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Dante had gone and left her literally holding the baby.
Alicia truly hated that blue condom.
Absolutely she did.
For in all honesty it would be so much easier if the tiny infant she was charged with taking care of was her own...
CHAPTER TEN
Sicily, now...
DANTEHADNEVERseen Alicia asleep.
For all the past they had shared, for all they had done, there was the odd realisation that he had never seen her sleep.
Or really even at rest.
Always busy, or talking, or imagining, or lying, or testing him. What he would do if...how... When there was silence, she filled it.
He knew her smile, her pout, her frown, knew when she lied, when she was upset, but he had never seen her asleep.
She was tough—he knew that. But not always.
Were they on for the weekend or off?
He knew the woman who’d been in his bed the other week...but not the one who’d walked into his suite with a feigned smile of surprise. And it was the oddest feeling to have Alicia back by his side.
For all the surprises she’d brought into his suite that morning, the biggest for Dante was that she’d never been back home.
It troubled him perhaps more than it should.
He wasn’t expecting an easy weekend, but he had no issue with slaying a few of her demons.
So long as she left his alone.
‘Alicia.’ He tapped her foot with his. ‘Look.’
She startled awake and looked at him for a moment with resentment, and then she too found her mask and smiled.
‘I dozed.’
‘So did I,’ he said. ‘I asked the pilot to take the scenic route.’
As he would have done for a client, but that was not so pleasant as her smile now, as she gazed out of the window.
‘To your left you can see Syracuse and Ortigia Island.’
They were over the Ionian Sea and now circling back towards Catania, the pilot informed them.
Though her village was in the south, still it felt as if she was coming home, for there was no other place on earth that sang to her soul the way Sicily did. It reached into the forgotten corners of her heart too, for she could recall Beatrice trying to drum into her the maritime borders of the Ionian Sea before it gave way to the Mediterranean.
Alicia, embarrassed that she could not read the names, had pushed the map away and shrugged. ‘Why would I need to know that?’
For moments like this—because after glimpsing their destination she found herself craning her neck and scanning towards the south, wondering if Trebordi was visible on this clear blue day, but too embarrassed to ask Dante. She was unable to meet his eyes, the recall of them so intense she could almost feel the windburn.
But then the plane suddenly dropped and she held her stomach. ‘Told you,’ he said. ‘The descent in a private jet is more rapid. Well, in comparison...’
‘I have nothing to compare it with, Dante. I’ve never flown before.’
