Modern Romance October 2019 Books 1-4. Кейт Хьюит

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СКАЧАТЬ not just that Nico had straightened up the bed. He stood there in his black lounge pants.

      Aurora laughed. ‘I thought they were in case you had to go to hospital.’

      ‘Marianna talks too much,’ Nico said. ‘But, yes, these are for emergencies—and you, Aurora, are always that.’

      She did not know quite what he meant, but he’d said it almost fondly.

      Nico knew what he meant. She brought drama and tension into Nico’s life every time he saw her. She made the blood race through his veins and sent warnings screaming into his brain.

      And always he fought to keep a cool head and control. The one time he hadn’t, or rather the few times he hadn’t…

      But he must not think of sex now—he just did not want Aurora out of his sight.

      At first they lay in a silence that was neither easy nor companionable; it was just silence as they both burrowed deeply into their own thoughts.

      It was Aurora who broke it. ‘I don’t like leaving Gabe’s night feeds to the nanny.’

      ‘Well, try not to disturb me when you get up to go to him.’

      She laughed in the darkness, and it scared her how right it felt to be in his bed.

      ‘Did it hurt?’ Nico asked. ‘The birth?’

      ‘Agony!’ Aurora said.

      ‘You didn’t tell your parents I was the father?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Why not?’

      ‘I don’t want to answer that, Nico.’

      ‘Okay.’

      ‘I don’t want to talk any more.’

      ‘Then don’t.’

      Aurora liked it that he did not push her to respond, and that he’d accepted her refusal to answer. She liked the feeling of being next to him in the darkness, even if he might not really want her there.

      And so they slept—albeit restlessly.

      Aurora rolled into him and rested her head on his chest, and then she found her fingers wanting to explore the dips in his ribs, and the hair on his stomach, but before she caved in and did, Aurora rolled away.

      And at midnight Nico woke up hard and pressed against her, so he turned onto his back and tried to think boring, unsexy thoughts.

      It was a joke that they’d pretended either of them would sleep. Nico wanted sex. And the woman he wanted to have sex with lay beside him. He could feel her desire in the thick air between them.

      Yet sex could only muddy the waters.

      He could tell that she was awake next to him.

      ‘Nico?’ she said. ‘We have to talk…’

      She said it as if he was the one who was reluctant—as if he was the one who had shut down the conversation two hours ago.

       Life with Aurora!

      But he didn’t bother pointing it out, for indeed it was time to talk, to work things out. Here in the dark.

      ‘What do you want to happen, Aurora?’

      ‘I don’t know.’

      ‘You must have thought about it or at least considered it.’

      ‘I’m confused,’ she admitted, and when he took her hand, she squeezed his back.

      ‘Then let’s talk it out.’

      ‘From what I can see I have two options.’

      ‘Options are good—so tell me.’

      ‘I want to tell you…’ She just did not know how.

      But as she lay in the darkness she found a way, and she spoke to him as she had to Louanna the night before Gabe had been born.

      ‘I wanted to tell—’ She had been about to say, to tell you, but held it in. ‘From the moment I found out I was pregnant I wanted to tell the baby’s father. After all, there is no doubt that Gabe is his. And I believe he would support the baby.’

      ‘Of course he would,’ Nico answered carefully. He would give the world to get her real thoughts, and if taking himself out of the equation helped, then that was fine with him.

      ‘But I worry,’ Aurora said, ‘that he might suggest the other option.’

      Nico was silent.

      ‘Marriage,’ she said. ‘You see, he turned me down once, and I would always feel I had forced him into it.’

      ‘Okay…’

      It was a gentle okay. It gave no indication as to his thoughts. More an acknowledgment that he had heard her.

      ‘I think,’ Aurora said, ‘that he will want the second option—even if he doesn’t really want it. He’s a good man, and very respected by my family. They would certainly expect him to marry me.’

      ‘And you don’t want that?’

      ‘No. I think I would prefer option one.’

      ‘Okay…?’

      It was the same response as before, but it contained a question.

      ‘You see,’ Aurora ventured, ‘I think he might regret that day.’

      ‘Well, I don’t think he does.’

      ‘I mean, he never wanted to marry…’

      Silence from Nico.

      ‘But now he will try to do the right thing by me. I would hate that. I think our marriage would be a terrible mistake.’ She struggled to voice the picture that danced in her mind. ‘He would come to Silibri and see us now and then…perhaps at weekends…and then return to his life. I would have a husband and Gabe a father and we would have respect in the village, and he would have his life in Roma. His stunning apartment and…’ She did not finish.

      ‘And?’ Nico pushed.

      ‘Other women.’

      Her breath was held tight in her lungs as he seemed to consider it.

      ‘You’d be okay with that?’ Nico checked.

      And because it was dark she could not see his smile. And because she was so focussed on the awful scenario that danced in her mind she did not hear the tiny tease in his words.

      She missed, completely, the fact that Nico had made a joke.

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