The Veranchetti Marriage(27)

“I gather you didn’t use the house at all,” she remarked, hearing his step behind her. “It’s pretty hard on the eye, isn’t it?”

“I like it. It’s bright, warm,” he replied almost abruptly.

Upstairs, her throat closed over in the doorway of their bedroom. For once her efforts for a cohesive scheme had come together. But the pale lemon-washed walls, the abundance of gorgeous fabric at the windows and over the bed made her turn away. How could he bring her back here? Didn’t he have any sensitivity at all? Everywhere she looked she saw a frail, drooping shadow of herself in the past. Welcome home, indeed!

Brown fingers linked slowly with hers. “Was it a mistake to bring you back? You loved this house.”

Irritably she rammed back her own eerie spectres. Alex suffered from no such imaginative qualms. “Where will we put Nicky?” she asked, walking down the wide, sunlit corridor to glance into empty rooms. She had furnished one guest-room. He hadn’t changed that, either.

“I’ll use the dressing-room off our bedroom,” he replied as if he could read her mind.

She gave a brisk nod, colour rising to her cheeks. Project one was evidently to furnish the room through the communicating door for Alex’s occupancy. “I’ve got a lot to do,” she mused.

“You mustn’t overtire yourself,” he ruled. “I will be here. Ask me to help with anything you wish.”

Unexpectedly, she laughed. “Alex, the last time I showed you a wallpaper book, you spread a file on top of it.”

“I must often have hurt your feelings,” he remarked with unsmiling gravity. “It won’t be like that again.”

“I’m not expecting you to immerse yourself in household trivia,” she said dully, recoiling from his sacrificial attitude.

Later she watched him from the bedroom window. Nicky was kicking a ball towards him and throwing a short-tempered fit when Alex kicked it back past him. Shorn of his jacket and tie, his black hair tousled by the breeze, he looked remarkably relaxed as he scooped his son up and hugged him with an unashamed affection which jerked her own heartstrings with envy. He looked happy. He had put a wall between them that she didn’t want, and he looked happy. He had only battled with his pride when he decided that they should opt for a platonic marriage.

When she was in bed, she thought of him lying in the narrow confinement of the single just through the wall while she tossed in more space than she could find comfort in. You’d better get used to it, she thought, Alex never changes his mind about a decision.

When she slept, she dreamt that she was locked inside a house without windows or doors. Everywhere she ran in her frantic need to escape she came on another stretch of blank wall. Her eyes flew open, a sob on her lips. Alex was bending over her. “It’s only a dream…hmm?” he soothed, and the fear went out of her. “Do you want me to bring you a drink?”

Drowsily, she shook her head. She bit her lip, and then said it anyway, “Don’t go…”

Alex stilled at the foot of the bed, already in the act of leaving her. Stark embarrassment flooded her as she registered his surprise and reluctance. But the slither of his silk robe marked his agreement. “Go back to sleep,” he murmured as he slid quietly into the other side of the bed.

When morning came, his head was against her shoulder, his thick hair brushing her chin, his arm lying heavily over the swell of her breasts. A mixture of hunger and tenderness gripped her as his dark lashes lifted and she merged with slumbrous gold. Immediately, he shifted away from her warmth. “I don’t think sharing a bed is a very good idea,” he murmured sardonically. “The next time something goes bump in the night, I shall leave a light on for you.”

She forced a laugh and watched him depart, but she was stung to the quick, almost certain that he had seen the helpless invitation in her eyes. Her energies, it seemed, would be pinned more rewardingly to the house. Alex no longer found her an unbearable temptation.

The next few weeks were both tranquil and busy. She had the hall carpet lifted to reveal the beautiful pale pink Gavorrano marble beneath, and she engaged an interior designer. Alex was talking about setting up a branch of Veranchetti Industries in Florence and shifting his staff from Rome. She was astonished, but gradually came to appreciate that the concession was in keeping with an Alex determinedly taking an interest in every detail of the household upheaval and prowling round baby boutiques in her wake. At every opportunity Alex was proving that she could have no cause to complain of neglect. His enthusiasm and his good humour were daunting, but then he never did anything by halves, and, had his efforts to please led him into her bedroom, she could have been ecstatic. Unfortunately, Superhusband went to his own bed every night, and did not appear to be finding it a strain.

