He grinned. ‘Do you remember Matteo and Isla? The couple with the army of uncontrollable children?’
‘She’s the redhead?’
‘That’s the one. It’s their tenth wedding anniversary, and they’re throwing a party for it. Matteo heard we’re in Rome and has invited us along. It should be a good night—you’ll know a lot of the other faces too. Have a think about it and let me know later if you feel up to going.’
Great. Just what she wanted, to be scrutinised and gossiped about by the Italian crowd Domenico considered his real friends. Oh well, she’d committed to trying again with him. She’d have to face his friends at some point, and now that he’d mentioned a party, she found herself yearning to go.
‘In that case, my diary’s clear.’
His brow creased. ‘You are sure? Don’t agree if you think it’ll take too much out of you.’
‘I’m fine, Dom. I feel normal. No sickness, only a little tiredness. I’m fine.’
‘Okay, but if you change your mind, don’t be afraid to say.’
‘I won’t.’
‘And when we’re there—ifwe go—then as soon as you want to leave, you tell me, okay?’
‘I promise.’
He pressed another of his featherlight chaste kisses that had as much meaning as the kiss from one friend to another to her mouth. ‘Good.’
‘What’s the dress code?’
‘Formal.’
She sat up. ‘Then I need to go shopping for something to wear.’
His brow creased again. ‘Can you manage shopping and a party in one day?’
‘I’m pregnant, not an invalid.’
‘I know, I just don’t want you overdoing things. Why don’t I get a stylist to…’
‘I want to go shopping,’ she interrupted firmly. ‘If I’m tired when I get back, I’ll have a nap.’
‘Whenweget back,’ he corrected before his face broke into a smile. ‘I’m coming with you.’
Of course he was. Since they’d agreed to try again, he’d barely let her out of his sight. Probably afraid that the minute his back was turned, she’d change her mind and do a runner. Other than that afternoon spent video-calling all his senior staff, he’d left her alone only to take two further conference calls, which for a workaholic like Domenico was the equivalent of taking a month off, and his insistence on coming shopping with her made Marnie’s stupid heart jump for joy.
While she would never admit this to him, the six months they’d spent apart had served to make her forget how quickly the hours passed when with him. Breaking away from him after all those years spent revolving her world around him had left her unmoored, as if she’d lost the gravity holding her to the here and now, and it was terrifying how quickly time was passing again and how quickly his gravity was reclaiming her.
Marnie remembered walking downVia dei Condottiwhen she’d done all her sightseeing the year before. Filled as it was with the flagship stores of most of Italy’s major luxury fashion houses and high-end boutiques, she’d felt like a lost little sheep amongst Rome’s elite. Rather than go into any of the stores, she’d drunk coffee in a cute little café and people-watched. She’d never, in the whole year of their marriage, been able to get her head around the fact that she was now considered one of the elite. Although she would never have fought the derisory settlement Domenico offered in their divorce, that she’d barely spent a penny of the allowance that had credited her bank account each month meant that, along with her settlement, she had a decent nest egg put aside. Obviously, it was peanuts compared to Domenico’s wealth, but she’d never needed much. The last time she’d gone shopping—actual spending-money shopping—had been the day after their wedding when he’d bought half of London for her dressing room.
This shopping trip with him was a marked contrast to that last one. Or at least felt markedly different, and it wasn’t just because he kept holding her hand. When she tried a dress on, he didn’t just give constructive feedback with his mouth but with his eyes too. It felt like he was looking ather, the whole of her, Marnie, and not just a mannequin in human skin. This time, it didn’t feel like she was shopping with someone treating her in the way she imagined he treated his sister on a shopping trip.
‘What do you think of this?’ he asked in the sixth store they entered, having shooed away the fawning sales assistants. The dress he’d pulled off the sparse rack was a seemingly simple white dress.
‘It’s pretty,’ she said, running her fingers over the fabric. Sewn into it were thousands upon thousands of crystal sequins.
Less than a minute later, she was stripping off to her knickers in yet another luxury changing room and carefully stepping into the white dress. Backless, she was able to do the hidden zip up herself as it only ran to the base of her spine, and then she pulled it over her breasts, securing them in the inbuilt bra, and tied the halter-neck straps around her neck, being careful not to catch her hair in it.
Only then did she allow herself to look at her reflection.
Her chest expanded. The dress was beautiful. By going up a size to what she normally wore, it accommodated her growing belly and breasts—she hadn’t paid much attention to them growing too—without constricting them, giving her an hourglass figure. The top part of it skimmed her cleavage in a circle, and as the halter-neck straps were gold, it gave the illusion of the dress defying gravity. When she turned this way and that, the crystal sequins caught the light and sparkled a rainbow of colours.
And then her chest deflated. She was much too plain to wear this. Wearing it made her feel like a mutton pretending to be a lamb.
