Clearly, Aldo and Matilde, his grandparents, had yet to absorb that hard fact. Yet, as grandparents they were relatively young being only in their fifties, but they were probably hoping for some miracle to occur and provide them with great-grandchildren. Why else had his grandmother also chimed in during that unwelcome phone call to confess that she couldn’t wait to meet Violet’s baby? The baby he didn’t even know the name of, which Agnese Renzetti had censured as a glaring omission.
‘You mean you didn’t evenask, Tore?’ she had gasped in dismay. ‘What were you thinking?’
That had long been Tore’s burden in life, he acknowledged. He was in possession of wonderful, unbelievably nice and loving grandparents but they would never ever know—if he had anything to do with it—that their beloved grandson wasn’t remotely nice or loving. Except towards them…
‘You’re the most beautiful little girlever!’ Violet exclaimed as she planted a noisy raspberry kiss on Belle’s plump little tummy and the baby chortled full of glee, rolling over to move off under her own power. Fed, bathed and into her giraffe jammies, Belle would soon be ready for bed.
Violet massaged her aching back. With her sister’s help she had packed all their belongings and the baby equipment and it had taken the afternoon to bring it all back to Tore’s house. She had unpacked the necessities with Dora’s assistance, and Belle’s cot was set up in readiness. Luckily for Violet, Belle was a sociable, easy baby and change didn’t freak her out.
A knock sounded on the door and on her knees, still tidying up all the paraphernalia that went with babies, she swivelled. ‘Come in,’ she called.
Astonishment gripped her when Tore strode into her new sitting room. Her first thought was, shamefully, that he was off-the-chartshot, particularly when he was more casually clad in light chino pants and a long-sleeved top, his luxuriant white-gold hair a little messy and damp, she surmised, from a shower. The embarrassment of that thought suffused her cheeks with colour.
‘We’re flying to Italy later this evening,’ he announced.
‘I beg your pardon?’ In disbelief at that declaration of intent, Violet scrambled upright, barefoot in her jeans and no makeup, once again feeling outclassed and caught unprepared.
Tore dealt her a sizzling appraisal. ‘You heard me fine.’
‘Yes, I did but I couldn’t believe you were serious. Why would I travel to Italy with you?’
‘You’re supposed to be my wife.’ His big frame tensed as a baby crawled from behind a chair and moved towards him. He endeavoured to ignore it. It was tiny,anothermember of the tiny family with a tousled cloud of brown curls and a huge smile as it crawled over the top of his shoes and hovered looking up at him with big, expectant blue eyes. It was not a fan of being ignored because it let out a little shout as if it was trying to grab his attention. A little girl, he reckoned.
‘Agreed, but we both know I’m not a real wife.’
‘It felt shockingly real in that church,’ Tore contradicted. ‘In any case, I don’t care how you feel about a trip to Italy because you’re going whether you like it or not.’
Violet’s blue eyes sparkled at his arrogance as he spoke to her as though she were an employee without choices about where and when she went. ‘For how long?’
A broad shoulder shifted in a shrug. ‘A month at most.’
Belle let out another shout that had the edge of a shriek and Tore flinched. He surprised himself then, dropping down into a crouch and saying, ‘And what’s your name?’
‘Belle,’ Violet supplied, watching her daughter stretch up a tiny hand to Tore’s knee.
Tore scanned the huge smile and invitation of the raised arms and leant in to lift the baby up. Belle squealed in delight and kicked her legs. ‘She weighs nothing,’ he commented with a frown. ‘Is she healthy?’
‘Totally, but she’s very like her mother in build—naturally slender and light in weight. Look, Tore, I want to be reasonable but I can’tpossibly—’
His ebony brows had pleated. ‘You’renother mother?’
‘I am but I’m not her birth mother. I started adopting her after my best friend, her mother, died,’ Violet extended. ‘Isabel and her partner nominated me as her guardian in their will.’
Realising that the baby was still dangling, Tore shifted her experimentally closer and like a puppy she pawed her way up his chest and into the crook of his neck, burying her head there and slowly slumping against him.
‘She’s tired. If you give me five minutes, I’ll put her to bed and then we can talk about Italy. It would beimpossible,’ she could not help telling him in advance. ‘My business couldn’t run without me. I work with an assistant but he couldn’t bake or decorate cakes as well as me. He’s not experienced enough yet.’
‘You own a business?’ Tore was disconcerted enough by that news to follow her into the bedroom next door.
‘Yes, but strictly speaking it’s not mine. The bakery belonged to Isabel and her partner. They left it to me, which has allowed me to be able to raise Belle, but once she grows up it should go to her because it’s her inheritance from her parents,’ she explained as she tucked Belle into her cot, switched on the glowing sheep toy that played soft music and backed away to close the drapes. ‘Night, night, baby.’
Belle snuggled in, clutching a shabby dinosaur, and simply closed her eyes. Having been told that he was a challenge to get to sleep as a little boy, Tore was impressed. And Violet was not at all the feckless, idle, spoiled young woman he had rather unpleasantly assumed she would be as Tomaso Barone’s grandchild. She ran a bakery and obviously baked as well. Not for the first time, he cursed the arrogance and the anger that had prevented him from having both sisters fully investigated in advance of the wedding. He should’veknownsomething of that nature when he was marrying the woman. Instead, he had chosen to work off biased assumptions rather than fact, and that oversight infuriated him.
‘I can make arrangements to make the Italian trip possible,’ he asserted, accompanying her back into the sitting room.
Violet dealt him a pained look. ‘It’s not possible. I’ve got cake orders coming in, decorating to do, deliveries to do, payroll, bank visits.’
‘If I’m willing to pay enough I can get it all taken care of for you,’ Tore imparted with unblemished confidence. ‘Experts are always available for hire for the right price…’
