Heiress's Pregnancy Scandal, page 6
He stretched out his legs and returned to the subject of the Grand Canyon. ‘How about West Rim?’ he suggested. ‘The Hualapai Reservation does helicopter flights, a skywalk and a river ride. Plus we can stay in one of the cabins there tonight if we want.’
Fran’s face lit. ‘Sounds wonderful!’ Then she paused. ‘But pricey... I’ll go halves with you.’
Nic was touched. Just as he had been when she’d asked him, before they’d set out for the Array, to charge the SUV hire against her room. He’d waved it away, said he’d fix it, and left it at that. She hadn’t pressed and he was glad.
‘Deal,’ he answered, and they busied themselves making their reservations before getting on the road.
* * *
It was an unforgettable experience when they got there, reducing them both to awed silence. They stood at the canyon’s edge, in the heat and the silence, looking across to the far North Rim, seemingly so close, but actually ten miles away across the great chasm in the earth, the dramatic formations of rocks and cliffs, the narrow ribbon of river far, far below, the great arching sky above.
They did not speak, only found each other’s hands and stood, fingers meshed, together, side by side. Then another group of tourists came up behind them and Fran stepped aside, slipped her hand from Nic’s to let them by.
Nic found himself glancing down at his hand. It felt empty without Fran’s in it.
He shook his head to clear it. It was the effect of this place, that was all.
They headed back to eat lunch under an airy awning before their flight down into the canyon, then a boat trip, gliding sedately along the Colorado river, deceptively calm in this stretch, gazing up at the towering cliffs above slowly passing them by.
‘Fancy white water rafting next?’ Nic asked wickedly.
‘No, thank you!’ Fran said primly. ‘This is quite fast enough for me.’
He laughed, relaxing with her. Resting his arm around her shoulder in a gesture that seemed to come naturally to them as she leaned into him companionably.
Back up on the rim again, they made their way to their SUV, which was looking decidedly dusty by now. It had come a long way.
And so have I, she thought.
Her mind skittered away, not wanting to ponder or analyse. She just wanted to enjoy this adventure and wherever it took her.
‘OK,’ she said as they strapped themselves in, turning on the air-con with relief, ‘where to now?’
‘Shall we aim for the North Rim?’ Nic said. ‘It’s a long drive, but we could give it a go.’
‘Let’s do it!’ she said, settling back happily.
The sense of exhilaration that she was getting used to filled her again. Crazy this might be, but she wanted it! She was not thinking beyond it—just going along for the ride. With Nic at her side.
* * *
In the end they didn’t head straight for the North Rim. Instead they diverted to meander into the vast Canyonlands of Utah, making their way along the well-trodden tourist trail, taking in the Grand Staircase, Zion and Bryce, stopping over at lodges, hotels and motels along the way.
They were taking it easy, each day a new adventure, for now putting aside their own lives, their existence beyond this road trip romance.
They did some short, easy-access hiking trails, nothing strenuous, buying the kit they needed as they went, and they did a lot of driving through the awe-inspiring, breathtaking scenery all around, stopping as and when they felt like it. Unpressured, leisurely...
Days slipped by, each one bringing its own delights. And each night was as burningly passionate as the first had been. As if by silent mutual consent neither of them counted the days, wanting nothing more than to reach the next awe-inspiring destination. Never looking further ahead than the next day. Never thinking about what would happen when, finally, they ran out of road. Ran out of time.
It was at a small, cabin-style café, where they’d stopped for leisurely coffee and donuts one mid-morning, as they were finally heading back south towards the North Rim, where both the road and their time together finally ended.
Fran had been deliberately keeping her phone off except to look ahead to their next impromptu destination, which she was doing now, to see what accommodation they might book before finishing their drive to the National Park north of the Grand Canyon the next day.
Usually there were no messages, but today, as she switched on the phone, a flurry of texts, missed calls and voicemails greeted her. She would have ignored them but she could see the identity of the sender. It was her brother, Tonio.
She frowned, starting to read his texts with growing anxiety. Not noticing that Nic, like her, was checking his phone as well, and his expression was changing too.
The message on his screen demanded his attention. But it was bad timing. Bad timing to get a heads-up from his business development manager that a potential prime site was likely to become available in Manhattan. He would need to check it out personally and move fast. Immediately.
But protest reared in him. He didn’t want to call time on being with Fran.
I don’t want this to end! Not yet.
Even as the protest sounded in his head he felt hard, cold rational thought pour down on it.
So how long do you want it to last? How long before it ends? Just how much more do you want of this—of her, of Fran? Another week? Two weeks? How long? How long to put your life on hold while you drive around the American West?
His eyes bored into the screen, willing the message to disappear. But it was still there. His real life was summoning him back. This hedonistic R&R, unscheduled, snatched out of his life, this instinctive, overriding diversion with this incredible woman who had blazed across his path was over.
