she was still the ice-cool, ambitious businesswoman she always had been.

‘So we might as well hire a nanny, mightn’t we?’ he said smoothly, dropping a cube of sugar into his cup ‘N-nanny?’ she echoed.

He gave her an unfathomable look.
‘Sì, cara.
With two working parents, there’s no other solution, is there?’ And he bent his head and began to read the business section of his newspaper.

Aisling stared at his dark head, feeling as if she’d just been wrong-footed—like a defendant in court who had just been tripped up by the prosecution. How tense he seemed this morning. Almost as if he
wanted
to pick a fight with her. ‘Gianluca,’ she questioned hesitantly. ‘Is something
wrong?’

His smile was bland as he looked up at her. ‘Why should anything be wrong,
cara?
We have a healthy baby and have proved we can exist in relative harmony for most of the time. You have met many of my friends and you all seem to like one another. We argue intelligently about politics and films, there are enough staff here to ensure that life runs smoothly—and at night you become a sensual witch in my arms.’ And it felt like living in a damned
vacuum.
He raised his eyebrows in question. ‘What more could a man ask for?’

The undercurrent and the tension in the air were almost palpable. Aisling felt as if he were asking her some kind of trick question which she had no idea how to answer. ‘We’ll advertise for a nanny, then,’ she said stiffly. ‘That should help.’

They interviewed the prospective candidates together, even though Aisling would have preferred to vet them all by herself.

‘Isn’t this more my territory than yours?’ she asked him lightly. ‘Do you really want to be bothered with all this?’

‘Haven’t you seen those horror films where the nanny turns out to be a psycho?’ he queried acidly. ‘I’d rather have some say in the matter, if you don’t mind.’

She knew that made sense, since whoever they chose would inevitably be Italian and Aisling’s command of the language was very basic indeed. Nonetheless, she shocked herself by wanting to bin all the applications from any attractive woman under thirty. Correction.
Any
woman she thought might be eying up Gianluca—because there was a stunning widow of forty she found rather threatening.

Was she going to become one of those chronically insecure women who was always terrified that her husband was going to have affairs with other women? And would that be such an unreasonable fear, under the circumstances?

‘Perhaps you could explain your criteria for rejecting some of these perfectly good candidates?’ questioned Gianluca sardonically.

‘They just have to
feel
right,’ said Aisling stubbornly, thinking that if one more applicant slanted him a look from beneath her eyelashes, she would scream out loud. ‘It’s a woman thing.’

In the end they both agreed on Carmela, who was just twenty and sweetly serious. But she was the one who seemed most captivated by Claudio—though bizarrely Aisling found herself wanting her not to get
too
attached to her baby.

And she quickly discovered that having a nanny was different from having all the other people who worked in and
around the vast estate for Gianluca. They tended to get on with their jobs and fade into the background, but a nanny was a fairly constant presence and Aisling found it inhibiting.

Not because she and Gianluca were constantly snatching kisses—they definitely weren’t, since all their physical affection never left the bedroom. But it was unsettling having someone else around as an unwitting observer. Or rather, it made her feel unsettled—and start to think that perhaps something
did
need to change. As if seeing the situation through an outsider’s eyes made her realise how unsatisfactory it all was.

Aisling went upstairs earlier than usual one evening and was trying on one of her suits when she heard the door open quietly, and then close again. She looked up from where she had been struggling to do up a skirt when she saw Gianluca standing there, watching her.

‘Those are your work clothes,’ he observed.

She met his eyes in the mirror. ‘That’s right,’ she said evenly.

‘You’re planning to go back?’

‘Suzy says there’s a job in Paris coming up and she’d rather I handled it—I’ve dealt with the people before.’ She shrugged. ‘And I can speak a bit of French.’

‘And were you planning to tell me about it?’

She heard the sharp note of accusation in his voice. ‘Oh, Gianluca—of course I was! I thought that was why we employed Carmela. Anyway, nothing’s been decided yet.’

‘It sounds to me as if the decision has already been made.’

‘You don’t … mind? If I go back?’

‘It is not my place to
mind, cara,’
he mocked. ‘You never claimed to want to stay at home baking biscuits all
day.’ His black eyes roved slowly over her, enjoying seeing her struggle with the zip.

