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“Do you have any more of those little biscuits that came in the room? We’ve eaten all ours.”
“Oh.” Ava nodded jerkily. “Of course. I’ll bring some down.”
“Thanks.”
Ava went gratefully from the cottage, but not before she saw the woman with the long mane of bright fair hair put a possessive hand on Cristiano’s waist. Tears stung her eyes as she stalked back to the main house, and how she hated them for her weakness!
Marie and Milly were no longer in the kitchen when she returned. Ava frowned and called out, but there was no reply. She went back upstairs, and then heard the unmistakable tones of splish splashing.
“Oh, Aves, I had to give the little pumpkin a bath. She had yoghurt caked in her nostrils,” Marie laughed. “And her fingertips and her ears and her neck folds.”
“Thanks.”
But something was wrong, and of course Marie noticed. “Ava? What is it?’
“Nothing.” Her smile was overbright.
“Do you need me for something?” Marie asked, wiping her hands on a nearby towel.
“No, no.” She was being a complete coward to shy away from going back to the row of accommodation. After all, she’d had months to prepare for Cristiano’s visit. That he had finally arrived was not something that should have been derailing her so spectacularly. “I just have to take some refreshments out to the cottages. Are you okay here?”
“Okay? Once Miss Milly is her lovely clean self again, I was planning on reading her some stories. Maybe some Stephen King or James Patterson.”
Ava let out a laugh. “Marie, have I ever told you that you’re a life saver?”
“Hundreds of times,” Marie grinned. “But I never get sick of hearing it.”
“Then you’re a lifesaver.” Ava called over her shoulder as she left the bathroom and moved back downstairs. “And no The Shining, thank you.”
Of course Marie would never have dreamed of exposing Milly to anything inappropriate. Marie had six younger sisters, and she was a dab hand at anything toddler-related. Ava had come to depend on her in a myriad of ways she hadn’t foreseen when first she’d hired the couple.
In the year and a half since Marie and Jackson had come to work for Ava, the burden of running everything single-handedly had lifted. She had someone to share her worries with. To talk to if she were lonely. To laugh with when Milly did something adorable. To turn to when she needed help. And for Ava, so used to doing things on her own for so long, this was a novelty indeed.
Oh, her sisters were wonderful. But they were far away, living their lives. Ava had learned, in a way she could never forget, that people who sought travel and adventure would never welcome the oppression of that instinct. And so she’d waved her sisters off with a smiling face and a heavy heart.
What had Cristiano said to her, the night they’d first made love? A crinkle furrowed between her brows as she began to lift her homemade cheese biscuits onto a plate. There is so much of the world I wish to see. So many people and places. I will never feel complete. In my whole life, I will never feel ‘finished’, because I know I can never get everywhere I want to. But I can try.
She’d understood then with a searing clarity that Cristiano would always love travel more than anyone or anything else. Her sisters, though not quite as dramatic about it, were the same. Especially Olivia, who was forever moving about to satisfy her quest for new scenery.
It had been the right decision to let him go. She nodded to herself in a gesture of reassurance and then lifted the plate with both hands and pushed out of the kitchen.
November was a hard time for Ava. Christmas – which had always been her favourite celebration – had become an ache in her soul since losing their mother Meredith. How could she not hear the beetles in the air and feel the warmth on her skin without remembering the last time she’d experienced those things with Meredith still alive?
She angled her head unconsciously towards the ocean. The setting sun was casting the sky in shades of orange and peach, and the water seemed to glimmer with golden sparkles.
It was the most beautiful sight in the world.
No amount of travel would make Ava feel differently.
Besides, Cristiano had gone off in search of adventure, and Ava had lived one of her own.
Milly. She bit down on her lower lip when she thought of their daughter. With her enormous brown eyes and shock of curling black hair. If Cristiano saw her, he would be a fool not to wonder.
For a brief moment, perhaps, he might believe her to be Angus’s. But Angus was fair with freckles and pale skin. His eyes were green, like his father’s before him. Cristiano was no fool. He would quickly discount that notion.
Ava groaned. Her conscience was tearing her in shreds. She wanted to tell him. It had sat heavily on her shoulders for years that she had kept their daughter from him. And yet he would hate her. Both for the initial deceit, and for the very existence of a child who must curtail his free-wandering of the globe.
He would resent Milly and hate Ava, and yet he would do what he considered to be the ‘right’ thing, because Cristiano was a good man. A man who had been raised with values, who was also instinctively moral.
