Socialite's Gamble

‘Oh, it’s not love at first sight for Aidan and me,’ Cara sputtered.

Kate touched her hand. ‘It’s obvious you’re both completely smitten. You can’t keep your eyes off each other.’

Embarrassed that she had been caught out, and sure that Kate was referring to her more than Aidan, she smiled gratefully as Kate’s toddler wandered over and nearly stuck ice-cream-covered hands all over Kate’s designer skirt.

Before Cara could warn her about the impending disaster Kate grabbed the child’s hands and held them aloft as she tickled her daughter with her other hand. ‘You little rascal. Go do that to Daddy.’

‘Daddy work.’

‘Yes.’ Kate threw Cara a conspiratorial glance. ‘Go to Uncle Aidan. He’s always got time for his goddaughter’s sticky hands. Go and show him.’

Kate gave Cara an impish grin as they watched the tiny girl in a pink-spotted dress toddle up to Aidan and tug on his jacket.

Cara was mesmerised, wondering how he would react, watching avidly as he glanced down and automatically scooped the little girl into his arms, completely oblivious to the disaster being rendered on his jacket. When Ben nudged him, Aidan glanced down at the creamy smear near his shoulder. Ben grabbed a napkin from a nearby table and wiped the little girl’s hands and Cara’s heart jumped against her ribs when both men grinned instead of growing angry.

And from there it was impossible to prevent herself from imagining what it would be like to have a child with a man like that. What it would feel like if they were a real couple. She was very much afraid it would feel a lot like love. For her, anyway …

And who’s to say it couldn’t be? she thought.

Love happened when you least expected it, didn’t it? Why was she so certain that it could never happen for her?

The little girl had the same caramel-coloured hair as Aidan and could almost be his daughter. She heard Kate giggle beside her and glanced at Ben just in time to catch the look of retribution he threw at his wife.

Cara didn’t even try to hold in her smile. Now that was true love, she thought, unable to swallow past the lump in her throat.

She watched as Emma squirmed out of Aidan’s arms and then rushed back to throw herself at her mother. Kate scooped her up and landed kisses all over her soft cheeks.

For Cara family didn’t involve parents. It involved only her adored siblings. It had been Lucilla and Antonio who had changed her nappies and fed her when her constant crying had sent another nanny running to a different job. It had been Orsino who had put Band-Aids on her elbows and knees when she’d tried to follow the twins up the side of Chatsfield House in a game of cops and robbers. It had been Lucca who had helped her through her art courses. It had been Nicolo who had pulled the cigarette from her fourteen-year-old lips after she’d returned home from boarding school and told her he’d beat her senseless if he ever caught her smoking again. And it had been Franco who taught her how to avoid the media—not that she’d learned that lesson very well.

In her deepest, most cherished dreams, though, this was what a real family looked like. A man and a woman who loved each other enough to push through any bad times, and a child they adored beyond comprehension.

The four Fijian guitarists entertaining the dwindling lunch crowd out on the wide deck were superb. Aidan folded his arms as Emma reached up to take Cara’s hands so she could spin her in yet another dizzy circle on the dance floor.

‘She’s nice,’ Ben commented. ‘Different from what I thought she would be, though don’t hit me for saying that.’

Aidan glanced at Ben. ‘Why would I hit you for saying that?’

Ben shrugged. ‘I’d clock any man I thought was making a derogatory comment about Kate.’

Aidan didn’t want to reply to that because it had been his first reaction, as well.

He wondered what Ben would think if he told him how Cara had commandeered his car and allowed herself to be used as a stake in a game of poker. Then he realised that he no longer cared about all that.

Instead he had been contemplating how she had struck up an easy rapport with the islanders and even had the schoolchildren braiding her hair. It was true that the islanders were incredibly friendly, but most were quite shy, and didn’t easily permit intimacies such as touching. That thought brought to mind the look they had shared after lunch. The soft glow of her face had reminded him of how beautifully flushed she had been in his arms the other night. How her flesh had leaped at his touch with a hunger that seemed to match his own. And then outside earlier, when he’d nearly given in to temptation once again in full view of anyone walking past.