The Secret to Marrying Marchesi

The sniffs turned to sobs, and after a moment of indecision he hurriedly undid the seat belt and lifted the small bundle into his arms. She was light as a feather and fitted neatly against his chest. The cabin was cool, so he kept a blanket wrapped tightly around her. He was probably doing it all wrong, but at least she wasn’t crying anymore. He smiled as he felt a tiny fist grab on to his shirtfront. Two perfectly round blue eyes took him in, unapologetically curious.

The bathroom door opened and Nicole emerged, looking slightly less pale. She stood frozen for a moment, watching him with a strange look on her face. As soon as the baby caught sight of her mamma she was wriggling and craning away from him. Nicole made quick work of taking her into her arms and holding her close.

‘Sorry about that,’ she said quietly. ‘I suffer from travel sickness from time to time. The worrying probably didn’t help.’

‘It’s fine. I seem to have avoided breaking her for the time being.’

Nicole smiled, hugging Anna close to her chest. ‘She’s quite sturdy now, really. She was actually five weeks premature—you should have seen her when she was born...’

Nicole’s voice died away, her words hanging between them, heavy and uncomfortable. Then Anna laughed, reaching up to grab a handful of her mother’s dark hair.

‘I should probably go and freshen up,’ Nicole continued awkwardly. ‘I’ll take her with me this time. You probably have work to do.’

Rigo nodded, glancing at from his emails onscreen as she gathered up a bag of toiletries and disappeared into the bedroom at the back of the plane. Something dark and uncomfortable began to uncoil in his chest.

She was beautiful, his daughter. How he hadn’t seen the resemblance straight away he would never understand. But the mind played cruel tricks when it was angry, and he had most definitely been angry. He had missed so much already. He wondered if the little girl would somehow have already erected a great big wall between them. Or if she would remember his absence and think of him forever as somehow lacking as a father.

* * *

As Rigo stepped out onto the veranda of his Tuscan villa he was once again filled with a sense of bone-meltingly deep calm. He nursed a cup of freshly brewed espresso in his hands and sat down to watch as pink fingers of sunlight spread across the dawn sky above the vineyards. The villa sat on acre upon acre of sprawling lush green hills and farmland. He listened to the glorious absence of traffic noise, pedestrian voices and all the other sounds he associated with his life in Paris.

Nicole appeared beside him, dressed in only a light silk robe, her hair spread over her shoulders in a tumble of loose errant waves. He had made love to his wife once more in the night, after waking to feel her long limbs tangled with his own, and then again just before they had decided to get up early for breakfast.

‘This view is breathtaking.’ She sighed, leaning forward against the balustrade as she cradled her own steaming cup of coffee in her hands. ‘If it were mine I would never leave.’

‘Technically it is yours now.’ He stirred his coffee thoughtfully. ‘I bought this place to help drum up profit in the local area, with the vineyards and the stables, but I don’t think I’ve set foot here more than twice in the past few years.’

‘Don’t you ever take time off?’ she asked. ‘Wait—I already know the answer to that question.’

‘I live a very busy life, as you know. But I have been ordered by my PR team to take this honeymoon so I plan to make the most of it.’

‘You make it sound like such a chore.’ Nicole’s expression dropped a little, her eyes drifting away to gaze out at the sudden sparkling fountains of water that had begun to fly through the air as the sprinkler system began to drench the land.

‘I’m sorry if my lack of enthusiasm offends you, but I’m simply not built to be idle. It makes me feel edgy.’

She looked up at him. ‘That’s possibly the first spontaneously personal thing you’ve ever said to me,’ she said. ‘I was beginning to wonder if you might be made of stone under all that muscle.’

‘I think we both know that I don’t run cold with you, tesoro.’ He reached out to trap her in the circle of his arms, pulling her close.

Nicole laid her coffee down on the table beside them, placing her hands flat on his chest. ‘We communicate well in bed—that much is true. But I’m talking about when we’re not in bed, Rigo. It makes me uncomfortable to think that you know practically everything about me while I still know so very little about you.’

‘What would you like to know?’ he asked, leaning back against the balustrade.