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‘Changing a nappy isn’t difficult,’ he said as he lifted the drowsy Nico from the changing mat and placed him carefully in his cot.
‘Obviously not,’ answered Justina, wishing that he’d stop being quite so...reasonable. Because this was Dante, she reminded herself. Powerful Dante, who didn’t say or do anything without an ulterior motive. She raised her eyebrows in ironic query. ‘But I thought that a macho man like you...’
Her words tailed off and he gave a wry smile. ‘You make me sound like someone who bares his chest and wears a medallion. There’s nothing in the rule book to say that the most masculine of men can’t be hands-on with his own baby.’ He gave a shrug. ‘Although obviously things were very different in my father’s day. I’m sure he never changed a nappy in his life.’
Justina started to fold one of Nico’s tiny vests as Dante’s words forced her to confront something which up until now they’d managed to avoid. ‘You haven’t really mentioned how your family have reacted to the news. I assume you’ve told them?’
‘Of course. I rang them the night he was born.’ She saw his ebony eyes soften with memory. ‘My mother is over the moon. This is her first grandchild and she’s eager to meet him. All my family are.’
Justina nodded. Of course they were—and she knew they had every right to be. Just as she knew that she couldn’t keep putting off the inevitable meeting. She felt as if she’d been living in a bubble since Nico’s birth—a feeling which had only been strengthened by Dante’s unexpected help with the baby. Had he been worried that she’d be unable to cope or that she’d sink into a mire of postnatal depression? Was that why he’d seamlessly relocated from New York and booked in at the nearby Vinoly Hotel, so that it was easy for him to drop by and visit his son?
She had returned home from the hospital to a delivery of the most beautiful flowers. Gardenias and roses and stephanotis and lily of the valley had been massed into a bouquet so enormous that she’d hardly been able to get it through the front door. The fragrance had been intoxicating, and the brief accompanying note of thanks had made her want to cry. But crying was the last thing she could afford to do. The last thing she ever did. Crying made you weak, and never had she needed her strength as much as she needed it right now.
She remembered turning on Dante as if he’d sent her an explosive device, aware of the sudden tremble of her fingers as they had brushed against the white petals. ‘Why did you send me flowers?’
‘Isn’t it normal for the father to send flowers to the new mother?’
Justina had shaken her head. Of course it was normal. But they weren’t normal, were they? None of this was. A baby had been born to two people who were no longer together. Who didn’t even like each other. And Dante was not a man she could trust. She should remember that above all else. He might be ladling on sweet words and consideration, but he would be doing it for a reason. And it seemed that one of those reasons had now arrived.
She drew in a deep breath as met his eyes. ‘Your mean your mother wants to come and visit?’
He shook his head. ‘My mother hates to travel. I was thinking that you and I might take Nico to Tuscany instead. I think it’s time he was introduced to his Italian roots.’
She wanted to protest that at four weeks old Nico would barely be conscious of which cot he was in, let alone which country. But Justina knew Dante well enough to realise that her words would fall on deaf ears. He had always been passionate about his homeland, and no amount of reason was ever going to alter that. In fact she was surprised that he had waited this long to bring it up. That’s why he has been so unusually reasonable, she told herself. The flowers and the nappy-changing and the insistence that she relax in the bath while he looked after Nico—they had all been velvet-coated weapons in his battle to get what he wanted.
But despite the sensation of being manipulated Justina had no intention of refusing his request, no matter how difficult she might find it to return to his family home. Because Nico needed family—and her own was never even going to make it past the starting line.
‘Do they still hate me?’ she questioned, in a voice which didn’t actually sound like her voice.
‘I think that’s an unnecessarily emotive way of putting it, Justina.’
‘I thought one of your complaints about me was that I wasn’t emotional enough?’ That was the main accusation he’d used to hurl at her, usually just before one of her tours, so that they’d always seemed to part with some sort of atmosphere simmering between them. ‘I remember you telling me that no woman with a heart could leave her man while she went away on tour.’
Dante met the amber glitter of her eyes. It was true he’d found it unbelievable that she could bear to be away from him for any length of time. He’d thought that her career would pale in comparison to being with the man she professed to love. But apparently not. She had refused to temper her ambition and he had grown impatient with her frequent absences. In the end those absences had chipped away at their relationship, so that many of their snatched reunions had been spent getting to know one another again. Sometimes it had felt as if they were going backwards instead of forward. When it had finally come, his furious ultimatum had seemed inevitable.
‘My family didn’t hate you,’ he said slowly.
There was a pause. ‘They didn’t make me feel very welcome when I met them.’ She could hear that whisper of insecurity in her voice again.
‘I think they tried their best.’ He reached down into the cot and stroked Nico’s head. ‘But my mother is an old-fashioned woman who didn’t approve of your choice of career—or all the things which came with it.’
‘Like mother, like son!’ observed Justina wryly, though she recognised that it hadn’t just been his mother who had been opposed to her. Dante’s brother Luigi had also disapproved—and all the male D’Arezzo cousins had clearly felt the same.
Her mind went back to the welcome party which had been thrown during her first and only visit to the D’Arezzo estate. If only Dante’s sister hadn’t insisted on playing the Lollipops’ latest DVD! Justina remembered the entire family sitting and watching in horror as she’d cavorted across the screen wearing a tiny tutu and a minuscule vest-top. After that they’d treated her as if she was some kind of stripper instead of a legitimate songwriter and performer.
‘They didn’t think I was the right person for you,’ she added. ‘I was unsuitable. And of course being English didn’t add to my general allure.’
‘All Italian mothers want their sons to marry an Italian girl,’ he said with a shrug.
‘As opposed to an illegitimate nobody whose mother has a track record for breaking up other people’s marriages?’
‘I think she wondered how our relationship was going to work when you were travelling the world.’ There was a pause as his black eyes glittered a question. ‘And you must admit that she had a point.’
Justina glanced down at where Nico lay sleeping and tried to imagine Dante ever being this tiny or this helpless. Unsurprisingly, she failed. ‘So how did your mother react when you told her who the mother of your baby was?’
Dante hesitated as he considered how best to convey his mother’s words. He had expected anger. Rage. A tirade against the Englishwoman who had made those brazen promotional films and flaunted her half-naked body to the world at large. He had thought there would be a dramatic outburst about a woman like her returning to the scene and ensnaring her powerful son by becoming pregnant.
But he hadn’t bargained for the softening effects of age, nor the primitive desire to see their powerful family line continued. His mother had been widowed for a long time and Dante was her eldest son. It was right that his offspring should be the firstborn, she’d said. The thought of a whole new generation of the D’Arezzo family was enough to sweeten the pill of the mother’s identity—and the fact that he wasn’t married to her.
