Modern Romance October 2019 Books 1-4. Кейт Хьюит

Nico said, as if reading her thoughts.

      ‘Absolutely, it would be,’ Aurora agreed.

      ‘I don’t think anyone would close the drapes on this.’

      Please don’t, her heart said in response to his words. Please don’t banter with me and take me back to that day in Rome. Please don’t seduce me in this room that I love so much when I know you will only break my heart later…my heart that is trying so hard to mend itself.

      As the crowd moved off, Nico held back and waited for her attention.

      ‘About ten?’ he checked.

      Aurora swallowed but gave no response.

      ‘You have the key?’

      No, she wanted to say, you have the key. The permanent key. And you turn it, and you open me, and then you close me again. And I cannot be placed on lockdown for even one day more.

      No, she was not yet ready to tell him about the baby.

      ‘I’d better get on,’ she told him.

      It had been a rewarding though exhausting day.

      Aurora had slipped away in the evening, as Nico wined and dined his guests, though he himself barely ate a thing.

      Tonight—after this—he would sit on that balcony and he would wine and dine Aurora. And with the temple ruins as their backdrop, he would say what he had come to say.

      Nico escaped the celebrations just after ten.

      So certain of her love was he that at first it didn’t faze him that Aurora was not there.

      He ordered champagne and a spritzer. He ordered the freshest pasta, with a light basil and tomato sauce, and for dessert her favourite—Tiramisu. And he asked for the tray to be decorated with wild flowers, picked just before sunset.

      All the things he knew she loved.

      And he waited.

      And then he texted her.

      And then he drank the champagne as he called her cell phone but got no answer.

      The flowers and the food came, but the meal he had chosen with her in mind went cold beneath the cloches.

      Nico put on the television in his room with its most stunning view—just to check the news and be sure that wildfire had not ravaged the village again, nor had there been an accident on the winding roads. For surely Aurora would come if she could…

      He woke on the plush sofa to the sound of her laughter and a rare hangover.

      The sound of her low, throaty laugh had him looking around the vast suite—and then staring, bemused, at the television.

      Aurora looked amazing, with her hair freshly styled, wearing more make-up than usual, and in that gorgeous Persian Orange uniform.

      ‘The Temple Suite,’ she said to the interviewer, ‘is more than luxury. It is a place where you can retreat, where you can heal, where you can rest and ponder your life choices.’

      And it was then that he saw, tucked into the wilting wild flowers, a letter addressed to him. It was clear as he read it that Aurora had intended him to receive it last night.

       Nico,

       I have told Vincenzo that you want me to do the breakfast television interview. I’ve lied, but better that than be your plaything again.

       The concierge can arrange an intimate massage in your suite or, if you do not want Pino knowing your business, you can call Rubina’s and ask Madame to send someone to help you create another unsatisfactory memory of your time in Silibri.

       Sorry to disappoint, but my pride got in the way.

       Aurora x

      And then she laughed again.

      At least the Aurora on breakfast television did.

       CHAPTER ELEVEN

      ‘WHAT IS THIS?’

      Back in Rome, Nico wasn’t certain he had read things right and was immediately on the phone.

      Aurora had resigned.

      Aurora Eloise Messina. Now aged twenty-five. With a passion for the hotel like no other and a hunger to succeed, had left.

      It made no sense.

      He knew full well that she was furious with him. And after the stunt she had pulled Nico had been furious too and had stayed well back.

      But his anger was fading now—so much so that whenever he re-read that note he almost smiled.

      ‘Why did she resign?’ he asked.

      ‘She was headhunted.’

      Vincenzo sounded taken aback that the rather absent owner of the business was immediately on the phone to him the moment the email went out.

      ‘By whom?’

      ‘Aurora would not say. Apparently she was tired of her ideas being dismissed.’

      They had not been dismissed. Had she turned up for dinner that night then she would have known that.

      Nico called her. ‘What’s all this?’

      ‘Scusi?’ Aurora asked.

      She was sitting in her little pink bedroom as she awaited a taxi to take her to the station.

      Her parents had not taken the news of their daughter’s pregnancy well at all—especially as Aurora refused to name the father. A terrible row had ensued.

      Nico had been right: her parents did snoop, and they had gone through her phone and found the dating app she had downloaded in Rome.

      And now she had Nico on the phone.

      It was too much for her nerves today.

      ‘Why have you resigned without speaking first with me?’ he demanded.

      ‘Nico, I resigned and I have left. I don’t have to answer to you when you are no longer my boss.’

      ‘All right, then. Forget that I was once your boss and tell me. Why did you resign?’

      ‘So from what standpoint are we talking, Nico? As friends?’ Aurora’s voice was incredulous and angry, though she struggled to keep the hurt from it. ‘Because we are not friends, Nico. You yourself told me we could never be.’

      ‘Aurora—’

      ‘Or are we speaking as lovers?’ she interrupted. ‘But that can’t be because you have so many—surely you don’t expect them all to give you career updates?’

      ‘Aurora!’

      She would not let him in. ‘Or are we in a relationship, Nico? Oh, but that’s right—no. Because you don’t want one. You told me—’

      ‘And you told me you would never leave Silibri.’

      ‘I was sixteen years old when I said that. Tell me, Nico, is that the only reason you decided not to marry me?’

      Silence.

      As always, his silence killed her.

      She wanted to curl up on her bed and weep into the phone.

       Tell him. Tell him about the baby. Tell him that you have never felt so lonely nor so scared.

       No!

      And