It turned out the wonderful man discovered he couldn’t leave his wife, who was expecting their first child. A week later Rosie had discovered that she was too.
‘When she lost the baby—’
His sharp intake of breath made her turn her head. ‘Your cousin really was carrying Paul’s child? He said...’
Anna tipped her head, her smooth brow pleating into a sad, contemplative frown. ‘She found out just after he left her. She didn’t think he believed her. Afterwards she just told him she lost it, no details, it was just a text.’
Cesare bit back the exclamation on his tongue, not wanting to interrupt her halting narrative. Any lingering guilt that he had sent his friend away vanished.
‘I think Rosie thought the miscarriage was her punishment for briefly considering a termination.’ She scanned his face and, seeing no evidence of the rush to judgment she had anticipated, lowered her defences a little. ‘If only she’d spoken to someone, but she didn’t. She was too ashamed to tell her parents. She felt it was all her fault. She still loved him.’
Cesare listened to the level of pain and the depth of emotion in her voice, and wondered how he could ever have thought her capable of the actions he had accused her of.
‘She lost the baby. She was all alone and then she came back home to the flat.’
‘It was at this time she attempted to take her own life?’ And he had considered Paul the victim.
Anna nodded, unable to look at him as she struggled to govern her emotions. She heard him swear. ‘I had a key. I let myself in. There were pills on the table and drink. Luckily she’d been sick. The hospital said if I’d been a little bit later...’ She closed her eyes, aware as she sat there with her head in her hands of his footsteps on the wooden floor.
‘Drink this.’
She opened her eyes and shook her head, her nose wrinkling in response to the smell of the contents of the glass he held out to her.
‘I don’t like spirits,’ she said through chattering teeth.
‘You will feel better.’
‘You’re a bully,’ she accused, curling her fingers around the glass. Her eyes met his over the rim as he watched her take a sip then shudder. ‘It’s horrible,’ she complained without heat. The glow was making its way down her throat and pooling in her belly. She had stopped shaking. ‘It was all a long time ago.’
The indent between his dark brows deepened as he studied her face.
‘Good girl,’ he commended as he retook his seat. It was obvious the memory of discovering her cousin had left its mark on Anna.
Anna choked a little. ‘That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.’ She felt her eyes fill with emotional tears and blinked madly. She didn’t want him to run away with the crazy idea she’d been waiting for a word of praise from him.
‘Slowly,’ Cesare advised, touching the glass that was pressed to her lips.
She nodded and even managed a realistic little cough to reinforce the idea raw alcohol was responsible for her tears, not raw emotion.
‘So how did your cousin’s parents take it when they found out?’ His eyes narrowed as he contemplated his own response. In that father’s place he would have hunted down the man responsible. Of course if the girl had been as stubbornly mute as Angel had been that was not easy—at least Angel had come to him. For that he would remain eternally grateful.
‘They never did—she didn’t tell them and she swore me to secrecy. I suppose other than Scott I’m the only person who knows.’
He stiffened at the name. ‘Scott?’ A man she felt close enough to share her cousin’s secrets with.
Anna smiled and sniffed as she fumbled for a tissue and found none up the sleeve of her top. ‘Her husband.’
The relief he felt was so intense that his entire body slumped.
‘Rosie got married last year. Scott is Canadian—they moved to Toronto. Aunt Jane and Uncle George have gone over to be there with her for the birth of her and Scott’s baby, who was born yesterday...a little girl called Annie.’
Cesare swallowed, struggling to acknowledge the jealousy that had caused him to rush to judgment as he handed her a tissue and watched as she blew her small nose. It had never occurred to him that it was possible for such a prosaic action to trigger a rush of gut emotion. While recognising it he stopped short of identifying that visceral tightening as tenderness.
He ground his teeth as he asked himself why. Why would he be surprised? From the outset his reaction to her had been unlike that to any other woman, totally disproportionate even if she had been the woman he had wanted to believe her to be.