Happy Mother's Day!

We’re going to die! I’ll never get the chance to see my baby. Never get the chance to lie next to Francesco and feel the friction of his skin against my skin, smell the warm scent of his body and enjoy the touch of his lips on my skin, taste him …

‘Erin, it’s fine, we’ll be fine.’

She opened her eyes and found that the plane had levelled off and during the interminable time that it had been bounced around like a cork in a stream, somehow, even though it seemed a physical impossibility, Francesco had moved around to her side of the table.

She presumed that the arm resembling a steel bar that was clamped across her was the reason she had not been thrown from her seat.

A voice, presumably the pilot, came over the loud-speaker system. ‘Mr Romanelli, would you like to come up front? There could be a bit more of that.’

‘What does he think you can do about it?’ she demanded indignantly.

‘An extra pair of hands on these occasions does not come amiss,’ Francesco said, strapping her into her seat and giving a thumbs-up sign to the shaken-looking female attendant who was strapping herself into the seat beside her. Erin would have thought that any pilot would have wanted to keep nonessential people clear of the cockpit on such occasions, but she kept this opinion to herself.

When he bent down to brush his lips against hers and promised that there was no need to worry, she saw the gleam of exhilaration in his eyes and realised that, far from being terrified, her husband was enjoying this.

It wasn’t the best time in the world to learn you had married a madman, the sort of crazy who got a kick out of situations that would turn normal people into quivering lumps of jelly.

Her expression was indignant as she watched him stride away. ‘I don’t see why they want him. It’s not as if he’d be much use if the copilot falls out of the window or something.’

‘Well, actually,’ said the girl beside her, ‘he would. He’s licensed to fly this baby.’

‘Francesco has a pilot’s licence?’

She could see the girl thought it a bit odd that his wife wouldn’t have this piece of information, but she was too polite to say so.

‘He flies himself occasionally.’

Erin was spared the need to respond because they encountered some more turbulence. She never did ask Francesco if he had been in control while they endured the next ten minutes.

He finally joined her as they were circling the airport. He studied her face with concern.

‘You look shattered.’

‘You don’t.’ Obviously cheating death at twenty thousand feet was something that he found relaxing. ‘Guess which one of us is the normal one?’

He grinned and said she could nap on the drive out of the city.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

AND Erin did just that. She slept most of the way from the airport and woke as they turned onto the last mile of track that led to the home she had once shared with Francesco.

She felt her excitement mount as she picked out familiar landmarks.

‘You’ve resurfaced the road.’

He nodded. ‘I think you’ll find I have made quite a few changes.’

The location hadn’t changed—it was still simply stunning. It enjoyed total privacy, and mouth-watering far-reaching views over the hills and forests of the estate and beyond.

‘You’ve been doing some landscaping,’ she began, assuming the cleared section filled now with rows of olive tress were the changes he had referred to, when the house came into view and she knew she’d been wrong.

She caught her breath.

No matter what your taste architecturally, Erin doubted anyone arriving here would not gasp. ‘You’ve finished it!’

He pulled up on the cobbled area in front of the building and nodded. He held out his hands palm up for her inspection.

‘How do you think I got these?’ he asked, revealing a set of workmanlike calluses, which she duly admired.