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‘Plenty for me.’ Nico shrugged. ‘So what’s it to be?’
‘Nico, I don’t want to cause trouble. I just want to forget—’
‘You willneverforget,’ Nico interrupted. ‘And nor will Louanna and the children,’ he added. ‘I know that for a fact. Ignoring and denying and sweeping things under the carpet does not improve the situation one iota. It needs to be faced.’
‘Leave it, Nico, please.’
He did not.
Sometimes she forgot that Nico was just as Sicilian as her.
Nico’s stunning apartment became busy with two uniformed police officers, who took a detailed statement. It was exhausting, but there was relief at the end, when Aurora asked if Louanna would be safe.
Nico answered for the police. ‘She will be fine. Right now she is tucked up at my hotel with the children.’
When the police had gone, Aurora turned to him. ‘You didn’t have to do that.’
‘It was my pleasure,’ Nico said. ‘I will ensure she is looked after and I will have my lawyers help her.’ He saw her bemused frown. ‘Louanna gave you a home when you needed one, and—’ He stopped whatever he had been about to say. ‘Go to bed,’ he told her.
‘I can’t. Gabe is asleep,’ she said. ‘I don’t like to bring him into bed with me in case I smother him.’
Yet she was tired—terribly so. All the adrenaline that had fired her seemed to have left en masse.
‘I could maybe take a drawer and put him in it. Or if you have a box…’
‘Or I could hold him.’
It was Aurora who was silent now.
‘Surely that’s better than a box?’ Nico said.
‘I sleep better when he is next to me.’
‘Let me hold him, Aurora.’
She handed Gabe to him and he took the baby awkwardly and held him in one arm.
‘You have to support his head.’
‘I am.’
‘And if he wakes there are two bottles left. I should put them in the fridge…’
‘Go to bed, Aurora.’
‘Which bed?’
She flushed as she asked the question—and then Nico took her breath away.
‘The one he was made in.’
Sucha direct answer—and it told her that Nico did not doubt for a second that the baby was his.
It was actually a relief to close the bedroom door and be alone.
Nico knows.
How he felt about being a father was another matter entirely, but she felt a sagging of relief that he finally knew.
