‘Tore doesn’t sound to me like a guy who ever does anything he doesn’twantto do.’
‘He agreed to marry when he didn’t want to,’ Violet protested defensively.
‘You’re getting so protective of him and you’re such a worrywart,’ her twin lamented. ‘If he’s halfway decent as you say he is, he’s not going to want you to risk losing custody of Belle. I’m sure he’ll help.’
Alfredo was hovering on the front steps awaiting the end of her phone conversation. As she returned the phone to her bag, he informed her that lunch was ready.
Tore was pacing the hall. Stella had taken Belle. He wondered if Violet realised how clear her speaking voice could be surrounded by stone walls. He had only caught a couple of phrases of her conversation.When we’re not staying together, she had said.I don’t want him to feel obligated. What didn’t she want him to feel obligated about?
Dio mio, was she pregnant? It was wondrous how calm he felt at that prospect. The advent of another Belle didn’t seem like the end of the world, yet that is how he would have reacted to such a possibility just weeks earlier. Even though he had taken no risks, protection was never fully guaranteed. But would Violet already know if she had conceived? Then he scolded himself for being unusually fanciful. They had only been together a month. He supposed it was possible that a woman would know early. He hoped she realised that if she was carrying his child, she would be going nowhere away from him any time soon. A faint smile softened the tense line of his mobile mouth. His grandparents would be ecstatic. Married young themselves and parents soon after, they could imagine nothing better at maturing a young man than the added responsibilities of marriage and fatherhood.
‘Sorry about that,’ Violet muttered as she joined him in the hall, looking shifty with her eyes averted and visibly uncomfortable. They walked out to the loggia to sit down for lunch. ‘It was Tabitha.’
‘Problems at the bakery?’
‘Nothing important,’ she answered dismissively, reckoning that she would leave the request about Belle until they had returned to London. That would be time enough, she reasoned unhappily.
A beautiful pasta salad was served. She was offered wine and demurred, having discovered that wine in the afternoon tended to give her a headache and simply make her sleepy.
But was it wrong of her to withhold from Tore what she had just learned about her adoption of Belle? Exactly how would she go about asking Tore if he would agree to being questioned as Belle’s potential adoptive father? Tore was a particularly private and reserved man.
Yet, she could only blame herself for the issues that had arisen. Knowing that she was only waiting for the court to verify the social services’ recommendation, she had relaxed and forgotten that she was still living under official scrutiny. Indisputably, the reality that she had now acquired a husband and moved house was relevant to her adoption case and she couldn’t admit the truth. She couldn’t admit that hers was merely a marriage on paper that would leave her richer but otherwise back where she had started out as a single parent with a small business. But surely, Tore wouldn’t object to playing along and faking it as a husband and father for Belle’s sake?
‘You seem preoccupied,’ Tore remarked.
‘Leaving this place will be a wrench,’ she admitted reluctantly for it was never easy to face leaving somewhere where you had enjoyed real happiness. Even if that happiness had been built on sand foundations? She ignored that warning, censorious voice in her head. Tore had made them both very happy and she wouldn’t deny that, even though it seemed that those fragile feelings of contentment couldn’t possibly last.
‘I have something to say, then,’ Tore stated quietly, reckoning that lunch was already a bust in the mood she was in and deciding to press ahead with what he had always intended to tell her. ‘This plan you have where we suddenly start living as strangers again won’t work.’
‘Why shouldn’t it?’ Violet pressed in sudden dismay, disconcerted and on the immediate edge of distress at the opening of that previously unmentioned topic. ‘Why shouldn’t it work?’
‘Because everything has changed between us. We’re not strangers anymore and we’re certainly not friends in the normal sense of the word. We never were. It makes more sense to explore the connection that we have established now rather than try to change it into something else and turn the clock back,’ Tore reasoned feelingly, green eyes alive with resolve and fierce energy.
Violet leapt upright. ‘Go on, remind me that this is all my fault! I changed our arrangement first—’
Tore expelled his breath in an exasperated hiss. ‘It’s nobody’s fault, Violet. What we’ve discovered together should be celebrated, not criminalised, not suddenly put on the forbidden list. We’re both content and we’re independent adults. What we do is our business. Why change anything? Especially something that will feel unnatural to both of us.’
‘Only a few weeks ago, being polite to each other and keeping our distance in every other waywasn’tunnatural,’ she reminded him stubbornly. ‘We can get that vibe back if we work at it.’
‘It’s not what I want,’ Tore admitted grimly. ‘And maybe I’m not prepared to work to achieve what I don’t want and don’t believe in. There are two of us in this relationship. It’s not only you. I’ve adapted to being a married man, a husband and a stepfather. Those are big concessions on my terms. But I am happy with the changes. I won’t apologise, however, for the fact that I neither agree with norbelievein your current plan of action.’
‘If I’d listened to you, we would never have got this close!’ Violet exclaimed vehemently.
‘But you were braver than me and possibly more insightful. If we hadn’t made this a real marriage, we would’ve missed out on a great opportunity. As I see it, between us we’ve created a very successful relationship.’ Tore compressed his lips on that note, lean, darkly handsome face shadowing, already convinced that he had said more than he should’ve done. ‘We may have had an unconventional beginning but we’ve overcome that. So again, I ask you… Why would we change anything?’
Turmoil was eating Violet alive as she moved back into the villa. She hadn’t expected Tore to put up a fight to maintain the status quo. She got his point that once again she was making a unilateral decision that affected him as well. But never had his cool, logical approach worked more against him than then. Violet really just needed him to put his arms round her and tell her that everything would be all right and that she didn’t need to worry about anything. And yet, she knew he didn’t have the power to make everything right. But for the first time, she grasped that Tore was more invested in their marriage than she had previously appreciated.
‘Violet…’ His dark, deep drawl halted her a few steps away and she turned her head back unwillingly. ‘I caught a few words of your conversation with your sister on the phone. I heard you refer to the fact that our marriage was temporary and that you didn’t want to put me under an obligation. All I could think then was that you might have fallen pregnant…’
Shaken and wide-eyed at that suggestion, Violet stared back at him and shook her head. ‘No, I’m not pregnant. We’ve been careful—’
‘Yes, but as you pointed out, careful isn’t always enough. Are you sure?’
‘Yes, I’m sure,’ she said limply, thrown entirely by his suspicion but not ready as yet to open up another possible source of conflict until she had calmed down. And the one thing she wasn’t in that moment was calm.
Tore looked disappointed at the news that she wasn’t accidentally secretly pregnant. The more time she spent with him, the more she learned about him, she conceded wretchedly. He could’ve accepted an unplanned pregnancy, could’ve made the best of it, it seemed. Surely, that softness in him, that very acceptance, would make him more likely to agree to adopting Belle with her? She could only hope.
Chapter Ten
