Shock: One-Night Heir

His forehead creased in a brooding frown. ‘I have shareholders and investors to protect. Don’t take it personally. It’s just business.’

Maya put her glass of juice down on a pot stand before she dropped it. ‘Oh, yes, it’s always business with you. Our marriage was nothing more than a business arrangement. The only trouble was I didn’t deliver the goods as promised.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ His voice was hard and sharp, like a flung dagger.

She dropped her gaze and let out a scratchy sigh. ‘You know what I mean, Giorgio.’

A lengthy silence passed.

‘I wanted it to work, Maya,’ he said quietly. ‘I really did, but we were both making each other miserable in the end.’

She looked up at him with a pained expression. ‘You don’t get it, do you?’

‘What’s to get?’ he asked, his voice rising in frustration. ‘We were married for five years, Maya. I know it wasn’t easy for you. It wasn’t easy for me, watching you…’ He didn’t finish the sentence but, moving away from the doors, lifted his glass and drained the contents.

Maya looked at his stiff spine, feeling the emotional lockout she always felt when they argued. He refused to talk about the losses they had experienced. She’d always had the feeling he had dismissed each miscarriage as nature’s way of saying something was not right. She, on the other hand, had wanted to talk about each of the babies she had named as soon as they were conceived. She had wanted to talk about their stolen futures, the dreams and hopes she had had for each of them. To her, they were not a collection of damaged cells that nature had decided were best sloughed away. They had been her precious babies, each and every one of them.

Giorgio hated failure. He was a ruthlessly committed businessman who refused to tolerate defeat in any shape or form. Success drove him, as it had driven his grandfather and his late father to build the heritage that stood unrivalled in the world of luxury hotels. Giorgio had no time for life’s annoying little hiccups. He wanted results and went about achieving them mercilessly if he had to. That was how Maya had ended up his wife. His father had just been injured in a terrible head-on collision and was lying in a semi-coma in hospital, not expected to live past a few weeks.

Giorgio had decided Maya would be an ideal candidate for a wife: educated, poised, young and healthy and in the prime of her reproductive life. How wrong he had been to choose her of all people, she thought bitterly. He could have done so much better, a fact some members of his family had hinted at over the last year or so. They were subtle about it, of course: an occasional comment over dinner about someone’s newborn child or how one of Giorgio’s school friends was now a father of twins. Each comment had been a stake through Maya’s heart, worsening her sense of failure, shattering her self-confidence, destroying her hope of one day being a mother. She had failed as a Sabbatini wife. She had let the dynasty down and, until she got out of Giorgio’s life, his family would continue to look upon her with pity and disappointment.

Giorgio put his glass down on the wrought iron table before he faced her. ‘My grandfather is dying,’ he said in a low, serious tone. ‘He told me this morning. He has less than a month or two at most to live. No one else in the family knows.’

Maya felt her heart drop like a ship’s anchor inside her chest. ‘Oh, no…’

His throat rose and fell over a tight swallow. ‘That’s why he wanted all the family here tonight. He wanted tonight to be a happy celebration. He didn’t want anyone’s pity. He will make the announcement to family and friends in the next week or two.’

Maya could understand Salvatore’s motivation in keeping tonight focused on his birthday instead of his impending demise. Pride was something she had come to recognise as a particular Sabbatini trait. Giorgio had it in buckets and barrels and spades. ‘Thank you for telling me,’ she said softly, not quite understanding why he had. Why hadn’t he told Luca and Nic, his two brothers, for instance?

His eyes were still meshed with hers. ‘I want you to think about postponing your trip to London,’ he said. ‘Call the school and tell them you can’t make the interview. Tell them you need to take compassionate leave.’

She stared at him, open-mouthed. ‘I can’t take leave before I’ve even got the job. They will give it to someone else.’

He lifted a shoulder. ‘If they do, then you weren’t meant to have it. If they think you are the best one for the position they will wait until you are available.’

Maya frowned at him furiously. ‘Of course they won’t keep the job open for me. I’m the least experienced of the candidates. I haven’t stood in front of a classroom since I was at university on teaching practice. I won’t stand a chance if I don’t turn up for the interview.’

‘You don’t need the job right at this moment, Maya,’ he said. ‘I have agreed on an incredibly generous allowance. If you want to work, then I am sure other jobs will come along in time.’

Maya threw him a castigating look. ‘Why do you have to be so damned philosophical about everything?’

He returned her frown with a challenging arc of one brow. ‘Why do you have to be so irrational and emotional?’

Maya turned away and looked out over the wintry gardens, her hands gripping the balustrade so tightly her knuckles ached. ‘Is this really about your grandfather’s health or an attempt to make me change my mind about the divorce?’

He didn’t respond for so long she wondered if he had left her there, listening to the soft patter of the February raindrops.

