“I just…” Hannah shook her head. “He doesn’t want to marry me, just to be clear. He wants to marry the mother of his child so that his son will have his name. Let’s not romanticize this.”
After his epic sword fight, Dominic looked to be approaching a level of excitement that would likely tip over too quickly into a meltdown, so Hannah and Cinzia moved to each take one of his hands and set off on a more sedate walk down the lane, the better to avert disaster.
For a time, as they walked, Cinzia was quiet. When they got to the bottom of the lane and turned back, Hannah picked Dominic up and settled him on her hip. He was already sleepy, and he rested his head on her shoulder, pressing his face into her neck.
Hannah breathed him in, and felt her load lighten that easily.
Only then did Cinzia comment. “The man is not simply a gift horse with a mouth you could look into all day, and happily,” she pointed out. “He ticks every box. He’s outrageously attractive. You should hear the women in the village swoon and flutter over the verythoughtof him when attractive men are easy enough to come by.” She waved a gloved hand. “This is Italy.Ovviamente.”
Hannah laughed. “Ma certo,” she replied, because she knew better than to argue about the riches of Italy with Italians.
“Antonluca Aniello is not any run-of-the-mill Italian man,” Cinzia continued. “He is also wealthy beyond measure. He can provide for both you and Dominic, forever.”
Hannah blew out a breath. “I understand. I know that. But…”
“But?”
“Is that enough?” Hannah shook her head, and found that Cinzia’s intent gaze made her feel…raw. Too vulnerable. “Surely a marriage should be something more than simply…convenient.”
“Should it?” Cinzia shrugged. “But who’s to say that convenience cannot be the gateway to something marvelous?”
“He doesn’t love me, Cinzia,” Hannah said, baldly. She caught her friend’s gaze, then looked away. “He doesn’t love me. He doesn’t pretend to.”
They walked on, the only sound between them the wind rustling through the hills and the fields and the church bells in the distance. When they reached the front of their cottages, Cinzia turned to her again.
“You must do as you see fit,” she counseled Hannah, and it seemed to Hannah that there was wisdom pouring out of her kind eyes and those lines in her lovely face. “But I will say this. A wise woman uses the tools she has, and fashions precisely what she wants with them.”
Hannah shook her head, holding Dominic tight. “I don’t know what that means.”
The older woman’s gaze was knowing. “It is not as if the man is immune to you, is he?”
And Hannah thought about little else once she put Dominic down for his nap. She answered emails and a few calls from the hotel. She moved around the cottage, but she was thinking about that castle on the hill.
She continued to think about it the following day, when she and Antonluca did their daily walk-through of the Christmas Market and then put their heads together over sets of figures and projections.
And, she thought,as long as I can work, I can survive anything.
That was the key, she thought as they sat close together and had a very dry conversation about revenue and occupancy. As long as she could do her job, she could make everything else work. She’d already done it once, as a single mother in a foreign country. She could do it again, and this time with the added benefit of being a very rich man’s wife.
If La Paloma was any indication, that was its own cottage industry.
That night, he walked her out to her car in the staff forecourt, as had become his custom. There were flurries of snow spiraling down all around them, though not sticking to the ground. And when they reached her vehicle, he insisted on waiting there at the driver’s side window until the car was properly warm and the windows defrosted.
He stood there and insisted that she wait until he was satisfied that she could drive safely.
And something about it pierced her straight through.
Possibly because it was sad, really, that she couldn’t think of anyone else in her life who had taken this kind of care of her, not so consistently. Cinzia was a wonder, and they were truly friends, but Hannah also paid her rent. So really it was only Antonluca.
Sadder still, the kind of care he was taking with her here was so matter-of-fact. She felt certain she could have been anyone. He was simply being polite to the mother of his child.
But something about that was soothing, too.
Because she couldn’t really mourn what she’d never had, could she? And if he took care of her like this, on a snowy night when he could as easily have done nothing at all, then certainly he would take care of his child.
He would insist upon it.
And if Hannah and Dominic could depend on that, well. That was no small thing.
