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Dante glanced around, not bothering to hide his disapproval. It was a vast open-plan apartment which was perfect for a career woman, but not for a baby. There were too many sharp corners, too many glass surfaces—and the furniture was coloured an impractical shade of oatmeal. He’d been to many sophisticated apartments like this but they always left him cold. In Tuscany he had a palazzo which was centuries old, and in New York his home was a faded brownstone filled with antiques. He didn’t do modern—and wasn’t that yet another great difference between him and this woman? She had no great love for the past. She’d once told him that was because her own history was so full of gaps—and yet his history was what defin
ed him.
Walking over to the window, he stared out at the stately dome of St Paul’s Cathedral and the glittering skyscrapers beyond, before turning round to face her.
‘This is no place for a baby,’ he said.
There had been several times recently when Justina might have been inclined to agree with him, but hearing Dante say it was different from thinking it herself. ‘Don’t tell me—a baby can’t be happy unless it’s living in some cute little house with roses growing around the door?’ she said sarcastically. ‘Or, as in your case, some whacking great palazzo nestling in the Tuscan hills?’
‘Don’t be naïve, Justina. How many other women in this block have babies?’
She frowned. ‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘So already we’re talking social isolation.’
‘For a newborn?’
‘For you, too!’ he snapped. ‘New mothers need people around them for all kinds of reasons. And what about that tiny elevator?’
‘What about it?’
‘How the hell are you planning to get a buggy in there?’ He looked around again, only this time he appeared to be seeking out something in particular. His dark gaze finally settled on her. ‘Where is the buggy?’
‘Buggy?’
His voice was dangerously quiet, and he appeared to be choosing his words with care. ‘Please tell me you’ve bought our child something in which to transport it. Just like you’ve bought a cot and clothes and all the other things he or she will require. Do you have all those very necessary things, Justina—and, if so, would you mind telling me where they are?’
Still reeling from that wholly possessive ‘our child’, which had flowed so fluidly from his lips, she met his eyes, unprepared for the wave of guilt which washed over her. ‘No,’ she said, and her voice was little more than a whisper. ‘I haven’t bought a thing. Not yet.’
For a long moment there was silence, before Dante slowly took in her words. ‘Not yet’ she had said, while looking so ripe with child that he wouldn’t have been shocked if she’d suddenly gone into labour right there on the oatmeal sofa. No, that wasn’t quite true—he would be pretty shocked if that happened.
‘Why not?’ he demanded. ‘What are you waiting for?’
His words were like bullets, and Justina felt as if she’d just removed the vest which might have bounced them back at him. All the fight went out of her—because how could she possibly explain that her life had been non-stop activity for the past thirty-five weeks? That she’d been afraid to turn down any work since she’d first stared aghast at the telltale blue line which had confirmed her pregnancy? That she hadn’t wanted people to think she was going to retire or start taking things easy because she still needed to work—baby or no baby? She was going to have to work for all kinds of reasons—the main one being her own sense of crippling insecurity, which always lurked just below the surface of her life.
Hadn’t it been easier to cram her life full of jobs? Much easier to have things which kept her busy rather than to have to think about a future she’d never envisaged and which she still couldn’t quite imagine. But as she met Dante’s gaze she could see that her actions might easily be interpreted as selfishness. And hadn’t that always been one of his number one accusations against her? That she was one of a terrible breed of women who refused to put other people first—or rather put their man first?
‘I kept putting it off,’ she said. ‘Maybe it was an extended form of denial that it’s actually happening. I’ve been to all the childbirth classes....’ Her voice tailed off as she remembered the ignominy of that. Everyone else had been part of a gleeful couple—each man proudly patting his partner’s bump at every opportunity and religiously doing all the breathing exercises. One man had even given up soft cheese and alcohol in order to ‘share his wife’s experience’. Justina had just felt such an oddity in their midst. Maybe they’d found it slightly embarrassing that she didn’t have a partner—that she’d clammed up whenever they had tried to quiz her about her baby’s father. And hadn’t she felt so unbelievably lonely as she’d tried to stem her envy of their seemingly uncomplicated and ordinary lives?
‘It just seemed so unreal,’ she continued slowly. ‘Like it wasn’t really happening to me. As if I’d wake up one morning and find that it had all been a mistake.’
His gaze was still fixed on her and she waited for some control freak tirade to follow because she’d dared to neglect the material requirements of the D’Arezzo heir. But to her surprise there was no outburst. Just that same faintly despairing expression in his dark eyes, which was infinitely worse. She thought that he’d never seemed more distant as he stood there, his powerful body seeming to absorb all the light in her usually airy apartment. But there was something compelling about him which drew the eye so that it became impossible to look anywhere else other than at him.
‘What do you do to relax?’ he asked suddenly.
The question was so unexpected that she didn’t have time to concoct a convincing answer. Instead, she shrugged. ‘I’m not very good at relaxing.’
‘I can tell. You look worn out,’ he said softly. ‘So why don’t you think about the baby for once—instead of your unquenchable desire to be number one in the music business? Go and take a bath, or something. Isn’t that what women usually do to relax?’
‘You would know about that better than I do, Dante.’ She was about to add that she would have a bath when she wanted one—and preferably after he’d gone—but his phone had started ringing and he’d clicked to answer it. And unbelievably, he was holding up a forefinger to silence her while he listened.
She contemplated telling him to go and take his calls somewhere else—but she was damned if she was going to stand there like some sort of simpering secretary, waiting patiently for him to finish his conversation. Instead, she stomped into the bathroom and locked the door behind her, turning the taps full on and recklessly dolloping in far too much lime and mandarin bath foam, before she hit the music button and then lowered herself into the foamy water.
When she’d first moved into this apartment she’d had a sophisticated sound system installed which played music in all the rooms. Usually she pressed the ‘shuffle’ button, so that she never knew which track was coming next. But today she selected Metamorphosis—which had been one of the Lollipops’ most successful albums. A success which had come at a cost.
It was the album she’d been writing when her relationship with Dante was breaking up. She hadn’t been able to listen to it for years but her reasons for needing to hear it now were important. No, they were vital. She needed to revisit that dark place she’d been in. She needed to remember the heartbreak and the desperation she’d felt as it had all slipped away from her. To remind herself that the occasional twinge of isolation was nothing to the pain she’d suffered in the past.
She lay back in the warm water, the shiny mound of her belly emerging from the white suds as the sound of the music filled the bathroom.
