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As the crowd moved off, Nico held back and waited for her attention.
‘About ten?’ he checked.
Aurora swallowed but gave no response.
‘You have the key?’
No,she wanted to say,you have the key. The permanent key. And you turn it, and you open me, and then you close me again. And I cannot be placed on lockdown for even one day more.
No, she was not yet ready to tell him about the baby.
‘I’d better get on,’ she told him.
It had been a rewarding though exhausting day.
Aurora had slipped away in the evening, as Nico wined and dined his guests, though he himself barely ate a thing.
Tonight—after this—he would sit on that balcony and he would wine and dine Aurora. And with the temple ruins as their backdrop, he would say what he had come to say.
Nico escaped the celebrations just after ten.
So certain of her love was he that at first it didn’t faze him that Aurora was not there.
He ordered champagne and a spritzer. He ordered the freshest pasta, with a light basil and tomato sauce, and for dessert her favourite—Tiramisu. And he asked for the tray to be decorated with wild flowers, picked just before sunset.
All the things he knew she loved.
And he waited.
And then he texted her.
And then he drank the champagne as he called her cell phone but got no answer.
The flowers and the food came, but the meal he had chosen with her in mind went cold beneath the cloches.
Nico put on the television in his room with its most stunning view—just to check the news and be sure that wildfire had not ravaged the village again, nor had there been an accident on the winding roads. For surely Aurora would come if she could…
He woke on the plush sofa to the sound of her laughter and a rare hangover.
The sound of her low, throaty laugh had him looking around the vast suite—and then staring, bemused, at the television.
Aurora looked amazing, with her hair freshly styled, wearing more make-up than usual, and in that gorgeous Persian Orange uniform.
‘The Temple Suite,’ she said to the interviewer, ‘is more than luxury. It is a place where you can retreat, where you can heal, where you can rest and ponder your life choices.’
And it was then that he saw, tucked into the wilting wild flowers, a letter addressed to him. It was clear as he read it that Aurora had intended him to receive it last night.
Nico,
I have told Vincenzo that you want me to do the breakfast television interview. I’ve lied, but better that than be your plaything again.
The concierge can arrange an intimate massage in your suite or, if you do not want Pino knowing your business, you can call Rubina’s and ask Madame to send someone to help you create another unsatisfactory memory of your time in Silibri.
Sorry to disappoint, but my pride got in the way.
Aurora x
And then she laughed again.
At least the Aurora on breakfast television did.
