Page 16 of Italian Weddings

F RANCESCO HAD CO-EXISTED IN London for a long time, with Willow. They had both lived in the city for years, and yet knowing she was just a few suburbs away had never really been a big part of his thought process.

Until now.

Returning from the Cotswolds and dropping her off at her small mews house just off Gloucester Road, he’d found himself walking her to her door, carrying her small suitcase, and holding his breath while he waited to see if she’d invite him in.

She didn’t. She smiled up at him, thanked him for being an excellent fake boyfriend—with benefits—and had slipped inside without a backwards glance.

But if she’d turned around and asked him to follow, he would have.

He would have lifted her up into his arms, carrying her to a bed, or a sofa, or a carpeted rug, and made love to her all over again, giving his body what it had been craving since the morning after the party, when they’d explored one another in bed, slowly, this time, sensually, and with enough space to properly touch and be touched.

Willow was doing exactly what they’d agreed to and sticking to the boundaries.

But as he stalked back to his car, he found his mind wandering to the trip the following weekend, to Italy, and suddenly, he no longer wanted her to back out.

He wanted more of Willow, and the fact they’d formed this convenient, fake relationship gave him the perfect cover for that.

All he could think about, once he reached his own penthouse, was Willow. So much so he had to leave his phone in his bedroom to decrease the likelihood of weakening and calling her, inviting her over. That would be breaking the rules, changing the game they’d agreed to.

But after a sleepless night, and looking down the barrel of several more, he made the decision to get out of London, and away from temptation. He flew to New York without giving Raf any notice, deciding instead to simply arrive on his doorstep.

Only Raf wasn’t there.

Marcia answered, spoke two words to Francesco—neither of them pleasant. But after what she’d been through; could he blame her?

He dialled his brother’s number then, and when Raf answered, it was like he was talking to a ghost. His voice sounded so much like their father’s, from those awful dark days after their mother’s death. Deep, raw and affected by alcohol, despite the fact it was barely lunch time.

“Where are you?” he asked, tone grim.

“I don’t need a fucking saviour.”

“Good. Because that’s not what you’re getting.’

He could practically hear the cogs turning in Raf’s brain, and then, he named a bar in the Village.

Francesco caught a cab, and even then, worried sick about his brother, his mind wandered—without his permission—to Willow, so he was wondering what she was doing.

Who she was with. Aching to call her. Aching for her in a way that infuriated him.

True, sex with them had been insanely good, but it wasn’t like he hadn’t had great sex before.

First and foremost, she was his friend; he wasn’t going to do anything to jeopardise that.

Raf was in a booth at the back of the bar, staring straight ahead.

Francesco took one look at him, contemplated dragging him back to his place, then decided against it, and ordered a couple of beers from the bar, on his way to the booth.

He slid one over to Raf to get his attention—it earned him a flicker of a single brow, and a sound that might have been a grunt of greeting.

“I’d ask how you are, but it’s pretty evident.”

Another grunt.

Francesco sighed. “Raf, man, I don’t know what to say. It’s understandable that you’re feeling like this?—,”

Raf took the beer and drained half of it, then wiped the back of his mouth with his hand.

Francesco took a small drink of his own. “How’s Marcia?”

Raf’s eyes slide sideways to Francesco’s, his expression inscrutable. A shiver ran down Francesco’s spine; this was not like his brother, at all. Raf was fair minded and generally a pretty easy-going guy. This was new. And not good new.

Then again, after what he’d been through, wasn’t that to be expected?

“I saw her,” Francesco admitted.

Raf’s eyes drifted to Francesco’s face, lingered there a moment, his expression no longer inscrutable, but rather, furious. “And?”

“And she looked awful,” he admitted. “She told me to fuck off. Serves me right—she obviously wants to be alone, after everything she’s been through.”

“Been through?” Raf repeated, finishing his beer, slamming the glass to the table then lifting his fingers in the air, to call over a waiter.

“Well, yeah. I mean, losing a pregnancy is devastating for both parents, but for a woman, I imagine?—,”

“You cannot imagine anything about Marcia.”

Francesco’s gaze narrowed. “Raf, man, you’re not actually pissed at her about this?”

A muscle jerked in his brother’s jaw, beneath what looked to be about ten-day old stubble.

A waitress appeared, big smile in place an incongruity, given the tone of their conversation. “Would you like to see some menus?”

