“Your private jet has bedrooms?” She snorted. “How many? Is there an indoor pool? A bowling alley?”
He couldn’t tell if that was a dig or merely her dry wit rallying. “Just the one stateroom. And the theater.” He nodded at the screen that showed their flight path.
“I’m fine here.” Her elbows tucked into her waist, and she looked out the window at the void of charcoal.
He pinched the bridge of his nose.
“I wasn’t presuming to join you. I won’t come in unless I have to wake you because of turbulence. Then you’ll have to come back to your seat.”
She looked into the watery gold of her tea, but her mouth quivered. “I’m fine.”
Tiny, tiny words that made his lungs fill with concrete.
She nursed her tea for the next half hour, then watched out the window again. Eventually, she fell asleep. He unbuckled her himself and carried her into the bed, so very tempted to lie down and hold her. There was a gaping wound from the base of his throat to the pit of his belly. He needed the compress of her warmth to stem the loss.
Instead, he draped a light blanket over her and went back to his seat where he dozed fitfully and snapped awake from dreams that she had disappeared from the plane.
She must have been as exhausted as he was. When he finally did wake from a deep sleep, his neck held a dull ache and his eyes were like sandpaper. Most of their flight had gone by.
“No, I’m totally fine,” Cami was saying in a low voice to the attendant. “I just don’t travel well. Toast would be great. Thanks.”
“Air sick?” he asked as she came to her seat.
She was pale, her hair was finger-combed and she smelled faintly of toothpaste. “It happens,” she murmured, not meeting his eyes in favor of making a thorough study out the window.
“Another few hours.” He pointed at the progress map, which showed them halfway over the Mediterranean.
Despite the circumstance, he was looking forward to showing her his homeland, hoping for some reason that she would love it as much as he did.
“Dante...” She wore a tortured expression as she turned her face to meet his gaze.
The gravity in her tone was so ominous his lungs seized. His ears rang as he strained to hear her. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m pregnant.”
* * *
“Don’t you dare ask me if it’s yours,” she whispered, glancing toward where the flight attendant would appear at any second.
She risked a glance at him, trembling as she had been since rising in a rush of morning sickness. She couldn’t read his expression. He was a master at hiding his thoughts.
The flight attendant came to draw the table down from the wall and serve their breakfast. It was a meal of loaded silence and impossible entanglements.
When they were alone again, Cami said, “I need to know if it really was just revenge. Clearly I’m very gullible, and I know how angry you were—”
“Cami.” His hand closed over her wrist, gentle, but heavy as a manacle. “I’m going to need some time.”
The pressure of his touch over her pulse was so profound, her blood throbbed into his fingers like an open wound. Emotion pressed into the backs of her eyes. She couldn’t swallow.
After a long minute, he released her to sip his coffee, then asked, “When did you find out?”
“A few days ago. I didn’t do it on purpose.”
“We.” Was it her imagination, or was there a euphoric quality beneath his even, fact-finding tone? “Were you going to tell me?”
She realized she was wringing her hands and made them settle into her lap. “I hadn’t worked out what to do. When you showed up last night... How are we like this? One catastrophe after another?”
He might have flinched, but the attendant brought fresh coffee.
They finished their meal in a quiet that was almost companionable, harking back to their comfortable mornings in Whistler. The ones that had given her hope they had something more than revenge and debts, blame and rancor.
“You’re keeping it.” She couldn’t tell if that was an order or a request.
“Hopefully,” she murmured. “One never knows. That’s why you’re not supposed to tell anyone in the first trimester.”
He burned a hole through her with his gaze.
She lifted her shoulders defensively. “I’ve been sideswiped by life a lot. I’m not going to assume this will go as I hope it will.”
He closed his eyes. “The honesty of you. I was better off when I thought it was all lies.”
He didn’t say he also hoped she had a successful pregnancy, and she was too unprepared to face his answer by asking if he did. They didn’t talk much after that. He took several calls, speaking Sicilian, and she tried to read a book on her phone until they were preparing to land.
