Modern Romance March 2019 5-8. Dani Collins

to the coasters on the table.

      Ivo told her to make herself at home and vanished, leaving her to cope with the baby. She’d have liked to call him selfish but there were several hovering staff offering her assistance.

      Having read up on travelling by air with a baby, Flora spent take-off and the next part of the journey feeding Jamie, who didn’t appear to suffer any problems with the change in pressure. She had just got him changed and back to sleep when Ivo appeared.

      He wasn’t alone.

      ‘This is Cristina.’ The young woman smiled. ‘She’s one of the nannies.’

      It would have made less sense to Flora if he had said the woman was part of a boy band. ‘What do you mean, the nannies?’ The plural part hadn’t passed her by.

      ‘Well, Nanny Emily is getting on, though don’t let her hear me say it.’ The young woman beside him smiled. ‘And—’

      Flora cut him off mid-sentence. ‘If you think I’m handing Jamie over to anyone, you are off your head!’

      After scanning her angry face, Ivo turned to the young woman and said something in Italian that made her vanish. ‘I’m trying to make your life easier here,’ he said, struggling to hang onto his temper.

      Flora flung back the plait, and shook her head, causing stray red curls to drift across her face. Ivo, distracted by those golden-tinted wisps, fought a strong compulsion to push them back.

      ‘No, you are trying to take over my life. Jamie’s life.’ Give him an inch and she’d be asking his permission before she decided what dress to wear. This man was so typical of the breed, she decided, forgetting she had ever imagined for one second that she had misjudged him.

      ‘Where is the harm in having a nanny?’ Not accustomed to considering anyone’s convenience but his own, Ivo had rationalised the efforts he had made to make the journey and stay as comfortable and stress-free for Flora as possible by telling himself it had nothing whatever to do with sentiment, it was simple practicality.

      The last thing he wanted was her gratitude. He just wanted Jamie. Admittedly they came as a package but that, he hoped, was a temporary situation.

      Not gratitude, but the last thing he had expected was her spitting fury!

      Flora compressed her lips. ‘No harm at all if you live in the nineteenth century,’ she agreed with a smile that aimed for provocation, and if the tightening of the muscles around his mouth was any indication she succeeded.

      ‘Ever heard of delegation?’

      ‘Ever heard of consultation?’ she retorted, planting her hands on her hips as her chin lifted another defiant notch. ‘Ground rules, Ivo, where Jamie is concerned I make the decisions. Is that clear?’

      The look of astonishment that flickered across his incredibly handsome face might have been funny in other, less fraught, circumstances.

      ‘Was that an ultimatum?’ he grated, clinging to his temper.

      ‘Excellent,’ she approved. ‘You’re catching on. It’s possible you’re not as stupid as you look.’ About halfway through she sort of knew she’d gone too far, but she was on a roll and couldn’t stop. She knew she was shaking; it was always that way when she let her anger get the better of her.

      He didn’t say a word, he just looked down at her. The colour that had flamed in her face had faded, leaving it washed pale; her eyes were blue pools, the defiance in them now tinged with wariness. With no warning his anger snuffed out.

      She looked so tired but she was so stubborn. In his head an image materialised of him holding her until the stiff rigidity in her shoulders dissolved, she dissolved against him, warm and... He gave his head a sharp jarring shake to dislodge the image and the emotions that went with it.

      ‘I was trying to help, but if you enjoy being in a state of permanent exhaustion—fine!’ he said, wrapping up his misplaced concern in irritation. ‘Your choice. But for God’s sake sit down before you fall down!’

      Flora did, not because she was grateful for his reminder that she looked awful, but because her knees were shaking in reaction to the emotional confrontation. Probably the first of many, Flora girl, so you need to toughen up.

      ‘I should have discussed it with you.’

      The concession made her eyes widen.

      ‘But I just assumed...’

      ‘What, that babies have an army of nannies and live in nurseries?’

      ‘I did,’ he said.

      ‘And look how well that turned out!’

      He responded to her soft taunt with a grin that literally took her breath away. Wow, if Ivo Greco decided to seduce a girl she’d be seduced, Flora realised, no if, but or even maybe.

      In her anxiety to push away the thoughts and the insidious warmth unfurling low in her belly and confusing rush of feeling that came with it, she said the first thing that came into her head, a question that was already there but she’d never intended actually to ask.

      ‘How old were you when your parents died?’

      His smile vanished to be replaced by a more familiar hauteur. She bent her head, waiting; she could almost smell the chilly put-down coming her way.

      It didn’t come.

      ‘I was a few months old when my mother died.’ Her head came up with a snap. ‘She was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was pregnant, but she delayed treatment until after I was born... So you could say I killed her.’

      His father had.

      He’d apologised the next day, tears streaming down his face as he’d said over and over, ‘I didn’t mean it.’

      It was not a memory he accessed voluntarily, though the smell of stale alcohol on someone’s breath always brought the moment back.

      ‘Only if you were a total idiot!’ she retorted, hotly indignant—furious! Surely no one would allow a child to think that? To potentially carry that sort of guilt through life and into adulthood?

      Eyes misted, she turned her head sharply, embarrassed by the emotions that threatened to find release in tears, emotions that only intensified as her eyes drifted towards the figure of the sleeping baby.

      She might never know what it felt like to hold her own baby but she could imagine—imagine being willing to give anything for the life you had created.

      ‘I remember my dad,’ she said to fill the silence that was growing. ‘Though it’s hard to know when the memories are mine and when they are stories mum and Sami told me, if you know what I mean.’

      ‘Our father didn’t tell us stories. He drank and he wept, spent weeks in bed and then he killed himself because he couldn’t live without her.’ And you are telling her this why, Ivo?

      The fact that this tragic information was delivered in a tone that was totally devoid of any emotion made it all the more shocking.

      Flora’s tender heart ached in her chest; she hurt for the boy he’d been, the pain real.

      ‘Poor man,’ she whispered, thinking of poor boys left to be brought up by an army of nannies and a grandfather who, if the Internet opinion of him was even half true, was not exactly warm and cuddly. Flora was really trying hard to reserve judgement, but it wasn’t easy.

      ‘Poor man...’ Ivo ground out the words as he surged to his feet.

      Flora sat still and silent. His intimidating height advantage was emphasised even more than normal by the confined environment. ‘I just meant—’

      ‘Weak man,’ he bit back in a clear, cold, contemptuous voice before dark lashes veiled the anger and pain she had glimpsed in his eyes and he delivered