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No—for she had never wanted to force him into doing his duty like this.
‘I’m going to make something to eat…’ Aurora said.
‘There’s a meal being delivered in an hour.’
‘A meal being delivered…?’ She frowned.
‘I often have the hotel chefs prepare my dinner.’
‘Well, I just want some bread,’ Aurora said. ‘Do you have that in your fancy house?’
‘I’m not sure,’ he admitted. ‘I don’t do the shopping. Marianna brought a lot of stuff over for Gabe…’
‘What did you tell her?’
‘Nothing,’ Nico said. ‘I just told her to arrange a nanny and that I needed stuff for an eight-week-old baby.’
‘And she didn’t ask any questions?’ Aurora looked over at him, and felt a delicious teasing in his vague answers.
‘She asked if you were breastfeeding.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said that I believed not.’
‘I wasn’t able to,’ she said.
‘Well, there’s plenty of formula and bottles, and there’s an emergency nanny on her way. There is a separate wing in the house, and she shall have Gabe with her at night.’
‘No.’
‘Aurora, even aside from the bruise, you look terrible.’
‘Thank you for being so tender in your assessment of me.’
‘You are exhausted.’
She was… Not from the birth—the fog had lifted from that. And not from the night feeds, nor the drama of Louanna and her husband.
It was from eight years of chasing his love and running from his love and then chasing it again.
‘You look tired too,’ she observed.
‘Because you’re exhausting, Aurora,’ he said, and then he smiled.
The nanny arrived a little while later, and as Nico went to the entrance hall to let her in Aurora sat there, feeling on the back foot, still dressed in his shirt because her clothes were being washed. She braced herself for someone brisk and efficient, as all the people Nico hired in Rome seemed to be.
Instead she was a… Well, all Aurora could think of was a vast Italian nonna, who hugged Aurora as if she had raised her and was besotted as soon as she saw Gabe.
‘He looks just like his daddy!’
‘That’s the assumption we’re working on,’ Nico said, to the nanny’s bemusement, but it made Aurora laugh.
And as the nanny got to know Gabe, so he wouldn’t get a fright when he woke in the night and saw her, Aurora and Nico ate dinner. A gorgeous osso bucco in a wine and herb sauce. There was even bread! Well, there were rolls…
And as they sat at his gleaming dining table, and dinner was served by staff from the hotel, Aurora’s stomach growled as wine was poured.
Nico must have sensed her discomfort and dismissed the staff back to the hotel. ‘Grazie,’ he said.