They came home from a shopping expedition in Florence one afternoon and there was another letter from Steven awaiting her. Alex passed it to her with a brilliant smile. “He likes to keep in touch, doesn’t he?” he quipped. “Perhaps you will want him to visit with us this summer.”

Leaving her pole-axed, he strode off into the library. Had it been her imagination that he was jealous of Steven? What a lowering admission it was that the hint of a dark, brooding scowl from Alex on the subject of Steven would have made her day!

The same post included a letter from her mother, who wrote that she was rather concerned about Vickie. She had not been home since Kerry’s departure. “She’s very strained over the phone, not like herself at all,” Ellen wrote. “Do you think there’s a man involved? I hoped that she might have confided in you.”

Kerry hadn’t heard from Vickie, nor did she expect to. She assumed that Jeff’s appeal to her sister had failed, and that with it his desire to unlock the past had waned. It was now almost four weeks since he had called her from Athens. Sooner or later, she would have to write to Vickie. She didn’t want their parents upset by the discovery that their daughters were mysteriously at loggerheads. But it was still too soon for Kerry to face penning that letter. Her anger had subsided, and much of her bitterness, but she was still paying the price of that morning through her marriage.

The following morning, Lucrezia brought her breakfast in bed. Alex came in with Nicky, her son bouncing up and down with exuberant excitement. Still half asleep, she surveyed them.

“It’s your birthday,” Alex said drily.

She blinked, for she had completely forgotten. “Happy birthday!” Nicky cried, thrusting an envelope on top of her cup of tea and settling a luridly coloured box beside it.

“Happy birthday.” Alex pressed cool lips to her flushed cheek and presented her with a card. It was all very restrained and polite.

His card was one of those ones with no message. Admittedly, he would have had to sack Florence to find a card with a blurb suitable to their association. What it did have, though, was an enormous key taped inside.

Kerry looked at him hopefully. The key to the communicating door between their bedrooms, she thought wildly, for the lock was empty on both sides.

“It’s a surprise,” he proffered with an oddly tense smile. “We need to go out to fit the key to a door.”

Disgraced by her own imagination, she nodded. Eating breakfast was impossible after that. Nicky was left at home and Alex drove them into Florence. He parked by the Arno and took her walking through the narrow, crowded streets.

“Am I going to like it…the surprise?” she prompted doubtfully.

“I hope so…I think so.” The cool, sensual mouth curved into an almost boyish smile as he guided her off the Via Tornebuoni. “I thought of it in Greece.”

He had been thinking of her birthday that far back? She could only be complimented. He grabbed her hand impatiently. “Close your eyes,” he instructed, and his arm folded round her to move her on another few steps before turning her round. “Now you can open them.”

“Am I supposed to see something?” she muttered, gazing at the green and gold decorated windows of the apparently empty shop in front of them.

He sighed. “Look up to the name.”

What she read in flowing gold script immobilised her. Antiques Fayre—Firenze. While Alex employed the key in the door she tried to crank her jaw shut. Alex had bought her a shop?

“Aren’t you coming in?”

She stood inside the enormous interior on the dusty floor which was littered with packing cases and rubbish. It was easily four times the size of what she had left behind. “How…how did you get it? It’s so central. It must have cost a fortune…or is it rented?”

Alex looked pained. “It belongs to you. I made the previous owner an offer that he could not refuse. At the price, he might have removed the rubbish,” he complained grimly.

“You want me to go into business?” Kerry wished there was a seat somewhere around. Her legs were wobbly. She was afraid there was a catch, and this was some gigantic misunderstanding.

“That was the idea, but…”

“I knew there was a but.”

“The baby,” Alex reproved and spread his expressive hands wide. “I didn’t know there was going to be a baby. Do you think you could wait until after its birth to start this place up? I am afraid it would be too taxing a project to begin now, but when the baby is born we can get a nanny…”