Absently, she thought of home. She had spent a long time getting her flat just as she wanted, decorating it on a shoestring and furnishing it with recycled quirky items that she had personalised. Being back home should have felt like a good thing, but it didn’t. Loving Cesare had changed so much. A place no longer made her feel centred and at home, but a person—the wrong person.
Would anywhere ever feel like home again? Even if it meant she carried this awful black stone around in her chest for the rest of her life she would never regret loving him. The sad acknowledgement was tinged with defiance, which enabled her to close off her feelings behind a brittle shell.
Inside the terminal building she wandered towards the duty-free outlets. Not because she felt the need of retail therapy, but because she had a three-hour wait before her return flight boarded and she was already awash with coffee.
She spotted an outlet that sold handmade baby clothes in brightly coloured ethnic prints. Knowing that the quirky items would appeal to Rosie, she’d actually spent half an hour selecting some of the cute but overpriced sleepsuits in several sizes after she realised how quickly babies grew.
Paying for her purchases, she walked out of the door and straight into a tall man who was striding past. She might have fallen if hands had not shot out to steady her.
Pre-programmed to apologise, she stuttered a shaken, ‘S-sorry.’ Then felt a stab of exasperation. The great oaf was the one at fault; he was the one who hadn’t been looking where he was going.
‘It’s going to take a lot more than a sorry.’
The grim comment shattered her protective shell into a million pieces. ‘Cesare, what are you...?’ Blinking up at the tall figure towering over her, she shook her head, seriously considering the possibility that she had lost her mind.
‘We need to talk.’
Her initial hastily formed impression had been that he was furious, but now Anna realised this was not the case. Emotions of a strong nature were rolling off him, but it was not anger that was causing the corded muscles of his neck to stand out, or that pulled the muscles of his face taut. Like an addict coming face to face with the drug of her choice, she couldn’t stop shaking, or looking.
She cleared her throat. ‘She’s not here,’ Anna prefaced and received a blank look. ‘Angel has already picked her up.’
His dark brows knitted into a frown over his slate-grey eyes. ‘Jas is here?’
‘I assumed...’ She shook her head and thought, Never a good idea with Cesare. ‘I don’t understand.’ Leaving aside the why, there was a massive how? ‘You were in London. I saw you on the television. The princess is very beautiful.’ She bit her quivering lower lip.
‘Olivia, a nice woman but boring. All she did was witter on endlessly about Rafe.’
‘Who is Rafe?’
‘The man she is going to marry.’ He studied her face, then grinned. ‘You were jealous.’ He seemed to take a lot of pleasure from the discovery.
She set her mouth. Had there been a cat in hell’s chance of her carrying it off she’d have lied. As there wasn’t she simply toughed it out. ‘I’ll get over it,’ she promised grimly.
His smile suddenly died. ‘Well, I won’t. If I saw you with another man I’d...’
This dog-in-the-manger attitude ignited the smouldering embers of Anna’s resentment. Talk about mixed messages! He was the one who sent her away and now he was here saying stuff that had her fighting the urge to announce there was no other man for her and there never would be.
‘Well, what do you expect me to do?’ she asked him, struggling to maintain her uncaring façade. ‘Take a vow of celibacy because you don’t want me but you don’t want anyone else to have me either?’
‘I do want you,’ he gritted. ‘I need you, Anna.’
Wanting was good, needing was even better. The look of desperation etched on his lean face appeared genuine, but she couldn’t lay herself open to that hurt, not again.
She was worn down by fatigue and unhappiness and the mask slipped as she raised her swimming blue eyes to him. ‘You didn’t want me there when you came back,’ she wailed, unable to hold back the tears any longer. They spilled unchecked down her cheeks. It had been a total shock. She had always known that at some point the novelty of having her in his bed would pall, but the rejection had come totally out of the blue and hurt all the more because of it.
‘I can’t tell you how many times I almost turned the car around and came back, but I was just too gutless to admit I wanted to even to myself.’