"Hi, I'm Lauren," she said, offering her hand.
"Gwyn," she murmured, and tried to thank her for the loan of clothes, but was waved off.
"Anything for Vito. Hello, caro," she said to him. He stooped a little so she could kiss both his cheeks.
"Should you be anywhere but a maternity ward?" he asked her.
"I offered to check myself into a clinic, but the doctor said there was no point since it will be at least two weeks. Paolo wouldn't let me stay in the city without him, of course. His mother is at the house, but you know what he's like. Won't let me out of his sight." She shook her head in exasperation.
"Roberto was born inside their front door. Bianca delivered in a car," Vito informed Gwyn.
"It was easier to lose the paparazzi waiting at the gate if we made it look like we were going for a simple family outing," Paolo said, arriving with a baby monitor that he set on the table next to Vito's wineglass. "Miss Ellis," he greeted with a cool nod.
"Signor Donatelli," she murmured, intimidated to the soles of her feet.
Thankfully his son pleaded, "May I swim, Papa. Per favore?"
"Vito and I must talk about work, but if you put on your trunks you can come to the shore with us and wade."
"Yes!" Roberto dropped out of Vito's arms and started to run toward the house.
"Quietly," Lauren warned, slowing his step. "Don't wake your sister. I'll start dinner," Lauren said with a well-practiced hostess smile.
"You will not," Paolo told her. "I'll cook when I come in. Stay off your feet."
A man willing to cook. Gwyn was so astonished it took her a moment to blurt out the sensible solution that broke the challenging stare between the married couple.
"I can make dinner."
Everyone looked at her. These two men really were too much masculinity in one impactful wall for any woman to handle.
"Unless you need me to be there while you talk?" She had no doubt she would be the topic of their discussion. Frankly, she was hoping to avoid listening to her humiliation being kicked over like something a dog owner had failed to dispose of properly.
"I would appreciate your cooking, if it's something you don't mind doing," Paolo said, then turned to his wife. "You may sit and chop tomatoes if you promise not to put your weight behind it."
She made a face at him.
"If our daughter wakes, would you call me?" he added to Gwyn. "She's under the weather and will want to be held, but Lauren needs to take it easy. At this stage the hiccups will start her labor. I have my hands full enough without catching a baby today."
"It's twenty minutes out of your life," Lauren murmured, looking at her fingernails. "I don't know what you're complaining about."
He caught her hand and brought her curled knuckles to his lips. "I can barely think of anything else as it is. You know that. Try to buy us a few more days while we settle this work crisis? Please?"
The looks they were giving each other were such a mix of open emotion, tender and teasing and loving, Gwyn knew she ought to look away. It was a private couple's moment, but it was so beautiful, she was transfixed. She wanted that. The cajole and silent communication and connection that bound in a thousand ways. The secretive smile. The way they looked like they wanted to kiss, but were in no hurry because Paolo was stroking her bent knuckle against his upper lip and they had an abundance of time and opportunities for loving affection.
"Maybe this one will have my patience instead of your lack of impulse control," Lauren teased. "We could get lucky."
"Do not blame me!" Paolo scoffed. "They wind up with your sense of humor and think it's funny-stop laughing. I'm serious. No laughing. You'll put yourself into labor."
Lauren disobeyed, releasing a hearty chuckle that made Gwyn smile along with her.
Their son came outside in his trunks and Gwyn turned her expression of amusement into a greeting for the boy, giving the couple their privacy to exchange a kiss.
When she glanced at Vito, she saw he was watching her, his expression unreadable.
* * *
A few minutes later, Gwyn was moving around Lauren's kitchen, chatting with her with surprising ease. Perhaps Lauren wasn't resting with her feet up as her husband had demanded, but since she wasn't holding anything heavier than a paring knife, Gwyn didn't say anything. Besides, every birth story she'd ever heard was a lengthy process, happening in the midnight hours. Lauren wasn't complaining of a backache or any of those other things women talked about as precursors to labor. She was relaxed and pleasant and ever so nice!
Feeling as vilified as she did, Gwyn was deeply relieved to be treated like a normal person.
"Did you get that top at the boutique on the far end of the lake?" Lauren asked. "I bought the red-and-gold one two months ago. They have amazing stuff, don't they?"
Gwyn agreed, then, as she set a pot of water to boil and the conversation lulled, she screwed up her courage and said, "I, um, lived in Charleston before I came here. I'm not trying to pry," she hurried to add. "I just thought I should tell you that I couldn't help but be aware of all the coverage about your husband. Um, first husband, I mean."
Lauren's expression smoothed to something very grave, gaze sliding away to hide her thoughts. "It was a heartbreaking time."
"I'm very sorry for your loss," Gwyn said quickly, feeling it was the decent thing to say to the widow of a war hero, but it wasn't why she'd brought it up. She wasn't asking the big question that had been on everyone else's mind at the time: had Lauren slept with her husband's best friend the night she had learned her husband was dead? The answer to that was outside throwing rocks into the lake, as far as Gwyn could tell.
"I wouldn't have mentioned it except... Is it bad taste to ask how you handled all the attention?" Gwyn asked.
Lauren smiled with empathy. "It's exhausting, isn't it? People so love to judge." She opened a cupboard and drew out a box of linguine noodles. "I guess you make peace with whatever you've done to get yourself into that situation and accept that you can't control what others think or say. It's what you think of yourself that matters."
"I'm obsessed with what other people think," Gwyn admitted glumly. She had a childhood full of starting new schools, being teased for being first to wear a bra, then constantly being underestimated because she was smarter than anyone expected from a girl with good looks.
Her mother had nursed the same sort of angst, having quite an inferiority complex due to an orphan's upbringing. Sometimes Gwyn wondered if that had been her mother's reason for moving so often-part habit, but also a continuous attempt to reinvent herself in hopes of ever-elusive acceptance.
For Gwyn, landing this job in Milan had been her first step in believing she really was good enough and smart enough to earn respect on her own merit, but she was seriously struggling to believe in herself now.
And while she could dismiss the dim views of strangers and comfort herself with the knowledge she hadn't done anything to deserve the humiliation she was suffering, she was acutely sensitive to what Vito might be thinking of her.
Why? Why couldn't she shrug off his judgment of her?
Because he affected her on every level, she acknowledged. Because he had literally controlled how she felt in the car today, working ecstasy through her. If he had the power to make her feel good, he also had the power to devastate her.
She started to blush, feeling the heat rise from deep spaces to become a hot glow on her cheeks. Such power. She wished she could get him out from under her skin!
"My turn to pry," Lauren said, handing Gwyn a bag of mushrooms, scanning Gwyn's guilty pink cheeks with interest. "This thing with you and Vito. Have you really been seeing him? Or is it just for show?"
"What?" Gwyn said dumbly, nerveless fingers nearly losing the featherweight of the bag.
"You don't have to tell me," Lauren said with a teasing twinkle in her eye. "I'm being nosy because he's one of my favorite people, but I realize there are things at the bank that can't be discussed. Believe me, I know." She made a face of long suffering. "But..." She sent Gwyn a cagey look as she moved to the sink. "I have a feeling that if he'd been seeing you before this story broke, I would have known."
"What do you mean?" Gwyn asked, knocked off balance by something she couldn't identify. Was she suggesting Vito acted differently around her? Lauren had only seen them together for a minute and a half before they'd come inside and the men had gone to the beach.
"I don't know. There's something in the way he looked at you-" Lauren shrugged, starting to wash her hands, then cut herself off as she gave the soap dispenser next to the sink a shake. "I think there's a new one in the upstairs bathroom," she said, turning off the tap.