Breathe - SAMPLE

Chapter Two

Anna took the nipple of the bottle out of Aurelia's slack mouth. She'd fallen asleep feeding. A tiny dribble caught at the corner of her lips and Anna affectionately touched it with her finger. She'd missed out on these moments so much when Matteo had been small, and even for the first six months of Aurelia's life. She'd let Stefano steamroll her into getting a nanny so she could continue being the dutiful wife, moving in the right social circles and going back to work in Morelli's marketing department when both children had been only weeks old. He'd insisted it was expected, but she had always felt it was wrong.

Those days were gone now. She wanted to be a better mother. She wanted to be the one they looked to and depended on. One of her biggest regrets was how she'd spent so much time away from them, leaving their care to someone else. No matter how trusted that person had been. Thinking of it now made her physically ill.

And oh, she was tired. All the travel and taking them to a new place was confusing to the children, and she was rapidly beginning to realize that when their schedules were toyed with, things did not go well. She gently laid Aurelia in her playpen and covered her with a pale-yellow coverlet the color of diluted sunshine and the inside of daffodils. Tiptoeing to the edge of the room, she looked in on Matteo. He'd been very quiet, and she smiled when she saw he was also asleep on his bed, his hand on a stuffed giraffe.

Her babies.

She swallowed against tears. No, no more. She would not cry, not even when she was exhausted and at her wits' end. She was done with crying. She'd done her share and was determined not to ever again. Her children deserved a happy mother, not one who leaked from her eyes at the drop of a hat. She'd made the decision to uproot them and leave the Morelli house, and she was convinced it had been the right move. She was beginning to realize there were things more important than giving them the privileges money could buy, and she couldn't stand playing the grieving widow for another moment. It was time to live her life honestly.

She'd gone looking for a new start, a place to heal and begin again. Only four people that she was aware of knew the whole story—her father; her brother and his wife; and her former nanny. And that was how it would stay. She didn't want Jace to know what a fool she'd been, how her silver-spoon life had turned into a clichéd joke.

What she really wanted now was a glass of wine and something to eat. Something edible. Which meant she wouldn't be making it because her cooking skills hadn't yet caught up with her aspiring nurturing side. Their cook had shown her a few staple dishes, as had Jace's mother, but her culinary expertise was limited to those select items. Her own mother had abandoned the family when Anna was young.

She remembered how that felt, to lose a parent. Then she'd let Stefano neglect their children, and that knowledge kept her awake at night now. It was one of the reasons she was determined they would never feel unloved again. She'd taken the gilded cage of marriage to Stefano when the life she'd wanted had ceased to be a possibility. It had been a knee-jerk reaction to a broken heart, nothing more. Her way of rebelling. Now she was paying the price. But her children never would. They were little and would forget all this pain and uncertainty. She'd make sure of it. She had brains, means, and the desire. She simply had to figure out what next.

She left the doors to their rooms open so she could hear if either of them woke, and left to see if there was anything she could scrounge in the kitchen.

At the bottom of the stairs she could hear movements from the front of the house, and she followed the noise and then her nose. Her stomach rumbled. She'd had a muffin in Kelowna several hours earlier, the bites fitted in between getting Matteo and Aurelia fed. But this didn't smell like dried-out muffin. It smelled like garlic. And olive oil...and something spicy. Italiano.