Dimly, he realised that Fran was speaking, and he switched his attention to her. Her voice was hollow, her eyes filled with fearful emotion. For a second, just a split second, he thought it must be because he’d said out loud that their time was over.
But it was not that.
‘Nic...’ The strain was naked in her words. ‘Nic, my grandfather...he’s had a heart attack. They—they don’t think he’s going to pull through.’ Her voice wobbled at the end, choking.
Instantly, instinctively, he reached across the table to take her hand. She looked at him, her fingers clutching at his.
‘I have to go to England,’ she said. ‘My mother is there already, and my brother and sister. My father is on his way too. I—I have to be there.’
He nodded. The decision was made. The only decision to make. He beckoned to the server, wanting to pay and go.
In minutes they were back in the SUV, heading south.
‘We can make McCarran in Vegas in just over three hours, I think. Can you sort a plane ticket while we drive?’
Fran nodded numbly. It was unreal, surely, what was happening? Her grandfather, who had seemed to be as indestructible as the ancient ducal castle that was his principal seat, was dying. By the time she got there it might be too late.
Guilt smote her. She’d kept her distance from her family ever since breaking up with Cesare, not wanting to hear any more of her mother’s recriminations for doing so, burying herself in her work, devoting herself to her research.
Her guilt was exacerbated by realising that the last thing she wanted her mother to know was that she had taken off on a crazy road trip with a guy who worked in security at a hotel.
She felt emotion twist inside her. This adventure with Nic had been a mad, impetuous break out of time—away from all that she knew. It had been heady, and fantastic, and wonderful.
But it had nothing to do with her real life, did it? Neither the sober life she lived as a scientist in the halls of academe, nor the life she had been born to as Donna Francesca.
The life she was being summoned back to now, to what might be the deathbed of her grandfather, the centre of her mother’s family, who even now might be passing his ducal coronet to his successor—her uncle—while his son-in-law—her father the Marchese—would be paying the respects due from one nobleman to another.
And she must be there too—she must. Whatever the friction with her mother, it counted for nothing at a time like this.
Blindly, she stared out of the tinted windows of the SUV at the wild, rugged landscape they were passing through. It had become so familiar in the past amazing, unforgettable days she had spent there, spent with the man who was now at the wheel, driving her to Las Vegas airport with all the speed the law allowed.
I don’t want to leave this—to lose this.
It was a cry that came from within, from a place she hadn’t known existed until that moment. But it was a cry she must silence.
And if not now, then when?
That was the knowledge that pressed upon her. Had her brother’s messages not summoned her away, what would it have gained her? Another few days with Nic? Maybe another week at most? How could it have lasted longer than that? Her other real life would have called her back. She had things to do. Papers to write. Another research post to find, maybe a move to another city—another country, even.
So maybe this sudden ending of her time with Nic was for the best. Wasn’t it? Yet something seemed to twist inside her, like a heavy stone turning over...
Nic was talking and she made herself listen. He was telling her not to worry about her suitcase, left at the Falcone Nevada, that he would ensure it reached her office.
She thanked him absently, her hands clenched in her lap. She urged the SUV onwards, towards the airport, anxiety filling her lest she arrive in London too late. But even as she urged it onward she knew that the last of her time with Nic was ticking away.
Their parting, when they arrived at McCarran, was swift. She was cutting it fine for the flight she’d booked, and there was no time for anything more than for her to take Nic’s hands as he helped her to the concourse at Departures and press them tightly.
‘Thank you!’
Her words were vehement, her kiss swift, pressing his mouth so fleetingly he had no time to do what he wanted, to yank her into his arms and crush her to him one last time.
But the last time had been and gone, without either of them knowing it. So she slipped her hands from his, slung on the backpack she’d acquired on their road trip, gripped her passport. She had already checked in online, had no luggage to drop, and she needed to make her flight now—right now.
Unable to bear to look back at him, she forged forward through the opening doors, was swallowed up inside.
For one endless moment he stared after her, not believing she was gone.
Then, making his muscles work, feeling a sudden clenching in his stomach, he swung away, back to the SUV, gunned the engine. He drove off. Heading back to the Falcone Nevada.
It was over. His time with Fran was done. His expression tightened, and he wondered why he felt as if he’d just been punched in the guts...
CHAPTER FOUR
BY THE TIME she arrived at Beaucourt Castle, her grandfather’s principal seat, it was late morning.
Her young sister Adrietta ran up to Fran as she climbed wearily out of the Rolls-Royce sent to collect her from Heathrow, hugging her and exclaiming, ‘He’s rallying! He told the doctor to take himself off and he wanted lobster for lunch! Washed down with claret!’
Fran gave a tired, relieved smile. ‘He’s a tough old boot,’ she said fondly.
They made their way to her grandfather’s bedroom where, somewhere in the huge, crimson tester bed, her grandfather was propped upright, looking frail, testy, but blessedly alive—even though he was wired up to all kinds of medical kit and a nurse was hovering.
