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‘I didn’t hear you come in.’
‘You were out of it. Come back to bed. Sleep when he does.’
‘No, I’m awake now,’ Aurora said. ‘And I’m hungry.’
But the deeper truth was she was nervous beside Nico. Nervous of the conversation to come and not sure how she was going to react to his weary, inevitable proposal.
There would be questions first, and accusations, but something told her that a proposal of marriage would come at the end of them.
Happy now?his eyes would say.
No—for she had never wanted to force him into doing his duty like this.
‘I’m going to make something to eat…’ Aurora said.
‘There’s a meal being delivered in an hour.’
‘A meal being delivered…?’ She frowned.
‘I often have the hotel chefs prepare my dinner.’
‘Well, I just want some bread,’ Aurora said. ‘Do you have that in your fancy house?’
‘I’m not sure,’ he admitted. ‘I don’t do the shopping. Marianna brought a lot of stuff over for Gabe…’
‘What did you tell her?’
‘Nothing,’ Nico said. ‘I just told her to arrange a nanny and that I needed stuff for an eight-week-old baby.’
‘And she didn’t ask any questions?’ Aurora looked over at him, and felt a delicious teasing in his vague answers.
‘She asked if you were breastfeeding.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said that I believed not.’
‘I wasn’t able to,’ she said.
‘Well, there’s plenty of formula and bottles, and there’s an emergency nanny on her way. There is a separate wing in the house, and she shall have Gabe with her at night.’
‘No.’
‘Aurora, even aside from the bruise, you look terrible.’
‘Thank you for being so tender in your assessment of me.’
‘You are exhausted.’
She was… Not from the birth—the fog had lifted from that. And not from the night feeds, nor the drama of Louanna and her husband.
It was from eight years of chasing his love and running from his love and then chasing it again.
‘You look tired too,’ she observed.
‘Because you’re exhausting, Aurora,’ he said, and then he smiled.
The nanny arrived a little while later, and as Nico went to the entrance hall to let her in Aurora sat there, feeling on the back foot, still dressed in his shirt because her clothes were being washed. She braced herself for someone brisk and efficient, as all the people Nico hired in Rome seemed to be.
