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There was no response she could give to that he wouldn’t have seen as a challenge she had no intention of meeting, so she’d swallowed it all down. She’d accepted that for the first time in as long as she could remember, she was well and truly left to her own devices.
She’d gone out and lost herself in the ancient streets of the eternal city.
And it was out in the chaotic splendor of three thousand years of human habitation, losing herself on one street only to find her way back on another, that she realized she’d completely forgotten that Christmas was coming.
When normally this was her favorite time of year. The pressing dark, and the bright lights making joy against the night.
She found herself in a café in a bustlingpiazzaone late afternoon, with a latte steaming gently at her elbow. It had been a wet day, cloudy and moody, and much too cold. She had left Dante in the capable hands of his caregivers. Who, if she was honest, she quite liked herself. And how could she argue with Pascal’s desire that he receive that kind of attentive care when she herself had left him with the neighbor while she worked?
She couldn’t. Or she would have, to be more precise, but she didn’t quite dare.
There was something about Pascal here, prowling around his natural element, that made Cecilia feel as if she’d lost the ability to keep her feet on the ground. And not because it was cracking or rolling beneath her the way it felt sometimes, but because he’d taken it.
She blew out a breath as she looked at the bustlingpiazza, and all the Christmas lights and decorations that made it gleam no matter how dark or thick the incoming night. She could see the gleaming trees, done up proud and bright. She could hear thezampognariplaying the mournful bagpipes, just as the Sicilian family had always claimed was tradition down south.
For a moment she felt very nearly at peace.
The abbey had always felt magical to her this time of year. The sisters had sung carols every morning, and the village itself had done itself up with trees draped in lights, wreaths on the doors and candles flickering in every window.
And suddenly, the fact she wasn’t there to see it this year took her breath away.
Cecilia hadn’t expected to miss home this much. It felt like a physical pain, wrenching and terrible, that she couldn’t simply go outside, walk for five minutes no matter the weather and find herself in the cool, serene embrace of the abbey. That Mother Superior was not on hand for a dry comment, a bit of wisdom, or both.
She was well and truly on her own for the first time in her life, and Cecilia couldn’t say she liked it.
Later, when she’d drained her coffee and left the café, she found her way home again through the tangle of streets, packed full of eras and people and cars that roared this way and that and parked in all directions. She only got lost twice, which she thought showed improvement, and found her way into Pascal’s rambling three-story showcase of a home, resplendent in its usual state of modern, moneyed serenity. She was informed that her child was currently being fed and would soon after be bathed, before settling down into his evening routine.
They no longer pretended to ask her what she thought about this routine; they simply performed it.
Cecilia felt a surge of temper—or maybe it was fear—wash over her then. This was all part of Pascal’s plan; she knew that. He was going out of his way to show her how easily he could keep her son from her, in retaliation. And she was letting it happen. Just standing here, letting him do his worst. She should storm into the middle of Dante’s dinnertime, kick out all the staff members and reclaim her own son—
But even though she started across the polished marble of the foyer toward Dante’s set of rooms, she stopped.
Because like it or not, Dante was having the time of his life. What right did she have to take something away from him because her feelings were hurt? Or because she felt lonely? Whether she liked it or not, he was the only son and heir of a very, very wealthy man. If this was how wealthy children were raised—and she certainly wouldn’t know—who was she to deny him that?
She turned away from the hall that led to her son and headed for the nearest sitting room instead, so she could stare out the window at all the light and madness andpeoplethat made up the city she still couldn’t believe she lived in now. The glass of the window was cold beneath her fingers, but she didn’t lift her hand.
It wasn’t as if she didn’t see her own child. Dante always knew where she was and any of his new aides knew how to contact her if he needed her. She should congratulate herself on having raised such a confident child that he was happy to race around, immersing himself in his new life without giving her a second thought.
She would get there, she told herself. Maybe a little grimly. Somehow, she would find a way to be happy about all of this. For him.
“You look so glum,cara,” came Pascal’s low, insinuating voice from behind her.
As if the prospect amused him.
Cecilia took her time turning. It was early for him to be home, and she hated that she knew anything about his schedule. His routines. Because the real tragedy was that she’d started to anticipate his return every night. She could tell herself that it was because she grew ever more wary of him, and needed to buttress herself against him however possible…
But that wasn’t quite true.
She faced him, entirely too aware that she didn’t feel any one thing when she looked at him. It was all mixed up together. Guilt and temper, her long-held anger, and beneath it all, that heat he could generate without even seeming to try.
She could still feel that kiss he’d given her on their wedding day. The way he’d claimed her mouth with his and taught her things she didn’t want to know about herself, right there in front of the entirety of the church.
“I’m not glum at all,” she told him now. “I was merely contemplating, as ever, the fact that you insisted on this marriage. And yet apparently have nothing for me to do here but wander the streets of Rome like a permanent tourist.”
He stood in the doorway, still dressed in the sort of exquisitely cut suit he wore to work. And she really would have preferred the remove of a tabloid magazine, because the pages could only show him in two digestible dimensions. There was no way to sense the brooding power he wore. Or how impossible it was to look away from him. Or how she couldfeelhim, like a switch flipped deep inside her.
Magazines made it clear he was beautiful. But the truth was, he was dangerous.
