‘I’ve brought you here so I can tell you, in years to come, that I made it here. But only on my own—only with you. And I want you to know that on that far side of here, ten miles away, I once stood—but not with you. I want you to know, my son or my daughter, that it was the most important time of my life. But I didn’t know it then.’
She had thought herself alone, unheard by anyone but the tiny being growing within her.
But she was wrong.
A voice behind her spoke.
‘And no more did I know it.’
A gasp broke from her. Instant recognition of that deep, gravelled voice, charged with so much.
She slewed around. Felt faint suddenly with shock. With so much more than shock.
It was Nic.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
FRAN’S EYES LEAPT WIDE. She got to her feet, impelled upwards. ‘How—?’ The most banal of questions. The most irrelevant.
He walked towards her. Like her, he was enveloped in a ski-jacket, thick boots on his feet, crunching on the stony path.
‘My security team found you,’ he told her. ‘They’re good at their job.’ He took a breath. ‘I was always glad you assumed I was one of them.’
‘You let me think that,’ she countered.
Her mind was reeling, but it was impossible to say anything else. Nic—Nic, here? It made no sense.
‘Just as you let me think things about you.’
She gave a sigh. ‘It was what we both wanted at the time.’
‘Ah, yes,’ said Nic. His hands were plunged into the pockets of his jacket. ‘At the time.’ He paused, his eyes resting on her. ‘And now? Now what is it that we want?’
She let her gaze slip away, and there was sadness in her voice. ‘Different things. Impossible to reconcile. You’re forcing yourself to marry me, and I don’t want that. I don’t want to marry a man who hates everything about me. A man I don’t like for that very reason.’
‘Is that so?’ A studied neutrality filled his words. As if he were balanced on the point of a sword so sharp it could slice away his life with the merest slip.
‘Yes!’ There was vehemence in her voice—there had to be. How could she be standing here, thousands of miles from Rome, and Nic be standing here too? Having this conversation. A conversation that was a waste of time, of effort.
A waste of so much.
Emotion burned in her throat. Made her words sound as if they were wrung from her. ‘Oh, Nic, you shouldn’t have come here. It serves no purpose. It changes nothing. You’re still Nicolo Falcone and I’m still Donna Francesca. We’re strangers to each other. Strangers who deplore what the other is—strangers who by mistake have created a child between them, but strangers still.’
He nodded. He was keeping himself under control, because it was essential to do so. Just as it had been on his journey here—on the flight to Salt Lake City, closer to here than San Francisco, gaining him time on her, and then on the pedal-to-the-metal drive south, guided only by what his security team had uncovered.
She’d never flown to LA. She’d flown via San Francisco instead, then taken another flight to Vegas. Picked up a hire car there. Asked the clerk about winter closures, revealing her destination. Giving him the chance to get here in time.
To say what he had to say.
On which so much hung.
More than I ever knew. Could ever know. Until she walked away from me.
‘Yes,’ he said now, his tone still measured, his hands plunged deep into his pockets, where she could not see them clench with the exertion of the emotion that it was so essential to keep from her.
For now—or else for ever.
‘Yes, strangers. The aristocratic Donna Francesca and the nouveau riche Nicolo Falcone.’ He took a breath, felt the cold air rushing into his lungs. ‘But there are two people who aren’t strangers.’