“What would she tell you to do now? Marry me?” Paolo challenged lightly.
Lauren was quiet a long time, then said to the side window, “She’d say don’t marry for any reason but love. You don’t want to be tied down when you find the person you’re meant to be with.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
DESPITE THE GRANDNESS of Paolo’s ancestral home, it was very much that: a home. The villa was set behind an ornate gate on an expansive estate of fountains and sprawling trees, but children played in the hedge maze and men smoked on a terrace off the second floor. Winter pansies shivered in ceramic pots at the front doors.
They arrived as a very pregnant woman was unloading children from a limo. Paolo moved to greet the woman with an embrace and kiss, agreeing to her children’s pleas to join them on the lawn after he said hello to his mother.
“This is not Isabella,” the woman said with a significant look from Lauren to Paolo.
“No, this is Lauren Bradley,” Paolo said, explaining to Lauren, “Maria is the second of my three sisters, all younger. She runs our branch in Switzerland. Her husband is with the Red Cross and must be overseas?” He looked to Maria.
“On his way back from that flood in Asia, which wasn’t as horrific as feared, thankfully. It seems the earth-shattering events are happening at home today. What’s going on, caro fratello?” Maria kept her tone artificially playful. “I thought the old Paolo had only been visiting three months ago. Has he returned to stay?”
Lauren heard the underlying hardness as clearly as Paolo did. He pulled away from the patronizing way Maria tried to thumb her lipstick off her brother’s cheek. Lauren couldn’t help but draw in on herself, assaulted by ignominy.
“Lauren is our guest, Maria. Don’t make her feel uncomfortable. I don’t like it.” Paolo took Lauren’s hand and pulled her into the house.#p#分页标题#e#
Lauren stumbled a little, feeling Maria’s gaze like a dagger in her spine, but she was too terrified to look back and see what the woman was truly thinking. Apologies choked up her throat, but she couldn’t voice them, not when Maria’s reference to “the old Paolo” reminded Lauren of his promiscuous past and that she, Lauren, was merely his latest conquest.
A conquest full of consequences.
They moved purposefully through a classically decorated house. It was more richly appointed than her mother’s tasteful house where only company sat on the good furniture. People leaned and perched and nested everywhere, all talking a mile a minute, hands gesturing, all creating a din of cheerful Italian and bursts of laughter.
Lauren would have dug in her heels from being dragged into the crowd, but he rushed her past the startled eyes of his family.
She should have fought him on coming here today. She had thought she would be meeting his mother, not his entire family. She should have stayed at the house on the lake, should never have come to Italy. Why had she even called him when Ryan went missing? It had been a stupid, weak, desperate act.
Warm, stomach-grumbling scents greeted her when they entered the kitchen where copper pots steamed and marble workspaces were covered in trays and bowls. A woman with coiffed hair, perfect makeup, and not so much as a water stain on her apron turned from sending out a maid with a tray of hors d’oeuvres. Her smile for Paolo was warm and filled with love.
She checked slightly as she spotted Lauren.
“Mama, you remember Lauren.” Paolo moved to embrace and kiss his mother. His wide shoulders eclipsed the confused astonishment on Carlotta Donatelli’s face. By the time he had stepped back, she had recovered herself into the gracious woman Lauren had met at Ryan’s funeral.
“Oh, my dear.” Carlotta took up Lauren’s hands. “Do you even remember me? What a difficult time for everyone. How are Elenore and Chris?”
“I haven’t spoken to them recently,” Lauren hedged, clearing her throat of a husk of culpability. “But, well, you saw them at the funeral. I don’t imagine they’ll ever recover.”
The way I have. Lauren felt as though the baby in her belly glowed like a beacon of light, filling her with joy that must seem very inappropriate in these circumstances. The reality of being pregnant by this woman’s son, a woman so close to Ryan’s mother, hit Lauren. She began to really see how the underground tremor of their actions that one night would spread to topple and reshape the landscape around them. The Bradleys would be devastated all over again. This woman might side with them.
What would that do to Paolo? To his feelings for their child? For her?