“Do you have Macallan?”

“Um, I think so.”

“Bring us a bottle.”

“A bottle?” She looked to Francesco, as if for confirmation.

He dipped his head, once, in confirmation, but added, for good measure, “And some burgers.”

“I’m not hungry,” Raf partially slurred, as the waitress left.

“You’ll eat something if you want to stay here.”

“I thought I told you; I don’t need a saviour.”

“You’ve got a brother. And a friend. But if you think either of those is going to let you drink yourself into a stupor, think again. You need to eat.”

Raf grunted.

“Raf, listen,” Francesco leaned forward, trying to find the right words.

But this version of Raf was so completely unfamiliar to him.

So angry. So furious. Just like their father.

It stole his breath. And for the first time in days, he wasn’t thinking about Willow; he was fully focused on the predicament in front of him.

“It’s probably not what you want to think about right now, but you and Marcia will get past this.

One day, you’ll try again. You’ll have another baby.

And probably another one. This is just?—,”

“No,” Raf interrupted, as the waitress returned, with a bottle of scotch and two glasses.

She hesitated though, eyeing Francesco, before announcing the cost of the entire bottle.

He nodded once, pulled out his wallet and slid over a card. “Start a tab.”

She stared down at the black card before lifting it up and walking away, leaving the whiskey between them. Raf snatched it up, unscrewed the lid like it had done him some great wrong, then poured two full glasses.

“I know you’re upset,” Francesco tried again. “But don’t you think you should be going through this with Marcia? She must be devastated too.”

Raf made a snorting noise.

“For God’s sake, what’s going on with the two of you? She lost a baby—there’s no way you can be angry about that.”

“She didn’t lose the baby,” Raf snapped, his eyes boring into Francesco’s now. His hand trembled as he lifted the whiskey towards his lips, then slammed it back down on the table, so half of it spilled out, over his hand, and across the surface.

“What?” Francesco frowned. “But Gianni and Maria said?—,”

“They were misinformed.”

“By who?”

“Me.”

“What?”

“At that stage, I had been misinformed likewise.”

“This isn’t making sense.”

“She was never pregnant.”

Francesco stared at his brother for several beats then shook his head, as if he could shake the words into his brain, somehow.

“She lied. She got sick of the state of our relationship, knew that I would have no choice but to marry her if she was pregnant.”

Francesco swore loudly. “That’s hardly a clever plan. Presumably at some point she must have known you’d work this out, when she didn’t, you know, have a baby.”

“She thought we’d fall pregnant after the wedding. It was a calculated risk, that didn’t pay off.”

Francesco’s jaw dropped.

“Months passed. Months in which she told me she had regular appointments. Hell, she even produced a doctored sonogram image for me, Cesco. Can you believe that? The sickness of this woman…”

Francesco was inclined to agree. To see this as evidence that Marcia was, in fact, actually sick. “And then what?”

“She should be nearly five months along, by now. Showing, probably. With a baby due any time. So, she told me she’d miscarried.

But she wouldn’t let me take her to a doctor, to a hospital, she wouldn’t get help.

It didn’t make sense; nothing added up. Still, I didn’t suspect.

What kind of an idiot does that make me? ”

“You trusted her. You loved her.”

He scowled. “I called an ambulance, against her wishes. I had to. I was worried about her. I am not a doctor, but even I knew that miscarrying at that stage in the pregnancy could bring about complications.”

Francesco closed his eyes on a wave of nausea and anger. Imagining how that scene unfolded was truly mortifying. His poor brother.

“You must have been livid.”

“That does not begin to describe it. I have never known such anger, Francesco. Not in my entire life. I have never known a hate quite like it.”

He lifted the liquor glass and threw it back, his Adam’s apple shifting as he swallowed hard.

“She must have known this would all come out.”

“She thought we would fall pregnant at some point, that she could fudge the dates a little. She is a master manipulator.”

“But why? Just so you would marry her?”

Raf grunted, and Francesco slumped down in his seat a little, his mind spinning at that reality. He’d never liked Marcia. None of them had. But this was beyond anything he’d have thought her capable of. It was so calculated and cruel.

“I know she was not actually pregnant, but to me, she was. I had put my hand on her stomach and imagined our baby there, I had thought about what that child would be, would mean, would become. I was going to be a father, and now…”

Francesco grimaced, his brother’s grief and despair totally understandable.