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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…”
She sagged. The but had not contained the tripwire she feared. Silence fell. She was in the trancelike hold of astonishment. Alex had opened the door of her gilded cage.
He expelled his breath. “I know you like to be busy. You have so much energy. When the house is finished, Nicky at school, what would you do with yourself? I suggest you hire a manager so that you are not too tied to the business, but that is up to you.”
She wanted to cry. When Athene heard about this, she would think her son had gone crazy. “You thought about this in Greece?”
“I know how bored you were before at home. You needed more stimulus. This time I want you to be content in our marriage, and here you will have your own challenge, you will…”
“Alex, it’s the most wonderful thing anybody’s ever done for me!” she interrupted extravagantly. In buying her this business, Alex had overcome his need to lock her up. She could see in his dark, set features that he was still questioning his own decision and was somewhat ambivalent about his own generosity. But what mattered was that he had done it for her despite his own fear of giving her this amount of freedom. She reached for his hand uncertainly. “You won’t ever have cause to regret this.”
His ebony brows pleated. “I have to trust you. You were right when you said that. The problem was mine,” he stated tautly. “That day on the island, I shocked myself. It will never happen again. I promise you that.”
Her bronze lashes veiled her stinging eyes. How like Alex it was to force himself into the very opposite of what he wanted when he realised that he was behaving unreasonably. She could have applauded his determination on a much less extreme show of trust than this, and suddenly she could see hope for them both, without Vickie or Jeff. Surely it was possible that, when Alex had dealt with his own gremlins, he would come back to her in every way?
Five days later, Alex flew to Rome. He was due home for the weekend, but the afternoon passed without his appearance. Early evening, Kerry was perched on the window seat in the salon, wondering why he hadn’t phoned, when a little yellow Fiat came bowling noisily down the driveway. A tall blond man extracted himself awkwardly from the driver’s side and straightened. Vickie strolled round the bonnet and grasped his hand. Kerry froze. They had actually come. A minute later, Lucrezia showed them in.
“Alex is in Rome, he isn’t back yet,” was the first thing Kerry said.
In the uneasy stasis, Jeff stuck out his hand, a dull flush of red lying along his broad cheekbones, his other arm planted round her strained sister. “I don’t expect you to like me, but I’m four years older and wiser now,” he said wryly.
“I guess you’ve been wondering what was going on,” Vickie said very quietly. “Jeff never knew that you and Alex split up that day. I don’t want you to feel he’s equally to blame. It was over two years before we ran into each other again. I started seeing Jeff, but I had to keep quiet about it. I couldn’t take him home, I couldn’t tell you about him. It was poetic justice, I suppose. I was caught in my own trap.”
“I had absolutely no idea why Vickie was holding me at bay. If I had done, believe me, I wouldn’t have let it lie,” he stressed levelly.
“The day you left me…I was upset,” Vickie muttered. “I phoned Jeff and I told him everything.”
