AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Jennifer hesitated—but what did she have to lose by telling him? ‘So isolated, I guess.’ Jennifer shrugged. ‘Mind you, that was after we had separated. Maybe they were acting on your instructions.’
His face darkened. ‘I gave no such instructions.’
In fact he remembered feeling pretty isolated himself. The rupture of their relationship had given him a sense of being cut adrift from all that was familiar. Because even when their marriage had been in an appalling state they had still been in contact. She had still been his anchor, the person he turned to to confide in. He’d telephoned her from locations around the world, or she him. But once she had left—that had been it. Nothing. As though he had never even occupied a tiny part of her life. She had cut contact completely—or so he had thought.
Now it seemed that his staff had been instrumental in that sudden severing of all ties, and his eyes narrowed thoughtfully as he stared at her. He employed people to act on his decisions, not to make them for him.
‘So, how many of the famous d’Arezzo workforce will be accompanying us to Pantelleria?’ asked Jennifer.
‘None.’ He savoured the moment. ‘Nessuno. Just us.’
Jennifer blinked in surprise. ‘No chef?’ she echoed. ‘But you always take Gerard with you!’
A sense of regret washed over him. Was this what he’d intended when he had started chasing his dreams? To employ so many staff that he seemed to have lost control of his own life? ‘I’ll do the cooking,’ he drawled.
Jennifer’s surprise increased. ‘You?’
‘Do you really consider me incapable of living my life without any staff to help me, Jenny?’ he demanded exasperatedly. ‘That I never knew what it was to be cold or go hungry? Or to take jobs that I hated in order to survive before I got my big break?’
‘Well, in theory, no—of course I don’t. But when I met you you were so successful that it was hard to imagine you being anything else. Like a slim person telling you they once had a weight problem. You can’t quite believe it.’
‘Well, believe it,’ he said quietly, and smiled. ‘And come and meet our pilot.’
He had given her a lot to think about on the flight, but the reality of what they were doing hit her when the luxury private jet touched down, and she turned to him with wide eyes. ‘Are we completely mad, do you think?’
He gave a lazy smile. ‘Very probably.’
And the easy intimacy of that smile spelt danger, reminding Jennifer to be on her guard. To be careful to protect her feelings. Because nothing had changed between them. This trip didn’t mean that they were compatible, or that they weren’t in the process of getting a divorce. She was having a baby. That was all.
Pantelleria’s October air was still deliciously warm, and coastal flora bloomed in a profusion of pinks and reds and yellows. The crystal blue waters which surrounded it were rich in lobsters, and in the fertile valleys of the interior grapes grew as large as plums. It was like paradise.
Matteo felt the weight of expectation lift from his shoulders as he drove along the familiar unchanged roads to the Valle della Ghirlanda and his dammuso.
These days, superstars visited the island, but Matteo had fallen in love with Pantelleria as a child—when his parents had saved up enough money to send him to stay with one of his aunts during one long, dry summer. His family had laughed when he said he’d own a house there one day, but sure enough he’d done it—buying the dammuso with his very first film cheque. He had set about completely modernising the old building, whilst making sure it retained its natural charm.
It offered two terraces—one by a vast swimming pool which had a backdrop of the distant sea. The high walls hid a secret pleasure garden, with an irrigation system which had been built by the Arabs during their four-hundred-year occupation.
But it was the cool, domed main bedroom which Jennifer longed and yet dreaded to see—with its huge bed and restful simplicity. If only she could close her eyes and take herself back to the person she’d been then…would she have done anything differently? Would he?
‘I guess you’d better sleep in here,’ said Matteo, as they both stood in silence looking into the room.
‘And you?’
He shrugged. ‘The guest room is prepared.’ He wondered if she would heed the unspoken question in his voice. Was she thinking of inviting him into her bed—to maybe build some kind of way back through the physical intimacy of being close once more?
But Jennifer didn’t hear; she was struck dumb by the c
hain reaction of feelings which had been sparked by being in this room, this house. Delight, sadness, regret, and sorrow—all those emotions and a hundred more besides flowed over her in a bittersweet tide.
She stared at the bed as if it was a ghost—and in a way it was. And imagine if the ghost of her honeymoon self were to look up and see what had become of her and Matteo. Separated—with only an unplanned baby holding them together. How heartbroken that madly-in-love Jennifer would have been.
‘Our baby should have been conceived in a bed like this,’ she whispered—as much to that ghost of her former self as to the man by her side. ‘Not in some seedy lift.’
‘So many should haves, Jenny,’ he said, and his deep voice was etched with pain, too. ‘We should have listened more. Trusted more. Talked more. We should not have been too proud to say what was on our minds.’
‘We should not have been parted so much,’ she ventured—because this was a game it was frighteningly easy to play. There was a whole list of things they had done wrong without meaning to. Had she and Matteo just got unlucky? Or had they simply been too bound up in selfish interests to cherish their marriage properly?
‘Do you think those problems happen with all couples—only some work out how to deal with them?’ she questioned.