As her ears popped, she looked out and bonked her head into the window, trying to keep the gleaming peak in her sight. “Is that Mount Etna?”
His mouth quirked, the first softening she’d seen in him. “Yes. Why?”
Heart wobbling in thrill, she said, “I’m a mountain geek. It’s so beautiful.”
“I thought you only went nerd over skis.”
“It’s related.” She leaned as far as she could, but lost sight of the peak as the plane banked. “When I first came to Italy, I spoke to a retiree who was ticking off every ski slope in Europe as a sort of bucket list thing. I didn’t even know Mount Etna had a resort, but he said it was one of his favorites, that the views of the Mediterranean were spectacular. I made my own list and read up on all of the mountains, but this one seemed like such a long shot even before we had to go back to Canada.”
“You can’t ski,” he reminded. “Not for a while.”
Because she was pregnant. Taken unawares by the first big adjustment she would make in her life for the sake of the one growing inside her, she murmured a stunned “No,” of agreement.
She wasn’t upset by the need to take care, but the fact she once again faced a period of dark unknown distressed her. She would get through it, she knew she would, but the not knowing how brought a tightness to her chest. Just like that, the air grew heavy and oppressive.
Maybe it was because they were landing. She was suddenly quite homesick.
But she felt strangely at peace when she left the jet and walked across the tarmac to Dante’s cobalt-blue sports car. There was something in his calm confidence that reassured her. He put the top down so the verdant afternoon air blew across her skin as he started away from the private airfield and she sighed, relaxing.
He pointed out the odd landmark as he drove, but mostly they let the breeze snap around them, blowing away travel weariness.
Cami couldn’t stop craning her neck, utterly entranced. The stamp of centuries was everywhere, providing a sense of permanence and endurance.
Eventually he drove the car up a winding single lane through a vineyard, climbing to a hillock and cutting through a break in hedges to circle a fountain in front of a huge stone building. She dragged her gaze from a view that went for miles, expansive and breathtaking, and took in the worn stones of the courtyard and the vines climbing the front of what looked like a medieval castle.
“Is this a hotel?”
“It’s my home.” She heard the laughter in his voice and scowled at his back as he left the car.
How was she supposed to know that? She had known he was rich, but hadn’t realized he was this rich. She was still taking that in from the passenger seat when he opened her door and offered a hand to help her out.
“It’s beautiful,” she murmured. Intimidating.
“It’s a bit of a relic. My grandfather modernized with electricity and new plumbing, but aside from overhauling the kitchen a few years ago, I’ve only been keeping up on the necessary repairs. Noni’s very comfortable. I don’t like to displace her for anything that isn’t absolutely necessary.”
“Bernadetta’s here?”
“Of course.”
“But what will she think—” She realized he held her hand and carefully lifted hers away. “I don’t want her to know I’m...”
It was hard, very hard, to look into his eyes, especially when his expression turned so grave. “Nothing is going to happen to it, Cami.”
He couldn’t know that.
“We’re already dealing with enough. Me and her,” she decided firmly. “Let’s put off adding to it.”
A muscle pulsed in his jaw, but he eventually said, “If you insist.”
“I’m actually getting my way with you for a change?” she said as he retrieved her backpack from the trunk.
“You’ve had your way with me many times,” he drawled.
Her breath left her in a sensual punch as she recalled teasing him while trying on dresses. He’d let her take the lead more than once in their lovemaking, but she knew there was an element of allowing her. Dante was always the one in control. Wasn’t he?
He was certainly tightly leashed right now, all vestiges of sexual memory gone as he showed her to a guest suite. “These rooms are yours, and you should already be connected to our Wi-Fi.” He held up a phone and pointed to a tablet. “Call your brother. He’ll want to know you’ve arrived safely. Please dress for dinner at seven. Your clothes are in the wardrobe.”