Page 54 of Unveiled As The Italian's Bride
They could hear voices before they entered—Antonio and Angelina. She would have to keep up the front. Could she? She smiled all the way through a long early evening and then, when Angelina was in bed, through an even longer dinner. It was just the three of them, with a menu that never seemed to stop, and every delicious course tasting like cardboard.
Thank the lord, Dante knew how to hold court. If she hadn’t been so tense, she would have been amused at the way Antonio bristled at every question to do with his health, which he’d repeatedly done ever since they’d returned to Italy, until Dante was forced into retreat. She would have been amused at the way this big, powerful, aggressively dominant male could be manoeuvred into a position he obviously didn’t much like.
She would have stared in rapt fascination at the guy she had fallen in love with, would have hung onto every word and would have been utterly involved in every aspect of the conversation, because that was just what happened when you loved someone.
And, most of all, her head would have been filled with thoughts of what was going to happen when they headed upstairs, when the clothes came off and desire took over.
‘Are you feeling all right, my dear?’
Kate blinked. Somehow the drinks had disappeared. Where? Had she actually drunk the glass of dessert wine that had been pressed on her? She hated dessert wine. And where was Dante?
‘Sorry?’
‘You’re a million miles away. Have been all evening.’
‘Where’s Dante?’ Kate blinked, owl-like. Antonio’s eyes were narrowed, watching her shrewdly.
‘Sent him off.’
‘Sorry?’ Conscious that she was repeating herself, Kate tried to get a grip. How on earth could she have been thinking of Dante and the sudden mess she was in all evening and yet literally not even have noticed when he left the room? ‘Where?’
‘Work.’ Antonio shrugged. ‘Told him I had unearthed some problems in the shipping sector of the company. Looked thorny. Urgently needed him to cast an eye. He seemed pleased enough to take the bait.’
‘Bait?’ Kate frowned, but she found it impossible to join the dots in the conversation because her brain felt foggy.
‘You do not look like a radiant bride-to-be, my dear. Ever since you returned from seeing your parents, you’d been bursting with happiness. But now...?’
‘No, no. Not me,’ Kate said with dismay. ‘I’ve been my usual self.’
‘So what is going on here?’ Antonio waved aside her feeble response. ‘Have you and my nephew had an argument? To be expected. These things happen. Pre-wedding nerves, I believe it is called, although, having never been in that place myself, I can only speculate.’
‘Antonio...’
Yes, she’d been brimming over with happiness, she thought miserably. She’d been floating on cloud nine but now she had crashed back down to earth and without any safety gear to cushion the fall. Every part of her was hurting and underneath the hurt was the dreadful fear for what the future might hold.
It would be fine because it would have to be. Her eyes started to well up and she looked away, but she didn’t trust herself to speak, and into the telling silence Antonio prodded gently, moving to sit closer to her and covering her hand with his.
‘I have seen it all,’ he murmured in a voice that could have melted ice. ‘You can tell me anything. Are you pregnant? Is that it?’
‘No!’ That managed to bring a smile to her lips. ‘Now thatreallywould be a disaster,’ she murmured to herself. The smile didn’t last. It faded when she thought of how Dante would greet an accident like that—with horror. His worst nightmare.
‘Ah.’
Antonio rose unsteadily to his feet to move to the door, brushing away her helping hand, but then turned back round and reached for his phone.
‘I see how the land lies, my dear,’ he said sadly.
‘I don’t think you do, Antonio.’
‘As I said, nothing comes as a surprise to me any longer, but perhaps there are things left to surpriseyou.You and my nephew. Who will be here in a minute—I have texted him. Told him I need to see him urgently.’
‘Why?’
Antonio shrugged. ‘Perhaps it is time for an old man to stop causing mischief...’
He sat them down.
Out of the corner of her eye, Kate noted Dante’s wary expression. She wanted to reach out and squeeze his hand, share amusement at his uncle’s dramatic antics, but everything had changed and that sort of spontaneous gesture no longer seemed carefree and innocent.
