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Maisie looked surprised. ‘Only if you want to...’
‘Of course I want to.’ Antonio took Ella, cradling her in his arms, amazed at the soft, sleepy feel of her. She nestled into him, and his heart swelled with both love and fear. She was so very precious.
Maisie watched them, her expression softening, and Antonio gave her a quick smile. ‘We’ll be fine.’ He hoped.
He strolled up and down the aisle, bouncing her gently and humming under his breath—one of the lullabies from his childhood. Eventually Ella stopped squirming and squawking and Antonio watched as her eyes shut, her breath coming out in milky sighs. He stroked her downy hair, her head fitting perfectly into his palm. She was tiny and fragile and beautiful, and already he loved her. Already he knew he would do anything for her, sacrifice everything for her safety and happiness. The feeling was deep, instinctive, and overwhelming.
This time he wouldn’t mess up. He wouldn’t ruin everything. This time he would get it right, for Ella’s sake as well as his own.
CHAPTER TEN
‘WHAT DO YOU THINK?’
Maisie gazed around the yawning foyer of the enormous villa on the outskirts of Milan, overwhelmed by the sheer grandiose luxury of the place.
‘It’s huge.’
Antonio flicked a glance at the brochure. ‘Four thousand square feet. Hardly enormous.’
‘Maybe not by your standards.’ She jiggled Ella against her chest as she walked around the marble-paved hall, a double staircase leading to a balcony above. As they’d driven up, she’d seen that the circular driveway had a huge, ornate fountain. The place was a palace. ‘I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but I’d feel like I was swimming in a place like this. Couldn’t we look at somewhere...smaller?’
‘You want somewhere smaller?’ Antonio sounded disbelieving.
‘Yes. Cosier.’
‘Very well.’ Antonio glanced at the realtor who was standing by the door. ‘Roberto?’
‘Bene, bene.’ Roberto smiled at them both. ‘I have such places. Small, but perfect.’
Feeling guilty for not liking a place that was so opulent and enormous, Maisie followed them back out to the waiting limo. They’d arrived in Milan yesterday afternoon and started house-hunting today. Her head was still spinning, and not just with jet lag.
She couldn’t figure Antonio out. One moment he was wining and dining her in First Class; the next he was shutting himself off, seemingly deliberately, everything about him closed and cold. He was gentle and loving with Ella, and then he blanked Maisie. She felt exhausted simply trying to decipher his moods and the reasons for them. And, worst of all, every time he acted cool or remote she started to doubt whether she should have come to Milan at all. Whether she could survive the emotional roller coaster Antonio put her on just by existing.
Because the truth was, she cared for him in some small way. When she saw him with Ella, when he asked her about herself, she remembered the gentle and passionate and hurting man she’d met on that night nearly a year ago. She remembered him and wanted him, even if he wasn’t real—at least, not the real Antonio. The trouble was, wanting that man was a very dangerous and foolish thing to do.
They’d barely spoken beyond the basics since they’d arrived in Italy; Maisie had been exhausted and Ella fretful, and she’d fallen asleep in a huge king-sized bed in the guest room of Antonio’s apartment, on the top floor of an elegant palazzo in the historic city centre.
She’d woken to find Antonio immersed in his laptop, and she’d explored the apartment, only to realise it was the ultimate bachelor pad, from the media room to the rooftop gym, to the sleek, clearly unused kitchen. The surfaces were all hard, marble or steel, the furniture angular and uncompromising, the spiral staircase a stunning centrepiece as well as a death trap for a baby who would be crawling in a few months. The sooner she found her own place the better, and not just because of the silly stairs.
Twenty-four hours into her sojourn in Italy, and Maisie realised how important it was going to be to make her own life...away from Antonio, his changeable moods and her own dangerous desires.
She glanced at him now, his sharply angled jaw freshly shaven, his piercing blue eyes narrowed as he focused on the screen of his phone. He was dressed in an expertly tailored business suit of steel-grey. He looked devastatingly attractive, and as remote as ever. Maisie looked at him and her mind emptied out. Her heart started to pound. It was ridiculous.
She turned back to Ella, pointing out cars and trees along the road, trying to distract herself in meaningless babble.
Fifteen minutes later they pulled up to a far more modest yet still elegant house in a village on the outskirts of Milan. Maisie immediately liked the friendly-looking house, with its bright red shutters and wrought-iron railing trailing bougainvillea. Inside, dark wood beams crisscrossed a whitewashed ceiling; there was a living room with squashy sofas and a deep stone fireplace, and the dining room led into the open-plan kitchen, with French windows overlooking a terrace and garden, com
plete with a fenced-in pool. Upstairs there were three bedrooms—a master with a sumptuous en-suite bathroom, and two smaller bedrooms. Maisie stood in the last bedroom, by a stone-silled window overlooking the garden.
‘Is that a fig tree?’ she asked as Antonio came into the room.
‘It looks like it.’
‘This is perfect.’ She turned to him with a smile, Ella in her arms. ‘Cosy and friendly. It’s not too much?’ She still felt uncomfortable with the prospect of him paying for everything, but she didn’t have much choice. Besides, he had asked, or rather demanded, that she come here.
‘Too much?’ His eyebrows rose. ‘It’s a positive bargain, considering the other places I was thinking of. And fortunately it is available immediately.’
‘Great.’ She tried to keep her voice upbeat, battling a mixture of elation and fear. It would be lovely to have her own house, but she was being plopped in a small village in a foreign country, without speaking a word of the language. It was a little daunting, to say the least.
