Page 43 of Italian Baby Shock

Perhaps it had been then that all the anger he’d suppressed while he’d been a child trying to make two irrational people happy had started spilling out like poison. Anger at them and what they’d put him through, the childhood he’d been denied. Happiness. Security. Love.

All his parents had given him was their own rage, which they’d nurtured with their dysfunctional relationship and so now he was cursed with it too. There was no escape for him. There was always the doubt that if he gave in to it, he’d turn into them, violent and irrational and toxic.

But he’d been good these past few weeks. The simmering rage that had burned just beneath the surface of his skin had recededback down to where he’d buried it deep inside, and hopefully now it was gone for good. It hadn’t touched Maya or Lark, and he was glad.

He’d been feeling very glad at the Colosseum today, too, enjoying the feeling of Maya’s warm little body on his shoulders and hearing her laugh. He’d turned to glance at Lark to see if she was enjoying herself as much as he was, only to catch a glimpse of some troubled expression on her eyes, something painful. Then she’d looked away, avoiding his gaze.

A strange feeling had stolen through him then, an urge to find out what it was that was hurting her and take it away, soothe her. It was unfamiliar this feeling, yet he hadn’t questioned it after they’d got into the car. He’d asked her straight out what was wrong, but she’d only smiled, told him it was nothing and turned away.

Maya losing her toy had distracted him, yet he hadn’t forgotten. The smile Lark had given him had been fake. And he knew the difference. He’d been seeing Lark’s genuine smiles for the past few weeks, after all. When she held Maya in her arms and looked down at her. When he kept the light on at night, so he could watch her face as he made love to her, and after he’d given her as much pleasure as they both could handle, and after they’d both recovered, she’d smile slowly, like the sun coming up, lighting her face, lighting her green eyes.

Thatwas a real smile. But the one she’d given him in the car was not.

Perhaps he should have let it go, but he couldn’t. The knowledge that something was bothering her nagged at him like a shard of glass caught in a place he couldn’t reach, and he knew that he couldn’t ignore it. He had to find out what was wrong.

Her happiness was vital to his new legacy plan, which meant he had to fix it.

He’d got sidetracked by talk of her mother and he could see now why she’d been pretending today. It had made him inexplicably angry the way she’d been treated as a child, the burden of responsibility that had been put on her shoulders by her mother, and he’d found himself wishing he could change it. Go back in time and tell Grace Edwards to get out of her head and look at what she was doing to her daughter. An irrational wish. Nevertheless he wished it. But all he could do was tell Lark that she shouldn’t have had to deal with that, that it had been wrong of her mother, and hope Lark believed him. Also, that he wasn’t her mother and she didn’t need to do that with him.

Lark’s lashes lowered, veiling her gaze as she toyed with one of the buttons on his shirt. ‘It’s nothing,’ she said slowly. ‘Only...that night we met two years ago, I’d also just been to the Colosseum and I saw a family there. Parents and a child, and they were having so much fun. I remember wishing I could have had that as a kid.’ She let out a long breath and looked up at him. ‘Then we were there today and I realised I did have it. With you and Maya.’

He frowned, dropping his hands to her hips and then lower, sliding over the curve of her rear to bring her closer, where he preferred her. ‘You didn’t look happy, though,’ he said. ‘You looked as if someone had stabbed you.’

She stared up at him for a long moment. Then abruptly she pushed herself away and out of his arms. His first instinct was to grab her and pull her back, but he crushed the urge. If she wanted space then he had to let her have it. Her needs were important to his plan and he couldn’t let himself forget it.

‘What’s going to happen, Cesare?’ she asked. ‘When you find someone you want more than me? When you get tired of me? What will we do?’

His frown deepened. He didn’t understand why she was asking him this. ‘What has that got to do with you realising you have a family?’

‘That family I saw, they loved each other.’ Lark’s voice was flat. ‘All of them loved each other.’

‘So?’ He still didn’t quite see what she was getting at.

‘Our marriage isn’t a real marriage,’ she said. ‘We’re only together for Maya’s sake. So what happens if it breaks down between us? What happens if you decide you want someone else?’

‘Our marriage is very real,’ he insisted, slightly irritated because they’d already had this discussion right before she agreed to marry him. ‘You’ve taken my name. You wear my ring. You sleep in my bed. We live together. How is that not real?’

‘Because we don’t...care about other, do we?’ There was an odd pain glittering in her eyes that he didn’t quite understand. ‘And it’s the children that suffer when two people don’t care about each other, Cesare. You know that and so do I.’

A flicker of shock went through him, because he hadn’t been expecting this. It felt as if she’d taken a hammer to the most perfect mirror and now there was a crack running straight through it.

How could she think he didn’t care about her? When he’d done nothing but make sure she was happy for the past three weeks?

‘That’s not true,’ he said, itching to grab her and drag her back into his arms and show her just how wrong she was. ‘I do care about you. Haven’t I been proving it to you since we got married? Haven’t you been happy these past few weeks?’

She let out a breath, the expression on her face difficult to read. ‘Yes,’ she said, almost reluctantly. ‘I have. I just...want Maya to know what a good relationship looks like. What respect means. I want her to know what a good man looks like.’

That hit him hard, in a place where he knew he was vulnerable. Because he wanted that for Maya too, but he wasn’t a good man. He never had been.

You’ll just have to try harder then, won’t you?

Yes. He would.

‘I agree,’ he said. ‘And she will know, Lark. I promise on her life that she will know.’

Lark said nothing, her gaze was unreadable and he didn’t like it.

‘What more do you want?’ He was impatient now to get whatever this was out of the way so they could get on with being happy. ‘Tell me and I’ll give it to you.’

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