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CHAPTER THIRTEEN
DANTEWASONthe way to the airport, which luckily had suffered no damage, and he was speaking to his brother via speakerphone.
‘I should get there before your flight leaves. Do you have to fly straight out?’
‘I’ve got a meeting I can’t get out of tomorrow.’
‘Right. I should make it before your flight if there are no hold-ups.’
‘Is your heroine wife with you?’
‘Heroine… Beatrice, you mean?’
‘You got any other wives? They are playing the video on the big screens and there’s not a dry eye in the house. She had all the kids singing and she’s carrying the little guy—’
Dante could feel the pressure build in his temples as he tried to speak. He managed to get the words past his clenched lips on the third attempt. ‘Beatrice is at the nursery, the one where the wall collapsed?’ The news of a successful evacuation had reached him but not that his wife was involved in the process.
‘Well, she was earlier, but the parents are being interviewed now and all are singing her praises. You’re going to have to name a park after her, or put up a statue or something.’
Dante, who did not connect with the amusement in his brother’s voice, swore loud and fluently, cutting his brother off mid-flow. He brought the car around in a vicious one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn that sent up a dust cloud of gravel, and floored the gas pedal.
Beatrice spent a luxurious half hour in a hot shower, washing off the accumulated dirt and grime. Dressed in a blue silk robe, her long wet hair wrapped in a towel twisted into a turban, she walked back into the bedroom. She had checked her phone sixty seconds ago but she checked it again. Nothing since the missed call earlier, but the mobile mast had been down for a good part of the day and there were numerous black spots on the island.
She sighed. At times like this a fertile imagination was not a friend. She knew that she wouldn’t be able to relax until she had contact from Dante again.
She walked over to the mirror, untwisted the turban and began to pat her long hair dry. She had picked up a brush to complete the task when the door burst open.
Dante stood there, his tall, lean frame filling the doorway, wearing fatigue pants that clung to his narrow hips; the vest that might once have been white was stained with dust and dirt. His dark skin seemed liberally coated with the same debris.
Relief flooded through her as her face broke into a smile of dizzy relief. ‘Dante!’ She was halfway across the room when she realised that something was very wrong. ‘Are you hurt? Has something happ—’
‘Quite a lot, it seems.’
She stopped dead. She could hear the flame pushing against the ice in his voice, and literally feel the raw emotion pulsing off him.
‘I asked you to stay safe, I asked you… You promised, and what do you do?’ He advanced a step towards her and paused, close enough now for her to see the muscle throbbing in his lean cheek. ‘I trusted you to take care of yourself and our baby and then what do I discover? That you decided to put yourself and…and our child straight in the path of danger, quite deliberately.’
She gulped. ‘The nursery, you mean? There was no danger. It was just, just…herding cats, that was all.’
‘You could have died,’ he rasped hoarsely.
She looked at this strange, coldly furious Dante and fell back on defiance. ‘You could die crossing the road.’
A hissing sound left his white clenched lips.
‘I told you to stay safe.’
Her chin lifted. ‘And I made my own judgement.’
‘You put our child in danger.’
‘How dare you?’ she cried, surging towards him, her hands clenched into fists, not sure in the moment if the anger fizzing up inside her was directed at the insulting accusation or the fact he was confirming that that was what this was about. It wasn’t her safety; it was the baby. It was always about the baby, this time and last time.
Suddenly she was angry with herself as much as him for wanting to believe differently, wanting to believe she was more than a means to an end, a person, not an incubator.
He watched as, hands outstretched, she backed away from him, her chest heaving.
‘How dare you even suggest that?’ she began, her low, intense voice building in volume with each successive syllable. ‘You are the father. Does it make you a bad father for putting yourself in danger today? No, that makes you a man doing the right thing. Well, I did the right thing today too. Women do not stay at home waiting for the heroes’ return and knitting socks these days…my child was never in any danger at any point!’
