She shifted, but he didn’t let the movement dislodge his hand.
“I didn’t notice,” she murmured. Avoiding his nickname hadn’t been a conscious decision and she couldn’t believe it mattered to him either way. The fact that he was remarking on it now made her use of the familiarity seem overly significant and intimate. She looked away, gaze scanning the ceiling for somewhere safe to land, but he lifted his hand off her hip and touched her chin, drawing her to look back at him.
The moment grew even more momentous for no reason at all. Neither of them spoke, but it was as if she’d opened a door and a million emotions had flooded in.
He was coming into her. And he took up a lot of space.
She desperately wished she could backpedal, but she couldn’t. All she could do was close her eyes in an attempt to shut him out. “I am tired,” she lied.
The mattress shifted and his breath warmed her lips before he kissed her.
She almost lifted a hand, wanting to draw it out. Her lips clung, but he kept the contact brief.
“We will get through this, cara,” he said, making it sound like a vow.
He stood and opened the blanket across her, letting it drift down in a puff of air and a layer of softness and warmth.
As he left, she kept her stinging eyes closed tight and tried to believe he wasn’t being optimistic. She wanted so badly to believe him.
But what if he was wrong?
Alessandro reentered the suite an hour later and saw the bed was empty. Clothes were strewed on the chair and the foot of the mattress. She wasn’t in the bathroom.
He was so keyed up, his heart lurched in his chest, convinced in that first second that she’d left in a hurry, but her cases were still here, one of them open on the floor near the closet.
The door into the sitting room was also open. He strode in to find Lorenzo asleep, which was reassuring, but there was no sign of the nanny or Octavia.
A hand appeared on the brocade curtain and Octavia peered at him from where she was sitting in the sun on the balcony. “Are you hungry? I ordered for both of us.”
He stepped outside to join her, finding her picking over a selection of antipasto, the scene so commonplace it made his leap to wrong conclusions embarrassing.
“I came up to see if you were awake and wanted to join us for a late lunch.” He stole a square of sharp cheese and hunger contracted his stomach. He dug in to the rest. “Where’s Bree?”
“I said I’d listen for Lorenzo so she could introduce herself to the kitchen and walk the grounds, get her bearings. Don’t eat all the olives.”
His mouth twitched at her command, still not used to her new assertiveness, but there was something engaging about it. Like finding unexpected talent in your tennis opponent so the match was more challenging.
He was about done with challenges for the moment, though, he thought with a scowl.
He slid his attention to the tomato slices sprinkled with chopped basil and scooped a circle of toasted bread into the tapenade, topped it with an artichoke heart, then chased it with two of the stuffed grape leaves.
“You could have brought him down,” he chided. “You’re hiding.” Not that he blamed her. He had no desire to go to the dining room now he was here.
“I’m acclimating,” she corrected. “It’s nice to feel the sun and smell the earth and hear Italian again.” She tilted her closed eyes to the sky.
His conscience pinched, but then he reminded himself she’d been considering staying in London. He might have sent her away, but he’d brought her home, too.
The thought didn’t ease the havoc inside him. His muscles were still twitching with aggression after holding himself back so heroically in his meeting with his grandfather and his uncle.
A fierce need to see his wife had driven him in swift steps up to their room. Funny how, after years of being the safety net for his entire family, he’d alienated nearly all of them and really only had an ally in Octavia. No one else appreciated the depth of betrayal he was experiencing and it bound him to her in a way he hadn’t recognized until his uncle had confronted him on it.
“What hold does she have on you that you’d choose her over Primo?” That bark from Giacomo had lit a fire in Alessandro. His own grandfather had asked if there was some way—or reason—her family could have done this.
Octavia was his wife, he’d near shouted in completely uncharacteristic ferocity. They’d stared at him flatly. The statement wasn’t an explanation.
You don’t choose a woman over your family, his uncle had spat, adding to his grandfather, He was always unpredictable. It had been a deliberate attempt to goad Alessandro into losing his temper completely.