He saw her hesitation and suspected he knew its cause—for did he not have misgivings about returning there himself? Would it not unsettle him—reminding him of the dreams they had shared and never realised?

‘You know you would be safe there.’

Safe? Alone with Matteo? That was a definition of safe she wasn’t sure existed. Jennifer felt as if her life were a pack of cards which someone had thrown into the air to see where they would land. ‘But how long would we stay there, Matt? I mean—I don’t want to have the baby there.’

The brittleness had gone and now his eyes gleamed. ‘You think that no child has ever been born on Pantelleria?’

‘How long?’ she persisted quietly.

‘Long enough to bring the colour back to your cheeks and for you to rest and eat good food.’ There was a pause. ‘And long enough to decide what we are going to tell the world. To decide what our strategy will be.’

From a supposedly hot-headed and passionate Italian it was possibly the coldest and most

matter-of-fact declaration Jennifer had ever heard.

CHAPTER SEVEN

MATTEO ORGANISED THEIR TRIP to Pantelleria with a degree of organisation to rival a military campaign. Despite the loyalty of his staff—who these days had to sign a watertight confidentiality agreement—he entrusted relatively few of them with the knowledge of their whereabouts.

As he said to Jennifer—this was just too big a story to risk.

And that was all this was, she reminded herself. A damage limitation exercise over a story which had the potential to explode in their faces.

Jennifer had forgotten how extraordinarily protected you could feel in the exclusive coterie of Matt’s inner circle—but this time there was a subtle difference.

‘Your staff are being unbelievably nice to me,’ she said, as they waited for their baggage to be loaded onto the private jet which would fly them to the island.

Matteo snapped shut his briefcase and frowned as he looked up at her. ‘Aren’t they always?’

Jennifer switched her phone off. ‘Oh, forget I said anything,’ she said airily. She certainly wasn’t going to blow the whistle on anyone.

But Matteo laid his hand on her arm, and the unexpected contact caught her by enough surprise to lower her defences. ‘Jenny? Tell me. Because if you don’t then how the hell will I know?’

And maybe it was her duty to tell him. Nobody dared tell Matteo anything. And even when they did they told him what they thought he wanted to hear. ‘They normally put a barrier between you and the rest of the world.’

He narrowed his eyes. ‘Well, yes, I suppose they do—but surely you can understand why?’

‘From the world, yes—from your family, no.’ She hesitated. ‘Once, I remember trying to get through to you on the phone, and being completely stonewalled and unable to reach you. They dismissed me as if I was some kind of disgruntled ex-employee! It made me feel so…’

‘So what?’ he prompted.

Jennifer hesitated—but what did she have to lose by telling him? ‘So isolated, I guess.’ Jennifer shrugged. ‘Mind you, that was after we had separated. Maybe they were acting on your instructions.’

His face darkened. ‘I gave no such instructions.’

In fact he remembered feeling pretty isolated himself. The rupture of their relationship had given him a sense of being cut adrift from all that was familiar. Because even when their marriage had been in an appalling state they had still been in contact. She had still been his anchor, the person he turned to to confide in. He’d telephoned her from locations around the world, or she him. But once she had left—that had been it. Nothing. As though he had never even occupied a tiny part of her life. She had cut contact completely—or so he had thought.

Now it seemed that his staff had been instrumental in that sudden severing of all ties, and his eyes narrowed thoughtfully as he stared at her. He employed people to act on his decisions, not to make them for him.

‘So, how many of the famous d’Arezzo workforce will be accompanying us to Pantelleria?’ asked Jennifer.

‘None.’ He savoured the moment. ‘Nessuno. Just us.’

Jennifer blinked in surprise. ‘No chef?’ she echoed. ‘But you always take Gerard with you!’

A sense of regret washed over him. Was this what he’d intended when he had started chasing his dreams? To employ so many staff that he seemed to have lost control of his own life? ‘I’ll do the cooking,’ he drawled.

Jennifer’s surprise increased. ‘You?’

‘Do you really consider me incapable of living my life without any staff to help me, Jenny?’ he demanded exasperatedly. ‘That I never knew what it was to be cold or go hungry? Or to take jobs that I hated in order to survive before I got my big break?’

‘Well, in theory, no—of course I don’t. But when I met you you were so successful that it was hard to imagine you being anything else. Like a slim person telling you they once had a weight problem. You can’t quite believe it.’

‘Well, believe it,’ he said quietly, and smiled. ‘And come and meet our pilot.’

He had given her a lot to think about on the flight, but the reality of what they were doing hit her when the luxury private jet touched down, and she turned to him with wide eyes. ‘Are we completely mad, do you think?’

He gave a lazy smile. ‘Very probably.’

And the easy intimacy of that smile spelt danger, reminding Jennifer to be on her guard. To be careful to protect her feelings. Because nothing had changed between them. This trip didn’t mean that they were compatible, or that they weren’t in the process of getting a divorce. She was having a baby. That was all.

Pantelleria’s October air was still deliciously warm, and coastal flora bloomed in a profusion of pinks and reds and yellows. The crystal blue waters which surrounded it were rich in lobsters, and in the fertile valleys of the interior grapes grew as large as plums. It was like paradise.

Matteo felt the weight of expectation lift from his shoulders as he drove along the familiar unchanged roads to the Valle della Ghirlanda and his dammuso.

These days, superstars visited the island, but Matteo had fallen in love with Pantelleria as a child—when his parents had saved up enough money to send him to stay with one of his aunts during one long, dry summer. His family had laughed when he said he’d own a house there one day, but sure enough he’d done it—buying the dammuso with his very first film cheque. He had set about completely modernising the old building, whilst making sure it retained its natural charm.

It offered two terraces—one by a vast swimming pool which had a backdrop of the distant sea. The high walls hid a secret pleasure garden, with an irrigation system which had been built by the Arabs during their four-hundred-year occupation.

But it was the cool, domed main bedroom which Jennifer longed and yet dreaded to see—with its huge bed and restful simplicity. If only she could close her eyes and take herself back to the person she’d been then…would she have done anything differently? Would he?

‘I guess you’d better sleep in here,’ said Matteo, as they both stood in silence looking into the room.

‘And you?’

He shrugged. ‘The guest room is prepared.’ He wondered if she would heed the unspoken question in his voice. Was she thinking of inviting him into her bed—to maybe build some kind of way back through the physical intimacy of being close once more?

But Jennifer didn’t hear; she was struck dumb by the chain reaction of feelings which had been sparked by being in this room, this house. Delight, sadness, regret, and sorrow—all those emotions and a hundred more besides flowed over her in a bittersweet tide.