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‘As you know so well,’ she returned.
‘So I fail to see any problem.’
‘You just expect me to—to uproot myself yet again…’
‘For our child.’ As if on cue, a faint cry sounded through the flat, making them both still and stare at each other. The moment spun on, both of them frozen, and then she cried again. His daughter. ‘Where…where is she…?’ Alessandro began, barely able to form the words.
Wordlessly Mia rose from the sofa and went down the hallway to the flat’s bedrooms. Alessandro followed, his heart starting to thud. His daughter.
‘Hello, darling.’ Mia’s voice had softened into an unfamiliar coo as she opened the door to a small bedroom decked out in pale grey and mint green. Alessandro stood in the doorway, transfixed, as Mia went to the cot and bent over it, then scooped up the tiny form that had been inside.
She turned to Alessandro, the baby pressed to her shoulder, one hand cradling her head possessively. She was tiny, a mere scrap of humanity, and so very precious, bundled in a white velveteen sleepsuit.
‘This is Ella.’ Mia’s voice trembled. ‘Do you…do you want to hold her?’
Hold her?
Alarm warred with a deep longing. Alessandro stared at her for a moment, speechless and uncertain for what felt like the first time in his life.
Did he want to hold her? Yes.
Was he terrified? Yes.
He nodded, not trusting himself to speak, not sure what to do. How did one hold a baby? He had no idea. He had never held one before.
Mia walked towards him, still cradling their daughter. Ella. She came to stand in front of him, close enough that Alessandro was able to breathe in her achingly familiar scent of understated citrus. It assaulted his senses and made him remember far too many things.
‘Hold your arms out,’ Mia instructed, and Alessandro thrust both arms out stiffly in front of him. ‘Not like that,’ she said with a small smile, a surprising and strangely gratifying trace of laughter in her voice.
‘How?’ Alessandro demanded. ‘I don’t know what to do.’ This was a vulnerability he couldn’t hide. Knowledge he had never possessed.
‘Like this.’ Gently, holding Ella with one arm, she guided Alessandro’s own, manipulating his limbs as if he were a mannequin, until one arm was bent as if to cradle a football, the other arm to support it. ‘Now we just add the baby,’ she said softly, and before he knew what she was doing, she put Ella into his arms.
He cradled her to him instinctively, pressing her tiny body gently against his chest as she snuffled into his neck. He breathed in the sweet, milky warmth of her as his heart contracted, expanded, and contracted again. He felt. It hurt.
‘That’s the way,’ Mia encouraged him. ‘You’ve got the hang of it now.’
He felt like a complete novice, inexperienced, incapable, and if he were holding the most fragile and yet explosive thing possible—a cross between a stick of dynamite and a Ming vase.
‘I don’t want to hurt her,’ he confessed, undone by this child in his arms, this fragile, precious, impossible human being.
‘You aren’t hurting her,’ Mia assured him. Tears sparkled in her eyes and she blinked them back rapidly. ‘Trust me, she would let you know if you were.’
‘Does she cry? Is she…is she a good baby?’ He realised how much he wanted to know—all the details, all he’d missed. It didn’t matter now that he’d missed them or why he had, he just wanted to know.
‘She’s a wonderful baby, but she’s had her moments.’ The smile Mia gave him was weary, and he suddenly noticed how tired she looked. Realised how hard it must have been, to parent alone all these months…which was all the more reason for her to come to Tuscany with him, where she could have help, and comfort, and space.
‘You’ll come to Tuscany,’ he said, and it sounded like an order. Mia’s gentle, tired smile faltered as a familiar fire sparked in her eyes.
‘Alessandro, you can’t order me about…’
‘You’ll come,’ he insisted. ‘And Ella, too. You must.’ His voice was too strident, his manner too abrupt and autocratic. He knew that, and yet he couldn’t keep himself from it, because it was so very important. It was everything.
He saw the remoteness enter Mia’s eyes, felt her coolness as she took Ella out of his arms, pressing her against her shoulder as she half turned away from him.
‘She needs a feed,’ she murmured, but it felt like an excuse. She slipped past him and went back to the main living area, leaving Alessandro no choice but to follow.
When he came into the room, Mia was sitting back on the sofa, Ella brought to her breast, one tiny fist clutching a tendril of golden hair. Shock jolted through him at the sight of her feeding their daughter, the simple, pure rightness of it, followed by a rush of primal possessiveness that nearly felled him with its intensity, its sureness.
