He even took her inland to Piazza Armerina, the town where her father had wandered an ancient Roman complex for a week while Freja learned fencing in a grassy park.
“The infamous bikini girls,” Giovanni said when she suggested he turn that direction, referring to the famed mosaics in the ruins. “I was taken there on a school outing. My extremely high expectations were left unmet.”
She chuckled. “I liked the circus pictures and all the strange creatures, but my attention span was exhausted within the hour. Thus, the fencing lessons.”
“I read all those books of your father’s yet never quite understood what drove him to pursue such a vagabond life. It was his living, obviously, but my father traveled for work and I still knew where I was from. I had a home to come back to.”
A tendril of her hair had escaped from her ponytail and caught at the corner of her mouth. She dragged it away as she said, “Yeah, but if you never have a home, you’ll never be homesick.”
“Is that true?” The car geared down with a small growl as he slowed for traffic. He glanced at her. “Are you missing America now that you’ve made a home there?”
“I miss Sung-mi and Byung-woo,” she said with a crooked, What can you do? smile. “I kept waiting for New York to feel like home, but I actually felt more in my natural habitat when I was traveling with you, waking up in a new city every other day. Granted, you travel very comfortably,” she allowed dryly. Private jets and luggage handlers made all the difference. “But even though your unannounced itinerary changes were really annoying—you do need to work on your communication skills—being on the move feels very normal to me.”
“I don’t want that life for either of us anymore. I want you to feel like this is your home.”
She had pieced that together over these days of his proudly showing her every inch of this admittedly beautiful and ever-changing island.
“Is that unrealistic?” he asked in a guarded voice.
“I don’t know.” Part of her was thinking, Home is where the heart is. That’s why she’d been content moving around with her father and living in a type of lockdown with Sung-mi.
By that logic, all she should need was Giovanni, but her heart was pining.
Because he didn’t love her the way those people had. And if he wasn’t willing to open his heart to her, then she didn’t have a home with him.
CHAPTER NINE
GIOVANNI WAS READING through CVs from his headhunter when Freja walked into his study. Rather than the beach bum attire they’d both fallen into while here, she wore jeans, a pale gray top and a light blazer with pockets—the sort of clothes she wore for travel.
“I thought we decided to stay in for dinner.” They’d only finished their late lunch an hour ago. “You look pale,” he noted. “What’s wrong?”
“I—” She closed the door.
He clicked off the tablet, met her by the chair where she sank down and tried to wrest the fingers of her one hand off the other. She wasn’t wearing his mother’s ring or any other.
Everything in him stilled.
“I’ve decided to go back to New York. There’s a flight from Palermo in a couple of hours.”
“Something with the tour? Everett will be here with my passport tomorrow. We were going to stop in Paris.”
“I don’t—” She shook her head and said in a small voice, “I’m not pregnant.”
The words rang through him like a sonic boom, leveling everything inside him. He firmly set aside whatever emotions rose up in waves around that news and said, “We both know my limitations.”
The timing was wrong, too. He was no fertility expert, but he understood the basics and they’d only started having sex a week ago.
“Freja.” He reached out to still her twisting hands. “There’s no rush. We have time to try again, find ways to tip the odds in our favor.”
“I thought if I got pregnant again, it would mean our marriage is worth continuing.” She stood up and paced anxiously across the room.
While he fell back in his chair and fought to keep panic from overwhelming him, he did what he had always done in times of heightened stakes and deep emotion. He condensed all of it into a ball deep in his core, stomach tight as he forced himself to ignore it so he could think past it.
“I told you that we shouldn’t put that sort of pressure on us,” he said forcefully enough to make her stiffen. He softened his tone. “We can see what happens for now, try more seriously later.”
“What if it doesn’t happen? What if that’s the only reason we stay married and it doesn’t happen?” she asked with a little sob of despair. “Think about it. You dated me to investigate me. You married me because I was pregnant. You told me we had to stay married until you took control of your company. Tomorrow you get your passport and can resume your life. And you want to share it with me? Try for a baby?”
“Wanting a family is a good reason to stay married.”
“But if it doesn’t happen, what do we have? We were never suited. Isn’t it better to end it now? Don’t you want to marry someone you love and have a real family?”
“For God’s sake, Freja. You’re not even giving us a chance.” He had to hold on to that cold, angry tone or the agony would shatter the steel walls holding his emotions inside. “This is not fair. I can’t make that happen on demand. You know that.”
“This isn’t about your physical limitations! It’s about your emotional ones. I asked you months ago if you loved me. You still haven’t answered me.”
Because death had bled love out of him once and losing their baby had done it again. He had been trying to keep what they had to something he could manage. Something that didn’t have the potential to destroy them both.
And what if he couldn’t give her a baby? He couldn’t bear to put her through the anguish of that. Or of losing another pregnancy. He’d already put her through so much.
“I think this is for the best,” she said, voice papery in the silence. “I’m going to go.”
He had to let her. Didn’t he?
“Have you lost your mind?” Everett said when Giovanni told him Freja had left for America last night. “You went through all of this and you let her go?”
“News flash. Women are no longer chattel. They do what they want. And I put her through the wringer. She’d had enough.”
“Is that what she said?”
“No.”
“What then?”