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His eyes hardened, but she pushed because she wanted to know. To understand him.Hischoices.
‘But why London? Why that—?’
There was a knock at the door.
Flora jumped to her feet like a startled teenager and crashed straight into his chest. She looked up into his face, her palms resting on hard muscle. She could feel his heart beneath her fingers. A heavy thud which matched her own.
Simultaneously, they both looked at the door, and before she could ask him not to answer it, but to answer her question instead, he strode towards the door and yanked it open.
After a few minutes of whispered murmurs in Italian with whoever was on the other side of the door, he turned to her.
‘They’re lifting the anchor in fifteen minutes,’ he informed her, and his eyes told her this was it.
She must decide.
Was she in or out?
Flora stared back at him, at this beautiful man she’d made a baby with, and squared her shoulders.
She’d thrown her doubts and her needs into the world and someone had listened—he’dlistened. He had got down on his knees and talked her through her feelings. Without judgement. Without pressure.
However flighty she’d been, he’d listened to her needs—not told her to ignore her emotions, but to work through the choices that were available and come to a logical conclusion. She hadn’t had to choose her feelings over rationality. She’d combined the two. They’d worked through her feelings. Her thoughts.Together.
She was in, wasn’t she?All in.
The thoughts and the lists in his head that she wasn’t privy to pushed at the corners of her mind, but she held them back and focused on him, on this moment, and staked her claim.
‘I’m ready,’ she declared—because she was.
She stepped towards him. Put one foot in front of the other and felt her stomach fizz with an unknown feeling.
Anticipation?
No. It was excitement.
His bulk covered the entrance to the door, but as she approached he stepped aside and there was a woman. Smiling at her.
‘Grace will show you to your room,’ he said, nodding towards the smiling stranger.
Flora didn’t smile back. Her eyes snapped to Raffaele’s and her excitement fizzled out into a frown. ‘My room?’ she echoed.
‘The VIP suite,’ he answered, without a flicker of hesitation.
‘And where will you sleep?’
‘In my bed.’
Without me?
The words hugged the inside of her vocal cords. They were going to have different rooms. Separate beds. New rules for their life.
Realisation dawned over why he’d refused her mouth—her kiss—earlier.
He didn’t want her.
Raffaele just wanted the baby.
CHAPTER EIGHT
