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She named the department store. ‘I’m a window dresser.’
‘But I saw the sketches...’
Her glance went to the folders stacked behind the folded architect’s table, which she’d intended to put away in the spare room. ‘My sister and I had plans to start a small fashion label, but she got back together with her husband, and start-up businesses need some serious capital and time investing in them... In the meantime, I do actually like my job.’
‘Don’t married women work?’
‘It would be a long commute. Beatrice lives in San Macizo.’
His mobile black brows lifted. ‘Yes, I can see that would be pushing it...’ He paused, a frown corrugating his brow. ‘Beatrice?As in the—’
She cut him off. ‘Yeah, I have royal connections.’
‘Who could surely give you the capital you need to start up your business?’
At the hint of criticism in his voice she fired back angrily, ‘They have offered and I refused.’
‘Interesting.’ She didn’t ask what was so interesting and he didn’t elaborate. ‘So you have a niece, and now you have a nephew too.’ He watched closely as the shock of recognition flickered in her eyes.
‘Yes.’
‘I imagine that you’d do anything for your niece?’
‘Obviously,’ she responded, indignant that there could be any doubt about that before she saw the point he was making.
It was true she would do anything for little Sabina, who had an adoring mother and father, who would never ever be abandoned or made to feel she was not worthy of love. She looked up at Samuele over the rim of her teacup, feeling lighter as she shrugged off the invisible but very real weight of indecision.
Why would she do any less for her nephew, who was so much worse off than her niece?
‘I’ll do it.’
It would be fine, she told herself. All she had to do was remember that she could not fall too deeply in love with her nephew because, in reality, parting was inevitable.
The uncle...well, there was no danger of love being involved there, but she would have to keep some sort of check on the surges of attraction that might put her in danger of doing something stupid.
Like flying off to Italy with a man you barely know where your lack of childcare skills is going to be outed very quickly.
CHAPTER FIVE
SHESTRUGGLEDTOshake the feeling that she was there under false pretences as Samuele’s staff deferred to her on every matter to do with the baby on board.
Apart from an interval when he became fretful, which, according to one sympathetic steward who seemed knowledgeable about such things, meant that he was probably teething, he’d been no trouble at all.
‘Look at those hot little cheeks, bless him. We didn’t sleep for a week when our eldest was teething,’ she said, setting out the bottle of formula Maya had not needed to request, but had magically appeared.
As Maya jogged up and down later, Mattio in her arms, she could appreciate how much harder this might have been if there were more than the one other passenger on board. Samuele was certainly not going to complain about the noise of a grizzling baby, but even he had spent most of the flight locked in a private cabin where she presumed he was working, only appearing when they were about to land to ask, in what she felt was a critical way, if she’d had any sleep.
Did she look that bad?
‘He’s teething,’ she said stiffly, nodding to the baby, who had just nodded off himself.
‘Oh.’
Maya quite enjoyed seeing him look out of his depth. She could imagine that it was probably a once-in-a-decade thing, so she didn’t let on that she was too.
Once they disembarked a well-oiled machine seemed to spring into action, making the transfer into a luxury four-wheel-drive painless and swift.
The only blip in this process was when the passenger door was opened by one of the team whose sole purpose in life appeared to be saying‘sì’to Samuele. Though to be fair his attitude did not suggest he required deference. He was relaxed with all his staff, who seemed pretty at ease with him too. Maya, whose nervous system was on permanent red-alert mode around him, felt quite envious. She hesitated at the car door. She had intended to sit next to the baby in the back seat, though perhaps there was no such safe distance when it came to Samuele.
