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CHAPTER SEVEN
THEYEMERGEDFROMthe low-lying fog that had blanketed the area around the private airport into the spirit-lifting blue above. Beatrice’s spirits didn’t lift; the nervous tension making her shoulders ache didn’t dissipate as she undid her seat belt and leaned back in the seat that bore an imprint of the Velazquez crown on the leather headrest. It had more of a welcoming embrace than any she had received from the Velazquez family, but then they were not really a tactile family.
She was under no illusions that any welcome she had in the future would be because of the baby. She didn’t care about that, but the equally inescapable fact was that Dante only wanted her here because of the baby. She avoided the temptation to read anything else into his determination to rekindle their marriage.
The pilot’s disembodied voice spoke, adding to his words of welcome the less welcome fact that there was the possibility of some turbulence ahead. Tell me about it, Beatrice thought, looking around and seeing that someone had already whisked away the fur-lined parka coat she had worn for the journey to the airport. She wouldn’t need it, or the layers she had on underneath, at the other end. San Macizo enjoyed an all-year-round temperate climate.
She continued to exchange her boots for the flats she had pushed into her bag as Dante translated the pilot’s Italian words.
She smiled and nodded absently, even though she hadn’t needed him to translate. She had continued the lessons she had begun without much optimism during her brief sojourn in San Macizo where Italian, introduced to the country by the royal family centuries before, was the official language. Though she had never encountered a native who didn’t speak English and French fluently, like Dante, who was also fluent in Arabic and Spanish.
Free of her layers, she adjusted the cuffs on her white shirt and watched as Dante unfastened his own seat belt and the buttons on his dark grey suit jacket and waited, wondering if it was worth getting the paperback out of her bag. She doubted she’d be able to concentrate—her nerves were too wound up.
No massive surprise there. What she had committed to was about as sane as deliberately opening a half-healed wound, and, as it turned out, just as painful. Up to the point of being welcomed onto the private jet she had not allowed herself to think about what lay ahead. Now she couldn’t stop thinking about it.
After a few moments, a small frown appeared between her brows. Dante hadn’t got up to seek a quiet, private office space to work in; he hadn’t even reached for the laptop that lay on the seat next to him, let alone buried himself in it.
She found this break in familiar routine slightly unnerving. She searched her memory and could not remember a time, at least not since he had stepped into the role his brother had walked away from, that Dante hadn’t immersed himself into work at every opportunity.
She had teased him at first about his ability to totally shut out distractions until she had realised that she was one of those distractions, then it had seemed less amusing.
Dante still showed no sign of moving away, and doing so herself would seem a bit obvious, so she exhaled a resigned sigh and reached for her book. Even if she could not lose herself in the world of fiction she would have somewhere to look that wasn’t directly at her husband. Husband… She could remember saying that word out loud and smiling—it seemed a long time ago.
These days she felt impatient with her younger self for being so naive; while she had been walking on air she doubted that, despite what was written on a piece of paper, Dante had ever felt he was her husband, not really. But he was the father of her child.
She desperately wanted this baby. It was that utter certainty that was getting her through; the life growing inside her was light at the end of the tunnel.
She couldn’t assume that Dante would feel the same way. She had to see things the way they were and not the way she wanted them to be.
Attracted to the wrong man and refusing to see the things that she didn’t want to. Now, where have I seen that before? An image of her mother’s face floated into her mind.
Beatrice found the idea of history repeating itself through the generations deeply depressing and she intended to break that cycle. It was just a pity she hadn’t displayed the insight earlier, instead of spending her short marriage living in a fantasy world of her own making.
Just thinking about it, she could taste the self-disgust in her mouth. The irony was, of course, that when she had finally opened her eyes to the reality of her marriage it had been impossible not to be struck by the fact she had been guilty of the same weakness that she had struggled to forgive in her own mother.
But though she couldn’t avoid the glaring comparison with her own mother, she had never extended it to include Dante, who was nothing like her ex-stepfather, who had been a manipulative, cruel bully with a sadistic streak.
Dante was not the man she had wanted him to be. She had created a fiction; that did not make him a bad person. He was absolutely straightforward, strong, complex, impatient, arrogant and had zero tolerance for incompetence, but his only real sin had only ever been not to be in love with her.
But that didn’t mean she had the right to rob their child of a father’s love, nor rob their child of his heritage. But she was equally determined not to allow that heritage to emotionally damage the baby.
‘Are you all right?’
She jumped as the sound of Dante’s voice broke into her thoughts.
‘What? Yes. Why…?’
One sardonic brow hitched, he nodded towards the book on her lap. ‘It’s upside down.’
She felt the guilty flush climb up her neck as she turned it around and then closed it. ‘I never liked flying much.’
‘There are no barriers, medically speaking, for you to fly at this stage.’ He caught her surprised look. ‘I have been reading up a little.’
‘This is staying between us for now…right?’
‘I have made some enquiries concerning obstetricians. Discreet enquiries. I understand that early monitoring is important.’
She thought about that and nodded. ‘So, what have you told your parents?’
