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To be back at work and taking such good care of Sophia and attending a party when she probably just wanted to sleep.

Then he glanced at the open suitcase on the bed.

Good.

Yes, he was a cold bastard.

She would leave, and he would take care of them from a distance.

Gabe heard a squeak and looked at the monitor, but thankfully the baby was still asleep.

Then he looked up Ravello mass times and wondered if Sophia might sleep until Signora Maria was back, but then he heard a cry. Unlike Stella’s walkie-talkie, he didn’t get to say standby, or ten one, or switch channels…

He went to the kitchenette. Most of the meals were prepared on the ground floor, but there was a butler’s kitchen and Stella had left instructions for warming up a bottle of formula. He had no choice because Sophia was bellowing now, her cries growing louder, as they had on the night he’d found out about her existence.

‘Coming,’ he called and walked past the bedroom and caught sight of the case again.

She really was preparing to leave…

Shape up, Gabe, or I’m shipping out.

And she would.

Her heart might be softer than his, but, it was wrapped in strength.

‘Buonasera piccolo…’ Good evening little one, he said, standing at the door to the nursery now, his voice low and measured, almost formal in his greeting.

He made his way over and the crying stopped, and maybe Sophia wasn’t hungry, just wanted attention, because she’d stopped crying as soon as he entered.

‘Go back to sleep…’ he suggested, but then he looked at the almond-shaped eyes staring at him with slight suspicion, or curiosity, or perhaps surprise that this man in a suit and unshaven, with dark rings under his eyes, was looking back at her.

Then she smiled, and something inside him came undone.

And then he gave a little chuckle.

She was not going back to sleep, it would seem.

‘Come on,’ he said and picked Sophia up, but a little at arm’s length, and he changed her quite easily and then snapped closed her little baby suit and looked at the huge chair.

He’d sat there when he’d held Beatrice for the first time, and had even given her a bottle, with his mother hovering, delighted that her son wasn’t at all jealous or put out by this winter baby.

He sat down now, more awkward at thirty-five than he had been at ten, and he looked out at the view rather than the baby.

And he would lose them both…

‘Mmm.’ Sophia made a sound with the bottle in her mouth and kicked her legs a little, and then did it again, demanding eye contact, and he looked down and met eyes that were shaped like his but had her mother’s blue colour. She made that sound again. ‘Mmm.’ And the same little kick in his arms that made him smile as she demanded his attention,

Rightly so.

The bottle was done and instead of sitting her up as Stella had he put the baby over his shoulder and breathed in that baby smell and felt the soft warm skin and he wept at the little cooing sounds of his daughter, who didn’t seem to mind a bit.

It could only be this way, Gabe thought as he put her back in her crib and watched her eyes closing.

Of course, he thought of Beatrice.

But he’d met Sophia today.

Giggly, with a fat tummy, and impossible not to love.