She swallowed—the ebony stare making her feel acutely self-conscious. ‘The damn thing’s too tight!’ she complained.

‘Your hips are rounder since motherhood,’ he murmured. ‘Buy a different size.’

Suddenly her inability to do the skirt up seemed to symbolise more than just a few extra pounds gained after childbirth. Where had all the control gone from her life? That feeling of order she used to experience—of knowing where she was in the world? ‘Are you trying to make me feel worse?’ she questioned.

He walked up behind her and slid his hands round to where they lay on the slight curve of her belly.

‘Al contrario’
he murmured, sliding his fingers down to press hard and possessively over the mound of her crotch. ‘I am trying to make you feel better.’

‘Gianluca,’ she breathed, because this was exquisitely erotic, with his fingers splayed possessively against her. And more erotic still was the fact that he was now sliding the skirt up over her thighs with a little difficulty until he—and she—could see the neat pale blue triangle of her panties reflected back in the mirror.

‘What is it?’ he whispered, bending his head so that she could feel his warm breath against her neck as he watched their reflection. He rubbed his fingertips over the triangle experimentally, feeling her squirm and watching her squirm, too.

‘I … nothing.’ She swallowed as his fingers moved with their own particular rhythm. It seemed too … too
intimate …
not just to feel him, but to watch him doing it. But then Gianluca seemed to delight in experimentation—to introduce her to wild and wonderful new things and to watch the passion explode within her. ‘Do you want to go to … bed?’ she stumbled.

‘No!’ he negated harshly. ‘I want to see you come. And I want to see
you
watching yourself come.’ In heaven’s name, it was the only time she showed any real feeling—the only time she really let go!

‘Gianluca!’ Her legs buckled and she might have fallen had not the hand that was not moving so surely against her panties whipped up to catch her firmly by the waist. And she realised then that he was not going to stop. Not only that, but neither was she. In fact, she was … was … ‘Oh!’ Her head tipped back, her eyes closed and she began to moan softly as she writhed against him.

He waited until he had felt her spasming cease and then he pushed her to the ground, straddling her as he ripped apart her panties with a single rent and her eyes flew open in question.

‘They were brand-new!’ she protested.

‘Then I will buy you another pair,’ he ground out. ‘Only next time I’m going to choose them for you. Something a little more …
ah
…’ He shook his head distractedly. ‘Aisling! What is it that you do to me?
Impazzire o fare i matti!’
She was driving him crazy. Crazy.

Her eyes were ice and fire now—just as she was—her coolness repelling him as much as exciting him. He was able to possess her, but only in the purely physical sense. He watched the thick lashes flutter down as he drove deep inside her and then before he knew it he was welcoming
the warm sweetness of his release—knowing that it would free him from her sensual spell. And, damn it—he
wanted
to be free from it!

They lay there on the floor, still entwined, their clothing in disarray, and Gianluca began to drift off, his hand absently smoothing down her hair as his breathing grew steadier and deeper, and Aisling’s heart felt as if it were going to shatter into a million pieces.

He did that tender stroking stuff after making love because that was what he had been conditioned to do, by nature—just as his hard body now required sleep in order to regain its strength.

In this moment, she had everything and yet she had nothing. All she had ever wanted and yet it felt completely empty. Just the same old one-sided relationship it had always been. She might as well have been back where she started—loving him from afar without daring to let it show.

It didn’t seem to matter if you made a baby between you and got married as a consequence of that—it didn’t change the fundamental facts. And those were that Gianluca simply didn’t feel the same way about her. That this life was a kind of compromise—and couldn’t she just accept that?

Because what was the alternative?

Aisling stared up at the ceiling, aware of the slow, steady breathing of the man beside her. Maybe she needed to initiate some kind of change—before she went mad with wanting what she could never have. Or worrying that one day he might find it with someone else.

She shook him gently by the shoulder, her fingers caressing the silk of his skin. ‘Gianluca,’ she said. ‘I want to go back to work as soon as possible.’

‘It’s only a little trip,’ Aisling said as she handed Claudio over to Carmela, and planted yet another kiss on top of his silky black hair. ‘And Paris isn’t far away.’