‘You can have your divorce, but not right now,’ he said at last. ‘I want my grandfather to die in peace, believing we have patched things up.’

Maya felt her heart slip like a stiletto on a slate of ice. She spun around and faced him again, her eyes wide with panic. ‘You’re asking me to come back and live with you as your wife?’

He held her look with enviable equanimity. ‘For a month or two, that is all,’ he said. ‘It will make the end a lot easier for my grandfather. Our separation has upset him greatly. I had not realised how much until now.’

Maya resented the implication behind his words. ‘So you’re blaming me for his terminal illness, are you?’

His dark eyes rolled upwards in that arrogant way of his which seemed to say she was being childish and petty while he was mature and sensible. ‘You are putting words into my mouth, Maya,’ he said. ‘My grandfather is ninety years old. It is not unexpected that he would be suffering from some sort of illness at his age. The fact that it is terminal is sad but not entirely unexpected. He has smoked rather heavily during his lifetime. He is lucky he has had as many years as he has. My father was not so blessed.’

She glared at him regardless. ‘No doubt you think I have jinxed things for Salvatore or something. I announce I want a divorce and a few weeks later he is dying. I can see a pattern, even if you can’t.’

A muscle twitched in the lower quadrant of his jaw. ‘My father dying just a few days after we married was not your fault. It was no one’s fault. It was just a tragic accident. You know that.’

‘I wasn’t talking about your father’s death.’

His muscle moved again. ‘Miscarriages are another fact of life, just like old age, Maya,’ he said, barely moving his lips to speak. ‘They are far more common than you think.’

Maya felt hot colour crawling beneath her skin and turned away again in case he noticed. ‘If we resume living together it will only complicate and ultimately prolong our divorce,’ she said after a slight pause. ‘Everyone’s hopes will be raised and then dashed again once we…go ahead with it in the end…’

‘I realise that is something we will have to deal with,’ he said. ‘But, for the time being, I believe this is the best course of action.’

Maya faced him again with a lip curl of scorn. ‘Why? Because it’s going to give you more time to work out a way to keep your assets safe?’

He stared her down. ‘You never used to be so cynical.’

She lifted her chin. ‘I grew up, Giorgio. Life’s repeated punches have a habit of doing that.’

He moved away to look out over the immaculate gardens as she had done moments earlier. His hands too, she noticed, were white-knuckled as he gripped not the balustrade as she had done, but the back of the wrought iron chair of the outdoor setting at least a metre away from the edge. Maya knew his fear of heights disgusted him, even though he had suffered from it since childhood. She had only found out about it by accident. He would never have told her, which said rather a lot about their relationship, she thought. He saw his fear as a weakness he had to conquer. Countless times, she had seen him fight with himself to overcome his primal reaction. His doggedness had at times both impressed her and frustrated her in equal measure. She had so often wanted to help him but he would push her away as if she had come too close, as if she would be the one to push him over the edge of the dark abyss he dreaded so much.

‘I want my grandfather to die a peaceful death,’ Giorgio said after a long taut silence. ‘I will do anything to achieve it.’

Maya mentally ticked the box marked ‘ruthless’. Giorgio would think nothing of doing whatever it took to get what he wanted, including resuming a relationship with a wife he had never loved and didn’t really want now she had failed to live up to expectations, to use a particularly relevant word. He would no doubt live the lie, playing pretend while he got on with his affair with his gorgeous lingerie model.

Maya knew from experience that the press got it wrong a lot of times, but not all of the time. That was the thing that had plagued her the most. The ‘no smoke without fire’ thing had niggled at her the whole time they were married. Giorgio had always denied the occasional dalliances the press reported, but her doubts and fears had still risen to the surface like oil on water. She had waded for five years through the cloying stickiness, trying to cling to the hope that the conception and subsequent birth of a child would cement their tenuous union.

It had never happened.

She slid a hand over the flat plane of her belly, her heart giving a tight aching contraction.

It might still not happen…

Giorgio turned from the chair as someone came out onto the balcony. ‘Luca,’ he said with a forced on-off smile. ‘I didn’t see you come in.’

Luca, his younger brother by two years, gave him a ready smile that lit his dark brown eyes from behind. ‘We arrived late,’ he said. ‘Ella was a bit late having her afternoon sleep.’

He turned to Maya and bent to kiss her on both cheeks. ‘It’s so good you came tonight, Maya,’ he said. ‘Bronte will be glad of someone to talk to. She was feeling rather nervous about practising her Italian in front of everyone.’

Maya smiled shakily. ‘She has no need to be,’ she said. ‘Everyone adores her and gorgeous little Ella.’

Luca smiled proudly. ‘We have an announcement to make…’ His expression faltered for a second before he continued, ‘I’m sorry, this might not be the news you two want to hear, but we are expecting another baby.’