Then he would come home and she wouldn’t want to rock the boat with a fight then, either. Be a good girl, Lauren. Don’t make waves.
Her heart felt as though it would crack right open. This wasn’t the dream she had envisioned for herself! She hated that she was falling into the pattern of measuring her life by her husband’s comings and goings. Not that she didn’t spring to life when he walked in the door. Her body began tingling just knowing he was on his way home. By the time he arrived, they couldn’t get to the bed fast enough, barely speaking, insatiable. Then they’d laze about, saying nothing until she’d work up the courage to ask when he was leaving again because the only thing worse than knowing was not knowing.
A nameless tension would come between them at that point and would linger until he left again. She didn’t think he was cheating and the absences weren’t that long, usually only a few days, but she dreaded them. She felt so bereft. She didn’t even have to ensure his laundry was done or his toiletries were in order. He had residences all over the world and people who sent his suits for dry cleaning and recharged his shaver when necessary.
“I need a life,” she wailed to the empty kitchen one morning after he’d left. She could blame Paolo all she wanted for leaving her at a loose end, but the dissatisfaction and pining were not his doing. She’d married a man who didn’t love her and put herself right back into the position she’d been in when Mamie had died.
Lauren reflected on that. She had been on the brink of taking control of her life before Paolo had derailed her. Soon her baby would fill her days with diaper changes and feeding schedules and she’d be too tired to make love. Paolo’s sexual crush would cool to ambivalence and then what?
Her dream of a nuclear family would implode.
Swallowing back tears that seemed to be right under the surface these days, Lauren shook off her melancholy and reminded herself why she’d come to Italy: to find family.#p#????#e#
Heartened by the thought of doing something strictly for herself, she dug back into the few clues she had to the man’s identity. A message left with one of her grandmother’s oldest friends resulted in a surprise invitation a few days later to meet for dinner. Since Paolo wasn’t due home for another day, Lauren accepted and began packing a bag.
* * *
Paolo was beginning to loathe business trips. At one time they had energized him, but now the slightest delay or oversight fouled his mood. Anything that created more time away from Milan grated on him.
His childhood of bouncing from country to country and school to school began to make sense. His father had spent months at a time building the bank’s reputation globally. Given how his father had felt about his mother, it was no wonder the whole family had been carted along. All those fresh starts that his father had sworn to Paolo would build character were explained: Gino hadn’t wanted to sleep alone.
Paolo hated it, too.
He could almost hear Ryan snickering at the depth of Paolo’s fall into domesticity. The irony wasn’t lost on him that Ryan had never exhibited the same eagerness to rush home to the exact same woman.
Nor was it lost on him that Lauren had complained more than once about her first husband’s absences, but seemed almost anxious to get rid of her second, asking Paolo practically the minute he was in the door when he’d be leaving next.
It didn’t help that he was doubling up on his overseas duties, trying to square away as much as possible and delegate responsibilities so he could take time when the baby came. He felt like a schoolboy watching the clock, waiting for the bell that would release him into his life outside these walls, where Lauren and their baby were waiting.
An abrupt cancellation of a meeting by a European union representative allowed him to leave Zurich at noon, rather than waiting until the morning. Paolo frowned at the nearly visceral relief from pain. What was happening to him?
He brushed past the flight attendant in his own jet and had to fight the urge to enter the cockpit. He shouldn’t be so agitated that he wanted to take up old coping strategies, but waiting to be taken to Lauren felt intolerable. He wanted to pilot his return to her at his own agitated speed, pushing where possible and landing in record time before opening up the engine of his sports car full throttle to the lake house.
He made himself hold back, determined not to regress into that impetuous young man who’d taken too many chances because he couldn’t contain his emotions. Intense feelings that he’d managed to tamp down for years had been flaring up ever since Lauren had sashayed back into his life. That was intolerable.