‘So they got you here too, did they?’ the Duke barked as he saw her, but his voice was hoarse and his face had aged and, despite the defiance of his attitude, Fran knew she’d done the right thing in hastening here.
However wrenched away from Nic she felt.
No, she must not think of that. Must not think, as she had for the ten-hour duration of her flight, of Nic making his way back to the Falcone, sorting her things to be sent on to the West Coast. Must not think of him doing his job, putting on his tuxedo for the evening, resuming his duties. Must not think of him at all.
She felt a strange tearing inside her—a hollowing out. But she knew she must set it aside. Now she must focus on her family, on her indomitable grandfather who had pulled through, and who, even if lobster and claret were most certainly not on the menu today, nor for some weeks to come, was still very much here.
He was commanding the scene, as he always did, ordering her mother to stop fussing and fretting, telling her uncle the Marquess he must make do with his courtesy title yet awhile, that the ducal coronet was going nowhere for now.
And there was relief for Fran for another reason too. Her mother, her face tear-stained, had swept her into a clinging embrace.
‘Darling, I’m so, so glad you came! Thank you...thank you!’
‘Of course I came.’ Fran had hugged her mother back.
It was all that had been said, but Fran knew that her estrangement from her mother was over. It had been helped, she soon realised, not just by her grandfather’s close call with death, but also by the news that was clearly serving to divert her mother from endlessly bewailing Fran’s decision not to marry Cesare.
Adrietta was getting engaged to a highly suitable parti, heir to a visconti—which gave the Marchesa the enjoyable prospect of organising a lavish engagement party and an even more lavish wedding the following year.
Fran was relieved, glad both for her mother and her sister. But her mood was strange. She was being absorbed back into her family, into the world, she’d been born into. Yet it jarred—the contrast between her days now at Beaucourt and how her days so short a time ago with Nic, cruising the American West, could not have been greater.
She told none of her family about him. Tried not to think about him. They had had a road trip romance—brief, impulsive and carefree. It had never been intended to be anything more. Their time together must become a precious memory.
Yet, in the long reaches of the night she could feel her body ache for his as she lay in her bed in the room that was always hers whenever she visited Beaucourt Castle.
As the days passed, and her grandfather gradually regained his strength, her time with Nic receded more and more. She was absorbed into her existence as Donna Francesca, with her parents, her siblings, her aunt, uncle and her cousins, all accepting her presence again easily—just one more member of the close-knit family spread between England and Italy.
With her grandfather robustly on the mend, her parents and siblings decided to head back to Italy. Fran went with them, to spend a week at the eighteenth-century palazzo in Lombardy that was her childhood home, before returning to her university, now that both her vacation and her compassionate leave were over.
She told her parents she would be looking for another research post, and this drew from her mother the hope that she would find one in Europe this time. And, even better, find a replacement for the fiancé she had discarded so cavalierly.
‘I just want you to be happy, darling!’ her mother exclaimed.
‘I am happy. I’m happy in my work,’ Fran replied.
‘Oh, it’s not the same,’ her mother protested. ‘Look how happy Adrietta is! She’s radiant! I want that for you, too, my darling girl. I want there to be that special man in your life who is like no other that you have known!’
Fran did not answer. Thoughts flickered in her head, memories flashing...
Her mother pounced. ‘You’re thinking of Cesare, aren’t you?’
‘No!’ Fran’s refutation was instant. Instinctive. It had not been Cesare in her head. In her memory. It had been a quite different man.
No. The admonition to herself came swiftly. She had taken off with Nic because it had confirmed that Cesare was in the past and she was free to indulge herself. But the point about indulgence, she had to remind herself sternly, was that that was all it was. The easy companionship and casual camaraderie that had been between her and Nic from the off, and all that hot desire for his strong, tough body that had melted her in his searing embrace, had passed.
It’s been and gone. It was good, but it’s over.
It made sense to tell herself that, to remind herself of that when she was back in her department, working on her next paper, teaching her assigned batch of undergrads, looking out for new research posts. Made sense to tell herself that just as she had accepted that Cesare was no longer in her life, so she would accept the same of Nic—she had let Cesare go easily enough, so it would be the same with Nic.
Yes, it made sense. But it had caused a pang, all the same, to find her suitcase from the Falcone Nevada beside her desk, delivered as promised by Nic. Suddenly vivid in her head was that last farewell to him, in the hectic anxiety of her departure from the airport at Las Vegas. Even more vivid was the sensation of that last farewell kiss, so hurried and fleeting.
But maybe it was good that it had ended so abruptly. Road trips could not go on for ever. In time, the vivid memories would fade. She would move on with her life. She must.
Yet as she called up on her screen a complex set of graphs depicting the interactions of the data she was examining her mind went momentarily blank.
A stray, random thought drifted across it. We never did get to North Rim, did we?
Their road trip had stopped before that. And for a moment, before she bent her mind to focus on the graphs again, that seemed a cause for regret.
As if something remained unfinished...
* * *
