He saw a fresh batch of tears flash in her eyes and knew that the confrontation hadn’t been pleasant and so he asked again. ‘What did Nicki say?’
‘That it was my fault. That I treated her poorly and always made her feel second best...’
‘No.’
But his words couldn’t comfort her now. She was still shaking from the recent encounter with someone she had considered to be her friend, someone she had defended so often to this man.
‘I’m sorry,’ Gian said.
‘I know you never liked her.’
‘I mean, I’m sorry you had to go through that.’
‘I should have listened to you in the first place. In fact, I’m starting to think you might be right...about the value of not letting people get too close.’
‘Never take relationship advice from me,’ Gian said. ‘As you have undoubtedly seen, I am not particularly good at them.’
‘I don’t know about that.’ Ariana smiled. ‘You made me feel pretty wonderful, at least for a while.’ But she hadn’t come here to discuss her time with Gian. She’d said what she’d come to say. ‘Anyway, thank you for being so gracious. I just thought it was something you should know. I don’t know if Nicki will have the audacity to come here again...’
‘It’ll be fine. I’ll let my security team know.’ He looked at her swollen eyes and knew Nicki had said plenty more. ‘What else did she say?’ Gian asked.
Ariana was rarely silent.
‘Tell me,’ he pushed.
‘That I’m spoiled...’
‘You deserve to be spoiled.’
‘You do too, Gian.’
‘What do you mean? I have everything I could possibly want or need.’
‘You really don’t get it, do you?’ He was so self-assured and yet so remote, just so impossible to reach. She ached, literally ached, to shower him with kisses, to bring him ice cream in bed, to be there at the beginning and the end of his day... ‘It’s not about the best bits, Gian.’ He just stared back at her, nonplussed.
It was time to let go of her fantasy that he would change his mind, that he would see her as anything more. It was time to go.
She stood to leave, but it was Gian who delayed her. ‘Are you ready for the wedding tomorrow?’
‘Yes.’
He wanted her to elaborate, as she usually did. Gian wanted to know if she was dreading tomorrow, if she was speaking with Mia, and lots more besides, but it would seem he had lost his front row seat to her thoughts.
‘Good luck with the opening,’ Ariana said.
‘Thank you. Enjoy the wedding.’
‘I intend to.’
This really was it, Gian realised.
The tears she had shed and her sudden appearance hadn’t been about him. It had been about Nicki and a friendship lost.
There was no baby, no emotional issues to deal with, it really was just time to move on.
Gian was usually very good at that. So why did he feel this way?
The opening of La Fiordelise Florence was a tremendous success and on the Saturday night esteemed guests mingled and celebrated. While he should be quietly congratulating himself, he had never felt more alone in a crowded room.
The best food, the best champagne, and if it was sex he wanted, well, there would be no shortage there, for there were beautiful women vying for his attention.
The problem was him, because instead of enjoying the spoils of his own success Gian found himself slipping away not long after dinner, sitting in his impressive suite leafing through a leather-bound book... There were several pictures of him fishing or riding with Dante and later with the twins. There was one of a teenage Gian rolling his eyes while Dante kicked a stone to Stefano as a very spoiled Ariana sat on a fat little pony, the absolute apple of her parents’ eyes.
But then Ariana faded from the images as life took its twists and turns and he had headed to university. There were a couple of years without any images while the disasters that had unfolded back then had played out.
He had never really likedAngela Romano, but there was a picture of him smiling at her the night La Fiordelise had been saved. Angela was dripping jewels and being her usual affected self, as she stood with her husband and Gian.
This really was a gift without an agenda, Gian knew, for there was even a picture of Gian standing with the Romano family on the night Ariana had attended her first ball. He knew Ariana had made this album purely for his benefit because she would prefer that this picture of herself be relegated to burn in a fire for she looked scowling and awkward.
It was a slice of time he had forgotten.
Even now, as he looked at the photo, there was no flash of memory.
He would have been in his mid-twenties then, and Ariana at that awkward age of fifteen, her hair done in a way that now looked very much of its time, and she had been wearing too much make-up.
They had all been there for him throughout his life, and he couldn’t help but wonder what each of the Romanos was doing now.
How Ariana was coping with the nuptials.
He turned back the pages and looked again at a podgy little Ariana sitting on a podgy little pony, only he saw it differently this time... Not the pony, or the pampered heiress, just the absolute adoration on her face as she smiled at her parents and pleaded with them, with her eyes, to be loved, loved, loved...
It could have been a cone full of chestnuts they had given her; it wasn’t the pony she had craved, it had been attention and love.
Gian went out onto the balcony and gazed on the Ponte Vecchio, the gorgeous old bridge that was the soul of Florence, and sung about in ‘O Mio Babbino Caro’.
Yet it was not the music that filled his soul tonight, for he would never look at this bridge and not think of her.
Ariana.
Yes, he was proud of his new hotel, but tonight his heart was in Rome.
