‘I kept putting it off,’ she said. ‘Maybe it was an extended form of denial that it’s actually happening. I’ve been to all the childbirth classes....’ Her voice tailed off as she remembered the ignominy of that. Everyone else had been part of a gleeful couple—each man proudly patting his partner’s bump at every opportunity and religiously doing all the breathing exercises. One man had even given up soft cheese and alcohol in order to ‘share his wife’s experience’. Justina had just felt such an oddity in their midst. Maybe they’d found it slightly embarrassing that she didn’t have a partner—that she’d clammed up whenever they had tried to quiz her about her baby’s father. And hadn’t she felt so unbelievably lonely as she’d tried to stem her envy of their seemingly uncomplicated and ordinary lives?

‘It just seemed so unreal,’ she continued slowly. ‘Like it wasn’t really happening to me. As if I’d wake up one morning and find that it had all been a mistake.’

His gaze was still fixed on her and she waited for some control freak tirade to follow because she’d dared to neglect the material requirements of the D’Arezzo heir. But to her surprise there was no outburst. Just that same faintly despairing expression in his dark eyes, which was infinitely worse. She thought that he’d never seemed more distant as he stood there, his powerful body seeming to absorb all the light in her usually airy apartment. But there was something compelling about him which drew the eye so that it became impossible to look anywhere else other than at him.

‘What do you do to relax?’ he asked suddenly.

The question was so unexpected that she didn’t have time to concoct a convincing answer. Instead, she shrugged. ‘I’m not very good at relaxing.’

‘I can tell. You look worn out,’ he said softly. ‘So why don’t you think about the baby for once—instead of your unquenchable desire to be number one in the music business? Go and take a bath, or something. Isn’t that what women usually do to relax?’

‘You would know about that better than I do, Dante.’ She was about to add that she would have a bath when she wanted one—and preferably after he’d gone—but his phone had started ringing and he’d clicked to answer it. And unbelievably, he was holding up a forefinger to silence her while he listened.

She contemplated telling him to go and take his calls somewhere else—but she was damned if she was going to stand there like some sort of simpering secretary, waiting patiently for him to finish his conversation. Instead, she stomped into the bathroom and locked the door behind her, turning the taps full on and recklessly dolloping in far too much lime and mandarin bath foam, before she hit the music button and then lowered herself into the foamy water.

When she’d first moved into this apartment she’d had a sophisticated sound system installed which played music in all the rooms. Usually she pressed the ‘shuffle’ button, so that she never knew which track was coming next. But today she selected Metamorphosis—which had been one of the Lollipops’ most successful albums. A success which had come at a cost.

It was the album she’d been writing when her relationship with Dante was breaking up. She hadn’t been able to listen to it for years but her reasons for needing to hear it now were important. No, they were vital. She needed to revisit that dark place she’d been in. She needed to remember the heartbreak and the desperation she’d felt as it had all slipped away from her. To remind herself that the occasional twinge of isolation was nothing to the pain she’d suffered in the past.

She lay back in the warm water, the shiny mound of her belly emerging from the white suds as the sound of the music filled the bathroom.

It hurt. It hurt more than she had expected it to. The lyrics of one song in particular felt like having a bucket of salt poured over an open wound, and she flinched as the memories all came flooding back. It was a song which had soared up the charts. Women had bought it in droves. She’d even been approached about having it used in the film score of a romantic comedy, but she had said no—even though her agent had hit the roof when she’d told him. She hadn’t been able to bear the thought of having it associated with comedy when it symbolised the bleakest time of her life. In fact, she’d always regretted releasing it as a single. It had been played on the radio so much that for a while she’d stopped listening in order to preserve her sanity.

She’d written it when she’d got back from finding Dante in bed with that blonde, pouring all her feelings out into a song because she hadn’t been able to bear the shame of telling anyone else what had happened. She’d entitled the track ‘Her’ and the words were still unbearably painful to hear.

Does she know the things you said

When you were lying in my bed?

Your words of love became a slur

When you whispered them to her.

Justina wanted to scream. To turn the music off and with it the images it brought back—but she couldn’t move. She was marooned in a great tub of bath water, feeling and looking like a beached whale, her usual agility long gone. So she closed her eyes and waited for the track to finish.

The water was almost cold by the time she carefully got out, hoping that Dante would have taken the hint and gone.

But he hadn’t gone. He was still talking on the phone, looking out of the window as he conversed in his native tongue. He must have heard her enter the room—even though she was moving soundlessly on bare feet—for he turned round, his eyes narrowing when he saw her.

Maybe she should have put on some jeans and a sweater, not the full-length silken robe which she’d wrapped tightly over her baby bump. But why should she start turning her whole life around to fit in with him? She was dressed for bed and she intended to go to bed—perhaps he might take the hint and leave her to it.

His voice slowed as he watched her push a lock of damp hair back behind her ear, and he said something in Italian before cutting the connection and sliding the phone back into his jacket pocket.

‘I thought you’d have gone by now,’ she said ungraciously as she slumped down onto the sofa.

‘I was listening to the music. Unsurprisingly, the acoustics in your apartment are the best I’ve ever heard.’ His smile was brief, but damning. ‘Tell me, do you always listen to your own songs when you’re lying in the bath?’

If she said ‘never’, wouldn’t that indicate that he could still unsettle her enough to make her behave in an uncharacteristic way? And she didn’t have to justify herself to him.

‘That’s none of your business. I can listen to what I like. Frankly, I’m surprised you’re still here—not least because that last song must have made you feel intensely uncomfortable. Or maybe not.’ Her eyes challenged him with a bravado she was far from feeling. ‘Maybe it feeds your massive ego to hear yourself written about in a song.’

‘Not that particular song, no,’ he reflected. ‘It was unforgivable for you to take our private disagreement and throw it into the public arena.’

‘Perhaps if you hadn’t behaved like a total sleaze then I might have found something good to write about you.’

‘“A total sleaze”?’

His eyes narrowed, but she could tell by the way that he was tapping his forefinger against his lips that he was furious.

‘Is that what you think I am, Justina?’

He was walking towards her now, with a look on his face which was making her shiver. Actually, it was making her do much more than shiver. It was making the soft, curling excitement at the pit of her belly slowly begin to unfurl. She knew she ought to move, to run away—but her slumped position on the sofa meant that she wasn’t able to run anywhere. And deep down she knew she didn’t want to.