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‘Get yourself some proper maternity clothes.’
She looked at her charity shop finds. Maybe she damn well would. Maybe she’d stop playing the martyr and get back in the saddle of her own life. Six months ago she’d been a different person. She’d been pushing ahead, her face turned towards the sun. That Coral wouldn’t have let herself be treated like some temporary sex toy. That Coral was out there cutting her path, not hiding behind her pregnancy, begging for a job.
She picked up the tunic and held it out. Was she really going to continue to dress herself in rags and trundle about on public transport while her half-brother and the father of her child dressed in silk and cashmere and were ferried around in private jets and yachts? What kind of fool did that?
Not this one. Not any more.
She sat on the bed and stared around.
This stopped now.
If she was a part of this world then she was going to be a full part. Not some supporting actress who stepped in for a sex scene and then waited in the wings while the men forged forward with their lives.
She had an unclaimed fortune…
She was in the middle of one of the most beautiful houses in Regent’s Park…
It was a Rossini house, but the Di Viscontis had houses all over the world too. And a fleet of cruise ships. Those were just the parts she knew about. She might have missed out on their wonderful world, but there was no way she would deny her son all the things she’d never had. She wanted to make him proud of her—of course she did. And that started with giving him somewhere to live that was warm and happy and safe.
Somewhere like this.
All around her the antique furniture of the Rossini family bore witness. How many other women had been in these rooms over the years and generations? She’d bet each elegant piece had seen its fair share of happiness and pain, marriage and divorce…
Raffa might be saying all the right things now, but how long would that last? How could she be sure he wouldn’t tire of her and the baby?
Suddenly she felt a sharp stab of pain—an echo of what her mother had been through, pining for her love and sheltering her child. How many times had she contacted Giancarlo, pleading for him to come back to her?
Coral shuddered and pulled the damp towel around her. She wasn’t going to allow that to happen. She wasn’t going to allow any man to hold the keys to her happiness. Because she could be sure of nothing in this world other than the fact that there was no one at her back and there never would be. Whatever she achieved in this world was down to her.
So maybe it was time that she stopped playing the pride card.
She looked around for the tablet. It must be in the office.
She put on a robe and hurried downstairs.
* * *
At the back of the house, behind the kitchens, a short flight of wooden steps led down to the basement. Raffaele stood there now, gazing down into the half-light, absorbing the familiar waft of dry air and the scents that marked out the laundry and stores of dry goods.
If he let his eyes glaze he could almost see the dogs in the corner by the door to the wine cellar. He could almost sense his father tinkering about, choosing wine for dinner, beckoning him closer, holding a bottle of vintage red covered in dust up to his nose and then blowing. Laughing as the cloudy puff settled in the air, on father and son together.
Memories like those were precious, rubbed from his mind like a genie from a lamp, but so fleeting and fragile. The harder he tried to grab at them the more quickly they disappeared.
He moved down each creaking step and into the depths of the cellar, going towards the safe room. Most of the jewellery was still here. Kept intact with everything else in the house, even the staff, as if they were waiting for the moment when the family would be back again.
And now it would. He could almost feel the past reshaping itself. It was going to happen. It was as if all those years of dark pain might now be eclipsed by some light, some happy symmetry, where he might once again taste the fruit of a real family.
He opened the safe and pulled out a box, finding immediately what he was looking for. His grandmother’s engagement ring. The ring he had pictured on Coral’s finger the moment he had known he was going to ask her to marry him. He held it between his finger and thumb and it caught flashes of light, even there in the cellar’s gloom.
Yes, it was such an obvious solution—and it would solve her anxieties in one moment. It was the only thing that made sense. It would give her the security she needed.
That had to be the reason she was acting out. She wasn’t angry with him—she was afraid. Afraid of being alone because Giancarlo hadn’t married her mother and hadn’t even tried to have a relationship with her. In her mind she’d been rejected and abandoned, so she was doing what all abandoned children did so well—keeping people back, because they’d only go and leave anyway. Didn’t he know that better than anyone? Never let people get close. But Coral didn’t have the benefit of several years of therapy to reach that conclusion herself.
