Happy Mother's Day! - By Sharon Kendrick Page 0,53
had everything and yet she had nothing. All she had ever wanted and yet it felt completely empty. Just the same old one-sided relationship it had always been. She might as well have been back where she started—loving him from afar without daring to let it show.
It didn’t seem to matter if you made a baby between you and got married as a consequence of that—it didn’t change the fundamental facts. And those were that Gianluca simply didn’t feel the same way about her. That this life was a kind of compromise—and couldn’t she just accept that?
Because what was the alternative?
Aisling stared up at the ceiling, aware of the slow, steady breathing of the man beside her. Maybe she needed to initiate some kind of change—before she went mad with wanting what she could never have. Or worrying that one day he might find it with someone else.
She shook him gently by the shoulder, her fingers caressing the silk of his skin. ‘Gianluca,’ she said. ‘I want to go back to work as soon as possible.’
‘It’s only a little trip,’ Aisling said as she handed Claudio over to Carmela, and planted yet another kiss on top of his silky black hair. ‘And Paris isn’t far away.’
‘So you come back later today?’ asked the Italian girl quietly.
‘Well, I’ll probably stay overnight because I expect the meeting will run on into dinner.’ Aisling saw Gianluca come out of his study, carrying a sheath of papers which looked suspiciously like a contract, and raise his eyebrows at her in question. ‘I’ll catch a flight back first thing.’ She stared at her husband, looking so handsome and yet so impossibly forbidding. ‘If that’s okay?’
‘I think we might just be able to cope without you.’ He shot her a mocking black glance. ‘Tell me, cara, haven’t I seen that suit somewhere before?’
Aisling blushed. It was the one she had been trying on. The one.
She had managed to squeeze into it and had expressed enough breast milk for Claudio to be given in her absence, along with a long list of instructions for Carmela about what to do if he wouldn’t settle—and for her or Gianluca to ring her immediately if anything went wrong.
But there was no phone call—and while she was pleased that they hadn’t had to call her, she found herself feeling strangely disappointed, too. Was she so expendable, then? Didn’t Gianluca think that she might like to hear an account of the baby’s day while she was in a different country—or didn’t he care? Silly Aisling. Of course he didn’t.
She arrived to a chilly Paris and found it hard to settle during her meetings. Worse, she had little appetite for the delicious restaurant lunch she was taken to in the arts et metiers district. In fact, all she wanted to do was to whip out little photos of Claudio and show them round.
Was he missing her? she wondered. Was he doing that little thing he did when he’d just been fed—of lying on his back and kicking his darling little feet in the air? Gianluca always said one day he would become a striker for one of the top Italian clubs—while she had argued that he would be much better playing for an English side. Until they’d both decided that maybe football was a risky career for such a talented child.
But thinking like that didn’t help matters. It made her imagine an unimaginable future and ache with an odd kind of emptiness.
Stupidly, she found herself wishing she were back in her beautiful house with her beautiful baby—watching her beautiful man. Suddenly, she remembered how gentle Il Tigre could be. A strong man who could cradle a baby with infinite tenderness. Her heart turned over.
What wouldn’t she give for Gianluca to be missing her, too?
By mid-afternoon, she still hadn’t heard from them and she rang the house, but there was no answer. She tried Gianluca’s phone, but it just went straight through to voicemail and she left several messages asking him to call.
By late afternoon, she was frantic. Frantic enough to cut short her meeting and to cancel dinner and her hotel room and catch an early flight back to Perugia.
An empty stomach and self-doubt made her imagination work overtime. Claudio was sick. Gianluca had taken this opportunity to have the locks changed so she couldn’t get in! Gianluca had gone off with another woman! She had neglected her child by zooming off to the French capital and he would make her pay. And